Christmas Spirit(s)

Feliz Navidad, X-Mas Peeps!

As someone who's incessantly accused of overt hum-buggery (?) I feel that I must defend my festive reputation.

So, here it is, folks:

DAVE'S TOP TEN THINGS THAT NEVER FAIL TO BRING ON AN ACUTE CASE OF CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

(10) Life-Threatening Weather  I'm a bit of a snowstorm masochist, which is totally left over from growing up in Stephenville, Newfoundland.  At the risk of evoking charges of blow-hardery with such phrases as "BACK IN MY DAY..." I do have to make the claim that Old Man Winter seems to have gotten a helluva lot more pussified over the years.

Age may be clouding my memory a bit, but when I was a kid it would usually start snowing around the first of November and not let up until around May 23'rd (if it was a good year).

During this time you'd also get about three or four rip-roaring storms that would last for days, barricade you indoors and then threaten to trigger a veritable rash of Donner Party re-enactments.

Even now I can't resist the urge to don johns that are long (try saying that five times real fast), strap on my boots, en-parka-nate myself and then venture out for a long walk during white-out conditions.  Let me tell, Holiday shoppers, if you actually make it back alive from such a harrowing expedition you'll never again feel guilt over staying indoors until the second week of June.    

This one dove-tails nicely with...

(9)  Outdoor Shenanigans  As I get older and my circulatory system begins to approximate that of an eighty year old shut-in, I'm becoming increasingly unlikely to take advantage of this one.

But if you can force yourself to go outside for some skating, skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, or even just marinating in a snowbank while wearing a ski-do suit, you'll regress back to fuzzy childhood Christmas memories faster then William Hurt goes feral in Altered States.

Bonus points if you linger outdoors long enough to flirt with Mr. Hypothermia, make it back to your heated womb-like home and get pulled back from the brink of death with the timely administration of six gallons of stout, marshmallow-infused hot chocolate.  Regardless of your denomination, nothing will get you praising Sweet Baby Jesus quicker then a near-death sub-zero experience ...

(8) Tempting The Collapse Of Your Local Church Down On Top Of Your Head  Look, I've been accused of making Bill Maher look like Pat Buchanan but there's still something uniquely magical about being guilted into going to church once a year.  I don't know if it's the aroma of self-righteousness or incense, but when you're interred in a large, spartan, echoey chamber being bored into the preliminary stages of Alzheimer's you're quickly reminded of the true "Reazon for Da Seazon", yo.  Also, occasionally you can luck out and score a talented choir who, if they have any skillz whatsoever, can really raise the hair on the back of your neck.    

Which bring me to...

(7) Christmas Carols That Don't Suck.  I really 'effin despise cutesy contemporary X-mas caterwauling.  As far as I'm concerned "I Saw Mommy Knobbing Santa Claus", "The Little Drummer Nerd" and "Jingle Bell C@*k" are all auditory death.

I much prefer olde skool Holiday tunez.  And by olde skool I mean friggin' Medieval.  Frankly, you just can't top A-list material like "Silent Night, "O Holy Night" or "Good King Wenceslas".

Testify for me, York Minster Choir!  

Not bad, huh?  I have to admit that "Oliver Reed's" shout-out at the 1:56 mark kinda scared the poop out of me.  Overall, though, I think it was worth the little falsetto kid sacrificing his testicles, don'tcha think?   

Honestly, I have no friggin' clue who this Wenceslas cat was and/or what part of the world he was supposedly king of.  And frankly the song's lyrics are more incomprehensible then Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter", but, hey, it's still a bitchin' tune.

Speakin' of "kings"...

(6) ♪♫ Blue x 4 Christmas ♪♫  Y'know, they say that the world is divided into Elvis people or Beatles people.  I firmly place myself in the latter camp, but damned if this melodic tune doesn't have me reaching for the spiced eggnog and pondering a Holiday-themed suicide note.

Damn my parents for their overt brain-washery!  They played the ever-lovin' shirt out of this album when I was a kid and now that I'm home I'll prolly hear it another ho-ho-ho-jillion times.  Well, at least it's a better heavy rotation option then that godawful new Coldplay track.

(5) You're Supposed To Cut Up Not Across, Right?  Like I said before, most "contemporary" X-Mas songs blow reindeer d!@%, but there are a few notable exceptions.  Notably this 1987 remake by these four, young, enterprising lads from Dublin called "You Two".

Keep your eye on these guys, I really think they're gonna go places...

Cripes, why are all the Christmas songs I like depressing as s#!*?   WARNING: Every one of these tracks should be chased with a handful of Xanax...

