Negative wishes for the new year.

Everyone likes to spread positive wishes for the new year. I would like to instead post some negative wishes for you, kind reader. 

By that I don't mean that I want bad things to happen to anyone. Au contraire! as the French say, and I even wish them well. Mais non! I just want to make wishes for bad things to not happen in 2020. I think we can all bumble along all right as long as nothing bad happens. But sadly, it often does.

Merde arrive

So here's my negativity, which I hope brings some positivity.

😱 May you not be struck by lightning. Or any Ford. Or any vehicle, for that matter. Or a brick. Just don't be struck by anything.

😱 May you not be so shocked at your surprise party that you have a heart attack, because then everyone will feel pretty guilty about it. Or they'll be happy that their evil plan worked, in which case you shouldn't fulfill their vicious desires.

😱 May you not put hot sauce in your eye.

😱 May you and your dog not be at the mayor's lawn when your canine chum decides to have an attack of the trots -- and you all out of waste bags.

😱 May you not turn into a giant shoelace.

😱 May you never forget that the little X on the text box means your text has run outside the print area, even when you're working on the design for the rear panel of the package.

😱 And may you never say, "I don't need to see it again; it's fine" when it is not.

😱 May you not be stuck in a waiting room with the The View on the TV and no way to turn it off.

😱 May the police officer never feel obliged to ask you to recite the alphabet backward, omitting vowels.

😱 May your babies not grow up to be cowboys. Or maybe that only applies to Ed Bruce.

😱 May your doctor not find it necessary to use the phrase "clinical trials" in your discussions.

😱 May you not discover the hard way why predators are preferred in wildlife preserves and not in, say, your living room.

And that's enough for New Year's Eve -- I can certainly think of more awful things that can happen (It Is The Way Of My People) but I'll just say, please let's all do our best to keep bad things at bay, and see you here next year.

Begone!

How fast would all the Christmas stuff be gone if it weren't for New Year's following hot on its heels?

It seems to be a pretty American approach to holidays. It makes sense, really, for most of them. There's a day off (usually Monday) and it's back to work, on toward the next break in the routine.

And it's true too for Easter, a more important yet less culturally celebrated holiday. People seldom travel very far to be with family on Easter; you go to see local relatives, maybe, but no one stays over, and it's back to work Monday. In the church calendar Easter lasts eight days, and Eastertide for fifty, but in the American cultural calendar, just one.

We see it with Halloween, a non-holiday holiday that has a lot of cultural appeal, and yet on November 1 all those pumpkins and witches look like a mild hangover. What was that all about?

Christmas would be little more than these except for a few cultural shifts that put a heft on to that holiday that none of the others have:

1) Tradition of gifts. The stronger the gift-giving tradition is tied to a holiday, the stronger the advertising blitz will be ahead of the holiday. That also extends to other shopping, as for candy or festive food. I'd rank them from top down as: Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, and everything else. New Year's Eve is too jumbled with Christmas to separate; the booze ads can be for both.

2) Using up vacation time. Its spot at the end of the year makes Christmas perfect for people whose vacation policy is use-it-or-lose-it.

3) Popularity of religious and secular songs. No other holiday can compare musically. Classically speaking, Easter probably has the finest music, but not the most popular, and that goes for Christmas hymns as well as carols and songs and even parodies.

4) Sentiment of family gathering around, celebrated in story and song. Only Thanksgiving shares the celebration of getting the family together this way, and it doesn't have nearly as many stories and songs about it, and hardly any Hallmark movies.

5) The strong desire for a break. Up in the northern hemisphere, winter has begun, the days are short, the end of year accounting is due, and everyone wants a break from the routine. Spring and the beginning of summer may be the only rivals for the urge to get away from the everyday, but they have more to do with the positive change of seasons than burnout.

Christmas is tops on all five. And yet, on December 26, America starts to shovel things away, like we're a little ashamed of ourselves. Lights go off. People go back to their lives in slow, uneven stages. The supermarket stops playing Christmas music, even New Year's or snow-themed stuff, and goes back to Human League and Barenaked Ladies. New Year's merchandise appears in the seasonal shelf, but it's always trying too hard, like Christmas's copycat kid brother. "I'm fun, too!"

And on January 2, even though we're only at Nine Ladies Dancing, the decorations start to fall like autumn leaves in a gust.

I feel the same way, believe me, even though I know Christmas is supposed to be the start of the celebration, not the end. I leave the decorations up through Epiphany, but my heart is flagging. I want to get on with things. I'm grateful that the season doesn't go all the way to Candlemas anymore.

And yet, when it is all over, and the decorations are gone, and in this place we're left with two to three months more of blank winter, it's sometimes hard to look at the space while feeling the hole from things of comfort and joy.

I just love this stuff.

Oh, well. On to New Year's, on to 2020, on to Epiphany, on to the rest of the winter, come what may. God bless us, everyone.

Kiss da hand?

My wife got a lovely set of gloves for Christmas, quite glamorous, and enjoyed showing them off to me. She waved her hands in a most ladylike fashion, and I gently took the proffered hand and touched my face toward it, in a most sophisticated way.

"You didn't kiss my hand," she said.

"No, I did not," I said. "I heard long ago that one doesn't actually apply the lips to the hand, but dips the nose down and makes no contact."

I can't believe I knew something about etiquette that she did not. I don't know where I got that tidbit. but it is backed up by no less an authority than Miss Manners, who describes it thus: "the gentleman who kisses the air above a matron's hand (never an unmarried girl's) in the European equivalent of a handshake". In another place (I recall not where) I have read that the nose may tap the back of the hand gently, but I think it best to keep my nose to myself.

All of this brings out my own inner Manners man -- New Yawk Mannahs Guy, who knows how to behave an' stuff.

"Suppose youse just had some wings or sumpin', or maybe a greasy slice from Maroni's, always greasy in there, capisce? You're goin' to a fancy shindig but you think they might have dem little tiny little 'hor dervs,' like baby mouse food on a cracker, and you gotta eat first or you'll be stahvin'. Now ya mout is all sloppy, but you go into the place and meet some classy broad who holds out her glove like you should kiss it, you know? Well, you're not supposed ta go wipin' your mouth off on her like some pig, much as you wanna get the grease off. And you ain't gonna go blowin' your nose or nothin' on it, either. You're a freakin' human bein', not a cocker spaniel, right? Don't go sniffin' or lickin', just nod your head down witout makin' contact and then give back the hand. Don't go tryin' to hold on to it like a souvenir from the boardwalk at Beach Haven. Whadda ya, stupit or sumpin'? You do that and you might wind up kissin' da mat, like you got some other glove in ya face."

