Mainlining Christmas

It's day seven of 25 Christmas Eves, and I've got a short fantasy piece I think you'll enjoy. By: Erin L. Snyder How do you know the real one’s the real one? I mean, twenty-seven years of shopping malls, Christmas movies, candy commercials and the like: how do you know all those Santas are fake? The truth is, you just do. You see them there in their garish red suits and stupid hats, and at a glance you know they’re fake. Even kids know. They might lie about it, even to themselves, but no one’s ever really been taken in by the old farts they bring into department stores every winter. Because deep down, we all just know. We can tell the difference between a fake Santa and the real thing. I guess I never gave that much thought when all I’d ever seen were scores of the knock-offs. But... Jesus. You walk into your living room middle of the night Christmas Eve and find a jolly fat-ass in a red suit and mittens washing down a plate of oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies

I bought this kit last year, really cheap: And then I forgot to take a picture of the pieces in progress. Oops. The kit came with a bunch of red and clear glass beads, a long piece of wire and some silver thread, I suppose for making ornament loops.  The instructions were slightly confusing, but boiled down to:  Cut two long pieces of wire. Thread one with red beads and one with clear. Fold them in half and twist together at the half-way point. Twist all the way along so it looks pretty. Use pliers to bend the ends of the wire under. Bend into cane shape. So I made a bunch of canes: And they were fun to make, but they actually look kind of tiny and lame on the tree: And then I thought, I have all these beads and wire left over. So I cut two really long pieces of wire, and added beads and twisted them together as though I were making a giant, ill-proportioned candy cane. Only this time I left some wire on each side and added jump rin

The holiday cheer just keeps coming. This is part four of my look at my new Christmas music. Album: Gregorian Christmas Artist: CantArte Regensburg & Hubert Velten I'm a sucker for a bargain: Amazon was selling all 49 tracks of this for 99 cents. That's two cents a track. Granted, I don't really need more chant in my Christmas collection... but still: TWO CENTS A TRACK. The music's good, but certainly not essential. Album: Joy of Christmas Artist: Giovanni Pretty decent piano music. There are a handful of tracks I like quite a bit. Album: Country Christmas: A Christmas Welcome Thomas Kinkade Artist: Various (country) The only thing that pisses me off more than this album's existence is the fact I kind of enjoyed listening to it. See, here's the thing: it's got Thomas Kinkade's name on it, so I was all excited that I'd be able to hate it out of spite (no, his death wasn't enough). At any rate, the CD's a coll

God, Home Alone 3 is a strange movie. Wikipedia sheds a little light on this thing: originally, they wanted Culkin back. He'd have been a teenager at this point, which would have explained the escalation with the villains. Obviously, they couldn't get him to return, so they wound up relaunching with a new character, who was about as old as Culkin in part one. This led to the second most disorienting aspect of the movie (I'll get to the first in a minute): the discrepancy between the tone and the threat the villains supposedly represented. Along with Culkin, the robbers from the original two were gone this time around. In their place was a team of elite espionage professionals fighting to regain a computer chip they'd stolen from the US Air Force only to lose because they failed to exercise common sense when going through airport security. The implication seemed to be that their employer would have them killed if they failed to recover the object. The computer chip

We're up to day six in our series, 25 Christmas Eves. For those of you just tuning in, I'm posting a new piece of genre fiction every day until Christmas, and every damn one of them is about a Christmas Eve. This one's a fantasy piece. By: Erin L. Snyder Toby’s Bridge isn’t called Toby’s Bridge, at least not officially. It’s called something else. No one gives a damn what that is, cause it’s on Toby’s land. Sure, it’s not really his bridge. It’s the town’s bridge. Town’s bridge, town’s road, and all that. Town’s river. But everything all around it - the forest the road cuts through, the old mill (that hasn’t been up and running in twenty years), the marsh... all that really is Toby’s. People in Renville are fond of calling Toby the poorest rich man in America. Might be something to that. Just might. Toby’s is one of them old covered bridges. Sturdy, good build and all that. Don’t really make them that way much anymore. Not in Renville, anyway. Everyone wants bri

A lot of people think the worst movie in Matthew Broderick's career was Godzilla - just a few days ago, I'd have said so myself - but I really think Deck the Halls might claim the prize. I've seen worse holiday movies this year, but I can't remember the last time I watched anything this vapid and idiotic. The movie is supposed to be a comedy, which means it's supposed to be funny. It's not. At all. It is, however, structured like a comedy, as if someone set out with a checklist and systematically crossed items off a list. New neighbors: check. Rivalry based on male ego: check. Obligatory gross-out sight gag: check. Car destroyed: check. House destroyed: check. Dream fulfilled: check. The wives are loving, loyal, and level-headed, but somehow unable to perceive anything in the world around them. The kids are two-dimensional jokes. There are cheap attempts at slapstick to placate kids and Kristen Chenoweth's cleavage to placate their fathers. My faith in

Part three of my comprehensive look at my new Holiday albums.... Album: Christmas Wishes Artist: Anne Murray Growing up, I always hated country music. That's changed as I've gotten older, but I still don't have much in my music collection. While it's still not my favorite genre of music, I'm finding that I'm enjoying the country Christmas albums quite a bit. I shouldn't be surprised: it's one of the most under-represented types in my now substantial collection of holiday tunes, so it's a much needed deviation. I don't know much about Anne Murray - according to Wikipedia, she's a country/pop singer from Canada who was big in the 70's and 80's. This album is from 1981, and I'm enjoying it. Album: Christmas with Jim Reeves Artist: Jim Reeves I'm going through these albums in alphabetical order, so it seems kind of odd that I get two country/pop albums in a row. This is also a solid album, though I don't l