Tonight the girlfriend and I settled into bed with toasties (baguette toasted and loaded with spiced goat cheese, roasted garlic, and oven-dried tomatoes) and watched the first day of festive-ass holiday movies. Tonight was three classic holiday specials that all, coincidentally, first appeared on CBS.
We watched A Garfield Christmas Special first because it was the most recent (1987), the least loved, and also the least good and we wanted to save the best for last. Basically, it’s not that great and the animation is HIDEOUS and it turns out that it really, REALLY bothers me that Garfield doesn’t move his mouth when he talks. If only the viewer could understand him, I’d be okay with that, but there is no evidence pointing confidently in that direction.
Garfield suffers the same fate as most people and is forced to endure a holiday with people he doesn’t like but it’s particularly irritating to him because they won’t come to HIS HOUSE where he has his warm bed. This is a problem with which I relate. I would be way more amenable to hanging out with people I dislike if I could just do it from the comfort of my glorious bed.
Anyway, the best part of this entire thing is Garfield’s sassy, but gently sad Grandma who is fucking awesome. She’s smart-mouthed and loves Garfield and says that since Grandpa died she’s spent a lot of her time “rockin’ and strokin’ my cats”.
I don’t regret watching this, buuuuuuut it’s not exactly going to become a family tradition. I honestly can’t even remember if I had seen it before. Not exactly stellar memorable fare.
Next up was How the Grinch Stole Christmas…, the second eldest (1966) which is obviously excellent and beautiful and sweet and moving and stuff. The art direction in this thing is glorious and it really follows the spirit and brilliance of the book to a T.
I want to live in Whoville. I want to be a Who. I want to feel so moved by the spirit of joy and Christmas love that I sing nonsense while holding hands with my fellow Whos around the tree in the town center. I want to compel the Grinch to suddenly and abruptly give up his evil quest just with the power of my mad caroling skills.
This one is a classic for a reason even though it kind of ends suddenly. Also, Boris Karloff. Also, Chuck Jones. Also, Thurl Ravenscroft. Get over it, you know you love this thing.
Finally, we watched the oldest (1965) and the most iconic of the television Christmas specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas. OBVIOUSLY this one is great and beloved for a reason and it’s adorable and sweet and has the best soundtrack to ever come from a holiday television special ever. It’s not Christmas for me until I watch this thing. It is Christmas.
The thing is, the special itself isn’t that good. It is? I don’t know. It’s pretty to look at in a very rough/sweet way and the music is OUT OF THIS WORLD good and it’s the Peanuts so it’s obviously important to our collective media conscious and so many iconic things come from it visually/~spiritually~ — that sad little Christmas tree, Snoopy’s doghouse all decorated, the singing kids at the end, the dancing kids on the stage — but, and this is probably largely because it’s a 30 minute special made for television — it doesn’t really have a solid, genuine cohesive element.
Charlie Brown is sad and the other kids are mean to him for no real reason then he gets upset because no one knows the true meaning of Christmas then Linus quotes a LOT of the bible and then… Charlie Brown is still sad and shouting about COMMERCIALISM, but now the kids are kind of nice and decorate his tree? And then hark some angels and it’s all over, Merry fucking Christmas.
Regardless, it’s still better than the shit one that aired in 1992 which we watched anyway because we hate ourselves.
And the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack is still the most amazing collection of holiday music ever ever ever.
It is so good that one time when I was in high school, I was doing chemistry homework while listening to the dulcet and jolly tones of the Dish Network holiday channel and I was SO INTENSELY MOVED by the version of “O Tannenbaum” from the soundtrack that I stood up and slow-danced with a couch cushion while crying.
So earlier this month I came up with a way to get myself writing consistently and posting and also writing about shit that people probably care about way more than how I wash my face. So I decided that starting the day after Thanksgiving and ending on Christmas Day, I would watch a holiday movie every day and post about it. So I came up with a list and a name (31 Days of Festive-Ass Flicks) and have been ~preparing dutifully~ since.
But I thought I should write about my five favorite holiday movies coming into the project, so I can compare and contrast the list to one I will write when the dumb thing is done with. Also, I need practice writing about stuff. So, without further ramble:
5. Christmas Vacation
Christmas Vacation was THE holiday movie of choice in my household growing up. We are not a sunshine and unicorns kind of family. We are loud and brash and embarrassing and unapologetic. We have never, ever fooled anyone into thinking we were IN ANY WAY AT ALL perfect. No one has ever seen us as a group and been like, “Damn, that is some Leave It to Beaver status familial relationship shit going on right there.” But we love each other and we work pretty hard to treat each other well and bring each other joy.