Kapow! Right in da mout. 

So as you can see, just because I grew up in the city doesn't mean I don't know anything about manners. I'm still a little shaky on a few things, though. I don't know which fork is supposed to be used to jab the hand of your buddy when he reaches across the table for the bread. The shrimp fork is too small, but the others all seem to work. Any advice?

Elf-employed.

Seasonal workers can find it hard to get by when the season comes to an end.

We need a lot of Christmas.

I heard a heartbreaking story the other day. That's not too uncommon around Christmas, when newspapers will publish such stories for fund-raising appeals. Or maybe it's just bad news in a family that seems particularly poignant because it strikes at Christmastime. Terry Teachout, writer on the arts for the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, provided one like that this year, and God bless him and his wife.

The story I heard was from an acquaintance whose female friend was in California for Christmas, in all likelihood to watch her grandchild die helplessly, while the baby's parents were off to score more drugs. The baby was born in a flop hotel and dumped at the hospital. The parents entered the wind.

My friend's girlfriend (seems an odd word for a woman with a grandchild) is doing what little she can, but it is very little. The child, born with all kinds of health problems, including opioid addiction and one dead kidney, is a ward of the state, and not likely to be released into Grandma's care even if he survives. The parents? Well, one presumes they are normal enough young people, or were before addiction got into them tooth and claw; now they are like a devil's own upside-down version of the Nativity, uncaring producers of an unwanted child doomed not to die for our sins, but just plain doomed to die without ever having lived.

California has become a magnet for this behavior, by refusing to enforce any kind of control on it. As if allowing this kind of thing to go on is some kind of mercy to the mentally disturbed, to the addicts and drunks, turning the streets into a fecal swamp. The big companies haven't run for the hills yet, but small businesses can't keep their doors open, surrounded by and victimized by this criminal activity. Failed nations allow this because they have no resources to control it; American cities and states are allowing it because they are run by the insane.

How is this any kind of kindness? Can anyone think that the mother will ever want to get straightened out with the knowledge of what she has done to her child? Addicts have one answer to feelings of guilt and shame (and in fact to everything else): pick up and use. Had the authorities enforced rules against vagrancy and drug use, the mother might have been confined someplace safe and drug-free, the baby born without so many health crises, and perhaps the mother and even the father would have had a moment of clarity to encourage the desire to get and stay clean. Now none of that is probably ever going to happen. The local government will bear the cost of disposing of the bodies, the one type of street garbage that it's still willing to haul, for now.

So yes, we need Christmas, and a lot more of it, and everything else that comes because of it. I said the other day that Hollywood doesn't understand love at all anymore, and this is true; but no one in California seems to understand justice and mercy, and that you can't have one without the other. The state is run by people who act like giving a baby hard candy because he wants it is the kind thing to do. When he chokes to death on it, well, their hearts were in the right place.

At least, as Selena Zito reminded us a couple of days ago, many and maybe most places in America are not this stupid or nutty. In her profile of the lovely little town of Everett, Pennsylvania, a place of generosity and civic spirit, she writes, "I think America is mostly this way. At least, America is more like Everett than it is like whatever you see on cable news. You just sometimes have to slow down to see it."

I think she's probably right about America. I just don't know how long it will last.

Death by fruitcake.

Halfway through December I mentioned the danger of springing fruitcake on an unsuspecting public, and commenter Dan (hi, Dan!) noted that he, like us, enjoys fruitcake. We used to get the Freihofer's fruitcake, which is the one my wife used to bring me over to the dark side, but they were bought by Mexican baking giant Bimbo, who proceeded to get rid of Freihofer-branded confectionery goods and concentrate on ruining their breads. So, we started to cast about to either find a good replacement or a good recipe.

Here is the one that we tried last year successfully; King Arthur Flour, which is trying to differentiate itself from the Gold Medals and Pillsburys of the world by spreading misinformation about bleached flour, nevertheless has fine recipes, including this one. The only change we made this year was to up the spice level, add some cardamom, clove, and ginger, and use a layer of pfeffernusse icing rather than syrup for a topping. The finished product:

It is a moist, flavorful cake, loaded with good fruit (none of that weird candied peel or other hard bits), and feels like a dessert, not a chore. You can booze it up, but our version had to be boozeless for a varied audience, so we stuck with cranberry juice as the liquid ingredient. We intend to take some with us to a post-Christmas gathering to help convince the scoffers.

Fruitcake is an interesting substance, as it is one of the few foods that meets my Can It Kill? test. That is, is the object at hand mobile enough and hard enough to kill a guy? This is what comes of growing up watching cop shows and reading mystery stories.

Objects that pass the test include a hammer (hard, mobile), bullet (hard, mobile), Buick (hard, mobile), and knife (hard, mobile). Objects that fail are cookie (soft or brittle), piano (immobile), and bed sheet (gentle). Cheese is debatable; the wheel would have to be very large.

The batter for this cake weighs a ton, but can be lifted by the healthy, and if you dropped the bowl on someone's head I think it might kill him. However, I would suggest that you not hire a mob cannon who specializes in fruitcake murders. That kind of M.O. is easily traced by the cops, and a guy like that is going to sing, I am certain of it.

Besides, good fruitcakes are better for eating than murder. I think if I start a bakery, that will be my slogan.

Fred's Book Club: Good Things Come in Trees.

Welcome back to the Humpback Writers, the book club that takes place on a Wednesday even if that day is a major civil and religious holiday. Nothing stops us, not even Christmas!

But then again, Christmas is strongly involved with today's book. It's another child's picture book, the second since we started this feature last summer. And to me, it is a classic.

The Tale of Three Trees, as retold by Christian writer Angela Elwell Hunt, was first published in 1989 by Lion Publishing of Illinois. I believe it is still in print. Hunt says that the author of this tale is unknown; I'd never heard it before I read this book, and a brief look around the Internet tends to take me back to this book. I did see another version of it on the Bible.org site, not as well written and without Tim Jonke's terrific illustrations.

So is it a real folktale, or just something concocted in modern days? Beats me. I'm no folklorist. But it's a great Christian fable.

In brief, this is the story of three trees that have big dreams. One is dazzled by the beauty of the stars, and wants to be a great treasure chest; one wants to be a mighty sailing ship and cross the world on the business of kings; one wants to remain where he is and grow so tall that people look up at him and think of heaven.

