Mainlining Christmas

This special episode of T he Magic School Bus was equal parts awesome and awful; a bizarre work of propaganda that removes the education from edutainment, yet is strangely intriguing. There's a moment in this episode where the titular vehicle is hit by its own recycling-nullification ray and transforms into junk. That's an absolutely perfect metaphor for the episode. Maybe for the series. But damned if it isn't fun to watch. The episode begins right before holiday break. It's definitely a 90's conception of the "holiday," too, complete with pine trees, green and red decorations, multicolored lights, and an near endless number of Christmas tunes with new recycling-themed lyrics. I don't think they said the word, "Christmas" once, though they did mention Hanukkah several times. My favorite shot in the special is one of a chalkboard with a picture of a menorah and other Hanukkah paraphernalia surrounded by a Christmas garland. They tried s

What’s this, what’s this, here at the bottom of the internet? Why, it’s an early present just for you! Some games to play. Otherwise you’ll just work on that end-of-year report, and you’ve got plenty of time for that… Monkey Go Happy Christmas  PencilKids has made a cottage industry out of short silly games about monkeys and clicking. Choose your monkey, give him or her a holiday hat, and just click to explore. Find all the Christmas items to make the monkey happy. It only takes a minute. You don’t want the monkeys to be sad! Infectonator: Christmas Edition   Like most of these games, this had a non-Christmas version first. Click to start a holiday zombie apocalypse, collect coins from dying citizens to upgrade your zombies, and do it again! Sugar, Sugar: The Christmas Special   Sugar Sugar is a clever game of physics and patience with a pleasant mellow soundtrack. Draw lines with your mouse to direct falling sugar sprinkles into a mug. This game is all that in a ho

This is a collection of South Park episodes I found on Netflix. I guess it was released on DVD originally. I'm not the world's biggest South Park fan, but I've seen a handful of episodes, some of which were brilliant. Others... not so much. Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo (1997) Jesus, really? All right, the premise of this episode revolves around magical, talking Christmas poop. I think there's supposed to be some sort of message about political correctness or something, but mostly it's just juvenile humor about poo. Oh. Okay. Wikipedia sheds some light on this. Apparently, Mr. Hankey was supposed to be the main character of the show. Not this episode; I'm talking about South Park as a whole. An earlier version of their pitch was for "The Mr. Hankey Show." Yeah. That would have been much, much worse. Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson (1998) This was a little better, thanks in no small part to Mr. Hankey playing a far smaller role. The epis

Let's take a moment to ponder, in all its complexity and multitude of facets, the phrase, "missed opportunity." I'm not a fan of Lady Gaga, but I respect her for what she is. I just don't really think she's a singer. It's not that she can't sing - she can. It's just that there's nothing special about her singing, and less than nothing special about her songs. Her music is generic, and her lyrics are gibberish. But that's okay, because - like I said - she's not a singer. She's a performance artist. And a damn good one, if her popularity is any indicator. Hell, she's practically a Muppet herself. She should be juggling porcupines with Gonzo - she'd be awesome at that. Why didn't she hang out with Animal or hire the Swedish Chef as a costumer? Her interactions with Miss Piggy should have been legendary, not trivial. Like I said: missed opportunity. Instead, we got an hour of her singing songs off her new album, b

Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories Edited by Martin H Greenberg, 1990 Crossposted from The Blue Fairy’s Bookshelf I was so excited when I found this book! A collection of sci-fi themed Christmas stories, just the thing to break up the Christmas monotony, right? Now I know why I kept finding copies of it for a dollar. It’s not all bad. There are some stories I liked, but most of the authors are phoning it in here. It’s like everyone had one mediocre holiday story in them, and instead of reading it in a collection of other good stories on other topics or other good stories by the same author, it’s bundled with every other author’s one mediocre story. But let’s be more specific, shall we? “To Hell with the Stars” Jack McDevitt, 1987 To hell with your pessimistic cliche attitude, Mr. McDevitt, warp drive might still be possible - 1 Star “A Midwinter's Tale” Michael Swanwick, 1988 A nicely creepy Solstice tale, well done - 4 Stars “Christmas on Ganymede” Isaac

I don’t have a love-hate relationship with Woody Woodpecker. I have a hate-hate relationship with these characters. I found them annoying and abrasive as a child, and the slightly tamed version from the early 2000’s didn’t exactly make a great impression here. This isn’t an out-and-out terrible episode, but it’s pretty boring. In the first segment, a couple villains are stealing presents with a fake gift-wrapping scheme. Woody gets involved when he gets tricked by them, and he then tricks the dumb henchman into helping him take back the gifts by pretending to be Santa. The writing is obvious, and the show seems to be uncomfortable with its characters, not sure whether Woody is a loveable prankster or a semi-sadistic trickster, instead trying to have it both ways. The second segment is maybe a little better, just because there’s less voice acting, and the animation’s not awful. Chilly Willy (the mute penguin character) is trying to catch a ride on Santa’s sleigh to the Bahamas for

This episode of "The Frank Sinatra Show" was included as an extra on a DVD set of Bing Crosby Christmas specials. I went to Wikipedia to determine what "The Frank Sinatra Show" was, and learned there's no clear answer to that question. It sounds like it was basically a thirty minute segment where ABC gave Sinatra free reign to do whatever the hell he wanted to. Apparently, what he wanted to do this week was hang out with Bing Crosby and sing Christmas songs. There's some quipping between songs, but no real story. They exchange gifts - each gives the other a Christmas album they recorded - and then go caroling in a grey sound stage that's supposed to be an English street... I think. That section was pretty odd. The outside set was blatantly fake: elements were less developed than you'd want to put in a live stage performance. I suspect it would have been less conspicuous in black and white - this episode was filmed in color, though I can'