Mainlining Christmas

Christmas in Tattertown is a rather bizarre piece. Originally intended as a pilot for an animated series, it's basically a love letter from Ralph Bakshi to the largely forgotten animated works of the early 1900's. It's got a lot of issues, but it's a fascinating piece on its own. In my opinion, it's a shame it was never picked up. The special is intentionally light on plot, but what's present follows a human teleported into a world inhabited by thrown out toys and other discarded objects. She sets out to teach the denizens of this new world about Christmas and eventually to celebrate. Meanwhile, the primary villain (the main character's doll), quickly assembles a criminal empire and attempts to take over Tattertown. I like that, by and large, characters don't play to type: in other words, a Christmas wreath is as likely to be a conman as anything else. It leads to some entertaining interactions, while adding depth to what could easily have been a t

Holy crud-muffins. I thought I vaguely remembered this show, and a lot more came back to me as I watched, but I had forgotten just how utterly insane it is. If you were not a Nicktoons watcher in the 90’s, you might have missed this one. It’s about Rocko, a wallaby who moves to the city with his dog Spunky, and his friends (a neurotic turtle-thing and a big dumb cow raised by wolves) and his enemies (the catfish-thing that lives down the street). It’s sometimes satirical, often subtly adult, and sometimes just gross-out. It wasn’t as biting or as gross as something like Ren and Stimpy, though. In this episode, Rocko’s feeling down about being on his own for the holidays, so he invites his friends over. A game of telephone later, and the whole town’s invited to a party, along with some magic Christmas elves that moved in across the street. Of course, professional jerkass Mr. Bighead gets involved, and it looks like Rocko will be alone for Christmas after all, until his new friend th

It's the 18th day of 25 Christmas Eves, my attempt to provide you with 25 genre stories about Christmas Eve. Today, you're getting a very short piece called "Slouching." Give it a read: By: Erin L. Snyder “I’ve been saying it, Bob. Been saying it for six years now. Ever since I moved into Elbington.” The ground shakes the tiniest bit, like a trailer’s driving by. But you look down one side of Route 81 and up the other, and there’s not a blessed thing. Not a headlight to your left or a tail light to your right. And you know perfectly well there’s not another road east of Milford can hold a truck with more than two axles. “Told Trev just last week up at Jones’ General Store, when he was all, ‘Merry CHRIST-mas.’ I told Trev he was wasting his breath. That there wouldn’t be a merry anything this go-round.” It’s silent for a second, then you hear the rustling. You step off of Stanley’s porch to have a look around. There’s nothing for a second, but the rustl

Okay, so I had never seen an episode of That’s So Raven, although I had heard of the show. So I had no idea that the main character is psychic. Yeah, she gets flashes of the future. They seem pretty useless, but there’s your premise. Psychic drama queen with misfit friends and a permanent laugh track. This episode follows a stock sitcom plot that is nearly always unpleasant. Character does something slightly dumb (opens her Christmas present early, even after her psychic powers let her know what it is), compounds it with something dumber (wears the expensive necklace to school) and finishes off with completely implausible (necklace gets flung out a window and under a lawnmower). So now that she’s “ruined Christmas”, she and her friends try replacing the necklace before her parents know it’s gone, while avoiding their evil teacher who’s moonlighting as a mall Santa. And they manage it, through slapstick and shenanigans. And there’s a few bits where it’s almost actually funny. But

Bleck, another terrible Disney Channel sitcom. The ludicrously annoying premise of this show runs as follows: precocious scamps live in a fancy hotel because their mom is a...lounge singer? I know it used to be common, but does anyone who works in a hotel get paid in room and board anymore? Anyway, the show follows the misadventures of the kids and all the annoyingly shallow caricatures that work at the hotel. This was really bad. Really, really bad. Groan-worthy, in fact. The characters were so vapid, the stereotypes so hideous, that by the time there was a couple stranded in the hotel by the blizzard even though all the rooms were booked and the woman was very pregnant, I was too exhausted from all the eye-rolling to even be angry. Sure there was another plot about the kids and their divorced parents and one of them has visions of a Parent-Trap-like scenario for a while, but that was dumb too. It doesn’t help that these kids seem to have taken acting lessons from the kids on th

I've certainly heard of this show, but like most people who weren't eleven-year-old girls in 2003, I'd never actually seen an episode. While it was more or less as bad as I'd anticipated, nothing else about it resembled what I'd expected. It's hard to put into words just how bizarre this thing really was. The show was a smorgasbord of surreal sequences, slapstick, parodies, and animated side comments thrown against the wall in the hopes something would stick. It was strange and incoherent. It might actually have been impressive if anything - ANYTHING - they'd done had been remotely funny or amusing. This is one of those things that mistakes weird for clever. The plot is relatively simple: Lizzie is obsessed with winning a holiday parade float competition and expects help from her family and friends. Meanwhile, an old man shows up claiming to be Santa's lead elf. Pretty early on he effectively proves this claim by accurately recalling what Lizzie

DC Universe Christmas Various Writers and Artists Compilation released in 2000, Issues originally copyright 1940-1999 Premise: A collection of holiday-themed stories from across the first six decades of DC comics. Talk about hits and misses! This is a really interesting read, but it’s not always interesting because it’s good. There is a huge array of styles and quality here. It starts really strong, with a Denny O’Neil Batman tale from 1980 about an ex-con turned mall Santa, and a cute piece from the 90's about Flash (Wally West) shopping for a present for his girlfriend. Then we get a Wonder Woman story from 1943. There’s some historical interest here, but mostly it’s all kinds of horrible. Soon after it is a Teen Titans tale from 1968 with a hokey plot-line and a lot of ‘groovy jive-talking’. There’s a Robin story which is corny, but cute, a Legion of Superheroes bit that’s wild and kinda wonderful. I was really intrigued by a Green Lantern/Green Arrow team-up that’s