The Most Couch-Loungingest Time of the Year

Well, we are fast approaching another Christmas, my friends. I've bitched and I've parodied my way up to here, but this past weekend's snow and the extra twenty-five pennies I found in my car this morning so that I could buy coffee at work have put me in the moodiest of holiday moods. And so, I thought maybe I'd set aside the dick jokes and the drooling over large breasted women for just a moment and reflect on what the season is truly about: Holiday specials.

Now, my friend Joshua, Master of the Technical Parent and all-around nice fellow, has a little Tuesday event he calls "Top Five Tuesday" wherein he lists five things that he likes and gives a short description of them. Since Tuesday was reserved for me electronically and mentally stroking myself talking about my birthday and the end of the world, I was too full of myself busy to participate.

Well, better late than never.

Unless we're talking about ovulation cycles.

Anyway, since I'm a day late on the whole Top Five Tuesdays thing, I thought I'd break my top five down into two categories: favorite animated holiday specials and favorite holiday specials.

Five Favorite Animated Holiday Specials:

5.) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: There's just something about clunky stop-motion animation that gets me. Well, at least here. The rest of the Rankin-Bass stable kind of sucks. Except for their version of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, but those aren't stop-motion animated. Anyway, there's probably a lesson to be learned in there somewhere when Rudolph takes the high road and doesn't rub it in everyone's faces that he saved Christmas. Way to be an exemplary humble little reindeer, Rudolph. Especially since your name means "famed wolf".

4.) Mickey's Christmas Carol: While I'm not a big fan of the Disneyfication of stories, this one works for me. Probably because Mickey himself is just a supporting character. Oh sure, it's his lame little kid that melts Scrooge McDuck's heart, but we all know that it's really Pete's cigar smoke what changes Unca Scrooge over from the miserly old bastard to the generous and lovable grandfather figure in the story. Tragically, the story of Tiny Tim drowning when he tries to swim in Scrooge's Money Bin is buried on the back page of the papers.

3.) A Charlie Brown Christmas: I know I might have given Chuck the old run around a couple of days ago, but at the heart of it, Charlie Brown just wants us to remember the spirit of the season. And he's got a point. Everyone's pretty dickish the other eleven months of the year, can't we at least be decent during the month between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day? What's that? Not while we're stealing each other's parking spots at the mall? Fair enough.

2.) How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Boris Karloff's voice really makes this for me, but overall it is the ultimate story of redemption that doesn't involve lightsabres and big, black breathing apparati. I wonder what it would sound like if Karloff read it in Latin! *shivers down my spine* Not to mention, my favorite color is green and I think Max is perhaps the ultimate name for a dog. Put all that together and stir in some Chuck Jones animation and that's a recipe for awesome.

1.) Phinneas and Ferb Christmas Vacation!: Maybe it's that the shine hasn't come off this new holiday special, but I sat and laughed through the whole thing. Whether it was Frosty getting his smarmy ass creamed by a snowplow in the opening scenes or the little cut-scene references to A Charlie Brown Christmas or the not-so-subtle O. Henry "Gift of the Magi" subplot, I loved the whole thing. I even got a little teary-eyed when Perry the Platypus gave Doofenshmirtz some almond bark. Okay, so the tears were because I was laughing so much. Bait and switch, baby. Bait. And. Switch.

And now for the live-action holiday specials! Bring on the eggnog and brandy!

Top Five Favorite Holiday Specials:

5.) White Christmas: No holiday list is complete without the Binger's White Christmas on it, be it holiday special or favorite songs. It's charming, it's heartwarming and it's just a fun movie to watch. It sort of gets your right here. And by right here, I mean in the "...sisters, eh? Why don't you ladies drop those feather things and let's get going" gland. Plus, thanks to White Christmas, every year, I aspire to have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since the Binger tap danced with Danny fucking Kaye.

4.) Miracle on 34th Street: This makes the list because I watched it a lot as a kid. Back then, the miracle of this thing called a "VCR" was new, and my father, being too tight economically-minded bought blank video tapes and then we recorded the Christmas specials off channel 55 out of Fort Wayne. Problem was, he didn't want to deal with those commercial bullshit (my dad, so Charlie Browny), so I would have to sit there with the remote and push pause to avoid having the commercials in the recording. So, yeah, I watched this a lot. Nice to see the USPS can deliver a shit ton of letters to the courthouse but they can't get my wife's fucking last Christmas present to me on the day that they promised. Cock knockers.

