Sunday, February 28, 2021
“Father Ted” Questions. I Have Them.
I just realized that Dermot Morgan and Frank Kelly both died on a February 28. Does Ardal O’Hanlon breathe a sigh of relief every year when he makes it through to the next day? 🤔
Saturday, February 27, 2021
Ah, The Right/Wrong/Victims/Some Other Shit
There's REAL racism alive and well out there, and white people thinking it's creeping up on them laughable. I rue the day we let black people have access to the Internet and they see this shit. - XMASTIME
I just watched Megyn Kelly on Bill Maher's show sand they were lamenting the "new" desire by everybody to feel themselves to be victims. They went on & on and were boring, but I must say it's refreshing to find the rest of the country finally catching up to me in 2011 when I uttered what will one day be in my obituary as testament to my fundamental genius:
It's as if it's no longer just enough to be right, it's much more important to be wronged.
I will struggle to remain humble. You're welcome, Earth!
Friday, February 26, 2021
HAPPY BIRFDAY GEORGE HARRISON + 1 DAY
THIS ARTICLE HERE ranks all of George Harrison's songs he made with The Beatles. I will now take their list and make it right. You're welcome, Earth!
WHO CARES
Long Long LongMEH
The Inner Light
Blue Jay Way
You Like Me Too MuchMEH BUT INTERESTING
Savoy Truffle
I Me Mine
Think for Yourself
If I Needed Someone
Don’t Bother Me (first song he wrote)GOOD
Within You, Without You (mystical, Indian flavor to Sgt. Pepper)
For You BlueREALLY GOOD
Old Brown Shoe
I Need You
Taxman
Love You To
I Want to Tell You
Piggies
GREAT
It’s All Too Much
Only a Northern Song
Something
Here Comes the Sun
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
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| "Seriously, I know I heard you say Postmates...you guys ordering Postmates? | " |
WTF Exactly is This Shit?
Xmastime Believe it or Not?
Thanks for doing the right thing guys!
State du Moi
And now I have to admit to you people that this Dr. Seuss quote just popped into my head:
Don't Cry Because It's Over; Smile Because It Happened
I'll be honest: it's helping!
Baseball Bugs!
The iconic Bugs Bunny - who is without a doubt the funniest cartoon character ever - baseball game classic debuted in theaters 75 years ago today, and the Washington Post (I call it The Post, of course) celebrates its genius with us:
“Baseball Bugs” debuted in movie theaters 75 years ago this month. The 1946 cartoon is so packed with funny gags, clever puns, imaginative imagery and lively music that it’s still recognized as one of the best produced by Looney Tunes. Set at the Polo Grounds in New York, the cartoon also presaged a golden age of baseball that saw the city’s three teams dominate the national pastime.
“It’s one of those cartoons that hits on all cylinders — great story, great comedy, great animation, great art, great art direction, great vocal performance by Bugs Bunny,” said Pete Browngardt, executive producer and director of “Looney Tunes Cartoons” on HBO Max and creator and voice of “Uncle Grandpa,” an animated TV show.
“Baseball Bugs,” directed by Friz Freleng, is not just a great title on its face; it’s also a pun from the period that few fans would get today. The term “baseball bugs” used to refer to baseball fanatics — partisans who were so into the sport that they had caught the baseball “bug,” or fever.
There's not a single frame of this classic that isn't perfect.
Status of the World
It's fucking 2021 and pod-casters still seem to be under the impression we want them to spend the first 10 minutes shooting the shit before starting whatever interview it is we clicked on the goddam thing for in the first place.
OK Last One About Trump Today Before I KIll Myself and Then Everybody Else
FUN FACT: besides revealing themselves to be complete hypocrites re: being "Christians", they're also breaking the law with the flag shorts. So they're shitting on God AND America, two things they claim to love so much. Nice!
We always knew these MAGAts and evangelicals were fake Christian heretics. They finally broke out the golden calf.
— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) February 26, 2021
pic.twitter.com/cM6eQlqrXr
Politics. Ugh.