The Griswolds remind me of my family in the way that the Conners from Roseanne always have. They are imperfect and they make mistakes and a lot of shit happens to them (both of their own fault and not) but they LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH.
Clark’s an excellent dad and a good husband. He works so hard to make Christmas special for the people around him and it’s always struck me as a perfect mix of selfish and noble and heartfelt. And I love him and I love the Griswolds and comparing my family to them is a pretty damn good compliment.
4. Love Actually
I hate — HATE — romantic comedies. This initial hate came from a rejection of all things feminine because they were weak, but even once I learned better and grew out of that, I could never get my head into the game of romantic comedies. The women are so often weak and wilting and embarrassing, the men caricatures of what success or failure or rebellion is supposed to look like. MOSTLY THEY ARE BORING. And I’m just not into it. But since the very first time I saw Love Actually I have LOVED it. And I’ve said, again and again, it’s the ONLY romantic comedy I love and recommend.
When I worked at Hollywood Video, we’d do staff picks up on the couner and whenever someone was like, “Ash, you’ve picked three horror movies in a row” or “Ash, stop putting Clerks up,” I’d grab Love Actually to shut them up. There isn’t a single story I don’t LOVE. I laugh and I get choked up watching Liam Neeson be this amazing dad and I love Keira Knightly and Martine McCutcheon and Laura Linney is one of my favorite actresses.
IT IS ALL FLAWLESS.
3. Elf
My girlfriend hates Will Ferrell. This is not, on its own, a dealbreaker because, I mean really, what do I care? I like Will Ferrell okay and all, but I’m not going to go around declaring war because someone’s not into what he’s throwing down. Sometimes I don’t like Will Ferrell either! But in Elf he is a perfect beautiful angel beam of light from heaven. He is… is there a word for more than perfect? Because that’s what it is. So I waited, like, three years to watch this with her so that if she didn’t like it, I’d be too entrenched in our relationship to break up with her over it.
Elf hits me in all my feel-good movie places. It’s got this wonderful, warm father-son relationship between Buddy and Papa Elf and the new, strained one between Buddy and Walter. It has a woman totally willing to accept her husband’s adult child into their lives without question and with warmth and excitement. It has lights and decorations and the most best Christmas soundtrack. It has that NYC nostalgia thing that works even for people who’ve never been there. It has a Zooey Deschanel that I not only don’t hate, but actively love.
Complete excellence package.
[I am only now realizing that these are probably the things I would’ve written for my reviews/posts when I actually watch them for the project. OOPS. Oh well, I guess I will just have to find a new angle/way/lens through which to be awesome and astute and articulate. UGH.]
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas
A television special rather than a movie, but this is my list and I DO WHAT I WANT.
Charlie Brown is great. The music is… a word more flawless than flawless? The animation is so simple and so iconic. The story is human. Charlie Brown is a loser (through no real fault of his own) but he plugs away, trying to make things good for other people, trying to treat people and things fairly even when all they do is shit on him.
I love Charlie Brown’s dumb tree and Snoopy’s blue ribbon decorations and catching snowflakes on tongues and Sally’s letter to Santa. I love Linus’s exasperation. I love Schroeder the very most, plunking out “Jingle Bells” for Lucy until she says it’s right.
This would be higher on the list (aka #1) but I am a heathen and the “reason for the season” shit has unsettled me forever, even when I was a kid and thought there was a god. The sentiment is all good though. Peace on Earth, good will toward men. Let us treat each other like humans all year round, okay? And just add some glitter and alcohol and tunes for the holidays.
1. A Christmas Story
Duh?! Duh. A Christmas Story is perfect and weird and beautiful. Ralphie is the most perfect version of what it is to be a kid ever put on film. THAT IS WHAT IT IS LIKE SOMETIMES. That family is beautiful. Ralphie’s imagination is beautiful, the lamp is beautiful, swearing is beautiful. And now adult Peter Billingsley can get it.
As a kid, I couldn’t figure out the age of this movie and I got really tense about watching it because I thought it was from the 50s and I got really weird about watching/reading/using old stuff. But it seemed so modern! And like how people around me were! And I remember it confusing me SO PROFOUNDLY. I don’t even think I realized it was an 80s movie until I was a teenager.
There is a reason TBS airs this ish for 24 hours on Christmas. If you don’t love A Christmas Story just get the fuck out.
Honorable Mentions: Eight Crazy Nights and Scrooged.
