All title sequences from the PBS/WGBH show "Mystery!" Based upon the work of Edward Gorey, animated by Derek Lamb, Eugene Federenko and Janet Perlman. Music by Normand Roger.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Now This REALLY Feels Like Halloween
It is Now 11:36pm on Halloween night
UPDATE: did not make it to 666K
A Note on Halloween
It takes a lot to gross me out & even I'm like wait, there was a time when every Halloween we'd all stick our faces into big pots of water trying to eat the same apple?
Lovely Jubbly!
This is Only Fools and Horses creator/writer John Sullivan sitting down for his first interview ever for the premiere of his first sitcom, Citizen Smith (also an Xmastime super-slice!!!). Besides the fascinating story of how he even got the chance to write a script and have it read at the BBC, I lit up like a Christmas tree (and I'M XMASTIME!!!!) when he said the ONLY comedy writer who's an influence on him is...Neil Simon!! As in, longtime Xmastime Hall of Fame member Neil Simon!!!
As Del Boy would say you know it makes sense, bruv! 🤗🤗🤗🤗
More World Series
Friday the 14th
I try to watch the usual Halloween movie classics like everybody else, but more than anything else I make sure I watch one of my favorite Only Fools and Horses episodes, Friday the 14th. As I posted a few years ago from an article that seems to have been deleted from the Internet:
‘Friday the 14th’ is interesting because it works to highlight the inherent venality of the Trotter family. While Del, Rodney & even their crafty Grandad, are at heart good people (and Only Fools would not shine away from outright sentimentality at points), they are crooked, opportunistic, and will happily run away from a situation if they feel the long arm of the law bearing down on them. In this case, what appears to be the offer of a nice country cottage, rent-free, in Cornwall that the trio can escape to comes with a caveat – Del has made a deal with his old friend Boycie, who owns the cottage, to illegally salmon poach in order to make money from and exploit the local area. This makes the episode, to some extent, a cautionary tale. The Trotters are threatened by a dangerous external force for their hubris, for emerging from the moral vacuum of the crime-ridden, urban London landscape in order to remove natural resources from Mother Nature. Del placing a tub of writhing maggots on the dinner table as Rodney eats a curry with rice foreshadows this juxtaposition, suggesting horror before they even leave the homestead.
WATCH THE WHOLE EPISODE ON BRITBOX, PEOPLE!!!
Grrrrrrrrr drr Jrrrrr
I guess at least one of the airlines has just about had it with people trying to board earlier than their own boarding group, which doesn't really make sense since unlike Amtrak at least on the plane you already have an assigned seat so it really doesn't matter, and yes the reason I'm name-checking Amtrak here is because years have been shaved off my life by my screaming into the wind as the rather curiously long line of "business passengers" strolls past the suckers like me standing in the general boarding line (oh don't worry after about 5 years I finally broke down and now I just skip along too cuz fuck them if they're not gonna bother checking tickets (tho when they finally do I'm *guessing* I'll be the dumbass who gets in trouble, don't worry about that jack-o!).
As Uncle Arthur would say to Amtrak if he could, "take a lesson!"
Here's a small gallery of my feelings on the subject in the past:
I'll Say This.
Abbott Elementary! 🤗
Great question! I happen to have a few thoughts of my own that could improve this show I already love!
1. More Tariq!
2. More of the Jacob vs. that other teacher war
3. Is Mr. Johnson only allowed one line a show now?? 😡
4. Why not an entire side mock doc but from the kids perspective?
5. More of the Melissa/her sister school wars
6. More Tariq!!
7. What the hell - how have Melissa & Jacob been roommates all season & yet they've barely even MENTIONED it much less used it for any comedy!!!!! 😡😡
And while we're at it, let's give Mr. Johnson props for his Halloween costume. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Commercial Memories Have I Loved
I remember this, it was when they were showing the 1976 King Kong on tv (I guess for Halloween?). I can still remember to this day, already loving the whole thing to begin with and then at the end when he whips that drumstick around over his head without even stopping his marching, I was howling laughing & it still gets me 36 years later. Fantastic.
On October 30, 1988, the Energizer Bunny debuted pic.twitter.com/4F1aVn8XsV
— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) October 31, 2024
Too Depressing
The sheer amount of this shit going on at the voting stations this Tuesday is going to be staggering.
Trump supporter calls one Black woman a b*tch and assaults another because he doesn’t want to remove his Trump hat to obey the rules against wearing campaign paraphernalia in the polling location.
— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) October 31, 2024
This is the prototype racist Trump supporter. pic.twitter.com/JQVz4U3aUc
The World Series is Over.
I have never in my life witnessed a game like that. You'd be hard-pressed to find a decent little league team blowing a game like this, much less a team in the World Series.
You couldn't dream of a better scenario for Game 5: jumping out of the gate 5-0 so there's no doubt what's about to happen and the life is sucked out of the Dodgers, the Stadium is rocking, Judge comes alive and Cole is putting on the performance of his lifetime. Suddenly on the flight back to LA it's the Dodgers who start feeling the heat and it's the Yankees with house money and once you get to a Game 7, anything can happen. After the relentless shitstorm thrown at Judge because of his shitty start, suddenly the media will have to start noticing that Ohtani has been an absolute no-show, and Betts barely did much more. And it's not like the Dodgers had blown the Yankees out either, the Yankees could've EASILY been the ones up 3-1.
And here we are.
Blame whichever terrible play of the 5th inning you want, it doesn't matter. This could've turned into one of the greatest sports stories of all time; instead Aaron Judge is gonna hafta spend his off-season not getting to enjoy going around collecting awards for his crazy unbelievable season and staring at the ceiling watching the ball bounce off his glove over and over.
I've never been a "the coach has to go!" guy but it's time for Boone to go. I'm not saying he's a crappy manager, I'm sure there's 30 teams that'll love to have him and he’ll do fine, but we've seen this unbelievably bad/sloppy fundamentals show for 7 years now; if Yankees fans are being honest right now they'd admit that more than anything they're surprised the Yankees even woke up to put up such a fight after 7 years of "oh gee we're down in the 3rd inning so let's just sleepwalk through the rest of the game and try again tomorrow", knowing Boone will stand there after the game telling the press how everything's fine. They got rid of Girardi because he wasn't enough of a sweetie-pie best friend to the players and they wanted sweetie-pie big brother Aaron Boone and here we are 7 years later, with Girardi still having more World Series rings than Boone. And it can all be traced back to a relay throw not being fielded cleanly in Game 1, which sums up the Aaron Boone Yankees era perfectly.
Terrible. 😢
You couldn't dream of a better scenario for Game 5: jumping out of the gate 5-0 so there's no doubt what's about to happen and the life is sucked out of the Dodgers, the Stadium is rocking, Judge comes alive and Cole is putting on the performance of his lifetime. Suddenly on the flight back to LA it's the Dodgers who start feeling the heat and it's the Yankees with house money and once you get to a Game 7, anything can happen. After the relentless shitstorm thrown at Judge because of his shitty start, suddenly the media will have to start noticing that Ohtani has been an absolute no-show, and Betts barely did much more. And it's not like the Dodgers had blown the Yankees out either, the Yankees could've EASILY been the ones up 3-1.
And here we are.
Blame whichever terrible play of the 5th inning you want, it doesn't matter. This could've turned into one of the greatest sports stories of all time; instead Aaron Judge is gonna hafta spend his off-season not getting to enjoy going around collecting awards for his crazy unbelievable season and staring at the ceiling watching the ball bounce off his glove over and over.
I've never been a "the coach has to go!" guy but it's time for Boone to go. I'm not saying he's a crappy manager, I'm sure there's 30 teams that'll love to have him and he’ll do fine, but we've seen this unbelievably bad/sloppy fundamentals show for 7 years now; if Yankees fans are being honest right now they'd admit that more than anything they're surprised the Yankees even woke up to put up such a fight after 7 years of "oh gee we're down in the 3rd inning so let's just sleepwalk through the rest of the game and try again tomorrow", knowing Boone will stand there after the game telling the press how everything's fine. They got rid of Girardi because he wasn't enough of a sweetie-pie best friend to the players and they wanted sweetie-pie big brother Aaron Boone and here we are 7 years later, with Girardi still having more World Series rings than Boone. And it can all be traced back to a relay throw not being fielded cleanly in Game 1, which sums up the Aaron Boone Yankees era perfectly.