Republicans still scraping on their knees bowing to Trump is a testament to the fact that they're so shitty at their jobs they can't convince their constituents, "look, I fully intend to be an incredibly racist asshole who spends more time finding ways to be cruel to poor kids than stopping people from needlessly dying of a historic pandemic too, but trying to assassinate the vice-president of my own party while blowing up the Capitol is just a bit too far, so please vote for me even if I don't fawn over Trump 24/7."
I mean ffs already.
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Happy 78th Birthday
To George Harrison, the Tea Party Beatle and Godfather of Kickstarter who broke the ice with George Martin. AND he was the first Beatle to visit America! Totally depressing that 2021 marks 20 years since he died.
And this always fascinates me:
Finally, the film really never investigates the real mystery of Harrison: What was he so morose about?...Harrison... has always had a sense of the aggrieved about him. I just don't know what the source of it was. In Harrison's mini-autobiography at the front of I Me Mine, the unasked-for collection of his song lyrics, he seems mostly unhappy about … the travel indignities he suffered during the Beatles years.
Besides having the best Beatles solo record with All Things Must Pass, which includes superslices What is Life?, Apple Scruffs, Waiting on You All and the title track, my top 5 George songs with the Beatles are:
Here Comes the Sun
Something
I Want to Tell You
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Piggies
The
single most UPLIFTING moment in any Beatles song might have actually
come from the Dark Horse himself, ie coming out of the middle 8 of Here Comes the Sun. Kills me every time. Beat that.
"Postmates? Someone mention ordering from Postmates? I could eat..."
Let's Do it
I’ve never really cared about the White Stripes one way or another, tho I've always liked hearing Jack White talk shop. So I have no idea why it even occurred to me to listen to this but I've listened to the first song in this clip, Forever for Her (Is Over for Me), for about 24 hours now. Fantastic singing, and the piano chords somehow perfectly invoke both Exile On Main Street and Goat's Head Soup Rolling Stones shit. Awesome.
WTF is Wrong with This Guy?
Rowan Atkinson will always have a special place in my heart and owes me nothing ever again after brilliantly playing Edmund Blackadder for four years. But last month I had to get on him a bit, and now this shit about him shitting on The Vicar of Dibley pops up:
Creator Richard Curtis had hoped the Blackadder star would play a visiting clergyman in the Dawn French series, after his scene-stealing performance as a vicar in Four Weddings And A Funeral.
But the writer got a fairly blunt refusal from his former collaborator.
‘Rowan was supposed to be in it,’ Curtis reveals in a new documentary for the Gold channel. ‘He said he was going to do it and then watched an episode of the show and thought, "fuck that!"
‘"I’m so sorry, Dick," he said. "But it really is awful."’
Mr. Atkinson may officially consider himself to be on the Xmastime Shit List (Temporary Probation Edition). Step lightly, sir, STEP. LIGHTLY!!!
Happy National Toast Day!
I wanna open the (presumably) first restaurant centered around simple buttered white toast. I wanna become the Peter Lugers of buttered white toast.
I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about toast, including HERE. White bread, buttered toast. Toast is yet another reason I'll fit in perfectly in London. AND, two of the movies I mentioned HERE
have scenes involving toast. So I've felt as if my living through the
cosmos was pleasantly being altered thanks to my love of toast.
Well, once again I've proven to be the master controller of zeitgeist, as, according to New York magazine, we're in the age of toast.
I'm not saying it's because of me that toast is looming large in our lives. But I am saying that I am the reason for this looming.
Damn, I loves me some toast.
Finales
Beloved American sitcoms have a bit of a tradition of an iconic grand finale, a la The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, or The Office for instance. Big, emotional finishes wrapping things up nicely for the audiences that loved them. Meanwhile this scenario is rarer in Britcoms, and I think the main reason being that unlike American shows that adhered to a yearly September-May schedule, many of them - particularly in the first coupla decades of British tv - would air a season and then go away for 2, 3, maybe 4 years like Fawlty Towers, without anybody really knowing whether they were coming back or not.
