It Was 20 Years Ago Today!

The King of Thrones is Back!

Enjoy his foray into what may be the greatest guest house bathroom ever!

7 Years Ago Today

Was the single greatest live-blogging day ever, during which the modern Internet was redefined forever. Enjoy! :)

Only Fools and Xmastime 118 - May the Force Be With you

Boomer!

The New York Yankees are celebrating the 20th anniversary of David Wells’ perfect game; one week later he made his next start, which was the first time I ever set foot in The Stadium and fell in love with my team.

Griffey hit two out and A-Rod one for the Mariners while Mariah Carey sat behind the Yankees dugout cheering on her bf Derek Jeter. Tino won it for us in the 10th with an rbi double. :)

Life and How to Live It, 2018.

I don't wanna be a "millenials suck!" guy but back in my day basketball quizzes were much, much harder than this.

Literature.

This is one helluva sad short story.

Questons. I Have Them.

Can a book such as this be considered valid if it doesn’t include Garfield and his beloved lasagna? Discuss!

Oh FFS....

...it’s 2018 everybody oh by the way I have a question WTF DO WE STILL HAVE THE SCREWTOPS FOR TOOTHPASTE???!!!

Happy Birthday du Jour

As someone who manged to get a degree in English without taking a Shakespeare class, for his birthday I happily recommend the great sitcom, Upstart Crow. 

Stars: They're Just Like Us!

Genius du Jour

Comparing every NFL quarterback to a fast food chain.

Cam Newton (CAR): Bojangles
 "Beloved in Carolina, and now reaching a broader audience. Terrific food, but if you catch an off-peak meal at the airport, you might wind up with a stale biscuit and dried-out chicken."

Richard Cohen Suuuuuuuucks

Matt Yglesias over at Vox points out what a jackass Richard Cohen is:

Cohen’s career, I think, exemplifies the wisdom contained in that aphorism. He’s a guy who’s enjoyed a well-compensated, high-status, easy-to-do job for decades who nonetheless quite sincerely feels put upon by the fact that he lost a job to a woman sometime in the 1970s and sometimes get called a racist because he thinks young black men should be subject to discriminatory treatment.

He feels, on these grounds, a profound affinity for Trump voters. And because the demographic of put-upon older white men does, in fact, exert disproportionate influence over American social and economic institutions there continues to be a well-compensated and not-very-taxing job for him into his late 70s. 

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you call this bullshit years ago?" 

Sigh. OF COURSE I FUCKING DID, MANY, MANY TIMES!!!!

RIP Harry Anderson

Man, this one sucks. Here's Ken Levine, who wrote for MASH, Cheers, Wings, and a million other sitcoms:

I can't believe this isn't just one of his ingenious hustles. Come on Harry, show yourself.   There's so much that doesn't make sense.  Harry was only 65.  He can't be gone.  This must be a trick.
I first met Harry during pre-production of the first season of CHEERS.  So June or July 1982.  He came into the office wearing the full Harry the Hat outfit.   We were looking to sprinkle in some colorful characters and boy did he fit the bill.  A few weeks later Harry invited us all to the Magic Castle to see his act.  Sure, the magic was dazzling, but what impressed us the most was how FUNNY he was. 
And authentic.  All of the little hustles Harry did that first season were things he contributed.  He was a fun character and the audience loved him, but we worried if we used him too often he wouldn't be as special.   I was so thrilled when he then got the starring role in NIGHT COURT.  He was getting the spotlight he deserved. 
We used Harry again the final season of CHEERS.  David Isaacs and I were assigned to write the final Bar Wars episode.  We thought this would be a perfect time to bring Harry back one last time. In all previous Bar Wars chapters David and I concocted the story.   This time Harry was the mastermind.   We called him and said we really wanted to put a final exclamation point on the Bar Wars saga.  For once we wanted CHEERS to win and we wanted them to win big.  We even thought, "What if somehow Gary's Old Towne tavern gets destroyed?"   Harry came up with the sting.
He was a lovely guy, mischievous as hell, and just naturally hilarious.
Okay, Harry, you had your fun.  Show yourself.   It's too sad otherwise. 

Elgin Who?

It absolutely is fascinating how ridiculously  overlooked Elgin Baylor is:

Elgin Baylor’s gotta be the most underappreciated superstar of all time, in basketball or any major sport. The guy was NCAA Final Four MVP and NBA Rookie of the Year. He was First-Team All-NBA 10 times and an NBA All-Star 11 times. Baylor led his team, the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers, in the trifecta of big stats—points, rebounds and assists—in four different seasons, an NBA record broken only this week by LeBron James. He’s still got the record for points in an NBA Finals game (61). His career scoring average (27.4 points per game) is third-best in NBA history, behind only Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain.

Plus, he put that resume together while showcasing an original style and flair that indeed changed the game—nobody played above the rim before Baylor, the inventor of “hang time.”

Yet for all his certifiable greatness and transcendence, Baylor is nowhere near a household name. Don’t believe me? Ask the person next to you if they know Elgin Baylor.

Of course people like me who badgered him for being a shitty NBA exec hasn't exactly helped his case.  :/

Karma. It's a Bitch.