Terrible. 😢
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
World Series Game 5, II
World Series Game 5
A Great Moment at The Stadium 🥲 😭 🤗 ❤️
Along with the yin-and-yang of the old guard and the new guys and the gray hairs and the youth, there is a nice symmetry to Matsui winning the World Series MVP; it feels like he's standing for all the guys that came and went since 2000 without getting a ring. Some were good Yankees (Giambi, Moose) and some were douchebags (Johnson, Brown, Sheffield.) Matsui was always the best of them all, a great Yankee. Nice. - Xmastime, 2009
I have never cried in an office. I cannot imagine a setting in which I would even come close. But I will say that the closest I've ever come is watching the Yankees' impromptu swarming of Matsui when he was just announced on the field and given his World Series ring. Awesome - Xmastime, 2010
Somethig to Know About Me During the Halloween Season
A Thought on THE SHINING
I'd like to see a 3-hour movie of Wendy trying to figure out how to best use those comically oversized tubs of food & condiments meant to serve hundreds of people so she can feed two adults & a kid who probably weighs the same as a medium-sized dog, now THAT would be scary.
OOOOOH! Or when the rest of the hotel comes back 6 months later, they find the Torrances have somehow managed to eat all of the thousands of pounds of beef & pork in the deep freezer. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Xmastime on World Series Baseball
Number of pitches I've seen so far during the 2024 World Series: all of them
Number of pitches I saw during the fourteen World Series between 2009 & 2024: whatever # of pitches were in the final inning when the Cubs won
Say Anything, Indeed.
Oh Come the Hell On
ALSO: if this motherfucker takes one minute of attention away from The Rizzler I am shutting this goddam internet down right now.
Wait. Hold Up.
Coach Dale: I don't know why you're going on so about this kid being irreplaceable. It's my experience that nobody's irreplaceable.
Cletus: Well, I think there's something you don't understand.
Coach Dale: Oh?
Cletus: In over 40 years of looking at the best this state's ever had, I've never seen a better ball player than Jimmy Chitwood. Never.
If Jimmy Chitwood was the best player in the state of Indiana in more than 40 years, why'd the team only go 15-10 the year before? 🤔🤷♂️
Halloween Movie Questions. I Have Them.
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Keeping Up with Xmastime
Cancel Culture is Bullshit
I've been eyeroll-screaming for years at comedians trying to claim their free speech is "under attack!" and they're all worried about being "canceled"; I'm sure I've presented my own case brilliantly but Roy Wood says everything I've tried to say but in a nicely-done 4 minutes while appearing on the Van Lathan/Rachel Lindsay podcast HIGHER LEARNING. Enjoy!
Xmastime So Sayeth, So Sayeth Xmastime
One absolute & true test of racism can be measured by how long NFL teams were willing to put up with white cornerbacks.
Goals. I Have Them.
I'm gonna take the way guys hit on women with the "I'm sure you've heard this a million times by now, but you are very beautiful" softening-the-tip-of-the-spear template & flip the script on that shit with "I'm guessing nobody's ever said this to you, but you are very beautiful".
Will keep you posted on the results. 👍
Will keep you posted on the results. 👍
I Mean Look, People...
Things I Think, by Xmastime
It’s kind of that funny that now that in the year 2024 we know everything ever about every classic rock band thanks to the internet, this is when they’ve decided to start pumping out new rock biopics every 10 minutes. 🤔🤷♂️
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
I Mean Look...
Something You People Should Know About Me Now That It's Halloween Week
I'm a big fraidy cat so I need to watch Salem's Lot/Halloween/The Shining/The Omen/the Martin Landau Fall of the House of Usher/The Exorcist/Nosferatu/Night of the Living Dead/The Wicker Man/Get Out/Rosemary's Baby/The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in the next 12 hours before Scooter leaves tomorrow morning. 😬
"No CUJO?!??!!?"
Broken Clock Time
I can't believe I'm saying this but I agree with dipshit Joe Rogan about something: the Kamala non-podcast interview:
“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being.”I don't care whether or not she does the show, but I agree that if she DOES agree to do it, it should be in his studio. The entire point of long-form podcasts is that they're 1) long 2) at the podcaster's home base so there's a hope of the guest feeling comfortable in a more homespub setting & therein being less guarded for the podcast.
The Bible According to (Checks Notes)(Checks Notes Again) Donald Trump
Xmastime So Sayeth, So Sayeth Xmastime
While Day 1 of an Xmastime Presidency will of course be devoted to making it legal for adults to order off the kiddie menu, my solemn promise to ALL Americans is that by the end of Day 2 it will only be legal to run a goddam leaf blower on Saturdays between 2-3pm. No exceptions.
