Christmas time's a comin'

White candle's burning
My old heart's a yearning
For the folks at home dear
Christmas time's a coming

Holiday Season Snapshots: Last Minute Shopping

I saw a nice family the other night as I got done shopping. They were sitting in the food court: mom, dad and three daughters who looked to be between 7 and 12 years old. What first caught my attention was that the three kids were wearing matching Santa hats. The next thing I noticed was that they all looked happy--ma and pa, and all three kids, genuinely seemed to be enjoying each other's company, and enjoying their respite over churros and and soft drinks during an evening of shopping. There was not a hint of frustration, of anxiety, of tension. None of that. And the Santa hats weren't some ironic statement. This was no hipster family. It was just good clean all-American fun.

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The eldest and I swung through Borders earlier tonight. While we were trying to find a copy of Zombie Haiku, I noticed a plump middle-aged matron sitting in one of the comfy chairs. She was slightly shiny, about to break a sweat from wearing her winter parka in the store, and she looked kind of cross. She was talking pretty loudly on a cell phone, so I took that as an invitation to eavesdrop on her conversation:

"They said they were bringing a ham! I asked them to bring a turkey for Christmas dinner, but they're bringing a ham. I told them I said turkey for a reason, that's what was on the menu. No, they asked me why couldn't ham be on the menu! Can you believe that?"

She was, as my eldest observed, right on the edge of a major league spaz attack. I assumed she was talking about a family member or close friend, since she had apparently not only invited them to Christmas dinner but also asked them to bring the main meat course.

So, here's my question:

Who's the bigger dick in this situation? The person who can't follow a simple request to bring a turkey to dinner, and has to go improvising with pork product? Or the person who can't just be gracious and accept whatever meat product their loved one shows up with?

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I will be tallying the results of the Germany or Florida: Amputee Criminal Holiday Edition! contest in the near future. I'm too busy coughing up half a lung to do it now. It will be a post-Christmas surprise, and if the winner is local, they might receive their prize at the Drysedale Awards on December 29.

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Now, as part of my ongoing commitment to lazy blogging, I am re-posting this piece from December 24, 2006.

The Sprawling Ramshackle Compound Helpful
Guide to Last-Minute Shopping

Many people visit this website for useful, up-to-date information on important topics such as freaks, animal attacks and tasty drink recipes. Tonight I'm adding a new service: a comprehensive guide to last minute shopping. And by last minute, I mean, last minute. Shortly before midnight on Christmas Eve. Heck, even laster-minute than that. Thanks to the corporate slavedrivers at Walgreens, you can do your last minute shopping on Christmas day even, on your way to whatever family function it is you're going to. This sign says it all:

Yes, I know it's a little blurry. But that's just how it looks to your average Christmas Eve drunkard, roaming desperately through the northwest suburbs, chainsmoking and swearing to baby Jesus that next year he won't procrastinate like this.

I used to tell people I did all my Christmas shopping on December 23 and 24, at Walgreens. I don't know anyone whose heart isn't warmed by opening a hastily-wrapped gift to discover the newest Chia novelty or a tasty Whitman Sampler. But now Walgreens has so much more to offer. Here are a few ideas:

1) Check out the picture frame and photo album display. Grab a reasonably-priced frame and then wander over to the magazine section. Pick out a magazine with lots of nice pictures inside. Cut out the prettiest page and fit it into the frame. Everyone loves a beautiful piece of artwork!

2) Head for the toy aisle. The Walgreens closest to me added a second half of an aisle dedicated to inexpensive Chinese imports. They've got everything from toy soldiers to Floam to discontinued models of Barbie.

3) Buy an appliance!

You can get a staggering array of kitchen gadgets. Trust me, that special girl in your life will LOVE getting a brand new omlette maker! And she'll likely be even more impressed when she finds out you only paid $9.99 for it; chicks dig guys who are both thoughtful and thrifty.

Here are two useful tips for fitting in when you make your late night or early morning shopping run:

1) Smoke a lot of cigarettes right before you go inside. It seems like most of the people shopping at Walgreens after 10 pm on Christmas eve smell heavily of cigarette smoke. And maybe booze, but that might be aftershave. I didn't get close enough to be sure.