(4)  "I Am The Ghost Of Christmas...yada, yada, yada"  I absolutely lurves Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  Although I must shamefully confess that I've never read the original novella (but I did read the crap outta David Copperfield), I've seen a slew of cinematic and T.V. movie iterations produced over the past sixty or seventy years.

I love the classic Albert Finney version, the extra-grumpy George C. Scott television movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol and the Disney adaptation starring Scrooge McDuck (man, talk about casting to type, huh?).

Here's one of my favorites, which is surprisingly bittersweet and unnerving for what's supposed to be a vapid sitcom.

(3) The Ballad of Max The Indomitable   Now, I'm talkin' about the classic Boris Karloff narrated, Chuck Jones animated How The Grinch Stole Christmas from 1966.  

So many memorable moments: Roast Beast, Who Hash, Max's martyrdom, the Grinch's prototypical and gleefully evil expressions, his snake-like method of locomotion and his triumphant redemption.

Honestly, if this nasty green bastard can come back from the brink of Bloefeld-level super-villainy, there's still hope for all of us, n'est pas?

Oh, and for the love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (what?), don't wean your kids on that execrable Jim Carrey abomination from 2000.  Y'know, I'm talkin' about that crass piece of cinematic "product" which featured a marketing tie-in with Visa, A.K.A. "The Official Card of Whoville".

Wow, way to miss the entire f@#$%^& point, you greedy jack-holes!

(2)  Good, Grief  Nothing actimivates my feelings of Christmas nirvana quite like watching this poor, bald-headed manic depressive go through the motions every year.  Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown features a strong anti-corporate message, vintage animation,  authentic voice work from actual kids and a groovy jazz soundtrack to boot.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the anachronistic presence of characters like Peppermint Patty (who I suspect was probably evicted from Occupy Minneapolis last month), this perennial favorite seems even more timeless, important and relevant every year.

I can't help but crack up every time Snoopy goes spastic on top of Schroeder's piano and then slinks off under his withering glare.  Or when the pint-sized musician treats Lucy to a virtuoso performance which culminates with a one-fingered toy piano rendition of "Jingle Bells".

And again, although I'm just two steps away from official "heathen" status, I still well up like a sniffly little b!%$^ whenever Linus takes the stage to deliver his "true meaning of Christmas" speech.  By the time the kids transmute an alder branch into a Douglass Fir using Snoopy's Christmas lights and then start crooning "Hark The Herald Angels Sing" I get messier then Chris Crocker talking about Brittney Spears.

(1) Christmas "Spirits" (Fo' Reals, Yo!)  I.E. Guinness beer, Gabbiano Chianti and/or copious amounts of El Kapitan.

EPIC  I could never conceive of having the time to do this within my own lifetime, but kudos to people who do...

FAIL  Proving democracy still works:  http://jezebel.com/5870113/weve-found-the-worst-christmas-song-ever

The Driving Test

Picture it, Persistent Reader:

Stephenville, Newfoundland, January 12'th, Ninteeen-Eighty-Eight. 

This was back in the day when it used to start snowing in November and didn't let up until April.  It was a time when the word "accumulation" really meant something.  That year winter had run its typical riot across the island, leaving ten foot snow drifts all about and roads dangerously slick with ice.

A perfect day for a driving test.  

Honestly, the roads were so bad that morning, I should have strapped on my Bauer's, skated down to the test site and endangered the structural integrity of one of their cars.  Better that then risk turning my own vehicle into an elaborate luge while en route.

The temperature that day was a balmy thirty-five degrees below zero, which I figure was probably about minus seventy-eight with the wind-chill.  My test was at 8 am and I gave myself a good hour to unearth the Wondercar, which was buried deep under a mound of ice, sleet and hail, perfectly preserved deep beneath the Arctic surface like a some sort of steel mammoth.

After I was finished excavating the vehicle I crawled down from the roof, brought the atomic batteries to power, charged turbines to speed and then prepared to ease her into Warp Factor One.  Given the condition of the roads that morning this translated into flying down the road at a blinding twenty-four klicks an hour.


On the highway.

At the Department of Motor Vehicles & Child Endangerment I was "warmly" greeted by "Officer X" (name withheld by request).  Instantly I was terrified by how sharp this guy seemed to be, despite the early hour.  My barely-conscious seventeen year old brain marveled at how anyone could be moving upright at such an ungodly hour, so I just assumed that he must have been hooked up to a coffee IV drip before I'd arrived.  Despite his irritating mutant ability to catalog every single mistake I made, his sloth-like demeanor kinda reminded me of Benicio Del Toro on Quaaludes.           

