Some Happy Thoughts

My brother sometimes says I’m too angry/negative here at Xmastime, so I thought I’d take a minute to run through a few things I like:

1) My nephew - Paddy Mac!!!! His mother doesn’t like me calling him that, but I see saying Paddy Mac!!!! as a celebration - it’s not “Paddy Mac please pass the salt”, it’s “HEEEEYYYY, it’s Paddy Mac!!!! Let’s do this!!" When I first met the kid, he was, he was, oh, a few weeks old. Maybe 2-3 weeks. Tiny. And like most people fairly inexperienced with newborns I was freaked out that my oversized mitts and general hugeness would somehow crush him to death. So we all load into my brother’s car and go for a ride - he and his wife up front, me and the Kid in the back. I’m messing around with him, poking his belly, rubbing his head, whatever you do with a baby, and then FOOOMP!! His head is in his lap, stone cold out. His head looks like it’s attached to a long piece of rope, dangling there bobbing along with the road. And sheer, utter panic ran through me as I thought: Oh my god. I have killed this child. White terror sliced through me as thoughts ran through my head at 1000x the speed of light as I debated how to explain to my brother that I killed his son. Of course, while this is going on I would try to time it so that every time my brother looked in the rear-view mirror I’d lightly lift his what-I-thought-was-lifeless head up so no one would suspect anything. I’m sure it occurred to me that maybe I could keep this charade up for decades. Weekend at Bernie’s 3. Then my sister in law decides she needs to be in the back, so we pull over to grab a soda while she switches. I slowly walk into the store with my brother, awaiting the scream I know is coming and figuring out which woods I would have to live in for the rest of my life, eating berries and making friends with squirrels. Squirrels being, of course, the only animals in God’s Kingdom that still give babykillers the time of day.

No scream ever came, and when we walked back to the car he was awake, being fed. Never been so relieved in my life. Even while it was happening, I didn’t really believe it, but there was that 2% thought in my brain that I had somehow snapped this kid’s neck. Man. Anyways, I’m hoping to go see him again soon (I’ve seen him a few times since). In the meantime I have to beg for photos as my brother apparently is hellbent on setting the record for “Least Pictures Taken of Firstborn Child.” Ah well. Paddy Mac!!!!!!! :)

2) Television. I’m not a movie guy, I’m a sitcom guy. I’m sure I’ve already blathered to you people how I feel about cinefiles who turn their noses up at people who watch tv. To summarize: fuck you. Fortunately, there is a TON of good shit on tv - PBS, History Channel, Discovery Channel, A&E, some news channels, Food Network, National Geographic, HBO etc. UNfortunately, I’m usually too busy watching reruns of Dawson’s Creek and Who’s the Boss and episodes of The Real World that I’ve already seen 40 times. But I am aware of the vast amount of choices out there at least. For instance I know that this Monday PBS will feature Paul McCartney at Abbey Road running through his songbook. I’ll spend the next 4 days looking forward to it, but then of course flipping madly between it and The King of Queens and that hideous Flava Flav “reality” show. So you see my dilemma.

3) Cooking. I like cooking a lot, although unlike most people that enjoy cooking I pretty much stick to a handfull of things. Fried chicken, meat loaf, lasagna, meatballs, anything that can use 5 lbs of ground beef. I do have a few white trash specials: “Continental Chicken” aka white rice, cream of mushroom soup with some chicken on top. “Majestic Macaroni” aka 3 boxes of Krasdale mac n cheese with some ground beef mixed in. Mmmm. I like making huge amounts of food for other people, I enjoy hosting - mixing some Xmastime food with some entertaining thrown in. My biggest hit of course has always been fried chicken, but somewhere out there there is an English woman who came to one of my get-togethers that I’m pretty sure still hasn’t gotten over the “Festive Chili Bread” I made once. Round loaf of bread dug out, insert Hormel, top with cheese, voila!! She was stunned and pretty much stared at it for three hours. Probably realizing at that moment why the British eventually gave up the colonies.

4) Car Alarms. Like everyone else I wanna jump off a bridge whenever one of these things go off, but they are fun to think about when you consider has there been a single piece of widespread technology developed over the last 15 years that is as completely worthless as these things? What are the numbers on how many cars have been “saved” because of these things? Number of Times I’ve Seen/Heard One of These Things Going Off: 22,943 Number of Times I Have Ever Seen Anyone React in Such a Way So as to Stop a Crime: 0. You never hear one of these go off, and then see some dude sprinting down the hallway “My car! Someone’s breaking in, I can hear it!! I’ll kill him!!!!” It’s always car alarm goes off, and you see some guy “...and so, summarize, I-...oh crap. Is that mine? Is that me? Jimbo, that your car or mine? Mine? You sure? Crap. I gotta go down and turn it off. Dammit!”

I reckon that’s enough “happy thoughts” for now. I don’t wanna go totally soft on you people.