Well, things don't usually work out the way we hope.

All three trees are cut down. The first tree goes to a carpenter's shop, but instead of being used to make a treasure chest, he is made into a hay box for a stable. The indignity!

But then (and pardon me for the bad stitch on the spread):

You can probably guess how things turn out for the other trees.

Hunt does a lovely job with the story, and Jonke's rich and evocative illustrations pair perfectly with it. I'd recommend it to anyone, but especially families with children getting a Christian education; they can learn about their faith, but they can also learn lessons that are so seldom seen in children's books these days, like hope and humility.

The book touches on a number of things -- rudiments of the life of Jesus, but also dreams being fulfilled when we least expect it and not in the way we'd hoped. I once knew a priest who worked in a college; he liked to tell the kids that we head on out with our Plan A (like Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem) and we wind up running into Plan B (the Crucifixion) but we can be amazed by the way things turn out with Plan C (the Resurrection). Plans A and B are what men work, but Plan C is God's work.

Any Christian knows stories like that, of people with a plan for life that comes to nothing until after they fail, and then it's nothing like what they expect. This is seen in many of the great saints, like the bloodthirsty soldier and duelist, Íñigo, injured by a cannonball, converted to a real faith, and transforming Europe as St. Ignatius of Loyola. My old buddy G.K. Chesterton wrote about the similar transformation of St. Francis of Assisi, a spoiled, lavish youth, fanboy of troubadours and jongleurs, who went off to become an adventurous hero and wound up nearly dying in captivity.

Francis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared into the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain psychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete somersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently came back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any other figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it was a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands. 

It's not that much of a stretch to see the same happening -- thwarted plans leading to miraculous lives -- in so many unknown "little S" saints around us, or even, fictionally, in a little tree. Things fall apart; God can put them together. That's what He came here to do.

Thanks for reading, and I wish you a most happy Christmas on this Christmas Day.

Be careful out there!

Despicable Grinch.

I finally watched the Grinch movie that came out last year, the one with Dr. Strange as the Grinch, and here's my review. Yes, I realize it's silly to review a film that came out a year ago, but I don't care. Plus, I didn't read any other reviews of the animated movie, so if I read this while I'm writing it I can say I read one. For what that's worth.

Short version: It's not good.

Long version, with spoilers, I guess: Dr. Seuss' The Grinch doesn't have much to do with Dr. Seuss. I had some hopes for it, as it comes from Illumination, the company that gave us Despicable Me (pretty funny), The Secret Life of Pets (had good bits), Minions (they're funny), and Sing (not as bad as I expected). Also Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3, which... Well, maybe I should have had more reservations.

Like all Illumination films, this movie has its moments. One expects that expanding the original 69-page book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! would require expanding the Grinch world, and the filmmakers do that right off. Their vision of Whoville in the opening scenes is a wonder for the eyes, a Where's Waldo-like vista with all kinds of Seussish things going on in a happy, busy city. With computer animation and a much huger budget, Illumination has made it into more of a real city than the small town of Chuck Jones's well-praised TV special. So it's worth a look just for that. The characters are Seussish as well, but they lean more human -- and not just in looks.

The Grinch himself looks good, fuzzy and green, but the problems set in right away with him and don't let up. But we'll get to that.

The main problem with this movie, and I believe the Ron Howard 2000 film (which I have been too appalled to sit through), is that the story is too slight to support a full-length film. It doesn't mean that Seuss's story is no good, or paper-thin; quite the reverse. Some stories are short because there isn't much story there, but there doesn't have to be; they are still powerful. Biblical films are often dull or weird because the stories in the Bible can be very short and to get ninety minutes of screen time they need ridiculous amounts of padding. O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" was blown up into a TV movie musical in 1958, and no surprise that didn't become a Christmas classic. Even Chuck Jones talked about having to add business to the Grinch story, like that slapstick stuff coming down Mount Crumpit, to make it into a half-hour TV special -- with time for commercials! (In 2018 film this also means writing a lot more verse for the narrator, but the writers have little knack for verse. Nor is Pharrell Williams able to carry any dramatic heft the way Karloff did; he's like a so-so reader at library story hour.)

One way Howard and the Illumination guys try to pack their movies is to try to develop the backstory of the Grinch himself, provide motivation for his wicked anti-Who, anti-Christmas actions. But here they fail. I keep saying that the problem with the Star Wars prequels is that George Lucas is too shallow to understand what turns a kid into Darth Vader, and I maintain that -- I never bought for a second that the boy and man we saw as Anakin Skywalker was the villain we met in 1977. The same thing goes in these movies for the Grinch. Howard tried it (I am informed) by making the Whos of Whoville vile, commercial punks who deserved to have their Christmas stolen, which guts the whole point of the story -- that being that the Whos understand the true meaning of Christmas while the Grinch does not. The Illumination people avoid that, at least. Their Whos are nice people who just happen to love Christmas, except for some reason when the Grinch was a kid, alone in a Whoville orphanage, no one did anything for him. It's all dollar-store psychoanalysis.

The Illumination crew doesn't understand the Grinch at all. Hell, in this movie the Grinch goes into Whoville to buy groceries. Groceries! Like a common old fart! Sure, he's mean to all the people he meets, but this is not our Grinch. The real Grinch is not hateful because he's alone, as in this movie; the real Grinch is alone because he is completely full of hate. He despises everyone. God knows what he eats, but he wouldn't go anywhere near Whoville to get it. This movie is not about Grinch; it is about Oscar the Grouch.

In some regards it's okay that the Grinch is a little less vicious in this movie; he is not loving to his dog Max, but is not cruel to him as in the TV special. That would be hard to take for a full-length film. People would be hoping the Grinch would die.

Max is still a great dog, but Cindy Lou Who is not a cute kid anymore. I just can't buy that Cindy Lou Who should be a conniver and a sneak, however much she loves her single (naturally) mom and her mentally unsound twin kid brothers; updating her into an older daredevil of a baby badass removes the contrast between her innocent love and the Grinch's hardened hate. They might as well be buddies at the end, because they're almost the same person here. They're two sides of the same two-headed coin.

