So sorry I didn't wish you all a Merry Christmas! yesterday since I was unable to keep my hands on a computer long enough to post. I was going to share terrible cell phone pictures of my Christmas cactus that is appropriately blooming right now. I only have two blooms at the moment but since it took a lot of effort to get these two blooms I am terribly excited about them. One bloom just fell off and another is about to bloom so I will have a total four blooms this Christmas! How exciting! So, in honor of the Day of World Peace (I decided that's how I'm going to celebrate Christmas since I think Jesus was really just a brilliant anthropologist and humanist- not God incarnate), here are the promised cactus blooms:
This is the almost bloom. There's a bud coming on a stem next to it but it hasn't progressed in a while so I don't know if it will turn into a bloom or not.
I don't know if you can make out the great color of these blooms-it's a nice reddish pink, a very rich pink. I have another cactus that has pink blooms (at least I think so because it hasn't bloomed since I moved here THREE YEARS AGO!)
I didn't realize how phallic these things look! How inappropriate! It looks like a flower penis coming to poke me in the eye.
Hopefully I can share with you the other cactus one day. I called it the Jesus cactus since it bloomed on Easter and Christmas. It was very strange. Now I just call it Lucinda.
Happy Boxing Day everyone! I hope you all had a safe and lovely holiday filled with good food, good booze and great love.
Since Mike is taking me to see my favorite holiday movie Scrooged at an old theatre downtown this evening I thought I would share with you some of my holiday favorites.
Scrooged, 1988
This movie is so great because it's Bill Murray at his comedy best but at the same time allows him to touch the warm spot in your chest cavity. In my opinion it's the best retelling of A Christmas Carol.
The Year Without a Santa Claus, 1974
This video says it all.
Jingle All the Way, 1996
This movie with Ahnold is ridiculous but it makes me laugh every time. I had no idea it was going on 13 years old because to me, this comedy is timeless. Well, Sinbad may not be timeless but kids needing the gift of the year and parents being unattentive will always be timeless.
Home for the Holidays, 1995
This may not be a Christmas movie but it encapsulates everything about the holidays I love and hate. Robert Downey, Jr. and Dylan McDermott are super dreamy.
Elf, 2003
"I love you. I love you. I looooooove you." I find this movie underlying-ly depressing (I can't tell you why exactly) but at the same time Will Ferrell is actually very funny and charming in this holiday flick.
Are there any favorites I missed? I'm not a huge fan of the old Christmas movies because they are too sappy. So that rules out A Wonderful Life. As great as that movie is, I'll pass if it's on. So, what's out there?
During ticket pick-up last Saturday afternoon I saw at least 8 different women wearing fur coats of various lengths. It wasn't particularly cold out that day and there was no snow on the ground. I couldn't figure out why all these women were wearing animal carcasses on them for a matinee to a theatre in Albany. The only conclusion I had was that they must be going to one of the swanky restaurants downtown after the show. But that still didn't justify the coats. Every time a new coat would come to the window I grew increasingly nauseated. I didn't realize how much fur disgusted me. I'm just not around it enough I guess.
In this day and age I can't find any reason to justify wearing fur. It is no longer an item of necessity. I know why people wore fur back in the dark ages and I can even understand it up until the fifties. But now? Go out and get a jacket made of material that was obtained without stripping the animal of its largest organ. How long are people who own fur outside anyway? How long does it take to get out of a luxury vehicle, give the keys to the valet, and then duck into the restaurant? Fifteen minutes. Please. There are better clothes to make a statement. Besides, it just makes all the women look bulky and manly.
Yes, I eat animals. But, I will never wear an animal. I'm not going to throw red paint on people wearing coats but someone out there has to realize it's a luxury that isn't luxurious. It's disgusting. To quote Mohandas Ghandi:
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Whenever I meet someone new inevitably I'm asked where I'm from. For simplicity's sake I say I'm from Northern Virginia outside of Washington, DC since that's where I graduated high school. When I get pressed about not having a Southern accent I say that I moved around a lot as a kid. "Oh! Where did you live?" I rattle off the various states and countries and talk about how moving has really shaped who I am.
Being a military brat is a mixed bag. Moving has made it fairly easy for me to be in a group of people I don't know and strike up a conversation. It helped me learn my social limits. And moving helped me appreciate different kinds of people and places in this world. But it also took some things from me. I don't know my relatives very well. I don't have a lot of long term friendships. And I don't have a place I can call home.
Being "homeless" is exacerbated by the fact that my father got orders to England my senior year and we moved the day after I graduated high school, my parents got divorced a year later, and my father and mother lived in considerably different time zones the years after that. My father has since retired to Myrtle Beach and my mother lives in Atlanta. Ugh. I can appreciate a lot in this world but humidity and toothlessness are not on that list. Needless to say, I don't see my family very much and holidays are some of the few times a year I am required to see them.