3.) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: Did I mention something about the Binger tap dancing with Danny fucking Kaye? I sure did. And when Santa squeezes his fat ass down the chimney, he's going to find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse. I've seen this movie a lot, too. It's stuck with me. Now, if you'll pardon me, I've got some work to do. The shitter is full.

2.) Die Hard: What? It's Christmas effing Eve. There's an exploding helicopter, a platoon of dead Germans, plastic explosives tied to an office chair, Alan Rickman playing an evil German (as if there's any other kind), and Notre Dame playing football against USC...though why we're playing the Trojans on Christmas Eve still kind of confuses me. Let it Snow... is playing as the end credits roll. Plus, you know that the kid Reginald VelJohnson shot was Urkel! I'm so fired up, I'm going to have to go find this DVD somewhere. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers.

1.) A Christmas Story: Could it have been any other choice? We dorky white kids with glasses growing up in Indiana have to stick together, and while I didn't grow up during the depression nor did I ever ask for a b.b. gun for Christmas (I got a .22 when I was 12), I just have a connection with Ralphie that's primal, gutteral...maybe it's the blond thing, maybe it's the glasses, maybe it's the hounds (my brother had a pack of hounds), maybe it's the love of romance languages (fra-jee-lay), maybe it's just that the family kind of reminds me of mine, but I love this movie. The building where I went to kindergarten could have doubled for Warren G. Harding elementary, and while I grew up outside of da Region where the movie was set (before it became the armpit AND asshole of creation), I can still appreciate the story. Plus, I had a friend whose last name was Farkas when I was a kid. No lie.

So, there you have it, folks. My top five animated specials and holiday movies. Feel free to dissect and discuss all you want.

I would be remiss if I didn't add this little bit for your viewing pleasure, however. Given the year we just went through, I think this is a touching tribute to a fallen star. Plus, it mixes movies and puppetry, so it's kind of like this post.

And, if I don't see you before Friday, Merry Christmas.

Friend Me if You Like

So, I joined Facebook the other day. Go ahead, go look me up in you like. I'll be sitting right here, wondering what the hell I jabbed up under the nail of my middle finger on my left hand to cause it to sting like this.

Couldn't find me? I'm not surprised. I'm rather unassuming. Also, I deleted my profile within about five minutes.

Here's the thing. I joined Facebook in order to see if I could track down a picture of Betsy Hagar. Not Sammy's wife, but the one to whom I dedicate a post every year on her birthday under the guise of being a Groundhog's Day post. I figured it'd be a great way to sort of bring the whole joke together, to place a face to the words I write every February 2nd. Off to Facebook I went, where I plugged in my high school information and then, lo and behold, there was Betsy. Her last name has changed--it starts with a Z now, in case you care to know--but it was definitely her. There was only one Betsy in my class. I'm not sure what the story was about the picture she used on her profile page--it's either her three children, or it was her and her sister and brother as kids. I don't know if I'll ever know.

See, I went to punch the "send friend request" link...but then I hesitated. The cursor had gone from arrow to finger, as it will when it rolls over a hyperlink, but I didn't push the button. Instead, I sat back, looked at the screen, and then clicked to my profile page.

Now, I had lots of crushes in high school. I could list them all for you if you'd like: Rebecca, Elizabeth, Teryn, Rondelle, Dawn, Beth, Tabbie, Amy, Angela, Olivia, Sarah, Jenny, Carrie, Kathy, Courtnee, Cortney, Larissa, Danielle, Vanessa and two different Tricias. I asked some of them out, I dated a couple of them, some of them were simply crushes--a girl whom I thought was pretty or cool but whom I knew a relationship would not or could not last, if it even ever got started. A couple of weeks later, I'd move along to a new belle and wonder what it was that I saw in that other girl two weeks ago. Such is the fickleness of one's teenage years.

The one constant, however, was my unmitigated and unrequited lust for Betsy Hagar. The biggest problem here was that Betsy was one of my best friends. While Betsy was a brilliant person, I don't think she had even the slightest inkling of the raging hormonal conflagration that coursed through my veins at the very thought of her. Once, innocently enough, around a whole table of friends, we were discussing personal hygiene, and Betsy revealed that every day she took at least one, sometimes two, 11 minute showers! My teenage mind did not in fact spiral downward with this information; my teenage mind plummeted to the depths of my lustful soul and landed with an inelastic thud that disallowed my mind to focus on anything else for the remainder of the day.

