Mainlining Christmas

We covered Frozen back when it came out , despite some disagreement on whether it should count as a Christmas movie. (We've since decided it should be classified as Christmas in July.) But with this new special there's no room for disagreement or confusion. It's Christmas in Arendelle. The premise is that it's the first holiday season since the events of the movie, and so it's the first opportunity that royal sisters Anna and Elsa have for a holiday celebration both in public and together. They decide to throw a party, but after a public ceremony, the local folks all have their family traditions to get back to. The sisters realize that their lives have been so circumscribed by hiding Elsa's powers that they don't really have any traditions of their own. Olaf sets out to save the day by collecting traditions from the townspeople. Naturally, complications ensue. I loved this. I sat through it with a big stupid grin on my face the whole time. I liked

Black Friday tree, Black Friday tree Your advent's been foretold Black Friday tree, Black Friday tree Cast in an industrial mold. In foreign lands, you were made By workers who were underpaid Black Friday tree, Black Friday tree We bought you at a Walmart Black Friday tree, Black Friday tree Shipped over seas real fast Black Friday tree, Black Friday tree Not sure you're made to last With branches dark and details nice, You shelter us from retail price Black Friday tree, Black Friday tree We got you at a Walmart From our family to yours, we wish you a very merry Black Friday

Over the years, I've found the large drug store chains to be abundant sources of bizarre holiday decor, none more so than Rite Aid. Their seasonal section seems to be full of a wide array of Christmas oddities that linger well into January, when everything becomes more affordable. That's the story behind this, of course. I grabbed it last year when it hit 70% or 75% off. As you can probably tell from the image, these are low-end animatronic birds fixed to a stand decorated with fake tree pieces. When activated, they erupt in a chirping version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" at deafening volumes while LED's  light up behind them. This is the part of the review I typically go into a rant about the crappy quality, or stupid concept. But there's a problem... I kind of love this thing. I mean, sure, it's too loud and I could do without the glitter coating the base (I hate glitter). And, yeah, the plastic pine pieces aren't doing it an

If you haven't tried the new episodes of MST3K, available on Netflix, you should. They are a lot of fun, they keep what worked about the original formula while adding new twists, and you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that one of my life goals is now to have as much fun as Felicia Day is having every second she's on screen. The cast features a who's who of the geek-culture parts of the internet, with Day and Patton Oswalt as the recurring villains and brief guest appearances including folks like Neil Patrick Harris, Mark Hamill, and Wil Wheaton. I've watched 12 episodes and I'm still amused by the inclusion of commercial bumpers as if the show were made to have commercial breaks. These episodes have more ongoing plot in the scenes that break up the movies than I remember from the original show, but I probably never saw more than one episode in a row before. This episode in particular is building toward the season finale. So make some popco

It starts in March, but it's quiet - so quiet you can only hear it when the wind dies down and you're perfectly still. You don't even notice it until you're trying to fall asleep. A shuffling sound, at most - you can ignore it most nights. Pretend it's not even there. Most of the time it doesn't even cost you sleep. Most of the time. By June, though, it's grown into an audible scratch. Sometimes you climb into the attic, thinking there must be some injured animal up there. But there's nothing. Nothing but the boxes. And you dare not even look at those, not in the summer. In September, it's tapping. Knocking. It wants you to notice. It wants you to let it free. But it's still fall, so you try to ignore it. But now... now it's pounding against the ceiling. Rhythmic, ceaseless. It won't be ignored. If you left it there... if you did nothing... would it grow louder? Would it continue to build until the pressure was so intense it reduc

When this movie came out, I asked the first person I knew who watched it one question. I didn't care if it was good or bad, intelligent or idiotic, whether it tied to Prometheus or to the original movies... I just wanted to know if it was set at Christmas. The person I asked assured me it wasn't. Turns out, he was wrong. To be fair, you really  needed to be paying attention to catch it. The first shot after the intro provides the movie's only date: December 5, 2104. The ship is almost immediately damaged, requiring repairs before they can continue on their journey. Helpfully, the movie tells us it will take about 48 hours to make those repairs. That takes us to December 7. At this point, they decipher a message and change their destination to a planet "a few weeks" away. Assuming "a few weeks" translates to fourteen days, they arrive at the film's alien-infested world on December 21. Where do I remember that date from? Yup - it

Shockingly, this stop-motion Rankin-Bass special is not the same as the 1971  Here Comes Peter Cottontail . However, it is essentially identical to the 1970 special,  Santa Claus is Coming to Town . The plots and setups are basically the same - they've just changed the character names and lowered the quality to make them distinct. In this version of the Easter Bunny's origin, he's a baby rabbit located and adopted by a town of orphaned kids called "Kidville," because contrary to what the special's narrator would have us believe, there is clearly no God. He's discovered in the woods on Easter, so the kids call him, "Sunny," after the Easter Sun, which is not a thing. I'm pretty sure they're thinking of the Winter Solstice, which is (for all intents and purposes) Christmas. Within a year, the bunny has enslaved the children of Kidville (at least that was my reading). For some reason, he convinces them they need to introduce capita