Millions of fans would be miffed if I let 2020 go by without noting it's the 25th anniversary of the recording of the single greatest rock 'n roll record ever made. Happy New Year! #thehappyscene #takemyteenagehead
Thursday, December 31, 2020
#OTD1759 du Jour
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| What could possibly go wrong? |
Viva La Blue Bell!
As you loyal fans already know, I am a proud shareholder in the Blue Bell, a pub in Stoke Ferry, England. Again, please don't get freaked out by me - I'm still the same ol' Xmastime, your buddy that's been here since November 2005, just now with access to a higher class (with my newest bff Stephen Fry!) that will some day soon relieve me of having to interact with you people.
Enjoy this short video encapsulating the past year's efforts to save our beloved Blue Bell, thanks to its Community Benefits Society.
Sigh. Club membership really does feel good.
Hmm.
Fuck you Instagram!
Wait, What?
In looking for something interesting to post about Paul Westerberg for his birthday today (Happy Birthday Paul!), I realize only now there's apparently a Replacements biopic in the works:
A biopic is on the way for The Replacements, the punk band that emerged from Minneapolis in the early 1980s and later turned towards a more pop-oriented sound as the decade turned to the ’90s.
Josh Boone, the director of The Fault in Our Stars and The New Mutants, revealed in a recent interview that his next film is a biopic of the ‘mats, which will be based on author Bob Mehr’s best-selling biography of the band from 2017, Troubled Boys. Nat Wolff is set to play frontman Paul Westerberg, while Owen Teague will play bassist Tommy Stinson – at least, as an adult, since Tommy was 12 years old when the band first formed. Additional casting is also underway.
I won't hold my breath for it, but let's all hope this happens.
My thoughts on the utterly fantastic and utterly depressing/defeating book its to be based on, Bob Mehr's Trouble Boys, can be found (luckily for you!) HERE.
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| That moment when someone else cracks open a new bag of chips... |
Announcements. I Have One.
Very excited to announce my officially switching from white socks to black socks. #2021
New Year's Resolutions
Guess I'll just roll these over to 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 :
1. Be more reckless with my health.2. Watch more tv.3. Don’t take no sh-t from nobody.4. Loosen the hell up re: recycling.5. Track down high school football coach, demand to know where my highlight reel for Div. I college recruiters went.6. Fantasize more about sex with women who are way, way, way, way out of my league.7. Leave vague, ominous messages on Facebook like “…gee, I dunno…” or ”…out on the ledge…”8. Go to more high school parties.9. Remind people that “nobody in (insert town) knows how to drive in the rain” more often.10. Casually drop the phrase “deez nuts” during a meeting.11. Spread my wings, see how high I can soar.12. Get through the year without accidentally eating a raisin.13. Finish my autobiography, “The Life & Times of Greg Wilson: Believe Me, It Coulda Been Worse.”14. Talk more, listen less.15. Find out once and for all what all these g@%!dam squirrels are up to.16. Finally finish the last chapter of the last Sweet Valley High book. Seriously people, it’s time.17. Quit being so goddam fearless; really question what the hell I'm doing at every step of the way until I've talked myself out of it.
Just Put Me in a Wheelchair
I'm always surprised when I see Ramones fans who are old af and then I remember oh yeah, their first album came out in 1976....if you were 20 then, you'd be one year from retirement now. If you were 30 then, you're probably dead now. Sorry!
So enjoy this old bastard tearing up I Wanna Be Sedated on a dulcimer.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Totally Depressing du Jour
The Simpsons has been a dysfunctional family we're all meant to laugh at, but 32 years into their existence can most of us even aspire to be as financially secure as they are?
The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed an almost dreamily secure existence that now seems out of reach. Homer, a high-school graduate whose union job at the nuclear-power plant required little technical skill, supported a family of five. A home, a car, food, regular doctor’s appointments, and enough left over for plenty of beer at the local bar were all attainable on a single working-class salary.
This lifestyle was not fantastical in the slightest—on the contrary, the Simpsons used to be quite ordinary, they were a lot like my Michigan working-class family in the 1990s. But their life no longer resembles reality for many American middle-class families.
The purchasing power of Homer’s paycheck has shrunk dramatically. In today’s world, Marge would have to get a job too. But even then, they would struggle. Inflation and stagnant wages have led to a rise in two-income households, but to an erosion of economic stability for the people who occupy them.
And then, the killer:
“That a show which was originally about a dysfunctional mess of a family barely clinging to middle class life in the aftermath of the Reagan administration has now become aspirational is frankly the most on the nose manifestations [sic] of capitalist American decline I can think of.”