Betsy was the physical embodiment of every carnal desire I've ever had or ever would generate. In French class, I learned to conjugate faire, boire and vouloir while staring at her. I spent as much time sitting down during a basketball game watching her patrol the sidelines in her short cheerleader's skirt as I did watching Jimmy Hall run the motion offense. If I had had an art class and was instructed to redraw Botticelli's "Birth of Venus", it would have been Betsy standing in the open scallop shell.

When it comes to lustful machinations, I'm not so big into blondes. True, I was going to marry one, but that's because she had a mouth like a sailor, the appreciation of geekitude like a fangirl, and had the intellectual power and stamina to recite long stretches of Shakespeare--and all that was wrapped in a body of a stripper (fortunately for me, I found the same thing in a different woman...except this one had red hair!). I'm also a fan of large breasts and a shapely ass (again, fortunately, the red haired beauty came with these accoutrements) . Betsy was blonde, small-chested and flat-assed, and still, I wanted her with every shred of my being.

So, when I found her profile on Facebook, I was eager to befriend her through the magical electronic wonderland we call the internet. The lustful fires wouldn't burn so brightly when everything was carried on the backs of a few plucky electrons and, besides, those carnal flames would have ebbed with the passage of time, the maturity of my thirties, and the responsibilities built into the job of "husband" and "father." Right?

However, I wanted to keep the old fantasy. I didn't want to know what ravages time had done to this erotic ideal of feminism that I had cooked up in my formative years. Sure, maybe she's colored her hair, perhaps she now has full, round breasts or her ass had developed a pugnacious perkiness that would send a quiver up and down my spine. I didn't want to know. I liked the memories to stay where they were, buried in the recesses of my mind, floating to the surface every year when February 2nd rolls around.

It's fitting that one of my friends for whom I developed an array of carnal fantasies has her birthday on February 2nd. She's like my groundhog: if I don't think of those long, brown legs or that smile built from scarlet lips that were a bit too wide for her face or the iridescent sparkle in her brown eyes, then I'll know that my mind has slipped into a persistent and irreconcilable winter.

Once I found myself back on my profile page, I looked at all the people from my high school whom I could "friend" if I so desired. I went to a high school of 2300+ kids--that was when I graduated. During my four years there, I probably was in contact with just under 5000 other people. Of that five mille, I speak to exactly three of them: my best friend--The Brewing Optometrist--and his wife, and one of the aforementioned Tricias. Occasionally, I'll speak to my cousin, and even more rarely I'll have a conversation with my brother...usually on a holiday. Sure, there are some people with whom I'd like to keep up a discourse, like "What the fuck ever happened to Eric Cotton?" or "Wonder if Jenny Leutzow ever figured out who I was?" Then, I realize...it's not like it's tough to find this blog and shoot me an email. Besides, I have much better friends who mean more to me that I fail to converse with for whatever reasons, despite having a half dozen emails from them in my inbox.

I promptly deleted my account. I washed my hands of my presence on the social networking site and came back here to continue posting away things that are important to me or that I think might make you all smile or laugh or gag a little while you read.

I guess that's what age and maturity does to a person: it makes you appreciate the here and now, the people with whom you've surrounded yourself, and to be thankful for what you have.

Mother of fuck...that's one hellaciously depressing way to end a blog post, no matter how true it is.

Geekery Ahead: My Top Five Universes

Remember when I was slapping the Arte y Pico award around the other day, and I saddled awarded What Does it Mean? Nothing! with it? And remember in my description how I said that Jidai's blog is a lot like what I want mine to be, if I didn't have so many anecdotes about Notre Dame, Leelee Sobieski and Winston-Salem, NC (or something to that effect)? Right, well, it's getting a whole lot more Jidai-esque around here.

The other day, Monsieur Jidai posted a lovely entry wherein he described his five favorite fictional universes. Not one to let a good idea go un-plagiarized, I stole his idea and ran with it. I did give him fair warning, so that makes it less like plagiarism and more like homage, right? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Right. Let's move on.

5) Osten Ard:
Sure, I had been writing stories and such since I was in the third grade, but if there was any one place in all the different worlds crafted by different authors, Tad Williams' creation, Osten Ard, is the one that made me get serious about writing. Since then I've tried and tried again to craft a world based modestly on the model of Osten Ard: a realistic world in which realistic characters undertake semi-realistic endeavors surrounding magic and magical artifacts. The peoples of Osten Ard are easily identifiable as various archetypes from Europe (Scandinavians, Britons, and Roman Imperials), but the way in which Williams meshes his characters with the world has always made me hold Osten Ard and Tad himself in such high regard. While some may dismiss Memory, Sorrow and Thorn as being no Wheel of Time, this is the series/trilogy that I hold my own works against time and again when comparing to see if my books are "good enough". Granted, that's like holding up my kindergarten self-portrait to artwork of the Renaissance Masters and saying "Yeah, passable likeness", but still, this is how I view it all.