It all makes for a cheap pantomime of the real thing. It hits the plot buttons -- Whos loving Christmas; Grinch angry; Grinch decides to stop Christmas from coming; the plan; the execution; the change of heart. None of the transitions feels logical against the background painted. The Grinch being grouchy is just not cruel enough to carry out this plan, and making his target a large city instead of a small town makes it more ridiculous that an irritable hermit would go to all the trouble. To carry out the plot he has to devise all kinds of gadgets and gizmos, and that's when you realize that this is not so much Grinch 1 as Despicable Me 4: A Very Despicable Christmas.

The Grinch's hope in the original is not so much to stop Christmas but to punish the Whos and make them cry, their crying and wailing being the sweet sound he desires, and you don't get that out of this Grinch. Because you don't get that, you also can't imagine why he would have the change of heart at the end -- especially since the filmmakers completely gut the entire reason for it. There's nothing about "the true meaning of Christmas" here -- just sort of a "if you sing you stop feeling bad" bit of stupidity that is completely useless. The Grinch's puzzler couldn't have puzzled that out because it is senseless. God forbid we should say anything about why we even have Christmas, what it means and why that would give people joy. Seuss was no Christian proselytizer, or even Christian, but he understood what Christmas meant -- salvation, God with us. All the motivations have had their legs cut out from beneath them, but the film is expected to run along anyway.

And I have to say, having heard so many wonderful things from fans of Benedict Cumberbach, I was terribly disappointed. He was awful, to my ear. I know friendly, charitable people who are scarier than this guy. He just sounds like a weenie. Again, you never get the feeling that this is the malcontent who could and would want to ruin Christmas out of hatred for the pests who live thousands of feet below his hermitage. He probably just needs some Metamucil.

There were bright spots. The humongous reindeer named Fred (yay!). His kid, presumably Li'l Fred. Kenan Thompson as the delusionally cheerful Bricklebaum. The screaming goat. A few sight gags -- one with a catapult particularly echoed the best of Chuck Jones. But for all its visual splendor, it is a misfire, a heartless simulacrum of Christmas love. The many families depicted give you the feel of a movie producer with his third wife and trophy child. Hollywood doesn't know anything about love and has even lost the knack for pretending it does.

If it is any consolation to Illumination (like they care what I think), the Grinch has historically been a stumbling block, except for the original book and the Chuck Jones masterpiece. In 1977 a prequel, Halloween Is Grinch Night, aired on ABC, and although they gave it an Emmy, it's lousy. Geisel even produced it, and it was still too dull to be creepy. It also doesn't jibe with the Grinch we knew. It smelled like a money grab. Just like the 2018 film.

Ouch!

Saturday was cookie day here, and it was a near thing. I've been having back pain for a few months, which I think is sciatica, and my wife wants me to go to the doctor. Okay, but I have two problems with that: 1) She has reneged on her deal and 2) Our doctor is missing.

The first point is easy to explain: She was supposed to go for a routine test and has been dragging her heels on it for five years. It's a little invasive, and I think she's hoping Merck will invent something to render it moot. So I told her I would see the doctor when she took the test. You'd think her concern for her beloved hubby would get her motivated, but no. In fact, I think this rank blackmail has caused her to dig in her heels more.

The second point is stranger: The doctor is not in. Our GP's office is there, his people are doing prescription refills as they can, but he's been gone for more than a month. He's no kid, and he's a big chap, so I'm thinking knee replacement, but who knows? HIPAA rules apply to him too, so no one will tell us. I could go to another doctor, but he's got all the records; besides, I'm sure he'd be referring me to a specialist and I believe I need his sign-off for insurance purposes. So, I soldier on.

Yesterday I almost didn't. It wasn't too bad in the morning, but I was down at a church meeting and got pressed into service with the other able-bodied men to form a chain to pass sixty-pound boxes from the storage area to the food pantry distribution site outside for their Christmas rush. And they had a lot of boxes. Dozens of them. Maybe close to a hundred. It didn't hurt that much at the time, but later I was feeling it.

In the afternoon my wife left for an important appointment -- the hair salon; nothing trivial like medical care -- and I and the dogs decided to bake our annual cookies. And when I say I and the dogs, I mean I. Don't worry; no dog hair allowed within twenty feet of my baked goods. But by now I was feeling the pain, and every movement caused me to cuss and whimper alternately, and limp like Gabby Johnson, and despite having bought the ingredients for our sought-after cookies I was ready to chuck the whole thing. I only had to make three batches, but that seemed like climbing a mountain.

Finally I got sick of hearing myself whine, and decided I was either going to shut up and get it done or give up and lie down. I reminded myself that, as the physical therapists say, motion is lotion; it would probably feel better as I went. So that's what I did, and it all came out all right. My wife judged the cookies the best I'd ever made.

So that was how I saved Christmas! Or something. Anyway, I was in agony this morning, but followed the same plan and got better. I hope my doctor comes out of hiding soon, though.

Best gift.

Spoiler alert! For A Christmas Story (1983), so you ought to know it by now.

At the end of A Christmas Story, our hero and (as an adult) narrator tells us that on the Christmas he remembers for us he got "The greatest Christmas gift I had ever received, or would ever receive."

Author Jean Shepherd's construction there has always touched me. Obviously he, as the adult "Ralphie," is still alive and still capable of receiving Christmas gifts. What if someone walked up to him next Christmas and handed him a million bucks in unmarked bills, no strings attached? Hey. that's a great gift, isn't it?

But we knew what he meant. To get something, an object that was truly his heart's desire, when everything and everyone around him said that he couldn't and even shouldn't get it, and to get it at an age where one can still be so excited about a simple toy, not tarnished with worries or fears, or concerned with what anyone will think about his taste or level of maturity or any of those other clouds that cover the sun when we get older, makes it a nonpareil, the perfect gift at the perfect time. Any gift that comes in adulthood cannot provide the unsullied, unbridled joy as that perfect gift at that young age. We believe that Ralphie will never get another gift so good, but that he's okay with that, and so are we.

I mentioned this to my wife, and as it turned out her most perfect Christmas gift ever was not something she received as a child, but she was still quite young. When she was a teenager there was a big Christmas dance coming up at school, and she sooooo wanted a particular makeup set so she could get dolled up. Not only did her mom come through, but she gave it to her weeks before Christmas so she could use it for the dance. This remains her #1 gift, her "official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time," in part because she never thought her mom would go for the idea. So while childlike thinking is clearly not crucial to the "perfect gift" idea, the improbability of getting what you want seems to be connected.

Of course, I had to point out that all the guys my wife wowed at the dance went on to loser careers as bowling-ball polish salesmen, not as exciting freelance wordsmiths, but that is another story.