WHERE WILL THEY STAND WHEN THE 31 DAYS ARE OVER?! CHRISTMAS FIGHT TO THE DEATH!
During the first year of my MFA, when we’d all returned from our month of winter break, the professor who was my favorite at the time asked us if we’d gotten any writing done.
I said, “Yeah, if blogging counts.” It was facetious. Of course blogging counts. Teehee! A joke! I had done lots of blogging! Lots of Twittering and lots of Tumblring and lots of blogging and lots of reading others personal narratives via blog.
He returned, dead seriously, “No. No, it doesn’t.”
And at the time I couldn’t even really respond because that idea flabbergasted me SO MUCH. The idea that, somehow, because the writing was going on the internet by my own hand instead of into a folder on my hard drive to be theoretically published by some authority figure was absolutely FLABBERGASTING. FLABBERGASTING. Do you understand how significant the feeling of flabbergast is? IT IS UNBELIEVABLE.
And I sort of gaped and said nothing. But I got home and RANTED to my poor girlfriend and yelled at him through the miles that divided us. This guy had spent his formative years as a ROCK CRITIC!! And then became a genre writer! IF anybody should understand why playing writing police is bullshit, it should have been him. But instead he was an ass. FUCK YOU, DUDE, FUCK YOU A LOT.
One of my other professors later went on a rant about how “THEY” — this large and unidentified entity that included what seemed liked all media producers — didn’t want you to read or write. They wanted you to “watch movies and buy things and BLOG about it”.
I have literally never heard the word “blog” spit with more venom ever. No one will EVER yell “blog” with that much hate in their throat. I think I got some on me, actually. And it super a lot pissed me off. Like A LOT A LOT. Because you know what? Fuck you. Writing is writing. Writers have different processes and different kinds of writing has different processes but they are all WRITING and fuck you if you’re going to belittle one in order to raise up another.
ALSO, it’s not like book publishing and writing are fucking noble-ass pursuits! PEOPLE WANT YOU TO READ AND TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT TOO SO THAT THEY CAN SELL MORE BOOKS. This is not a complicated idea. People make things and then sell them because they want to make money. If they didn’t, they’d put everything ON THE INTERNET FOR FREE. (People should be paid for their creative products. I am not arguing otherwise at all.)
I blog because I love writing. I love it. I like talking about myself and I like talking about dumb shit and serious shit. I LOVE THE INTERNET. I love the sense of community that comes from blogging. And fuck those guys and anyone else that doesn’t get it.
Anyway, I’m not mad. (LOL I AM REALLY NOT OKAY) But I saw someone having a crisis about whether they should keep blogging the other day because it wasn’t “real writing” and I got super bummed out because there are so many of us who have had to absorb that bullshit from other people and just laugh it off and pretend to be unmoved by our belittling.
Blogging matters, man. It’s instant, constant, and current. It’s often genuine and funny and honest. It fosters community and interaction and idiocy and genius and creativity. It keeps a whole lot of people WRITING. If I didn’t blog, I wouldn’t write nearly as much as I do now, I would’ve missed out on fiction ideas that came from the process of blogging. Blogging is writing and it matters and it’s awesome. THE END.
This isn’t a very thoughtul blog but I believe in it. BLOGGING MATTERS. And stuff. Also, if you have the desire to cry today, DO I HAVE A RECIPE FOR YOU.
Man, just put these sad ladies and their pianos on loop and you will cry and cry. You will be SO SAD. Can’t spell piano without PAIN.
okay, so, after an influx of new followers to my tumblr, i got a bunch of nice and not nice anon messages. and this kiiiiind of sounds terrible but someone finally asked me about my skiiiiiin! in the fat chick bingo of my life, “you have such beautiful skin” has been the center square since BIRTH. it’s not quite as good as it looks in pictures and i DO break out (much more frequently as an adult than i did in my youth) but yes, it is clear and i am super grateful that i haven’t had to spend years fighting it like my sister and my bff and stuff.