4) Star Wars:
The Star Wars universe is sort of a double-edged sword. One one side, you have a fantastic universe littered with countless interesting worlds, characters, creatures, technologies and concepts; on the other side, you've got a creator who cares more about designs and computer technology than character development and dialogue. Fortunately, there's a myriad of authors, artists and comic book writers who are willing to pick up the slack. Here is a universe with 3000 years of history to tinker with (and you still wonder..."what happened before?" and "what comes next?"). While parts of the Star Wars universe not directly under George's control are supposed to get Lucas' stamp of approval, the other various medias in which the Star Wars Universe has been depicted were given carte blanche to work, and it shows. Perhaps greatest among these are the novels by Timothy Zahn. If you're a fan of Star Wars and you haven't yet read the Thrawn trilogy, you definitely need to. Yeah, they're big and yeah, they don't have pictures, but the books themselves are very well-written and help give a peek inside the mind of an evil genius warlord.

3) The View Askewniverse:
This holds perhaps the most unbelievable place in all the universes: A strange land called New Jersey. While most of the stories are, indeed, Jersey-centric (I don't know if Zak and Miri is also), this doesn't detract from the overall vibe of the universe Kevin Smith has crafted. Sure, most of the characters are modeled on real people Smith either has known or--better yet--cast in his movies, but the characters themselves are almost parodies of themselves. You'll never find more incredible--or believable--douchebags on the screen, but at the same time there are moments so flowing with tenderness and emotion it makes you want to get a love mop and clean that shit up. Not only that, but I have to love any universe where saying "fuck" is perfectly acceptable, phrases like "Bunch of savages in this town" crop up over and over, and Selma Hayek rips her shirt off and thrusts her breasts into the camera. Mercy. Where was I? Oh, fuck it, who cares. Snootch to the booch, my bitches.

2) Middle Earth:
As much as I love Osten Ard and publically fellate Tad Williams whenever I get the chance, Tad would be just another guy writing just another book if it wasn't for J.R.R. Tolkien's creation of Middle Earth, because he not only helped define a genre, he effing created it. Since then, there have been thousands of Tolkien clones and then, even when someone tries to break the Tolkien-mold, they get raked over the coals. Case in point, J.K. Rowling's House Elves did not fit the Tolkien High Elf description (instead, they were more like traditional elves from fairy tale literature), and she was gutted, roasted and served with a lemon wedge for it by the "fantasy purists". While I, too, struggle with breaking the Tolkien-mold, I realize that without him, I'd just be another hack struggling to put together a book and hoping like hell that one of Oprah's assistants picked it up and said, "not bad." *shudders at the thought* Whereas Lucas' Star Wars Universe is outfitted with characters that are often underdeveloped, Tolkien's characters are fully rounded--sometimes too much so. The man clearly loved his world, enough so that he continually scrawled new stories and "backfill" on napkins at bars, in the margins of papers he was reading, and probably on the unused rolls whilst sitting on the john. All of these have been summarily cobbled together and published in various forms, thanks to son Christopher's work, the most recent of which was titled "The Children of Húrin". Again, like the Thrawn novels for Star Wars, if you're a Tolkien fan, you should read Húrin.

1) My Universe:
I've never shied away from the fact that I'm a total homer when it comes to Notre Dame or Indiana, so why the hell should I back down from my own creation? Does it compare to the other universes I've listed? That's for others to decide. Unfortunately, I don't have a name for my world; if you really want one, I'll call it the Jenksatorium. Happy? Good. As it compares to some of the other universes I've listed, I can promise you the reader that I've toiled over it almost obsessively, thinking up the backstories and writing and rewriting the characters until it makes sense that they are doing what they're doing. Once the characters were set, then the story began to unfold. Now, I'm mired in at least four books with many more in sight along with a second series of stories that I'm just as eager to write, but I have to get my priorities set and finish the first set of stories first (the second set of stories totally ruins the first set, if I were to write them at the same time). Speaking of priorities, let me get back to finishing this game of Civ III. What? No, you didn't see that. I meant to say "get back to finishing this chapter in book III". Right.
Honorable mentions: Springfield from the Simpsons, Ivalice et. al. from the Final Fantasy games, the X-Universe from Marvel Comics, and Upside Down Alaska from Robin Hobb's books, and the Wizarding World from Harry Potter.