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Photos: Candy Cane Lane

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In my search for more holiday cheer, I heard that there is a street in Ravenna (a neighborhood here in Seattle) which goes all out for Christmas. Looks promising. Now, the big thing you have to know about this is how busy it was. It's a small, residential street, and you can either drive through or park nearby and walk. It was around 9 p.m. on a Saturday when we stopped by, and the line of cars to get there was blocks and blocks long. We parked and walked. Almost all the houses had pretty cute decorations. Giant candy canes and the word "peace" in many languages were prominently featured. The most impressive bit was the centerpiece, a 'carousel' around a hedge: In motion: The houses were very cute, although I'm not really sure why anyone would wait in that line of cars to drive through. When we left after about 15 minutes, we saw that the line had died down a little. However, some of the cars that we

Snow 2: Brain Freeze (2008)

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If you were reading the blog last year, it's conceivable you may remember my review of the ABC Family made-for-TV movie, Snow . But seeing as Lindsay and I barely remember it, it's not too likely. So, let's start this out with a quick recap: Snow is a movie about Nick Snowden, the new Santa Claus. He's trying to find a lost reindeer, and on the way he meets the girl of his dreams, Sandy. They rescue the reindeer from Sandy's ex-boyfriend and get married. Also, the first movie was essentially a worthless pile of crap. I want you to pay special attention to the "pile of crap" part. That's going to come up again. Snow 2: Brain Freeze takes place the next year. Snowden and Sandy are having difficulties, mainly due to him being a jackass. He teleports to the city to get some time away, hits his head, and promptly gets amnesia. One commercial break later, and he's in the hospital with a convenient news crew there to broadcast his conditio

The Fairly OddParents: Christmas Everyday! (2001)

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This is the first and only episode of The Fairly OddParents I've seen. The premise of the series is that the main character has a pair of fairy god-parents who grant his wishes, leading to mayhem. I have a hard time imagining how the producers have been able to wring nine seasons out of this premise, but I have to admit I found this special inventive and fun. The episode starts right before Christmas, Timmy's favorite day of the year. There's some generic toon chaos involving his babysitter (apparently, she was the regular villain at this point, so they shoehorned her into the episode), followed by Christmas itself. At the end of the day, Timmy makes the classic wish: for every day to be Christmas. The next few minutes are pretty predictable: the quality of each successive Christmas diminishes, and the world grows more and more irritated at the now seemingly eternal holiday. It takes Timmy a while to catch on, and by that time things are really bad. The military'

Simon's Cat Shorts!

Hey, look, two new holiday shorts from Simon's Cat! WHOO!

Holiday Goldfish Crackers

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I love Goldfish crackers. I think the classic cheddar fishes are a practically perfect food. Of course, there are special holiday Goldfish varieties; we'll look at the four I was able to find today. Let's start simple: Standard Cheddar, but holiday shapes.  Here's the back of the bag, with a game to play with Finn (the cheddar goldfish) and Gilbert (the pretzel).  Gilbert didn't have his own holiday product, so he's playing second fiddle here. Here are the crackers. Not that exciting, really. They taste basically like normal Goldfish, if a little less fluffy because of the flattened special shapes. Next up: Holiday Graham Goldfish, in exciting Holiday Vanilla Cupcake and Hot Cocoa. The back of both bags is the same. You might not be able to tell, but that's a lady graham goldfish named Coral that looks almost the same as the pretzel, but is not the pretzel acting as Finn's lackey on these. Once a

Santa with Muscles (1996)

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Life is sometimes unfair. So it serves to reason that Christmas is sometimes unfair. If this were not so, if we truly lived in the best of all possible Christmases as Leibniz thought, then Jingle all the Way would have no defenders, and Santa with Muscles wouldn't be entirely unknown. While it probably doesn't need to be said, I will state it now for the record: Santa with Muscles is not a good movie. It is - objectively - pretty bad, a vehicle for Hulk Hogan produced years after the wrestler's fame had waned. When it opened, it made $120k in its opening weekend and closed after two weeks. However, unlike 99% of zany holiday comedies, it is absolutely watchable. There are even moments when the filmmakers attempted to be funny that resulted in funny scenes. If you don't watch many movies in this genre, you'll be forgiven for not realizing how rare this is. The movie opens with a girl writing a letter to Santa. The girl's town is being terrorized by some sor

How I Met Your Mother Christmas Episodes (Part Two)

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Read Part One Symphony of Illumination (2011) Theres a nice punchline on the cold opening on this one and some pretty okay jokes about Christmas music. Unfortunately, the episode drags badly in the middle and the B plot is awful. Many of the characters drifted into over-caricaturization here, it was jarring and boring. The end of Robin’s plot has a really nice dark tone though. The Over-Correction (2012) There are three, count them three, episodes set at Christmas that ran back-to-back-to-back in 2012. Unfortunately, our early thought on this episode was: ‘Hey, we found where the show jumped the shark,’ There’s a lot of bad randomness in the early parts of this episode. (WHY IS COBIE SMULDERS CRAZY NOW? Also, the lack of coherency in the emotional arcs isn’t just me with no context:  AVClub gave this one a C+ .) Finally the plot of the episode comes together and it builds for a while into some honest laughs. Christmas ornaments featured heavily in the best running gag of the