So that's what I wonder today. No, not what happened to my wife's teenage beaus. My question is: Did you ever get the perfect gift at the perfect time? Was it something you really wanted or something you didn't know you wanted until you got it? Are you willing to talk about what it was and what became of it? This is a no-judgment zone.

All right, that's a lie; you know this blog is a super-plus-ultra judgey mcjudgeyface Judgment Zone. But not now, certainly not if it's something you got as a child or teen, because we don't judge kids here.

I have to think about it myself. My mom was into Christmas, and I got plenty of stuff I wanted -- spoiled even, at least on that one magic day. I'm sure if I'd ever wanted a BB gun, though, the answer would have been no way, but I wasn't interested. I was always excited to get any superhero or G.I. Joe merchandise, and I got a lot.

As for the best gift I ever got that I didn't want, I'll save that for another post.

So how about you? What did you get? Did you shoot your eye out? I sure hope not.

Something's missing!

This one is dedicated to Junior Varsity Dog and all-around Thief of Sticks, Nipper.  Chomp away, young fellow.

Ice capuppies.

Tuesday was the first day I recall our local schools closing entirely because of rain, but to be fair, it was freezing rain. And it was pretty bad.

Every flat surface, every branch of tree, every blade of grass was coated with layers of ice.

Of course this meant I was determined to be careful to the point of paranoia. I didn't want to reenact last winter's Skaters' Waltz and the resultant injury. The grass is crunchy and its texture helped with the footing, although it was a bit slick; it was also softer than concrete, helpful in case of sudden gravitational intervention.

The dogs didn't mind it a bit. They enjoy chewing on ice and even rolling on that nice crunchy grass. I saw the little guy slip on the driveway, but what does he care? He can only fall a few inches. Besides, he has four-paw drive. For the first time I agreed with Napoleon the pig -- four legs good, two legs bad. Sure, two-leggedness enables us to use these hands of ours, and helps us see over most obstacles, but none of that is helpful when you're flat-out on the sidewalk wondering if you broke anything.

This is the kind of weather that turns everything upside down. Keep on the grass. Do not walk on the walkway.

It was sunny Wednesday morning, and the temperature was expected to peek its head just above freezing, so I put down close to forty pounds of rock salt. I sprinkled it on the driveway, the walkway, the sidewalk. I made it so salty that the FDA was ready to sue me for causing pavement hypertension. And the ice was getting good and melty.

Three p.m.: Snow started.

I had been out and noted the dark skies. Still dark when I got back in my office. Went to get changed. By then everything was white outside.

What the heckin' heck --- !

Just a snow squall, over by 3:20. But it helped dissolve my salt. Then, frigid temperatures and wind. Black ice on the cleared spots. This morning it was -6 with the windchill.

And winter is still not starting until Sunday.

I'm not entirely sure that nature is trying to kill me, and yet I'm not entirely sure it isn't, either. But it's making my furry friends happy, so good for them.

😠

Fred's Book Club: All You Want for Christmas.

Hello, gang, and welcome back to the Humpback Writers, our book club that takes place on Wednesday, thus the stupid name. We could move it to Thursday, but then we'd probably just call it Day After Hump Day Humpback Writers. We're stubborn like that. 

Getting back to the salient point: Have you ever wished there was a book that contained every single thing you need to know to enjoy Christmas? I mean everything -- religious instruction, sheet music, recipes, stories, trivia, decoration ideas, party ideas, history, the works? Well, of course you have! But what you didn't know is, it came out more than twenty years ago! 

The Everything Christmas Book was published as part of the Everything series by Adams Media, a series that intended to pack an exhaustive amount of material in each enjoyable volume.

No book can have everything about anything, but this one is pretty close. Kudos to the many editors on this project, especially general editors Michelle Bevilacqua and Brandon Toropov. It must have been a huge amount of work.

The book is 470 oversize pages long, and includes chapters containing the legit story of Christmas, Biblical and historical; also great writing about Christmas, including poems like "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and "Christmas Trees" by Robert Frost; stories like "The Gift of the Magi"; the whole of Dickens's A Christmas Carol and other Dickens seasonal stuff; and of course, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus." Also included are chapters on Christmas customs in history and around the world, and information on other winter holidays.

They even have a section of sheet music for songs like "The First Nowell" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" and "Jingle Bells." Gather 'round the piano, everybody!

What else? You want a cookie recipe? There are sixteen, as well as recipes for appetizers, main dishes, sides, other desserts, and drinks. Here's a drink recipe now!

Not to mention the crafts to get the kids involved like cupcake-holder ornaments and paper-plate Santas; homemade presents like bath bags and potpurri; and party games for your guests who haven't drunk too much Cranberry Glogg to participate.

My favorite part of the book includes bits of trivia here and yon. For example: Would you be curious what Americans were watching on TV on Christmas Eve thirty, forty, fifty years ago? One chapter covers the networks on Christmas Eve from 1962 to 1995.

1969: 
The Flying Nun
Sally Field stars in the Christmas episode, "Winter Wonderland."

Music Hall
Wayne Newton hosts a seasonal celebration with his guests Julie Budd and the Singing Angels.

Space Cantata
A musical special set to official NASA footage from the Apollo 8 mission.

1979:
A Christmas Special ... With Love, Mac Davis
Mac is joined by Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Robert Urich, and the choir of St. Mary's Church in Van Nuys, California.

Christmas on Sesame Street
Big Bird and the rest of the gang get together for a celebration of the season.

Family
The holiday spirit takes a turn for the worse when Kate learns that Doug is keeping something from her.

1989:
A Christmas Carol
George C. Scott delivers the definitive Scrooge of our time in this rebroadcast of the popular special.

A Muppet Family Christmas
Kermit, Miss Piggy, Big Bird, and the rest of the gang celebrate the holiday.

Bill Cosby Salutes Alvin Ailey
Roberta Flack, Anthony Quinn, and others join Bill in a salute to the world-famous choreographer.

🔴

No 1999? No, because this book came out in 1997. Thus, some information in my edition is dated. One article cautions, "Steer clear of the bootlegs and commercial-jammed 'edited' versions; head down to your local video emporium and check out a copy of the crystal-clear, uncut It's a Wonderful Life for holiday viewing. But get there early -- you'll have some competition!"