I haven't spent a holiday with my father since the Thanksgiving my stepmother wouldn't let my dad bring me to his house for reasons I don't believe. He and I were forced to spend the holiday in my mother's house (in which neither of us ever resided and while my mother and siblings were away in Florida) digesting a turkey loaf. That was in 2001. I've spent a Christmas with my mother crying incessantly about how my brother and sister were in Hawaii and it was all her fault that the family is split up like this. I've spent a Christmas when my siblings wouldn't let my mother's boyfriend come over until after 2pm. And I had lost many friends from high school that I could run to. That was fun. I can go on and on but you get the point. I don't like the holidays.
So as a person who dreads the holidays I was really looking forward to Four Christmases, a movie with characters who vacation instead of spend painful holidays with family. I thought maybe someone could take a crappy situation and make it dark and deeply funny. I love to laugh at things that depress me. And nothing makes me laugh harder than divorce. But I only really laughed at one part in this movie- a screaming congregation of white Christians going shit crazy for baby Jesus. Like I said, depressing means funny.
The movie had a tremendous amount of comedy gold to be mined and it failed to deliver. It should have been about more than just people who don't like their families- families who seemed to be nothing more than innocuously annoying. It should have been about parents playing against each other, parents feeling guilt, the dynamic of how awkward it is to be around people who are sleeping with your parents, parents thinking you failed to live up to expectations and having to hear about it twice, or coming to terms with the mistakes people made and not making them yourself. I know this isn't a tall order for a comedy- it's been done, see Home for the Holidays.
Maybe it could have been a great comedy. Or maybe I can just learn to find humor in my own situation and not look to Vince Vaughn for dark and insightful humor. I don't think he can find anything insightful if it crawled out of his poorly improvised ass.
Ignore the cheesy video. It was this, or one with just the lyrics, or one with The O.C. kids all over it. I feel so warm and fuzzy now.
The Waitresses, "Christmas Wrapping"
I didn't watch this all the way through but I know without watching it that it's better than the Spice Girls' cover that I didn't know existed until today. (You guessed it, it's crap.) This was one of the first non-traditional Christmas songs I heard and it wasn't until high school that I heard it.
Vince Guaraldi, "Christmas Time is Here"
Who doesn't associate this song with a great Christmas memory?
Since Christmas is two weeks away, I've been listening to hours of Christmas music. I force myself to forgo normal music during the entire month of December. Not because I don't like my Christmas music, since I LOVE IT, but because it's just habit to reach for Radiohead and not Dean Martin singing lecherously about how it's cold outside (is it me, or is his rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" just a little too creepy?). For the past five years or so I've been searching for not-your-run-of-the-mill Christmas music and creating mixes of them. I love a rousing rendition of Peter, Paul and Mary's "Children Go Where I Send Thee" but since my mother is allergic to any good holiday music I've listened to that album enough for a lifetime. In my quest I've found some songs that are super and others that are so bad I'd rather risk molestation by a drunk-o Dino instead of listen to them. Today, I'm going to share with you some of those super songs if I can find them on the YouTube. If not, I'll just tell you about them and leave it to your imagination.
Sufjan Stevens, "Put The Lights on the Tree"
Just so perky and awesome.
Sammy Davis Jr., "Christmas Time All Over the World"
This is one that I'd rather get roofied but Mike loves it and does a killer Sammy D impression.
Sufjan Stevens, "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever"
I know it's the second song by this guy but I love the forlorn-ness of it. Very quiet which is unusual for a Christmas song.
Sarah McLachlan, "Happy Xmas (War is Over)"
OMG this song makes me cry so much but I love it.
David Bowie and Bing Crosby, "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth"
David Bowie give me a boner and this song did too until I found out Bing beat his kids. Now I just enjoy it immensely.
The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York"
Who doesn't love a Christmas song featuring abusive lovers?
I think that's enough for today. I'm sure I'm forgetting some. But songs that I can't find to embed are pretty awesome and I suggest you find them- Sheryl Crow "Blue Christmas" love the xylophone and MOST IMPORTANTLY Holly Golightly's "The Christmas Tree's On Fire." It's an important song about Christmas safety as well as a great song to jam to!
This is the almost bloom. There's a bud coming on a stem next to it but it hasn't progressed in a while so I don't know if it will turn into a bloom or not.
I don't know if you can make out the great color of these blooms-it's a nice reddish pink, a very rich pink. I have another cactus that has pink blooms (at least I think so because it hasn't bloomed since I moved here THREE YEARS AGO!)
I didn't realize how phallic these things look! How inappropriate! It looks like a flower penis coming to poke me in the eye.
