Posted on December 17, 2009
The Littlest Angel, The Biggest Waste Of Time
In an effort to get Trey excited about the holiday season, we’ve taken to the practice of watching a Christmas movie with him every night, an endeavor which has proven to alternate between being mostly rewarding and occasionally infuriating, depending on the film. When the nightly movie is something like the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or 1969’s Frosty the Snowman, I can easily slip into the long-ago mindset of my younger self by watching Trey gaze at the screen with the same childlike wonder I once had myself many, many moons ago. The old pangs of Nostalgia kick in and from the first moment a Burl Ives-shaped snowman waddles onto the screen to tell the tale of a red-nosed reindeer named Rudolph, or when the familiar rasp of Jimmy Durante’s throatnotes cut through the air, invoking the spirit of Frosty like husky musical pleas to the ancient jotunn goddess Skadi, my eyeballs are glued to the screen. There’s something magical in those old television specials that eludes modern filmmakers’ efforts to recapture – an intrinsic something that makes them stand apart as classics in a field of abject failures. It is with these sorts of lesser-than dregs of abysmal filmic failure that my Christmas joy is transformed into quiet misery and inescapable pain. Case in point: the Delaney & Friends Cartoon Productions 1997 offering titled The Littlest Angel. Read More
Posted on December 15, 2009
I Wonder About The Trees
Brittany and I wanted to take Trey to pick out a Christmas tree at the first of the month, but time and the elements conspired against our efforts, culminating in the grand and whimpering anti-climactic fury of an impotent snowstorm that covered our cars and not much else on the first Friday in December. The residual effects of the great blizzard of aught nine here in southeast Texas left the area soggy, damp, moist and muddy, with a nice haze of perpetual precipitation that has busied itself by alternating between a light haze, a dense mist and an impenetrable blanket of fog over the past several days. This past Sunday, however, we were finally faced with both clear weather and a delightful dearth of familial obligations with which to otherwise occupy our time. So, we piled in the car and headed towards the Land of Canaan known as The Christmas Tree Forest! Read More
Posted on December 10, 2009
Again, Dangerous Tub-Thumps
After Tuesday’s essay, I planned on writing something a little lighter today, perhaps with some froth on top and maybe some cheerful sprinkles, like some sort of literary version of a coffee house barista serving up joy, one cup at a time. Unfortunately, I remembered that the only thing I hate more than coffee is a coffee house, and the only thing I hate even more than a coffee house is the perky and annoying barista behind the counter who takes your order with disapproving scorn and then sets about brewing up a single-serving batch of paint-by-numbers java in one of three infuriatingly pretentious quasi-Italian sizes. And, as is so often the case when I sit down to write these little tarradiddles, my good intentions transformed into seething hate and disappointment before I could type even so much as the first damned predicate. Consequently, I bring you today’s essay in the amazing technicolor of my angry dreamcoat. Enjoy! Read More
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