Thank you!
Thank you!
New Xmastime Series!
I call this one, "Shitty Comments I Make in My Head That I Don't Actually Post Because I Don't Wanna Put Such a Thing Out into the World". Enjoy, everybody!
Me & Scooter
Based on what I've witnessed on every single one of our 19 walks around my building every day, if a homicidal maniac with a running chainsaw and his pet dog broke through my apartment door Scooter would sprint right past the homicidal maniac and be barking his head off at the other dog as my body was being sawed into hundreds of pieces ten feet away from him.
"And?"
WHEN WILL DON GORSKE (USA) END HIS SILENCE ON THE CHICKEN BIG MAC??? 😡😡😡
THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT, JERKOFF.
In America.
When Two Brilliant Authors Cross Streams
Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. I am alone and they are everyone, I thought - and pondered. - NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Whenever I walk in on a group of people, I automatically assume that they've been friends forever and aren't really interested in adding one more to their precious little group. - WILLIAMSBURG RATS: A MANNY'S TOUR OF DUTY, Gregory R. Wilson
Thank you, Fyodor, I am truly humbled. 😔
World Series Current Status
“Yeeeeeeeesssss.”
“And the Dodgers have no starting pitchers?”
“Not a one.”
“And you’re saying that for the first 3 games Ohtani has done nothing?”
“Nothing.” (puts hand on shoulder)
“Wow! The Yankees must be up 3-0!”
(Takes hand off shoulder, walks away)
Current Events
There's a lot of bullshit flying around by people twisting themselves in knots trying to say Tony Hinchliffe’s jokes at Trump's Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden were just harmless jokes by a comedian; I'd suggest that if you watch what he says while removing the fact that he's a comedian trying to make jokes and is just another "serious" political speaker making the same comments, ask yourself if the audience’s reaction of uproarious approval would have been the same and I'd say the answer is obviously "yes".
The audience matters; Dave Chappelle walked away from $50M because of it. I'm more likely to tell a racist-flavored joke around my liberal friends because I know they understand it's a joke; if I'm in my hometown the same jokes do not get made since I know they’d fall upon ears very differently.
This isn’t an example of a "joke" but it's what I think of during moments like this: in the Fall of 1995 I was visiting my hometown of Tappahannock VA for the first time since moving to Oxford Mississippi, and a friend's mother asked me what the black people were like there. I told her they moved about quietly and with their heads down as if knowing their place, and before I could continue, fully expecting her to have the same reaction as I'd had of sadness about such a thing, she simply said "oh, that's good" and skipped right back into whatever conversation she'd was having with someone else. I'm not calling her out to shit on her, she's a woman who's lived in the same small Southern town she was born in during the early 40s and is about as blandly benign about such a thing as she is anything else, but the moment itself has stuck with me for all these years later as a reminder of how much the audience always matters.
The audience matters; Dave Chappelle walked away from $50M because of it. I'm more likely to tell a racist-flavored joke around my liberal friends because I know they understand it's a joke; if I'm in my hometown the same jokes do not get made since I know they’d fall upon ears very differently.
This isn’t an example of a "joke" but it's what I think of during moments like this: in the Fall of 1995 I was visiting my hometown of Tappahannock VA for the first time since moving to Oxford Mississippi, and a friend's mother asked me what the black people were like there. I told her they moved about quietly and with their heads down as if knowing their place, and before I could continue, fully expecting her to have the same reaction as I'd had of sadness about such a thing, she simply said "oh, that's good" and skipped right back into whatever conversation she'd was having with someone else. I'm not calling her out to shit on her, she's a woman who's lived in the same small Southern town she was born in during the early 40s and is about as blandly benign about such a thing as she is anything else, but the moment itself has stuck with me for all these years later as a reminder of how much the audience always matters.
Learning is Important
If I had a gun to my head eventually I'd hafta admit that the only thing I actually remember learning in school was in 9th grade during health class when Coach Lewis said that when you wake up in the morning the first thing you should do is have a sip of water, "you wanna get that epiglottis going". I don't remember any other goddam thing any teacher said about anything else that could've been useful at any time now or later, but rare is the month that goes by without "you wanna get that epiglottis going " popping into my head on any given early morning.
Monday, October 28, 2024
An Actual, 100% Earnest Talk I Just Had with Scooter
"Hey look at me buddy, I can shake my tail too!.....well, not as cool as you do...although I CAN read."