OKAY SO. anon asked what my ~skin care regimen~ is like. and let’s get real. it’s not a regimen. it’s not even regular. i’m an irregular showerer! there are days i don’t leave the house! and i sometimes forget to brush my teeth. i’m gross. let’s establish.
my skin is dry verging on “normal” verging on oily. it is really temperamental when it comes to weather changes. if the air is dry, my skin turns to paper. if the air is damp, it turns into a paula deen recipe. in general, i have dryish cheeks and forehead and a slightly oily upside-down t-zone. but that changes all the time and i generally do not change my skin care products to match because it’ll just change again. my face is like midwestern weather: if it’s being an ass, wait five minutes and it’ll change. that said!
step one: i get some of this soap shit near my person. basis cleaner clean or clinique beauty bar in EXTRA MILD. i have the MOST SENSITIVE SKIN IN THE WORLD. i am allergic to everything (all neutrogena products, most cover girl, lots of eye make-up, almost all traditional deodorant/antiperspirant) and even food allergies manifest on my skin (this is such a common experience that i actually blogged about it once)Â so i have to be SO CAREFUL about what touches my face. we keep the basis in our shower and the clinique in the cupboard, so the basis only gets used once every other day, really. one out of four face washes. i soap up my hands and smooth the soapy shit over my dry face. no water on my face! because i am lazy. sometimes i use a washcloth instead of my hands if i feel flaky.
step two: get water all over the bathroom trying to splash my face clean. this is why i usually wash my face topless.
step three: dry gently. the single greatest realization about my face was to use a towel that was not the bathroom hand towel. why this took me, like, 24 years to realize is honestly baffling. that hand towel is filthy! and i was just rubbin’ it up and all over my face like it was nothing. i keep a separate towel in the cupboard that i use to dry my moony face for a couple days before i swap it out for a clean one.
step four: maybe apply some of that clinique acne solutions gunk if i am broken out or feel like beasts from the deep are emerging. maybe apply some all about eyes if i want my eyes to look dewey or if my eye area feels REALLY DRY or if i am going to wear eye make-up later which is pretty rare.
step five: squirt some of the jojoba oil into my palm, spread it around between my two hands and gently massage my face all over. up to my hairline and down my neck, sometimes into the boobal region if i got a lot of oil. then i rub the excess into my cuticles/hands and then wash them because i touch my hair too much to leave oil all over my fingers.
step six: there isn’t one.
i only started using jojoba oil in june when i moved to kansas city because i had never lived in high humidity before and my skin was FREAKING OUT. my body skin was like, “feels good, man” and my face was like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!” and putting on lotion was like rubbing olive oil on a stick of butter. jojoba was like a magical revelation of face care. and i do not want to go back to lotion. nevah evah.
SO YEAH THAT IS IT. and sometimes i go days without actually doing this stuff because, i repeat, i’m unemployed and kiiiiiiiiiiind of gross. ALSO, i never ever ever use ANY foundation type make-up on my skin-skin because i hate the way it feels. except on halloween, but that’s it. i am actually that pale in real life. naturally.
Yesterday was Halloween! And I stayed home and read stuff on the internet in between answering the door and giving small children candy.
But before that, I went to an empty lot near my house, bought some large squash from a stranger, then came back to my house and hacked it apart before sticking a lit candle in it and putting it on my front porch.
Halloween is the BEST and SO WEIRD.
The pumpkin patch my mom and I went to kiiiiiiind of sucks. At least compared to the one the gf and I went to in… 2009, I think? We tried to take my mother to that one this year but she was extremely resistant and grumpy. GOD FORBID WE DO COOL STUFF, MOM, JEEZ.
But we went to her crappy pumpkin patch on the day of Halloween, so at least they were cheapish? And the dude was real helpful AND the strange lady working in the booth gave us an additional 10% off and was like, “Come back for a Christmas tree… With or without your mom… I’ll give you 10% off then too.” WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE. Thanks, nice lady, but we have a fake tree.
So I came home and mutilated my pumpkin with a knife and spoons and screwdrivers and an x-acto knife. I am not very artistic, so I honestly don’t know what I was thinking trying to do that whole layered carving thing, but I stuck it out.
The pumpkins were kind of old and dry inside (though the flesh was extra damp, wtf.) and mine had a bunch of sprouts in it!
So I hacked at mine — a moon with a bat and a cemetery and a house on a hill — and then I started to carve… sky, I guess, over the house, and realized that I was going to have to do the entire front of the pumpkin like a frame or what I had done would make no sense, so I had to take the skin off the entire front of my pumpkin… around what I had already carved. UGH SO DUMB. And then it looked bad so I painted it black.
But it turned out pretty okay! And some people told my gf they liked it as she was handing out candy. I WIN HALLOWEEN.
And here’s my ~autumnal vibrations~ playlist for this year.
I’m officially in Christmas mode now (November 1st, yessssssssssssss.) AND I made it all the way through Halloween without seeing a Christmas commercial, so I feel really good about this holiday season. GONNA MAKE IT A GOOD ONE. Like I say every year. And then 90% of my holiday seasons blow. Gonna make it a concerted effort?!