2) Talk on a cell phone. Hitting the Walgreens can be a team effort. For every brave Joe prowling the aisles, there's a resilient, maybe even long-suffering, Jane at home whispering guidance into his ear.

Just don't try and buy any Club Man hair tonic for your brother. They're sold out.

Merry Christmas!

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And finally, I'd like to leave you with some pleasant, family-friendly holiday images:

You can't tell from this picture, but she's drinking this weekend's Sunday Afternoon Cocktail. The recipe is perfect for the wintry mix we've been experiencing lately. I call it Compound Coffee:



-1 cup of strong coffee or expresso
-1/2 teaspoon sugar
-1 shot bourbon
-1 shot Irish cream liqueur (like Bailey's)
-1/2 shot of Grand Marnier or Triple Sec
-Whipped cream

Place sugar in the bottom of a coffee mug. Fill 2/3 up with hot strong coffee, stir. Add bourbon, Irish cream liqueur and Gran Marnier, stir.

Top with whipped cream. Drink and enjoy. Feel the warmth. Fall asleep on the couch.

It's time

It's time.

Each year, on a pre-arranged date between Thanksgiving and Christmas, mall Santas gather at the Elks Club to initiate a foundling into their group.

I am a lousy Santa

Let me explain.

Recently, courtesy of Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein, I signed on to participate in the Zaius and Monkerstein's Simian Secret Santa. I thought it sounded like a swell idea, and I threw my name in on December 22nd when I was full of Christmas vinegar. I was excited to draw the name of one Germaine Gregarious, whose blog I've only just started reading. For that matter, I had only recently taken notice of Zaius Nation, and boy, do I got lots of catching up to do...

Well, I may not be a writer or a strategic sales executive, but I do know how to procrastinate. And doggone it if December 25 didn't come and go without me bestowing a single gift on my target, Germaine Gregarious. I was somewhat relieved when I found out that Ms. Gregarious was my secret Santa, and she was also stylishly late with the gift-giving. And oh, she was something else--she made it through the dogs and concertina wire, past the trap guns, and managed to get into the Compound tiki bar to fix us up a batch of Mai Tais!

But then the paralysis set back in, and I wasn't able to do my Santa thing.

Until tonight.

And really, what does it matter? The days between Christmas and New Year's Eve are the least productive of the year (except around here when we're celebrating Guy Fawkes Day) so being a few days late, hopefully, won't unduly piss off the beautiful and apparently lethal Ms. Gregarious.

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Well, I know Ms. Gregarious has a thing for pink pistols, and I'm a certified Glock armorer, so I thought the first thing I'd get her, simply as a little lagniappe, was a custom Glock pistol with a nifty tactical light attached:


Then I thought some more. While her Nefarious Lair has plenty of pink pistols already, they seemed to me to be lacking in longer-range firepower. The obvious choice was this perky Hello Kitty .223 carbine:

Then another thought occurred to me. Maybe the fabulous Germaine Gregarious was tired of pink firepower. Maybe she'd appreciate a little something different. Maybe a bright, summery lime green assault rifle, courtesy of the folks at DuraCoat:

I almost regifted, being sorely tempted to help Germaine protect her lair with my own Operation X-500 Rocket Launcher and Defense Base:


But my kids said no way, and I kept the X-500. I mean, come on--wouldn't you?

Finally, as I got to the last few million dollars in my budget (that X-500 is one cost overrun after another) I came up with something fun and practical for Ms. Gregarious.

I decided that I would furnish her with a personal staff, and pay their salaries and all expenses through the next election cycle. And believe me, these gals don't come cheap.

I got her a personal secretary

A research assistant who specializes in doing opposition research

And finally, a highly skilled night nurse, for mending wounds and conserving fighting strength when those secret missions get rough:

Merry Christmas Germaine Gregarious!

Merry Christmas baby...

Swag?

Check.

Belly full of food?

Check.

Family?

Check.

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men?

...Well, at least for now, in this little corner of the world, yeah.

Merry Christmas.

Freak of the Week: Yuletide edition

It's time for a new freak of the week, and Australia has obligingly provided an excellent yule season candidate.