You might be thinking, as was I, that the Internet killed the Everything books series. After all, the book may claim to have everything, but the Internet really is a fire hose of information, even if a lot of it is garbage. But in fact the Everything series continues, although it looks like it's given over to puzzles and cookbooks and kids' books now. Current titles include The Everything Kids Baseball Book and The Everything Fondue Cookbook, which seem to be a little less ambitious than this book. I also suspect that Adams Media, a wing of Simon & Schuster, has lost the cheerfulness and mass appeal it once had. Other books include The Modern Guide to Witchcraft and 365 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You and Weedopedia: An A to Z Guide to All Things Marijuana. 

Oh, well. I never thought I'd look back on the nineties as a relaxed and happy time, but it sure seems like it now. God knows what Christmas in America and America itself will look like twenty years from now. But I do take a little comfort in what we've seen and survived before, as noted in the book's chapter "The 20th-Century American Christmas," which includes news items such as these:

In 1931, roughly 5,000 unemployed men showed up to eat a free Christmas dinner of turkey and mulligan stew at one site in Manhattan. The total number of New York City families receiving charity baskets or free meals that year is not known, but it was clearly in the tens of thousands.

🔴

"While preparations are going on here, in a mild way to be sure, due to wartime conditions, our little British cousins across the seas have not been overlooked. Old Santa, that kindly bewhiskered man, will pay them a visit through the thoughtfulness of the relief agencies here . . . Of the many thousands (of) toys of various types and descriptions sent across the seas by Bundles for Britain, most of them are soft dolls and animals made from scraps of materials in the sewing looms . . ." (The New York Times, December 21, 1941)

🔴

". . . And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He seas; and God saw that it was good. And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you -- all of you on the good Earth." (Message from Apollo 8 astronauts, Christmas Eve, 1968)

Merry Christmas, everybody and everything.

Hooked?

Feel like you want to hang jolly festive holiday candy around, but you just don't like peppermint? Fear not! Spangler, the candy company that makes a whopping hunk of the 1.76 billion candy canes manufactured and sold (90% between Thanksgiving and Christmas) has a non-peppermint candy cane for you.

Yes, folks, a couple of weeks back I was in Dollar General, grabbing some extra light strings to fill a hole on the tree, when what to my wondering eyes did appear but Oreo Flavored Candy Canes.

Okay, so they are not festively colored; no red or green or even gold. In fact, the near-black dark of the Oreo cookie reflected here makes them look almost like goth candy canes. They'd be good for the death-metal fans on your list.

I was of two minds whether to buy them, in fact, as I am not a goth or death-metal fan, but you know what? It was Dollar General, for goodness' sake, so guess how much they cost.

But what you want to know is, do they really taste like Oreo cookies? And I am here to tell you... Yes, yes, they sorta do.

I mean, as much as a sugar candy can. Chocolate is a notoriously hard flavor to transfer to hard candies. Nestlé's Chocolate Parfait Nips comes pretty close, but it cheats by having a soft center. I'd say the Oreo candy cane ranks up there. But the filling flavor is even better; while it's hard to taste the white bit separately from the black, I did my best, and can state that the white part of the candy cane has a very good imitation of the Oreo filling flavor. Of course, the texture is completely wrong for Oreos, which makes it more difficult to nail down the flavor -- you could come up with a chewable vitamin that tastes exactly like a Thanksgiving turkey and it still wouldn't be right in any plausible way.

However, cookie-to-cane is a much shorter route than turkey-to-pill, so I think you're safe with these.

To recap: The Spangler Oreo Flavored Candy Canes are a good choice for those festive-minded people who:

🍬 Are goths
🍬 Like death metal
🍬 Dislike color on the Christmas tree
🍬 Hate mint
🍬 Are obsessed with Oreos
🍬 Just want something different in the candy cane line

And if you wait until after Christmas, they will probably be fifty cents a box!

Dim bulb.

Sometimes I get very angry over things that properly call for an angry response -- although fury is seldom a useful feeling, even for things like injustice and cruelty. At least it's appropriate. Sometimes I find myself mad enough to strike out over things that I can only characterize as stupid. Here's one that really got me worked up, and it's something that involves me not in the slightest.

What you see below is a picture from a house that was built in 1959 that had been empty for a few months before a flipper bought it. I thought he might have it knocked flat and build new, but apparently not. No, he is having it renovated and is apparently he is being exceptionally cheap about it. Rather than have the old, patchy wooden siding pulled off and replaced, he's having vinyl siding slapped on right over it. Holes, termite damage, rot, who cares? Just cover it up. This strikes me as execrable foolishness -- careless parsimony that could come back to haunt him.

But that's not the stupid part. It's the light:

Next to the front door are these four glass panels over the staircase, the kind of thing that makes the house unique and even a little awesome. And what did he put in for the new light fixture? A goddamn shaded lamp, the kind you hang over your kitchenette table, and not just that but the cheapest one he could possibly find.

This goes beyond stingy and straight into stupid. It takes the single most eye-catching part of the exterior and turns it into a cheesy flashlight. A space like this needs a large hanging light, the kind of thing that is itself an attraction. Here's a piece from another building, contemporary to this one:

Not a good picture, but you get the idea: Large, colorful, stylish, artistic, practical for the space but dead on for the aesthetic, the kind of thing that helps make someone fall for the house as he or she is getting out of the car. By going cheap on the fixture, this nincompoop is going to lose buyers he could have grabbed right away, and P.S., is leaving the stairway underlit. It's so dumb I want to slap somebody. He's not just fishing with no bait, he's fishing with no hook.

I'm no decorator. If it were a bachelor I probably would have furnished the house with clearance-sale stuff from the furniture store. But I know that a great space needs a great light, and this dumb-ass blew it. What adds the willfulness to the stupidity is the penny-pinching, and willful stupidity should be punished quickly and effectively. There's no excuse for this.

GAH!

The morning after the day before.

Very little to post this morning; we had company last night, which meant house cleaning and cooking before and entertaining after. And it was entertaining, certainly for us; I hope it was for our guests as well. Our dogs had a wonderful time and are very sleepy as I write this, unusual for this time of the morning.

I did learn a few things that I thought were interesting, or at least funny, that I thought I'd mention.

🎄 Windows Media Player is hard to find on your laptop when you're having a conversation and you used to use iTunes to play old CDs on your old laptop but you haven't downloaded it for the new one and you wind up giving up and not being DJ and leaving the Charlie Brown Christmas album in your D drive and the hell with it.