The test officer and I tried to pick our path carefully across the parking lot to get to the Ninjamobile.  I'd hoped to slowly drift into the driver's side door like a curling rock, but instead I lost my footing and power-bombed myself onto the ice-covered asphalt.  This promptly knocked the wind out of me and all I could do for about forty seconds was lay there make a mournful "hup, hup" noise as "Officer X" came to tower above me.  While I was ordering the bridge crew of my body to give me a damage report, "Mr. Helpful" just stood there staring at me, threatening to bombard my upturned face with nasal drip runoff if I didn't hurry get up and get out from underneath him.

I got to my feet and gingerly scuffed the rest of the way.  All this time I knew the instructor was probably thinking:

'Jesus Christ, he can't even walk his uncoordinated ass across the parking lot and I'm supposed to get into a car with him?  F$#@, I don't get paid enough to do this!'

When we were safely ensconced in our bucket seats, "Officer X" helpfully reminded me: 'Now, this is a driving test, not a flying test'.  He told me in no uncertain terms that any more deviations from standard procedure would result in instant failure.

Despite the dire warning, my confidence spiked.  After all I was now hermetically sealed in my familiar power armor; a steel roll cage of invulnerability.  In an instant I'd gone from being a soft target to feeling that regardless of whatever came next I'd certainly give just as good (if not better) than anything I could possibly get.  My instructor seemed to sense this unwarranted delusion of grandeur and despite the frigid temperatures, beads of cold began to manifest on his forehead.

Seat belt...check, mirrors...check, lights...check, tray tables stowed and seats in the upright and locked position...check, emergency exits and safety features of the vehicle illustrated...check.  The flight attendants in my mind completed final cross-check for departure and I began to taxi away from the terminal.

I began to come hard about at a sharp angle in order to give sufficient clearance to the vehicles parked behind me.  I brazenly turned to check the "objects-are-a-helluva-lot-closer-then-they-appear" rear-view mirror when suddenly I heard:

"Hay!  Hay!  Hay!  Hay!  Hay!  Hay!  HAY! HAY! HAY!!!"

Assuming that the dude didn't have a fetish for equine dietary preferences, I whipped my head back around.  It didn't look good.  If not for the dulcet screams of my terrified passenger, the portside bow of my Autobot would have taken the side off of a Porsche 944.

After a reproving and somewhat dazed frown from "Officer X" I gave the drunken helmsman in my brain a hasty course correction and slowly edged out straight.  But I was now coming out too straight and I narrowly grazed the ass-end of Datsun pickup truck behind me.  Honestly, there was less room in that place then the average impound lot.


With me nerves already on life support, I didn't like my chances with the next vehicular Olympic event: parallel parking.   Undaunted, I edged up,  my bumper next to the far pipe representing the boundaries of the sweet spot.  I rammed her in reverse, cut her hard, and then slowly rolled back.  Satisfied by my depth in the spot, I cranked the wheel in the opposite direction, leveled her out, pulled ahead a bit for good measure and put her in park.  My self-satisfied grin quickly withered when I turned to see my instructor looking as me like Ben Stein.

"The pipes are supposed to indicate where cars are parked both in front and behind you.  The white line on the ground by the bank right there is meant to represent the curb.  The idea is to park directly between the pipes and not on the curb."     

"Okay," I replied, suddenly alarmed by the white line intersecting my front windshield.  "If that's the case, where would I be now?"

"You'd probably be in somebody's mailbox," came the deadpan reply. 

'Your sister's a mailbox...' I muttered just under my breath.

Despite the double-barreled blast of wide-assery I still managed to nail it on the second attempt.

"Haw!  In yo' face, dawg!" I shouted at my tormentor.  He said nothing in response, choosing instead to etch a cryptic note on his little wiener clipboard with his little wiener pen.

The next Herculean trial was backing into a spot, once again represented by four impossibly-skewed metal poles, conveniently camouflaged by some chucklehead who obviously decided it was a bright idea to paint them all snowdrift white.

But as I got ready for my own version of the Death Star trench run, I heard my Dad's voice whisper in my ear, Ben Kenobi-style: "Remember...Use the Rear Brake Light, Luke!"

As a side note, dontcha think it's kinda weird that my own Dad used to call me Luke?  I know we didn't hang out together constantly or always see eye to eye, but, c'mon!  You think he'd remember the name of his only son!  Hell, his only kid!   

Sorry.  Regardless of this heinous insult my Dad had been an incessantly patient and wise driving teacher.  One of his best chestnuts of sage advice (besides "Y'know, you can always drive ten kilometers over the speed limit on the highway and the cops won't stop you") was: "When backing up, just make sure that the brake light in the middle of the rear window is positioned exactly between the white lines of the space."