The few iconic BBC series finales I can think of:
Only Fools and Horses - yes, the intended finale came in the 1996 trilogy but the public demanded Sullivan bring the show back, and while the "real" finale isn't as good, the final final final scene in which Rodney asks Del Boy if he is anything like the man who turned out to be his real father and Del Boy answered, "Freddie the Frog was a professional burglar. He was disloyal to his friends. He was a womaniser, a home-breaker, a con-man, a thief, a liar, and a cheat... So no Rodney, you're nothing like him.", made it all worthwhile as a finale.
Extras - just fantastic.
Gavin and Stacey - if when Dave coaches saves the day in the end and says goodbye to Baby Neil while leaving doesn't make you verklempt then you're not human.
Blackadder - maybe the best finale ending scene of all time, in a show that had exactly ZERO earnest, non-funny scenes in all the previous episodes.
I think that's pretty much it?
Something I'm Worried About Today
That after waiting 33 years, the Coming to America sequel will suck. 😬
RALPH!
Growing up in the early 80's as a UVa basketball fan of course I worshiped at the feet of Ralph Sampson like everybody else. As you most incredibly loyal fans surely remembers, years ago I defended Ralph's career, which some people had decided to deride over the years. I also mentioned how close he came to going to Kentucky. I thought I pretty much knew everything about Ralph - did I not pump out $32 for some signature Puma kicks in 7th grade? - but I was yesterday years old when I read this:
As a high school senior, Sampson had gone there on a recruiting visit. Tar Heel star Al Wood was his host. They got separated, and Sampson wandered the campus for an hour before finding him.
“Al Wood was the reason I didn’t go to Carolina,” Sampson says. “Because I got lost on campus.”
Dafuck? How is this not a well-known legend?!?! And to confirm I found an old podcast with Ralph in which he tells the story, so it is actually true.
Of course it was Wood who single-handedly beat UVa in the 1981 Final Four. Between that and ditching him, dude must've really hated Ralph.
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| Still waiting. |
People are Strange
I'm always interested in the fact that I have friends who don't bother reading this blog, or the book I wrote. Not because any of it's good or anything, but wouldn't you be curious what a friend of yours was talking about on a daily basis? For all you know, they're talking about you. That's not worth a minute or two every day? Your days are that chock-filled with curing cancer?
But just now I heard James Corden say that his wife has never watched Gavin and Stacey, so I render my own argument invalid, funk me very much.
Questions. I Have Them.
If speed reading is a teachable thing then why don't we just teach it as regular reading? Why do we bother teaching the slow version at all? 🤔🤷
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
If I Was President...
...I’d make it illegal to play a Horner bass right-handed. Macca respect, dammit!
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WTF du Jour
Article in the New York Times (I of course call it "The Times") on a "new phenomenon" of people grabbing shit off the street because of the pandemic.
None of it makes sense to me since 1) I lived in Brooklyn for 14.5 years and we always had an eye for free shit out on sidewalks 2) the only time I would avoid this would be...during a horribly contagious pandemic. Wtf?
Questions. I Have Them.
Before the internet made it easy to instantly know how long it will take to get from point A to point B, how did Domino's know whether or not whoever was ordering pizza was actually within the 30 minutes they guaranteed delivery back in the day? And is there a number out there of the total number of pies (there! I tried it!) they had to give away for free from being late?
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| "Where...the hell...am I...? |
Sign of the Times
Anyway, forget it. I know things are hard right now. Really, I get it. But might I remind you that no one ever said, “You know what could eradicate coronavirus, convince national leaders that everyone deserves a livable wage regardless of the kind of work they’re doing, and provide a rush of endorphins? A short afternoon walk.”
Anyway, here's some deaf kids on a walk. Good for them!
Dog Life
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Scooter: A Soap Opera in One Act
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| "Fuck these boring motherfuckers putting me to sleep with their bullshit yapping." |
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| "Wait - pizza? Did somebody say pizza?" |
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| "I know I heard the word pizza! |
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| "Camon, pizza!" |
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| "Camon camon camon camon camon!" |
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| "P-I-ZZ-A! P-I-ZZ-A!" |
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| "You know what, fuck this guy." |
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| "I didn't want any of your nasty-ass pizza anyway." |
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| "Fucking dummy." |
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| "Any good turds out here for me to eat?" |
Camon Now, Guys
It's not a pet peeve really but I notice whenever someone says, "so & so did/said such and such before they died", as if they could've possibly done/said something after they died?
