she gets to eat ribs. Seriously.
The Christmas Song Entry
Although it’s been said many times, many ways, I still hate The Christmas Song. Also known as the Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire Song. Also known as the song which opens up a giant sucking hole in the universe, a festive wreath-trimmed portal to sheer nothingness. The fact that I actually love Christmas and love Christmas music (even that hallucinatory Carol of The Bells song) does not keep me from wanting to punch this song, hard. Punch it in the chestnuts, even. Roast THESE, Christmas Song! Pow!
The Christmas Song is a hollow song; a big, dull, polystyrene unbreakable ornament of a song. I guess I didn’t always hate this song, but it takes up space in my head and more than thirty years of my consciousness of it has finally worn the lyrics down to their bare, flimsy logic. Paraphrased roughly, the Christmas Song goes like this: “Here’s a Christmasy thing, here’s another Christmasy thing, and another Christmasy thing, and yet another Christmasy thing. Everybody knows this one Christmasy thing and this other Christmasy thing makes things extra-Christmasy at Christmas. Children are excited about Christmas. Children know that Christmas is coming and bringing additional Christmasy things. All children, as a matter of fact, will make sure that certain Christmasy things really are as Christmasy as they purport to be. So Merry Christmas to almost everyone, and though everyone says Merry Christmas anyway, I’ll say it like it’s particularly special, even though it’s not, really.”
See? It’s full of crap. It’s the musical equivalent of snowman poop.
And you know, a lot of the Christmasy things this songs lists are pretty random. “Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe help to make the season bright.” That’s right: A turkey and some mistletoe. Chris pointed out that it’s like saying a Snickers Bar and the color orange are what makes Halloween so special. I mean, you could just fill in the blanks all day: An elf shoe and some marzipan! A reindeer and some gingerbread! A pudding and some tinsel stars! A cookie and some blinky lights! A fruitcake and some credit cards! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! I don’t know why the world takes this song seriously and not the Barking Dog Jingle Bells song, because when it comes down to it, the two songs have about the same depth of meaning. And if you ask me, Barking Dog Jingle Bells has way more joy.
Plus, isn’t “Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow” the creepiest line ever? Discuss!
Gingerbread Watch '06!
Just because I’m not going to bake this Christmas season* doesn’t mean I can’t watch demented Food Network shows about gingerbread, right? After discovering the wonders of competitive gingerbread last year we decided to make this a holiday tradition, albeit a really lazy and cheap tradition, and we set up the Tivo to record this year’s extra-pathological gingerbread challenge, in which five past National Gingerbread Champions were given only eight hours to work their compulsive gingerbread magic. They had to work side-by-side and scurry around with their cooking tools. If Santa had a meth lab it would look a lot like this show. Awesome!
I was excited that the main objective for the contestants was to “create a gingerbread showpiece that best portrays their favorite childhood holiday memory.” So we were really hoping to see gingerbread scenes like “Daddy Was Sober for Once” or “The Dog Pooped Tinsel” or “I Played With My New Atari and Ignored Everyone.” Just think of the possibilities! But unfortunately they all sort of ditched the memory theme, because surely Valarie E. of Sanford, Florida did not grow up in a chalet perched in a giant chocolate tree. Not even if she had hippie parents. Everyone’s creations were confusing, really. But anyway (SPOILER ALERT! GINGERBREAD SPOILERS!) we were rooting for Jim R., who I think was the guy whose all-candy-moving-parts carousel was sadly overlooked in last year’s competition, and this year (SPOILER) he was robbed. It’s a shame, really, that the gingerbread world has no place for a man with power tools.
And don’t even get me started on the winner, who (SPOILER) is the same asshole who won last year with the same kind of inedible-looking knickknack made from sugar paste and only two little strips of gingerbread. I call bullshit. Bullshit on you, Christina B, and your fakey fondant McMansions.
*But oh yes, I’m going to build something again this year. I’ll put up pictures if it turns out okay…
Forty days and ANTM nights
America’s Next Top Model watch: Man, we sure hope all the remaining contestants sneak up on Melrose’s bed in the middle of the night to whack her with bars of soap wrapped in towels. That is all I will say about her. Remember, it was just a bad dream, skinny girl!
I’ll admit that I don’t really love any of the girls this season as much as I love the completely freakish challenges the show’s been putting them through. How can you not be in awe of the terrible, demented collective genius that decided to cast the twins as “Anorexia” and “Bulimia” in a theme photo shoot? That made a girl dress up as Stedman Graham? I was disappointed when Megan was eliminated, not just because of her looks, but because she’d survived a tragic plane crash when she was a little kid, and over and over she’d get called on to recite the story of her amazing ordeal. And okay, this is awful, but I was secretly hoping the show’s art directors would come up with some kind of plane-crash -themed photo shoot where she’d have to pose extra bravely while partially pinned under a chunk of fuselage. Really, the show is that good! I mean bad! But then again, they’ve gone and fired Dan and the other writers, so who knows how it’s all going to turn out.