"It is believed the man was harassing neighbours and passers-by while parading around in female underwear and a Santa hat," Victoria Police spokeswoman Senior Constable Cassy Stone said.

It did not end well for the unnamed cross-dressing Santa. He was pepper-sprayed by the police and then jumped to his death from a 14th floor balcony.

Runners-up:

21 year old Tan Wen Zhong of Singapore gets points for wearing a pink bikini and for having a collection of 46 pairs of women's underwear, discovered when police searched his residence. Mr. Zhong pled guilty to "outraging the modesty" of the woman who shared the lift with him and "fraudulent possession of women's underwear".

He fell short, however, having not worn any festive Christmas-related headgear during his offenses.

33 year old Sandrama Lamy of Danbury, Connecticut was apparently trying to work out some daddy issues when she groped a 65 year old Santa at her local shopping mall. The initial report to mall security was that the mall Santa "had been sexually assaulted." Police located and identified Ms. Lamy quickly, as she was on crutches. She gets points for being a woman (women are notoriously under-represented in freak of the week) but loses points for not making any wacky statements to the media.

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There's a difference between being a freak, and just being an asshole. Mr. Clint Westwood, a 22 year old drama student at University of Montana, was arrested for throwing a pie in Santa's face as a girl sat in Santa's lap. Westwood was filming the prank for a documentary film he's making titled "My Crazy Life", and also planned to include footage of himself urinating while seated on Santa's lap. Westwood says he took up acting because his name is so similar to Clint Eastwood's.

How Bettie Page saved Christmas

I had an abbreviated work week--only 4 days, and today (Thursday) is my last day. Then it's 3 days off, then I work 7. My normal work schedule is 6 days on and 3 off, but sometimes we move our days off, either by choice or by the demands of work. Anyway...

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and the town I work for has a lot of retail stores, and that means that every boosting, wallet-stealing, purse-snatching, identity thieving, check-writing, forging, scamming, credit card swiping asshole in the greater Chicagoland area is out doing his or her thing.

We went out tonight trying to find a woman who stole about $20,000 from her employer; the case is several months old but we just got her bank records this week. No luck finding her tonight. Another of our detectives followed up a lead on a wallet theft when he found out that someone used the victim's credit card at a mall in a neighboring town. When he went to that store to view their security video tonight, who do you think walked into the store to do some more shopping? That's right--his offenders, children in tow. Always a treat. Another one of our guys had to attend two autopsies this week, and I can tell you that the chemical tang of the morgue is no way to wake up in the morning.

The domestic disturbances always take on a different tone at this time of the year, ranging from sad to surreal to tragic. Two nights ago I took a call from a neighboring department. Their officers went on a domestic involving a mom and her teenage daughter. The family are repeat customers, and when the officers arrived daughter was on the floor, screaming and out of control. She and mom were arguing over the daughter visiting a friend that mom doesn't approve of (the friend is a coke user according to mom). The daughter called mom around 11pm asking for a ride home; because of who she was with, mom expressed her disapproval by telling the kid to get home on her own. This happened the night before the domestic, and for whatever reason mom and daughter didn't start up with each other until the next day. Eventually the kid was taken to the hospital for a psych evaluation, and somewhere in all this she blurted out that she was the victim of an attempted sexual assault while she was walking home (thanks mom!) The officers determined that it happened in our town, so they called us. We went to the hospital to talk to the girl, and there were some big gaps in her story--we couldn't pin down an exact address. We asked her if she'd be willing to get in the car with us and retrace her route so we could pinpoint the address where it happened, and she agreed. Along the way we also learned that she'd been the victim of sexual assault before--at the hands of her own father, for roughly 7 years. The girl was admitted to a psych ward and our investigation is on hold until she's released.

No Christmas trees have been hurled through the front windows yet...give it a couple of weeks.

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So, what do you do? How do you keep your spirits up in the face of all this? I'm not big on religious platitudes and "God's will" type reassurances, so that's out. I do believe in prayer, and I do that as well as I can. My prayers all take one of two basic forms: "thank you", or "please help me/please help (fill in your name here)". I focus on my family and friends, and I literally count my blessings several times a day. I run for no particular reason. I read your blogs, and I am entertained and encouraged. I look forward to socializing with some of you later this month. I work hard to remember that the world is full of good people who do good things.