Petty. Petty, petty, petty Xmastime. 😞
"It was awful."
Shrugging Our Way to Fascism
People are spending their day today clutching their pearls being shocked, SHOCKED!! at Trump's Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden last night, but I am not one of those people. For about a year now I've been telling everybody there's absolutely ZERO reason for Trump to do anything but declare himself to be a fascist dictator, including last November:
The fact is there's absolutely no reason for him to do anything but announce that his second term will be a full-on authoritarian one without end fueled by his own petty grievances and personal greed. He can LITERALLY say he intends to hold the same power as Hitler and he'd instantly have at least6575 million votes to start with. There is no incentive for him to even pretend he's going to try and have a "normal" second term as president, as he's been greatly rewarded every time he's blathered openly about his desires for fascism. He's told us repeatedly that the second he gets a chance he'll support Putin's thirst to restore the Soviet states et al, meaning that within a few short years we can find ourselves replaying World War II except this time we'd be on what was the Axis's side (and that's how shit like this happens). This is the ultimate "Go Big or Go Home!" moment in world history; Trump is becoming more and more clear that he either gets to be Hitler x Mussolini x Putin etc or he'll just go back to Mar-a-Lago and bitch & moan while ruling the GOP with an iron fist whiles the media splooges themselves every time he waves his stubby fingers around to say something. There is no in-between, and the media breathlessly setting up any other scenario is just false and irresponsible, which unfortunately for democracy has become de riguer for them.
Halloween Season Statements. I Make Them.
I've always loved The Shining so much that I sat through that ridiculous documentary of people taking every frame of Kubrick's work trying to find all the hidden Easter eggs of clues he left us - this glass of water being held this way means the movie's about the American Indian, or Scatman addressing the camera directly is about the Moon Landing being staged blah blah blah blah - to which I would say that while I can believe Kubrick threw in a little treat for himself here or there, in 1980 nobody really knew that one day we'd all be Abraham Zapruder and we'd all get to parse any film frame-by-frame over & over as many times as we want, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to put in the huge amount of work it would've done for Kubrick to do anything, much less all the gazillion things people in the doc raise "questions" about.
Dreams. I Have Them.
Sometimes I get to dogsit my brother's dog Scooter and sometimes when I’m walking him around outside my building I'll fantasize that some asshole will come up & complain about him over something incredibly minor like whizzing on the wrong tree so that a few weeks later when I bump into them without Scooter they'll ask “where's your dog?” and I’ll matter-of-factly say “I had him put down after you complained about him” and walk away without another word.
Isn't This Interesting
While Donald Trump is the GOAT of whining about being a victim and there is nobody else within sniffing distance, if you think he invented the genre you will be disappointed to be reminded Republicans have fetishized the fantasy of victimhood for years & years now:
Sully IS MUSING re: the impact of Newt's ex coming out and giving an interview about his asking for her blessing to continue an affair. I find it hard to believe the interview will have any negative impact on Newt. Everyone has long known his cheating and hypocrisy and nobody seems to really mind - in fact, this "attack" from his ex might spur Newt more towards that most hallowed of GOP positions, The Victim, and he can blame the left-wing media, the lamestream media, the media, non-real Americans, Jesus-hating Americans, foreigners, European foreigners, the French, people who like ice cream, A-Rod, Letterman, dogs with missing legs, dentists, clowns, rodeo clowns, clown college professors, Clowns for Literacy, shortstops, left fielders, gays, Gisele, the 1943 Chicago Bears, Asians, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, birds, Eli Manning, Menudo, Johnny Carson, people that work at Frito-Lay, the Gilmore Girls (cast and crew), people that wear sunglasses indoors, animal trainers, Woody Allen, the Bad News Bears, The Bad News Bears remake, snakes, those things you shake up and it snows inside, bees, killer bees, killer whales, whales, Frank Whaley, popcorn, farts, armpit farts, squirrels, toilets that make you hafta hold down the lever until it's done flushing, cake, Tony Dorsett, Sweet Valley High, waiters, journalists and the president for what is surely a liberally-rigged attempt to crush the spirits of noble patriots and Jesus, along with his lovable, scrappy sidekick, Baby Jesus.
So....I guess this shit is just gonna be never-ending with these motherfuckers. Great.
REally, New York Times CONNECTIONS Game?
I mean I'm *guessing* I was not the only person who immediately did this. 😜
An Xmastime Prayer
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