Ugh. Fucking hell.
Sheen/Lennon
Earlier today I pointed out how funny Michael Sheen is in the new sitcom Staged; now I read he's returning his OBE to the Queen:
Michael Sheen has returned an honor presented to him by Queen Elizabeth so he could air his views on the British monarchy without appearing like a "hypocrite." The Welsh star, who was given an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2009 for services to drama, said in an online interview that he decided to give up the honor after conducting research into the history of Wales and its torturous relationship with England, particularly the centuries-old practice of handing the title of Prince of Wales to the heir apparent to the English throne, for the 2017 Raymond Williams Society lecture.
Of course the most famous instance of this is John Lennon returning his MBE, and no matter how many times I read it, exactly one of his reasons gets a genuine LOL every time.
2021 is Waiting for You
Moi, two weeks ago:
People breathlessly waiting for 2020 to be over because it was such a universally terrible year are gonna be in for a harsh meeting with reality when the calendar turns to 2021 and their lives still pretty much suck. In other words, was 2019 really that amazing for you? 🤔 Until 2020, were you just on an undefeated run of awesomeness, year after year? Does 2021 mean life immediately turns back into your being George Clooney?
Of course the internet says the same thing in a much, much better way:
PBS Alert du Jour
As a life-long fan of Little House on the Prairie, I'm very much looking forward to watching the American Masters episode about Laura Ingalls Wilder, which you can stream HERE (well you can if you're a member of PBS, VIEWERS LIKE ME, of course...)
Little House of course inspired my inspiring thesis on WHY DOES GOD HAVE TO REST? back in 2008.
Also, the hilarity of Ma Ingalls bitching at Pa to GET SOME EXERCISE. Wow.
Also: 2018 GOALS! :)
Aaaaaaaaand if you want guaranteed waterworks from ol' Xmastime, JUST MAKE ME WATCH THIS EPISODE.
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| And with that, they knew Half-Pint was now a woman... |
Going to hell for that one. Yeesh.
Xmastime TV Series Recommendation
David Tennant and Michael Sheen star as two actors
whose West End play has been put on hold due to Covid-19, but whose
director has persuaded them to carry on rehearsing online.
Watch it NOW on Hulu! They're both great but Michael Sheen in particular is laugh-out-loud funny.
Party Mix
I am rarely lucky. Okay, I'm NEVER lucky. So when I open up a bag of Party Mix and find only one pretzel, I know the thrill will be quickly followed by a grand piano falling outta the sky onto my head. - XMASTIMEUtz' are the best of the party mix chips, if only because the other versions are mostly fucking pretzels.- XMASTIME
"You can survive your Office Crush seeing you walking around with one bag of Party Mix, but for god's sake boy, don't let her see you with TWO of them."- XMASTIME
THIS ARTICLE about Party Mix is making me mad nostalgic for my old Brooklyn neighborhood, particularly this sentence:
I’ve lived in the same New York City apartment for over 15 years, which means I have made [consults abacus] somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 billion trips to my corner bodega. Jorge’s Deli is practically an extension of my home. Everyone there calls me “boss,” except the one dude who calls me “big guy.” I call everyone “my friend.” They know they’ll keep the change, but they still offer it anyway.
That's exactly how things were at the bodega around the corner from 100 Metro was for my 14 1/2 years there. You'd get a bacon, egg & cheese on a roll, peruse the chips rack and settle on Party Mix for the variety, grab a Daily News and then spend the next 15 minutes cursing at the heavens over the amount of fucking pretzels in the goddam Party Mix bag.
Here's the bodega I must've visited over 2,500 times from 1998-2012.
I'm not an "only in New York, people, only in new York!" guy, but it's hard to describe to people just how much your nearby bodega is a art of your everyday life there. Yes, even if they sometimes fuck up your sandwich.
Anyhoo, here's my old gang, we used to rob bodegas. I miss these guys!
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
IG 2020
Here's 10 of my Instagram posts I've enjoyed over the past year. Enjoy!
And of course I kicked the year off with my amazing daughter. Unfortunately, I won't be able to do the same for 2021. :( Here's to 2022!
I Don't Wanna Brag, but...
Now look, does this make me better than you? OF COURSE THIS MAKES ME BETTER THAN YOU, DAMMIT!
1995, Motherscratchers
February: Broke up with college girlfriend, kicking off my greatest pussy run to date. "Man, it's ALWAYS gonna be like this!!" I remember thinking. (2020 UPDATE: I was wrong)
March: Sistatime! came from her high school (she was a senior) to visit. First time I had ever drunk beer with Sistatime! And by "drunk beer with Sistatime!" I mean bought her beer and then sat through a pledge trying to tell me he "liked her."
