Today was our most anticipated event of the Christmas season: our holiday potluck. I prepared the Wham Bam Thank You Ham, and we had just as much dessert as we did mashed potatoes, green bean casseroles and vodka-soaked fruit. I’m close to slipping into a food coma, but I couldn’t let a feast go by without thinking of the MacAlister’s pizza dinner, Fuller’s Pepsi and Kevin’s bad luck that leads to Uncle Frank’s famous quip:
*Note: I wrote this yesterday and then realized the video I wanted to post I could only find as a Flash, which we all know good ol’ WordPress won’t support, so I gave up and went to work, and today will provide two clips.
It’s Friday and Matt Howard’s coming to visit and explore New York City at Christmas, and I got to be late and ride the V train to work this morning, and I got to eat a fourth piece of chocolate from my Advent calendar, so one would think things should be joyous and bumbling, but no.
I’m anxious and I’m sad, and it’s all the fault of last night’s episode of The Office. Parks and Recreation was bad enough, with poor Tom Haverford being all Sir Mopes A Lot since he split with his green card Canuck wife.
The Office’s cold open with Michael’s Elvis voice and Andy’s baby voice was just so promising. And then disaster struck.
Where did the writers think they could find humor in disappointing a class full of kids wanting to go to college? I felt terrible for and hated Michael at the same time, and my insides were practically braiding themselves they were so twisted. Nothing. Was. Funny.
My heart longed for The Office of Yesteryear (necessary invocation of melodrama, thanks), when Christmas was a trip to Morocco with Meredith’s head aflame, or a rousing game of Yankee swap, or the most prudish rendition of Little Drummer Boy ever performed in office karaoke.
So I share today one of my favorite Christmas moments from The Office. From the episode “A Benihana Christmas,” meet the funny-awkward Michael Scott, not the dream-destroying & unfunny crying man we met last night. Needless to say, I will be harshly judging this year’s Christmas episode. Let’s see what you’ve got, you twisted bastards.
(Here is where I WANTED a clip of Michael marking his Asian gf’s arm so he could differentiate her from another Asian waitress, but that plan failed miserably. Instead, I offer a brief look at the most evil Christmas game of all time, Yankee Swap, and then a lengthy clip of The Office UK, when Tim & Dawn finally seal the deal. Though it only makes me a little weepy, while Jim & Pam’s first kiss can make me hysterical. That’s enough.)
Well, we put up our Christmas tree last night. A hearty one it is, strung with lights and cranberries and Baby’s First Christmas ornaments from 1984, 1985 and 1986. I wore long sleeves this year in an effort to prevent a serious pine needle breakout reaction, because my skin can’t handle anything that isn’t the air inside my bubble. We drank spiked eggnog and spiked cocoa, and then we gave up and just drank the rum, thus eliminating any middleman calories and significantly improving our health & fitness.
And we settled in to watch Rudolph, and the Rockefeller Center tree lighting (during which we cried…troops! their families! ::sob::) and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, which got me thinking about Christmas bonuses, and how much I’d love to have a swimming pool. Full of the jelly-of-the-month club.
I still meet people who have never seen A Christmas Story. As if there is something better to do on Christmas than watch TNT for 24 hours. What is this “family and togetherness” bullshit? There’s a Red Rider BB Gun to be had, people!
I stopped liking Ralphie long ago. Whine, whine, pout, shoot yourself in the face, look awkward, whine. Things like this are funny IF YOU ARE CUTE. Fail, Ralphie. Sorry Hollywood had to capture you at the most excruciating of your awkward years and try to redeem it with a lisp. And I’ll give them that — the Lisp is Ralphie’s one good quality, especially since he has a friend named Schwartz. And a chubby kid saying “son of a bitch” makes me smile in any context. But that’s it, Ralphie. If you just said “Schwartz” and “son of a bitch” the whole movie, I might like you. But as it stands, I imagine you blind with “thoap poithoning” and I grin maniacally.
But your brother, Randy? With gems like the Meatloaf Rap, My Zeppelin, and I Can’t Put My Arms Down, you rock this movie boat. And in the movie’s alternate ending, Randy shoots Ralphie in the face, thus saving him from future thoap poithoning and Little Orphan Annie decoder ring disasters.
And here we are, in Randy’s shining moment.
In another (quite possibly futile) attempt to reinvigorate my blog and force people to read what I’m writing, I’m posting a clip each day from a Christmas special, mostly ones that actually matter to me. So don’t expect anyIt’s A Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street, because I didn’t see either of those movies until I was a teenager, and by then I was stauch and against anything new. (Becoming nostalgic at the age of 15 is really a great way to hold onto your “good ol’ days,” considering there aren’t many.)
No, all of my favorite Christmas specials are cartoons, stop-motion animation, or Muppet adventures. My mother taped a half-dozen specials from TV onto a VHS in 1992, and my sister and I still watch it several times a year, commercials and all. We’re probably the only people outside of the Playskool and Nabisco companies who can sing jingles to ancient Ritz Crackers and Playskool Dinosaurs ads. And that sure makes us special.
We begin with one of my favorite events in television history, and it happens so rarely that it’s always a big to-do, but when you throw CHRISTMAS into the mix, my nostalgia & my six-year-old brain get together and drink Huggies and eat wax bottles and have the happiest day of their lives. I’m talking, of course, about the Sesame Street gang and the Muppet Show gang teaming up for one gargantuan Jim Henson extravaganza. And Christmas carols. I will keep you from the elation no longer.
