Christmas Eve 2008

Home for the Holidays

The Good and the Bad

The holidays can be both a wonderful time of, um, wonder. They can also be a total sh-tstorm. Amidst all the Christmas- and Hanukkah-themed postings and year-in-review listicles in the blogosphere, Gawker has a fantastic post -- it’s subtitled “Why Don’t You Just Invite the Police Over This Year?” -- that shares commenters’ stories about the holidays. Equally awesome are the further stories left below the post (note that by “awesome,” I mean that the stories are very compelling, but it don’t necessarily mean they’re upbeat). Some excerpts [sic in advance on all this stuff]:

“I recall one particular Christmas when my little sister said her stomach hurt and my mother made her go to midnight mass anyway. About 30 minutes in, she puked all over the pew and we had to leave amid lots of dirty looks. Strangely enough, the same sister is the most Catholic of all my siblings today. I guess once you puke on it, you own it.”

…

“I'll never forget Christmas 1983, when I wanted a Swatch so, so, so badly and had been begging for one forever. So I got one from my aunt and uncle and couldn't have been more excited to wear it to school after break and show all my friends. I was less excited when every one of them pointed out that it was actually a girl's swatch and teased me relentlessly. I hated third grade.”

…

“When I was eight, my family had a hermit crab and it escaped in October. We figured it was dead and my mom had thrown it out and just didn't want to tell us. Cue to Christmas day: we are opening our presents and my dog walks up, drops the hermit crab in my sister’s lap and leaves the room. Apparently my dog had been carrying around the hermit crab on and off for 2 months and decided to give it back for Christmas.”

…

“My two-year-old niece did announce on Christmas Day after services that she'd ‘seen [my] boobies and that they were bigger than Mommy's’ to a crowd of about 15 people (I had been babysitting her that week and had to lock her in the bathroom with me while I showered). I was 15, and the mortification lingers to this day.”

Birthday!

Had a terrific birthday this year, including a fun happy hour with The Band, dinner at the new posh sushi place in downtown (which was beautiful, but the sushi was just "meh") and some great prezzies!

Dad and Bunny got me another Bachman's gift card (YAY!! it's so nice to dream about gardening with the weather so cold), which came with tons of balloons ...


... so I tied them to furniture all around the house. :)

Mom and Bill, along with Mike and Laura (who had already given me an awesome Cupcake Royale tee to match Addie's) gave me lots of sheet music for the piano!! In addition to the staff paper (so I can transcribe things into different keys or score out stuff by ear, which I've been doing a bit) from Mom, I also got:

• Radiohead's Kid A ("Everything in its Place" seems perfect for piano);
• The U2 Piano Collection (ditto "Sweetest Thing"); and
• The Beatles' Best, an "easy piano" collection of Beatles songs (really nice because the "real" version of "You Never Give Me Your Money" was making me pull my hair out!).

Thanks, everyone! :)

This, Santa, Is What We Call A "Turbine"

"Slings" on Sundance

The Gray Lady reports that "Slings & Arrows" -- arguably one of the funniest Shakespeare-related things ever written -- is being rerun on the Sundance Channel. I've watched the DVDs of the series so many times that I may soon have to replace them. In season one of the show, explains the NYT:

Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross) ... is New Burbage’s interim artistic director. He inherited the job after his drunken predecessor, Oliver Welles, was run over by a ham truck. Now he must direct an illiterate teen idol from Hollywood as Hamlet while dealing with egomaniacal actors, directors — and Oliver (Stephen Ouimette), who keeps showing up to chat, just like Hamlet’s ghost.

Good stuff. :) Catch it if you can.