April: bought my first computer (on the very day I met Eric Craft), was one of only two people I knew were online: me and RRTHUR. 2400 bps modem; could upload about 2 paragraphs an hour, which would blow you away like it was landing on the fucking moon.
April: hooked up with a girl who as I was about to "kick things up a notch" told me she had a boyfriend; to which I replied "yeah well, he ain't here, now is he?" NAILed it!
April: saw The Ramones for the last time, they played at my college and thanks to jennie fennell I got to hang out with them. I'm sure they were as thrilled as I was.
May: last time I ever saw my girlfriend, she was going home to Richmond, we starting making out. I told her she could only stay over if I got laid. She left.
May: Graduation Day!
May: Graduation Day + 1: the great pussy run ended. Going from BMOC to townie was harsh. They should warn people about this shit, there should be a fucking class about this....was I not at a pretend college, godammit??!?!??!.
August: went to Brooklyn to record the greatest ep of all time, changing music - nay, art, NAY - life as a whole. Did it in three hours, including teaching everybody the songs and 2 extra outtakes. AND probably broke for lunch.
August: got the best blowjob of my life cause RRTHUR left me alone, wasted, at the Halloween Bar with a "young lady" pouring beer down my throat with a hose so I'd fuck her. 300 pounds, yes (her, not me - it was 1995!); but still the best blowjob I've ever gotten. I guess she really HAD become great at putting stuff in her mouth.
Next Morning: woke up, had covered both her and her bed with urine. Snuck out to head back to RRTHUR's apartment, thinking hey, this is Brooklyn, she'll never find me, opened her door...it was right across from Rrthur's apartment. Christ.
August: Moved to Oxford, Mississippi. Yikes. First meal was at The Beacon, where even the napkins are deep-fried.
October: bought my Telecaster in Memphis. $900. Hmm. That's paid for itself.
October: started a "band" with Rylo, which consisted of him tuning for 20 minutes, then yelling at me for 20 minutes, then him storming out. But we did crush Stagger Lee, 20 Flight Rock, You Can't Do That and Do Anything You Wanna Do. All, for some reason, in my nightshirt a la Charles Ingalls that my Aunt Pat had sent me. Hmm.
November: had THIS Thanksgiving (see #3 in the post). I promise you: this is on tape, and I will find it.
December: got my first real job after college, doing graphic design at Sir Speedy, a career field 1) I didn't really know existed and 2) neither did anybody else. But I called from the British pay phone on the Square, convinced him I had a Mac (a Proforma 475!) and was brilliant. Then I got stuck in a huge snowstorm in Virginia for 2 weeks. I do remember the last song I heard somewhere between Knoxville and Nashville before I stopped late night at a diner and called home on a pay phone to say I had gotten a job: PS I Love You. Slice.
Living in Oxford that year was great, in particular because it was "Beatles Fall": HERE and HERE.
But obviously the greatest thing I did, my legacy, was recording my EP, Take My Teenage Head. It really was a miracle of efficiency. You can listen to the whole thing HERE. For free! (grrr). 2021 being the 25th year of the release of it, be on the lookout for a media onslaught about it.
Anyhoo - some years you look back on with great fondness, some you look back on with a grimace, and some don't register either way. And I'll always have a fondness in my heart for 1995. If any other memories of note pop up I'll let you know. You're welcome, Earth!
Hey, I guess here's one:
Monday, December 28, 2020
Questions. I Have Them.
How the hell did the Japanese beat the Chinese to inventing Pac-Man? 🤔🤷♂️
You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello...
Enjoy!
Ohh FFS du Jour
Oh Oh!
Unlike some years, I feel pretty good about the amount of Christmas I enjoyed this season. I watched plenty of Christmas episodes from my favorite sitcoms, I listened to Christmas music all day, I watched five different versions of A Christmas Carol, I read a bunch of Christmas short stories, etc etc. But it just dawned on me that I let two stone-cold classics slip by unwatched: A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Christmas Story. In my defense I did listen to a two-hour podcast on A Charlie Brown Christmas featuring Charles M. Schulz' son, but it remains that Christmas without watching these two reminds me of the classic Ramones line, "It ain't Christmas if there ain't no snow".
This shit will be rectified tout suite, people. Tout. Suite!