🎄 Young folks report being so freaked out by the blackface scene in Holiday Inn that they are forced to skip over that whole section of the film or just turn it off entirely. Of course it's offensive to modern eyes, but people accustomed to watching all kinds of depravity and violence in movies ought to be made of sterner stuff. It also shows the lack of historical perspective that so characterizes our age. The most famous blackface performer of all time, Al Jolson, was as far from being racist as he could be, for example. Anyway, it didn't seem to bother Canadian liberals to vote for their most famous blackface performer.

🎄 Say what you will about magazines as a dying industry, but Good Housekeeping still has some amazing recipes to offer. My wife found a pie recipe that was a big hit. I was the cheap labor that put the thing together, with help from Mr. Pillsbury for the crust. The magazine billed it as a Thanksgiving recipe, being made of pears and cranberries, but we defended it on the grounds that A) there was still one more week until winter, and B) options for Christmas deserts tend to be along the line of yule log (would like some practice before making one for guests), plum pudding (ditto), cookies (not a sit-down food), and fruitcake (I would not spring that on unsuspecting friends). Anyway, the pie was roundly applauded.

It was a lovely time, but I'm exhausted. I'll return with more of the usual stuff tomorrow. Enjoy your Gaudete Sunday!

Achtung!

"Grimsley! Come here immediately! I must ask you someting!"

"Yes, Herr Burgermeister?"

"Suddenly I am rackink my brain, Grimsley, unt it is painful! I need to know...
vy am I der only person in dis dumkopf town mit ein Cherman acczent?"

"I mean, didn't ve grow up here? But everyone else ist an American!"

"I'm sure I don't know, Herr Burgermeister."

"Schtop it, Grimsley! Vy do you sound like some silly Britishy person? Vy don't you

sound American? Even dot silly Mickey Rooney -- I mean, de Kringle -- and der schtupid Vinter Varlock kah-nucklehead sound American!"

"I grew up watching Eric Blore films, Herr Burgermeister!"

"I vill not rest until I find out vat is goink on! Vy am I der only person in dis schtupid town who sounds like I belonk in der Chermanic vorld? Vy do you all sound American?"

"Gee, that's a good question, Mister Lederhosen man! We were wondering why most of the folks around us sound French!"

Boost or letdown?

Behold: The last SteamBoost.

Almost the only companies that ever admit that they're discontinuing something are car companies, and that's only when an entire product line is going away, because stockholders need to know that. When Oldsmobile was shelved by GM in 2004, it was national news. When a cereal flavor or cable TV show or book series gets the ax, no one ever admits it. There's an omertà on failure in business these days.

Legend has it that Procter & Gamble, owners of the Swiffer line of cleaning products, had a brilliant idea once upon a time: join forces with Bissell, the floor cleaning specialists, to create an inexpensive steam mop that would boost the cleaning power of the Swiffer damp mop pads with steam. It would require the use of disposable pads, like all Swiffer products, so people would keep paying to use the product, but you could eat off their floors. Everybody wins!

That was the bright, sunlit heyday of 2013.

We bought one. We liked it a lot. It was lightweight and easy to use, unlike the previous steam mop I bought. It cleaned much better than a plain mop, and the floors got dry much faster. Then we got Dog #1, followed two and a half years later by Dog #2, and the SteamBoost was proving its value constantly.

Well, it finally gave up the ghost. The water trigger broke, leaving no way to shoot that lovely hot water into the pad. It could not be fixed. No matter -- we'll get another one.

And that's when I found out that, while no one will tell you the truth, the fact is that this product is discontinued.

I first noticed that none of the local stores carried the SteamBoost pads. Okay, I'll get a couple of boxes from Amazon. But then, when the machine broke, I found out that neither Amazon nor Walmart had any new SteamBoost mops, except for those sold for high markup by third-party vendors.

"Hey, kid! Psst! You wanna buy a SteamBoost?" 

Yeah, first one's cheap but then it'll cost ya.

I suspect the bright lads at Procter & Gamble (whose genius I have mocked previously) were scared that the SteamBoost was taking customers from their own inferior WetJet, which they push like it's the cure for cancer. I bought a WetJet years ago and... it's just okay. I found it no better than a standard sponge mop, and more expensive to operate.

I think P&G tried to put the screws to Bissell, demanding a better deal, and Bissell walked away. I'm just guessing. But Procter & Gamble does seem to be run by big dumb stupid heads these days, so I think it's a good guess.

Nevertheless, the SteamBoost still appears on the Swiffer site, and you might get one from other lower-volume online retailers for list price at this writing.

I got mine from Staples. I bought it in November for $49.85. Guess what it's selling for now?

Whether this is P&G extortion or, as I believe, price gouging from third-party suppliers who bought up remaining stock, it's insane.

Why can't companies just say "X didn't perform well, so we're not making X anymore" or "It was a good product but we didn't like the deal"? We know companies and divisions have failures. Hell, P&G seems to be on a mission to destroy Gillette. So what? Admit it, sell the stock to the discounter stores, and move on.

Prepare for liftoff.

Dear Jack,

I believe you do not know me, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nicholas. I live rather far north of you, so I regret my inability to come visit in person. However, I have been informed that you have hit a bad streak of fortune, and I believe I may be able to assist you. 

You see, I was told that your mother became angry as you traded your family's livestock for a pouch of magic beans. Clearly she does not think of these magic beans as having value, and indeed for many people they could be useless. I, however, require exactly such a thing for my planned delivery service. As such, I am making the offer of one (1) cow's weight in silver in exchange for the pouch of beans. 

You may have heard rumors that magic beans may be used to grow enormous beanstalks and other such things, and perhaps they may be true. However, I suspect there is a great deal of risk in dealing with said beanstalks, such as encountering giants with a particular taste for Englishmen. As your mother's sole support, you ought to wary of any such dangerous ventures. I, on the other hand, hope to use other attributes of these legumes to develop a source of renewable motive power for the benefit of all mankind. 

If my offer is acceptable to you, I will send my representative, Mr. Jangles, to your address with the silver in exchange for the beans. 

Regards,

-Nicholas

THREE MONTHS LATER

Fred's Book Club: Hot Stuff.

Welcome back to the Humpback Writers, our Wednesday book blog that gets its name from the fact that Wednesday is Hump Day, at least according to some camels I know. Elephants have a completely different take.

This week we have the first book in one of the all-time great crime classic series: The Hot Rock, by Donald Westlake.