Another version is someone saying "I've never done/said such & such in all my life", as if they could've done/said something before their life?
Sigh. Quite a life I'm putting together here, people.
Born to Yap
Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen and Barack Obama have a new 8-episode podcast on Spotify. I've heard the first two episodes, and it's good. Mostly because they really like and respect each other, and are very thoughtful with what they have to say. Barack sometimes goes on and on a bit and Bruce sounds like a balloon puppet with its neck being squeezed, but it's pretty great. From the New York Times (I call it "The Times):
Their conversation mingles the personal and the mythic. Obama discusses growing up in Hawaii with the confusion and discomfort of being of mixed race — “I wasn’t easily identifiable; I felt like an outsider,” he says — and they each share lessons of masculinity they drew from the failings of their own fathers.
They are a mutual admiration society. Springsteen, who now and then picks up a guitar, tells the story of his 1984 song “My Hometown,” with its echoes of racial conflict in the 1960s. He marvels at the universality and patriotism that comes through when concert crowds roar out its line, “This is your hometown.”
“I always get a sense that they know the town they’re talking about isn’t Freehold,” Springsteen says, referring to where he grew up in New Jersey. “It’s not Washington. It’s not Seattle. It’s the whole thing — it’s all of America.” Brief pause. “It’s a good song.”
“It’s a great song,” Obama quickly adds.
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| Two dudes, arguing over what the best Xmastime post is. Camon guys, haven't we seen enough division in this nation already??!?! |
Wings, Dammit!
Worlds Colliding
I've read or listened to Bill Simmons for about 20 years now, and the other day in a podcast he mentioend Sidney Poitier but pronounced his last name as "Pot-ee-yay."
You also know that my favorite show of all time is Only Fools and Horses, which opens the very first scene in the very first episode with an argument on how to pronounce the same name.
LOOKit me - bringing folks together! You're welcome, Earth!
Taco Bull?
Taco Bell is getting into the chicken sandwich game and Eater is asking is a chicken sandwich with a taco shell really a sandwich?
I'm fine with either answer; the only thing we really know for sure is that the real thing looks exactly nothing like the ones in this picture.
Questions. I Have Them.
With Phil Spector's bombastic, orchestral Wall of Sound and Roy Orbison's incredibly operatic voice, how is it possible they never recorded anything together? Did this not occur to them, did they even try? How amazing would this have been??!?!?!?!??!
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| "Goot EVENing Roy, I vant to - Roy? ROY! Where you going, Roy, come back!" |
Chopped Cheese Whaaaaaaaaaat?
I lived in New York City for almost 15 years and never once heard of this sandwich and now it's probably gonna be pretty much all I think about for the rest of the week.
Unpopular Hot Take du Jour
Discuss!
Quick Question...
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
State du Moi
Something I say once a year, totally mean it, know I won’t ever do it and then will regret it after he dies:
“Hey, I should listen to Brewers’ games with Bob Uecker’s play by play.”
Current Events with Xmastime
Apparently Biden’s been kicking around the idea of college debt forgiveness. I have no idea if this is a good or bad idea economically, but if your reason for objecting is because YOU had to pay college loans off, then you’re probably a dick. Why would you be angry about someone else’s life being made better when it doesn’t affect you at all?
Plus, isn’t one of the rare good things about getting older bitching/bragging about how much harder you had it than kids today?
The Gambler
Is there a better example of a full-on short story told in 3 minutes and 34 seconds than The Gambler? 🤔🤷♂️
Ahhhh, The Turkey's Nest...
The website "I Miss My Bar" lets you recreate the aural ambience of a watering hole specifically to your liking.
Is one of the sounds me saying to a woman, "sofhijbfbfwehibwevtvvedevvdejje"?
Or the sound of me forgetting to start a fight?