Sunday, December 27, 2020
OFAH du Jour
I've been watching all the Only Fools and Horses Christmas specials this weekend, and of course no moment was more poignant than the end of Time On Our Hands, when Del Boy realizes that his days of daily trading and dreaming of becoming a millionaire ("next year!") are over. Was supposed to be the final moments of the series before being brought back by popular demand.
Enjoy!
A New Way to Look at A Christmas Carol. For Some Reason.
The Wall Street Journal (or "The Journal", as I call it) is decidedly Team Scrooge:
While the literature of the Victorian era paints a dark picture of mid-19th-century life in England, virtually every official measure of well-being shows the period from 1840-1900 to have been the beginning of a golden age for workers. Wages, stagnant for more than 600 years, exploded during the Victorian era—rising from less than $567 a year in 1840 to $1,216 in 1900 (expressed in 1970 dollars). Life expectancy rose by 20%. Literacy rates soared. As wages rose, the quantity and quality of nutrition improved dramatically, want diminished rapidly, and the mortality rate for Victorian children plummeted. Child labor, once necessary for survival, gave way to steadily rising school enrollment and made ignorance a dark memory. There had never been a comparable period of broad-based prosperity in all of recorded history—and, most amazingly, the progress has never ended.
Who then benefited from the accumulated wealth of Scrooge and Marley? First Britain and then all mankind. Since Scrooge and Marley never consumed the wealth they created, its use was a gift to all. It funded the factories and railroads, the tools and jobs that fed and clothed millions of British subjects and then billions around the world. Their unspent wealth was of no use to them, but it was of sublime use to humanity.
I don't know if this is a joke, but if you read A Christmas Carol and come away deciding Scrooge is the hero, something is wrong with your brains.
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| 'Someone...is falling for this bullshit? Really?" |
Ah Yes, The Good Ol' Days...Blech.
Someone over at the Wall Street Journal (or "The Journal", as I call it) is asking Why We Can't Stop Longing for the Good Ol' Days by 1) asking when exactly WERE those good ol' days? 2) surmising they've always actually sucked:
People have been longing for the good old days at least since the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, 5,000 years ago. Archaeologists have discovered Sumerian cuneiform tablets which complain that family life isn’t what it used to be. One tablet frets about “the son who spoke hatefully to his mother, the younger brother who defied his older brother, who talked back to the father.” Another, almost 4,000 years old, contains a nostalgic poem: “Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion…/The whole world, the people in unison/To [the god] Enlil in one tongue gave praise.”
There may actually be a more scientific reason, however:
One possibility is that we know we survived past dangers—otherwise we wouldn’t be here—so in retrospect they seem smaller. But we can never be certain we will solve the problems we are facing today. Radio didn’t end up ruining the younger generation, but maybe the smartphone will. We didn’t destroy the planet with nuclear weapons during the Cold War, but who can say for sure that we won’t do it this time around?
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you have some thoughts about nostalgia a years ago?"
Sigh. Yes I did faithful readers, YES I did:
I've always thought that we feel "nostalgic" for those moments juuuuust before we were fully aware of being able to revel in them. For example, I romanticize the Amerindie/Minneapolis early-mid 80s music scene, but in reality I was JUST too young to enjoy it in real time. Meanwhile, I feel no real longing or nostalgia for the Grunge Era, and yet any cultural historian would point to it as being the defining musical genre of my particular segment of a generation. I think we tend to kind of pooh-pooh the moments we actually live through, and romanticize the ones we've just missed.
And remember: while Happy Days is seen as the ultimate in nostalgia for "Weren't the 50s the best period ever?", The Fonz had his office IN THE MEN'S SHITTER AT ARNOLDS, FOR CHRISSAKE!!!!
"Hey, how 'bout a mercy flush - I'm workin' here!"
Saturday, December 26, 2020
A Christmas Carol Rolls On, People
Because the internet is amazing, you can view every single page of Charles Dickens' prompt book for A Christmas Carol HERE.
What is a prompt book, you ask? It's the very copy he took around for his many readings, with handwritten notes to guide him along for inflections/voices/audience reactions etc.
Not too shabby.
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| "Anyone here from Devon? Fine, I'll read slower. Heyyyooooooo, I kid, I kid!" |
Lies, Lies, Lies
Here is a collection of Five Lies You've Been Told About Christmas.
To sum up: Santa was originally a scary asshole, Jingle Bells was written as a pro-Confederate dude as a Thanksgiving song, Colonel Sanders > Santa Claus, the whole "Brits and Germans stopped WWI to play soccer" story is bullshit, and (surprise!) Tiny Tim is, and always has been, dead af.
Happy Holidays!
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