And I think about Bettie Page.

See, there's a few different kinds of Christmases:

1) There's the traditional religious Christmas, the birth of the Christ child. There's some awesome symbolism there, but frankly that's beyond my ability to truly comprehend or talk about in any kind of articulate or intelligent manner. I really wish I had the faith and knowledge to do so.

2) There's the truly awful and overwhelming CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY SEASON, a vulgar blend of the worst sentimentalism, religiosity and corporate bombast. Oh, and patriotism, too, because God loves our nation best at Christmas time. It's Christmas music being piped in above the din of the slot machines in Las Vegas casinos, it's the endless chain emails showing the wreaths at Arlington cemetery with some mawkish "prayer" tacked on to the photos and some waving American flag animations attached because the simple imagery of the tombs at Arlington at Christmas isn't enough, it's all that shit Charlie Brown and Linus Van Pelt warned us about way back in 1965.

3) Then you've got the vaguely spiritual, well-meaning "holiday season", the idea that, for Christian, Jew, Muslim and everyone else, this is some special time of year when we all try and do just a little better, when we all try and behave just a little more kindly to our fellow man. It's the mercy and good works and redemption without the heavy religious baggage. It's war movies where the soldiers stop fighting and meet with each other in no-man's land for few short hours in December. It's the sense that we're all in this together. It's heartwarming stories about mysterious strangers dropping $100 coins in the Salvation Army buckets. It's George Bailey.

I've been trying to inhabit a slightly different holiday season. It acknowledges #1 without being strident about it. It veers dangerously close, at times, to # 2 but never crosses the line. It's got a lot in common with #3 without being bland or wishy-washy. It's the holiday season of doing a few good deeds, of being thankful for family and friends, of forgiveness, it's the holiday season of cocktail parties plain and swanky, of decorating Christmas trees, enjoying simple pleasures like freshly-baked cookies and homemade candy, of acknowledging that the newest and shiniest is not always the best. It's kind of retro. It's hokey at times, but in a good way. It has faith but doesn't shove it in your face. It avoids cynicism. It's about doing your best, and trying to make others happy. It's playful. And it keeps me going.

Like Bettie Page in a Santa hat.

Peroxide and wrestling

And what the hell peroxide and wrestling has to do with anything, I have no idea. I just know I found a cute pic of a hot dame and a snowman, and it's wintertime and it's three weeks until Christmas and I got snow all over my yard...so there. There's your winter pinup.

Enjoy.

OK, let's start getting in the Christmas spirit...

Manliest Christmas ever...

The initial frenzy is over...the second pot of coffee is percolating, and I'm still pondering the great mystery of how teenage girls who normally have to be dragged out of bed at 11 in the morning can suddenly, and without an alarm, wake up before 6 am. Even the dogs were excited.

We all came downstairs and there it was--my manliest Christmas ever. There was a Bettie Page magnet set, and socks with flaming dice on them, and Bookers bourbon, and a new Leatherman tool and folding knife and all kinda good stuff. Whew. Sadly I can't hit the Christmas bourbon (a real treat with some strong, manly coffee at 7 in the morning, believe me) because it's time to get ready for work.

Christmas: BRING IT ON!

Yeah baby...

There is nothing planned for the next two days, all I gots to do now is wrap some presents and do some baking. Maybe a run to Binny's on Saturday morning, after Woodfield. I'm thinking of doing something goofy--like heading out to Woodfield for some aimless last-minute shopping. They open at 7 am tomorrow.

In the meantime, enjoy this little video set to one of my favorite Christmas tunes: "The Merriest." I'd lie and tell you this was taken from my family's old home movies, but no one in it is holding a drink or an Erik cigarette.

The YouTube user has disabled the embed feature, so to watch it you'll have to click this here link. It's worth the trip.

I got a Christmas card today

Yeah, I know it's really only an advertisement for VLV X, but I like it anyway.

Easy on the ice...

All the snow is melted now, so I need something else to keep me in that holiday mood. This ought to do it.