This Thing I’m Doing is just past the 40 day mark, and as of tomorrow it’ll be six weeks. I don’t know if I mentioned that we’re shooting for a hundred days of This Thing, where we weigh ourselves every two weeks. (And yes, this is totally borrowed from Celebrity Fit Club, God help us. What can I say—that Tina Yothers, she spoke to me, even though I never watched her show when she was a kid.) Anyway, Day 100 hits in late January, right around the time when—usually—it finally occurs to me that the holidays are over and I really ought to make a few twitchy, vaguely fitness-related movements as soon as I can dig myself out of the cozy nest I’ve built from fried Thai noodles. But I’m counting on things being different this year.
I feel, honestly, sort of sneaky about doing it this way. Mostly sneaky in a good way, but there’s a twinge of incredulity there, too. Maybe it’s because I’m such an unrepentant dork when it comes to the holidays. But if I don’t make sugar cookies this year, will a gang of Rankin-Bass characters come to my house to kick my ass? Probably not, right? Okay, then!
Wednesday by the numbers
1. There is a college English class somewhere that has I’m Not the New Me as this week’s assigned reading. The instructor is letting me read the student responses on their class blog, and let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a group of eighteen to twenty-two-year-olds discuss your love life from five years ago.
2. Chris and I saw a movie at the Music Box last week, and about an hour after we left I realized my wallet wasn’t in my purse, so we went back to the theatre to look for it where we’d been sitting. Which was a little hard since the next show had started already, and it was dark, and I had to guess which row we’d sat in and then crawl around patting the floor like Helen Keller, Custodian. And was it really so hard for you to comprehend that I was looking for something, O Thursday night Music Box patrons watching loudQUIETloud? Because it was pretty niceSHITTYnice how you couldn’t be bothered to reach down and check the floor around you for the thing I was looking for. I know it was asking a lot for you to miss five seconds of Pixies concert footage and all the highly important plot points and expository dialogue that came with it, but for fuck’s sake. I did manage to find my wallet, no thanks to the girl whose indifferent Fluevogs were resting against it the whole time.
3. This morning we had a substitute instructor for our fancy “Lifting Weights to the Beat of Hateful Pop Remixes” class. Usually I don’t care either way, but today I actually missed the squeaky and totally unintelligible instructions our regular instructor gives while doing the final abdominal exercises. She says, “Nggh hnn urnnnuh-nun errk! And errk! Nurr heen! Heen! Hnnrk errn grnt to four! Grnnk!” I know the routine, so it’s not a problem, but really, it’s like being drunk-dialed by a Fraggle.
4. Here is an informative letter from a very kind veterinarian named Bob Groskin in response to my last NY Times piece. He breaks my heart a little by pointing out that I might have been able to find a vet to save Bootsy. But then he helpfully suggests other humane ways I could have killed him. I did read about the clove oil in my research and in retrospect I wish I had looked a little harder to find it. LISTEN TO DR. BOB, PEOPLE.
5. Today is Day 36 of This Thing I’m Doing, and I’m still planning on writing more about it. We went to Michigan for the weekend, where I sullied my innocence with a few Swedish meatballs and some Chinese food, but somehow I managed not to return to my old life of crime and fried cheese.
6. I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time ever, and despite all my quasi-vegan ambition, I am totally going to cook a turkey. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Have I evolved yet?
Yes, I think Kirstie Alley looked great the other day. No, I still think she’s a disingenuous preening ass who loves to pretend all her publicized sashaying is for some greater good of womankind. But good for her for making it easier for older and heavier women to appear on Oprah dressed like bitter concubines. Next!
Today is good, what with all the unwanted pounds and Republicans and Federlines that we’re getting rid of. I weighed myself this morning, and while I’d hoped the results had been little better and that my metabolism had taken over both the House and the Senate of my Fat Cell Congress, I’ve still lost ten pounds in four weeks. Chris, who is a guy, has lost about ten times that in the same amount of time. I know human biology dictates this. I would kindly like to inform human biology that I’m on the Pill and don’t happen to have any needy little bitty babies depending on my body fat reserves to protect them from the cold prehistoric world. Is there any way I can just upgrade to a childless hussy biological model, where I can use my body fat reserves to absorb vodka? No?