Donald Westlake was an established crime writer under multiple pseudonyms -- notably Richard Stark, author of the hard-boiled Parker novels -- when he was struck by a different arrow of inspiration:

One day in 1967 I was wearing my Richard Stark hat, looking for a story to tell about my man Parker, and I thought, he reacts badly to frustration, what if he had to steal the same thing four or five times? I started to work it out, then realized the idea was only comic and Parker wouldn't stand for it. But I liked the notion, and even -- once it was comic -- saw how to make it six thefts of the same elusive item.

Obviously he needed to come up with a hero who would be willing to go after the same item multiple times, imaginative and brave enough to pull off the heists but unlucky enough to keep losing the damn thing, and it had to be a crooked character who fit into a comic story. And so we have John Dortmunder and his band of underworld knuckleheads.

The hot rock in question is a large emerald, which Major Patrick Iko of the African nation of Talabwo wants stolen. It is in a Pan-African display in Manhattan, as part of another nation's exhibit, but the Talabwo people think it belongs to them. The Major is willing to pay the crooks well, $30,000 per man (the average U.S. salary then was $10K). Of course, the exhibit is well-guarded.

The best part about this and subsequent Dortmunder novels is not the careful plot but the wonderful characters in and out of Dortmunder's crew. Regulars include Andy Kelp, the Norton to his Ralph, who is always coming up with crazy ideas; Stan Murch, the getaway driver, who listens to record albums of race car engines; Murch's mother, who is usually quite helpful; and Tiny, a psychopathic mountain of a man whose favorite negotiating tool is to take a live hand grenade, pull out the pin, hold the clip down, and tape his hand in that position (it gets attention). Other handymen include locksman and model train enthusiast Roger Chefwick; safecracker and activist Herman X; universally loathed fence and repulsive human Arnie Albright; and in this book, utility man Alan Greenwood, who at one point swallows the emerald to keep it from the cops when he is arrested.

"Go on with your story. When did you next see the emerald?"
     "Not till the next day," Greenwood said. "I'll just sort of skip over that part, if you don't mind."
     "I wish you would."
     "Right. When I had the emerald again, I was in a cell. I guess they were afraid the rest of the guys might try to spring me right away, 'cause they hid me out in a precinct on the Upper West Side for the first two days. I was in one of the detention cells on the top floor."
     "And that's where you hid it?" the Major said faintly.
     "There wasn't anything else I could do, Major. I didn't dare keep it on my person, not in jail."
     "Couldn't you have just kept on swallowing it?"
     Greenwood gave a greenish smile. "Not after the first time I got it back," he said. 

So now, of course, Dortmunder has to plan to steal the emerald again, this time from the top-floor cell of a police station.

I have to say that The Hot Rock is not my favorite of the Dortmunder books I've read. There are 15, including a collection of short stories; I've read six. I preferred the second book, Bank Shot, in which the gang aims to steal a bank -- not rob a bank, but steal it, as the branch is temporarily relocated to a trailer during construction. The heist is so outrageous and the planning so clever, you almost feel like the hapless crew might pull it off... and maybe they will. Kidnap caper Jimmy the Kid is also terrific, and features the most extended cash-drop-off scene you will ever see, with multiple characters running up and down the highway trying to outfox one another -- that scene alone is a Westlake tour de force. But I think my favorite so far is Bank Shot. I'm not rushing through the series; Westlake cashed in his chips in 2008, so we only have these to enjoy. Fortunately he was prolific.

One of the odd things about the Dortmunder books is that, while Westlake liked to take on topical cultural currents, he didn't bother aging his characters. The first book's MacGuffin is inspired by 1960s news of postcolonial nations in trouble; Bad News (2001) is about Indian Reservation Casinos; the last book, Get Real (2009), puts the gang on reality TV. So you'd think they'd have aged forty-odd years in that time, but nope. In this first book, published in 1970, Dortmunder, a Korean War vet, is described as thirty-seven, divorced from night-club entertainer Honeybun Bazoom, and:

A little gray, a little tired, face a little lined, thin body rather frail-looking.... Dortmunder's eyes, as they met the Major's, were flat, watchful, unexpressive. A man who would keep his own counsel, the Major thought, and a man who would make his decisions slowly and then stand by them.

The same description could apply to our hero in all subsequent novels.

But not in any of the movies. Does that description sound like Robert Redford? Because he played Dortmunder in the 1972 feature film The Hot Rock. Not George C. Scott, either, who played the part (although they changed the name) in 1974's Bank Shot. Nor does it sound like Martin Lawrence (also with the name changed), in 2001's What's the Worst that Could Happen?, or Paul Le Mat (1982's Jimmy the Kid).

I've never seen any of them. The problem is always the casting. The last movie star who I think could have made a proper Dortmunder was Bogart; even Robert Mitchum was too tall for the part. Musclebound pretty boys can play Richard Stark heroes like Parker, but you need a skinny sad sack for this criminal mastermind.

Skip the movie versions and stick with the books. Westlake is a vivid writer and paints all the pictures you need.

Christmas letters.

I was in church on Sunday, not paying as close attention as I ought to, because I have the attention span of a four-year-old. I was listening to the singer and I suddenly found myself thinking how songs that sound so perfect could be ruined by a poorly sung note, a clunker of a chord, or a hilariously mispronounced word. Not that our parish musicians would ever do that -- well, maybe the kiddie choir -- but I could easily see me doing that. I've sung in glee clubs and music classes and even a bad band, but my participation was never that noticeable.

It made me think about how easily famous Christmas songs could be completely ruined by changing or adding or subtracting just one or two letters, no more. Such as in the title of the Three Stooges' short, "Wreck the Halls," where the D was replaced by the Wr. Here are a few titles that came to mind.

♫ "Sleigh Rude"

♫ "Jungle Bells"

♫ "Blunt Christmas"

♫ "Winter Wonderlunk"

♫ "I Saw Mommy Kicking Santa Claus"

♫ "The Little Dumber Boy"

♫ "Silver Belts"

♫ "Wonderful Christmas Tomb"

♫ "Marty, Did You Know?"

♫ "Lite Christmas"

♫ "Carol of the Bulls"

♫ "Fruity the Snowman"

♫ "The Christmas Shots"

♫ "Goy to the World"

♫ "Baby It's Cod Outside"

♫  "Nasty Christmas"

♫ "Santa Navy"

♫ "All I Want for Christmas Is Cow"

These don't all make a lot of sense, but in some cases I think they might be all right. Some could even be improvements on the original. Anyone got Sir Paul's e-mail address...?