So, I took a deep breath, let go of my conscious self and acted on instinct.

"Wait!" yelled my instructor as I started to edge back.  "Are your eyes closed?"

"Well, yeah," I said plaintively.  "My eyes can deceive me.  I shouldn't trust them."

"Really?  Is that so?  Well, I'm tellin' you to keep your friggin' eyes open, there, Dr. Spock."

Despite being handicapped by having my peepers at maximum aperture I still backed up perfectly between the pipes!  It was on to the road test...

Intoxicated by a heady draught of self-confidence I also killed on my road test.  Not, killed, literally as in vehicular manslaughter/ran over a pregnant woman, I mean that I did so good that my instructor had to pass me!

So, folks, the lesson of the story is: even when you seriously cock up at the start of something, just keep pluggin' away!  Sometimes when you think you've already failed, the pressure is suddenly off and you end up pulling through.  Or, at the very least, keep on sloggin' through 'cuz it's always good experience for next time!

Or, maybe the lesson of the story is: don't be afraid to really suck at something in the beginning 'cuz then there's no where to go but up. 

Whatever.  Happy motoring, folks!

EPIC: My Dad was a cool teacher an all, but nowhere as pimp as this dude:


FAIL:  I can't tell if this kid is a genius or deserves a kick in the knutz...

Officially in Mouring

Hello, Constant Reader.

Every kid in school (usually in the form of a creatively bankrupt essay topic) gets asked at some point in time what his or her favorite season is.  Invariably, I always picked summer.  Maybe because I never liked being cold, which I think had a lot to do with nearly freezing to death on a parade float when I was in Cub Scouts.

It was during the Sydney Christmas Parade back in 1978 when it actually used to snow.  And be cold.  At the risk of sounding like I've got a case of the "Matlock's", back in my day we had winter storms.  Lot's of 'em.  And how did we safeguard ourselves during these winter squalls?  Why, we had a parade and sent our children out into it apparently to appease Njorl, the Arctic God of Frostbite!  And we liked it that way!

Actually no, no we didn't.  I sure as hell didn't want to go out there and wave like an idiot just for the sake of a baker's dozen people who were obviously too stupid to stay inside during a blizzard.  But my dad was one of the scout leaders so I kinda got drafted for the event.  So me and six or so other mates were sent out on an odyssey of misery and suffering.  An hour or so into it, we began to made peace with our respective gods whether it be Jesus, Vishnu or Crom.  The general consensus was that if the Antarctic-level wind chill didn't kill us, the exhaust from the Plymouth Trail Duster pickup truck that was hauling this pint-sized "Death on the Ice" recreation would.

The "float" itself was nothing but a flatbed cart wide enough to put a coupla quad runners on it.  It was done up sorta like a camping/woodland scene with a few "Chuck Brown"- style trees, a fake plastic "campfire" that lit up but helpfully dispensed no heat whatsoever and a lean-to which looked like it was built by Mr. Magoo.  Half the time there weren't even any visible kids on the float since all of us were crammed into the shelter like pint-sized university students shoe-horned into a phone booth.

Every once in awhile the procession would stop so that the scout leaders could root us out of the shelter with a rake.

"I'm cold!" one wailed.

"Why, Baby Jesus, WHY?" another lamented.  

"I can't feel my hands and feet!" I screamed.

"Just wiggle your fingers and toes and they'll warm up," muttered one of the scout leaders.

Y'know it's a pretty crushing moment in a kid's life when he or she realizes that some adults will lie right to your face and in doing so clearly indicate that they're more concerned about the proper representation of a crappy parade float versus the lives of eight innocent children.

So, yeah, I survived this debacle (barely) but it left me hypersensitive to the cold.  I've just resigned myself that between October and April (sometimes September to May on a bad year) I'm going to feel as if I'm dying of hypothermia 24-7.  I doesn't help that I have the circulation of a eighty-year-old stroke victim.  I could be wearing woolen fleece mittens with solar panels attached to them and my hands would still feel like two junks of ice.

Beyond the obvious perks of summer (meals on patios, trips to the beach, having feeling in your lower extremities) if someone were to ask me right now what my favorite season is, I'd actually say spring.  Why you ask?  Because spring guarantees good things are ahead.  It's the season of hope and promise.

I've never understood the mentality of people who think Fall is their favorite season.  Beyond the aesthetic value of looking at colored leaves (?), really, what else is there?  Cripes, if you want color, just take a hit of acid and stare at a "Yellow Submarine" poster all day long.