It's well-known that Scott Mitchell is the douchebag Darth Vader of the video game industry. Nine years ago I wrote about this statement of fact:

Last night I caught The King of Kong; and almost (ALMOST!!!!) was stirred to emotion after the guy (Steve Weibe) got his heart ripped out by that douchebag Billy Mitchell and his little fucking minions. Dude breaks the Donkey Kong record, AT the official record-keeping joint in all the land. He was pressed into going to do it "live" by people that discredited his previous efforts due to them being on video tape. So as he breaks it live once and for all, Billy Mitchell has sent a videotape of HIMSELF "breaking the record" at his own house. Which his little faggot underlings proudly claim to be the new world record. Never minding that 1) it was Mitchell who had led the charge to discredit the guy for not doing it live before 2) some "sketchy" tape stuff was going on with the picture of the tape that the "officials" spent about 0 seconds on in their desperate hamstring-popping sprints to please their Master, Billy Mitchell.

And today? Mitchell's been stripped of his Donkey Kong "record":

Controversial arcade game player Billy Mitchell’s record scores have been removed from the Twin Galaxies leaderboards following a dispute earlier this year that many were performed using an arcade emulator. The ruling, which comes after a lengthy arbitration process, also bans Mitchell from further participation on the leaderboards, bringing an end to the King of Kong star’s high-score glory.

All of Mitchell’s records on Twin Galaxies, an organization that tracks video game records and high scores, have been scrubbed. These marks included a 1,062,800-point score for the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, as well as scores set between 2005 and 2007.

Ah yes, sweet, horrible vindication...

I Fucking Love Murmer

Today is the 35th anniversary of the release of REM's classic debut album Murmer, my favorite of theirs.

Super Slice: Radio Free Europe, Pilgrimage, Moral Kiosk, Perfect Circle, Catapult, Sitting Still, Shaking Through
Slice: Laughing, Talk About the Passion, We Walk, 9-9
Not a Slice: West of the Fields

I also have fond grass cutting memories of Pilgrimage:

The summer after 9th grade I got a job cutting grass at the DMV. It was a TINY square of grass that took maybe 15 minutes to cut. I got $10 to cut it every Saturday, and of course after maybe one Saturday the scorching heat completely killed the grass, leaving nothing to cut the rest of the summer. But I'd still show up every week, go thru the motions, and walk in to collect my ten fat ones. The lady would always be all "gee, did it really need it this week?" to which I'd look like she was ridiculous "oh yeah, yeah it really did" and then take my ten bucks to invest in some little-known company at the time called "Google." I remember blowing up Murmer that summer in Brothatime!!'s Chevette each week when he'd lug me and our lawn mower back and forth to the DMV for this pretty sweet gig.- XMASTIME

Only Fools and Xmastime 117 - Yesterday Never Comes

Today's This Day on Xmastime post HERE.

The Sandlot

I'm always surprised at how large The Sandlot has loomed over the years; people are making a big deal out of 2018 being its 25-year anniversary. Here are The Most Impressive Feats of Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez.

20. Successfully navigates a rundown while wearing a button-up shirt and khakis

10. Spends an entire day with a baseball cap in his back pocket

5. Swims in jeans

2. Hits the ball into Smalls’s glove while Smalls stands there with his eyes closed and his glove in the air like an idiot

No mention that he probably eventually banged Wendy Peffercorn.

The Dinner Party: An Oral History

The Office is great in that I started off loving it, and as time goes on I keep finding it even funnier. Meanwhile, I've stated several times over the years that I rarely like it when a show goes outside it normal set (i.e. if I'm watching Cheers I want them in the bar), and yet The Dinner Party is one of my favorite (if not my favorite) episodes of The Office. And because we're in a golden age of tv and oral history, Rolling Stone has put together an oral history of the episode. A few of my faves:

Gene Stupnitsky (co-writer): Most scripts get rewritten, and I think this was the only one ever done that didn't. The only thing that was changed was that in our first draft Jan hits the neighbor's dog and kills it on purpose.

Beth Grant (Melvina, Dwight’s former babysitter): I had just done No Country for Old Men and I'd worked with Greg Daniels on King of the Hill. When the strike ended, he called me and said, "We want you to play Rainn Wilson's date and former babysitter." I was like, "Oh, my God, from the beet farm?" 

John Krasinski (Jim Halpert): One of the funniest things I've witnessed in my life was Steve showing us that flatscreen TV and saying, "When . . . when people are over you can just do this" [pulling the screen out from the wall]. The TV only moved, like, a half an inch. Sometimes Steve would get frustrated when we couldn't keep it together because he didn't think he was as funny as we thought he was and also he's more professional than all of us. But on that one, he couldn't come back. There was something in the room there that was like an untamed animal, and we were just getting demolished by laughter.

Paul Feig (director): One of my favorite visual gags on that episode was that Dwight brings wine and wine glasses. I said, "He's gotta fill those wine glasses to the top. He's a guy that never drinks wine, so to him it's like a water glass." So the fact that those wine glasses are filled right to the top just makes me laugh so hard.

Enjoy! :)

Herro!

Many of you long-time Xmastime fans know that when I was in Brooklyn for 15 years, I wore the fuck outta my  beloved KAM SING.

Today I see a list by Anthony Bourdain of the best Chinese restaurants in America and it comes to exactly no surprise to myself that Kam Sing is indeed NOT on this list.

No matter - Kam Sing will always be the inspiration for my greatest Photoshop gag ever!

 

You're Welcome

A listing of every "That's what she said" from The Office.

Unfortunate Headline du Jour.