Or chatting with Gwyneth Paltrow while naked? (Me, not her)
Oh, the possibilities, oh my!
Mad Dog!
Doggie's talking about Larry Walker and trying to say "Colorado", which as you know is a joy to listen to.
1:27 Dog just tried to say "Colorado." After three fly-bys, finally just plowed thru it "Carararro." Sounds like a Chinese guy ordering Sammy Hagar’s tequila.
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| "Don't wike it, Xmastime? Then don't wisten!" |
This Week's "Gee, That Linus Van Pelt Really Was a Nutjob, Wasn't He?" Post
In 1964, Linus ran for class president, and THIS GUY HERE points out how Schulz brilliantly connected his own race with Barry Goldwater's:
Goldwater, a senator from Arizona, was noted for his tendency to make extreme statements that his campaign then had to walk back and for attracting the support of conspiratorial groups like the John Birch Society (whom he tried to disassociate from).
And of course Linus, a fucking lunatic, was the same way:
Linus’s campaign leaned into some of his most extreme, fundamentalist views as in the above strip where Linus uses the language of Jeremiah and other Old Testament prophets as metaphors for his platform. As suggested in the strip, the school administration was quite embarrassed by the whole showing. His classmates, however, seemed to rally to his passionate cries. With Charlie Brown as his vice president and his sister Lucy as his campaign manager, Linus looked to be on track to win election.
How did he manage to finally derail things in the end? The goddam Great Pumpkin, of course:
I'm just going to say it: people don't name their kid Linus for the same reason they don't name them Adolf. THERE I SAID IT!!!!
Questions. I Have Them.
More horrifying on a work Zoom call:
Having your face onscreen and hearing the sound of a screen grab, or
Thinking you’re on mute and farting? 🤔🤷♂️
XMASTIME OTD 2008
On Rush Limbaugh
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Grub Street
On the unstoppable appeal of lasagna:
Hillary Sterling, chef-partner at Vic’s restaurant in Noho, made a lasagna. It was the first lasagna that Sterling had ever tackled as a professional chef. These days, she spends mornings alone in the kitchen with her pasta-production guy, and on November 3, they needed a project to take their minds off the possibility of a second Trump term. So besciamella, Bolognese, tomato sauce, and yards of fresh pasta sheets it was. And it worked. The repetitive motion of spreading ragù across noodle seemed to calm them. Several hours later, they hoisted the first batch out of the oven: a judiciously sauced, crunchy-topped, 13-layer knockout that would make Garfield plotz. Now lasagna is a permanent part of Vic’s menu rotation and also, presumably, of Sterling’s stress-reduction regimen.
The Garfield bit got a legit LOL. 13 layers! Yowza. I very rarely - if ever - order lasagna at a restaurant because I'm wary of them putting ricotta and a bunch of strange shit in there. I want pasta, cheese, meat, sauce, period.
"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from
those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you write about lasagna in one of your very first posts back in 2005?"
Sigh. YES faithful readers, yes I did:
1) LASAGNA - and by this I mean "Xmastime Lasagna": 2 lbs cheese, 5 lbs of ground beef/sausage, and a jar of Ragu. Don't gimme no damn ricotta or spinach crap, and don't turn your nose up at Ragu. I've tried many many many homemade sauces that people slave over. They're all very good, and I admire their efforts, but I have yet to desire anything more than Ragu. And now they got a million varieties anyway; I like the Italian Sausage & Cheese jar. This is funny, since I mix it with enough Italian sausage/cheese to give you instant gout. My new trick is to use some of the grease from the meat after browning it - hey, we're making Xmastime Lasagna here. It adds incredible flavor - you may drop dead at the end, but what a way to go. My favorite memory of this is a few years back I was house-sitting for Will & Gina and my buddy Op came over and I made this; I had so much meat stuffed in the fucker that to get the 3rd layer on top I had to practically sit on it like you would an overstuffed suitcase. Man. Can still taste. Accompany with bread, a gallon of milk and a 14-hour nap.
Dafuck?
1) how the fuck has there not already been a Motown channel?
2) "limited time"?!!??????!???!?!
Xmastime does not like this.
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