Beyond the presence of Halloween (still my fav holiday of the year next to "Talk Like a Pirate Day"...Y'arrrr) Fall depresses the crap out of me.  It's kinda like when you start to notice that your Aunt Bea is getting dotty 'cuz she gave you a set of prayer beads for your forty-third birthday.  You know it's only a matter of time before you go into her fridge and see cartons of milk stacked up like cordwood.

Whoa, sorry, that was too grim, wasn't it?  Okay, I got another one.  It's kinda like when your per hamster Mr. Wigglesworth stops eating and the vet tells you he has hamster cancer and...whoops!    That's worse, isn't it?  Yeah, I thought so...

Anyway, bottom line is, Fall is some grim shit.  Everything friggin' dies and, frankly, I'm tired of presiding over the inevitable every year in protracted fashion.

Also, think about all the depressing stuff that happened in September:  the dread of school starting as a kid, 9-11, the invasion of Poland, the premiere of Scary Spice's reality show...

We won't even talk about the people that like winter the most.  Sick f#@$%.  Seriously, seek help before the sane people lock you up.

The biggest issue issue IMHO is that regardless of how  great a summer we had weather wise and how much fun we tried to pack into a few long weekends, we still feel ripped off.  The reason for this is: we are getting ripped off.  If people think that one week off in the third week of July represents a summer well spent than you've been properly deluded to the point that vacation-stingy companies want you to be.

Take me for example.  I've been liberated from the traditional 9-5:30 gig since April and this summer has still flown by like the average three-day weekend.  The only difference this year is that I packed about ten years of what once passed for summer into six awesome months.

But I still want more and kick myself for not taking advantage of it during the first few months.  After all, the circumstance I find myself in will likely never occur again in my entire adult life.  Unless I can puzzle out some way to become independently wealthy in the next six months, likely I'll soon find myself in yet another gig offering even less available vacation than I had last time.

I remember in July my infinitely wiser half said to me: "Look, I know you're working hard on your writing and job search stuff, but c'mon!  Live a little!    Enjoy some of this beautiful summer before it passes you by.  Don't have September roll around and you haven't taken advantage of all this beautiful weather."

Unbelievable.  She was right.  I currently had no boss and no binding contract demanding that I sit in a seat for eight and half hours a day underground, with my unused mole eyes slowly atrophying.   But I was still ensconced on my patio writing six to eight hours everyday.  Why was I still being so mindlessly self-driven?

It's because I'd been brainwashed.  We've all been told since day one that a minimum forty-three hour work week is normal and that two weeks of vacation time is plenty enough for anyone.  Who gives a crap how many unique opportunities we miss because of this, it's just the way things are, okay?  Stop asking questions!

And that's what I'm on about here.  August 31'st, 2010 only came by once.  Unlike Spring, it'll never come by again.  Do you remember how you spent that day?  I do.

I finally took my wife's advice.  I went to the beach by myself once but didn't dig it since the water was nigh-Arcticlike and I'm still not one to bake in the sun for hours.  But someone I know suggested I check out some lakes close to where I live I was all over that like Snooki on a guido juicehead.

During the recent heatwave we experienced between August 30'th and September 3'rd, I spent a few hours every day lakeside writing my blog entries olde-skool style with pad and paper.  I had a blast alternately lounging in the shade and sun and taking a quick dip when it got too hot.

Needless to say it was a slice of heaven.  Anyone who's still wondering what human beings are supposed to be doing with the lion's share of their time spent on this rock flying through space should take note.

I'm reminded of my buddy Mike's patented "Thatched Hut Theory".  He believes that all people truly need to be happy in life is a nice little thatched hut on a beach, some shitty twenty-hour-a-week menial job designed to keep you in food and other necessities, the capability to get drunk periodically and the freedom to spend each night sitting around a campfire hanging with your homies.

Notwithstanding the fact that he couldn't answer how my X-Box 360 fit into his little scenario, I have to admit that, the older I get, the more this kinda makes sense to me. 

Like you, Tireless Reader, I didn't get a vote in this whole "let's all be cogs in the wheel of big business-style free enterprise so that they own you lock, stock and barrel" but I've started an experiment to see how far I can scrawl away from it before I get lassoed back into place.  I don't fancy my long-term chances, but at least I'm gonna try.

By the way, I'm writing this now by the lake.  Literally the day after Hurricane Earl blew through, the temperature dipped fourteen degrees, the sun is suddenly taken by stage fright and the water is colder than a barrel of November rainwater.

F#@$%^% Fall.    
   
EPIC:



FAIL:  http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2006007/9574-eng.htm#6