Christmas Spectres Approaching II

I’ll resist appending”Electric Boogaloo” to the heading. No, no, no need to thank me. It was hard, but it was worth it.

Now where was I? Oh, yes, that was the basis for the post – “Where was I this last week?” Well, as much as I may bitch and moan about getting older, my father put everything in perspective by entering the hospital last week to clear out a heavily blocked carotid artery and have a stint inserted. Such procedures are no longer extraordinary, of course – good grief, they sent him home the next day – but we needed to be there to support my mom and, at my father’s insistence, “do Christmas” with them early.

Dad was in good humor for most of our visit, but kept having odd bouts of chills and fever, which had thankfully disappeared by the time we left.

But that’s not really why I sat down to write yesterday’s entry.

As mentioned earlier, we’ve been assaulted by Christmas imagery since late October. A local radio station has become “Your Official Holiday Music Station” since roughly that time, playing nothing but fa-la-la-la-al-derol. Since I am married to The Christmas Nazi, this means there has been nothing else on the car radio for the last two months, including during the drive to and from my parents.

What I discovered is that, according to this station, there are only six Christmas songs. Covered by a variety of artists, to be sure, but they are apparently the only ones worth playing:

  1. Winter Wonderland – the winner by a vast lead.
  2. Sleigh Ride
  3. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
  4. Feliz Navidad
  5. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

    6. – strangely, almost always the Gene Autry version, though they have played a very odd version by Dean Martin

  6. Frosty the Snowman

When a Christmas carol not on this list is played, the novelty value is great. Surprisingly, given the gleeful aggression of faith-based interests hammering on the “Christ is the reason for the season” trope (since they were obviously given as large a mandate as El Presidente in the last election), the non-secular music is pretty sparse, running mainly to Silent Night and The Little Drummer Boy (just to complete the Rankin-Bass holiday special trifecta). None of my favorites, like Angels We Have Heard On High, or We Three Kings. Or Bob and Doug MacKenzie’s Twelve Days of Christmas.

On the home front, I have completed the next phase in my insidious plan of slowly replacing the Christmas music CDs with stuff I can actually tolerate. Last year it was Big Band Christmas, this year it’s Los Straitjackets’ Tis the Season For…

I’ll get through this with the help of those worthies and the occasional Nat King Cole piece on Your Official Holiday Music Station. If I don’t see you again before then, a Merry Christmas to all, and Bah, Humbug, depending on your needs.

December 21, 2004
Categories: Mindless Blather . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Christmas Spectres Approaching

It is doubtless obvious to any and all out there in the blogosphere that Christmas is fast approaching. The fact that most of us have been bludgeoned with yuletide imagery since before Halloween really makes that introductory sentence superfluous.

I’m not the holiday type, but I find myself perversely excited by this coming Saturday. For one thing, it will be the first Christmas we are actually spending at home, instead of driving all over Texas to be with various family members. Allergic to travel as I am, that is good news. It will be the first Christmas Eve service at our church I’ve been able to attend in… well, ever. Extended weather forecasts have it being actually cold on Christmas Day, instead of the usual jeez-turn-down-the-air-conditioner Xmas that is common in the Lone Star State. The concept of sitting in my easy chair in front of a fireplace while my boy vibrates in pleasure while tearing open packages like a blonde paper bomb fills me with an odd, comfortable, feeling of nostalgic warmth… odd since I’ve never had a Christmas like this.

Last Christmas was a little too stressful, as my wife and one of my in-laws got into a religious argument, ending when the in-law informed my wife that she and my son were going to Hell because they were not living the word of the Bible (as he saw it). Insert snide “true meaning of Christmas” comment here, since the whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. Odd, there was no mention made of her heathen husband…

I should clarify that, it could lead to confusion. No, I am not a Christian. Yes, I go to church. My wife is, you see, and her faith is very important to her. She – and, for the most part, the rest of the congregation – are open-minded enough to let me find my own way. I help out at the church when asked, and the whole moral thing is important to a child’s upbringing. I’m confident he’ll find his own way, either through this church, another, or the constant quest of his old man, when the time comes.

Speaking of the supernatural, I also think that this will be the last year that my son, Max, will wholeheartedly believe in Santa, and not simply give lip service to the concept in order to get more presents (I’m not raising a fool). Especially since, on one of his favorite shows, Mythbusters, last week, Adam Savage lumped the concept of “free energy” in the same realm as “The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus…FANTASY!!!”

Max may not know what “fantasy” is yet. I know the whole game was blown for me while very young by The Smothers Brothers, of all people.

That’s enough for today. Tomorrow, I’ll let you in on where I’ve been the last week. It’s not a thrilling story, but I still have catch-up to play in other areas, like, oh, you know, work. The thing that pays for Christmas.

December 20, 2004
Categories: Senile Ramblings . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

Welcome to MY World

And now, a little peek into my home life.

My wife has just returned from the mall. She accompanied our friend, Ronnie, on a shopping trip there. She went mainly to keep Ronnie from machine-gunning the crowds of holiday shoppers, but she also found a T-shirt at Hot Topic that she wants to get my brother for Christmas. As we join TV’s favorite family, I am in the kitchen, cooking dinner, when the wife approaches.

WIFE: What do they call those people who know kung fu?

ME: Masters?

WIFE: No…

ME: Oh. Boxers!

WIFE: No,  (waving arms in air) kung fu.

ME: People who know kung fu are called boxers.

WIFE: No, they aren’t.

ME: Yes they are. Why do you think they called it The Boxer Rebellion?

WIFE: I have no idea. C’mon, who are the other guys that know kung fu?

A slight pause. I realize I have to change sides of my brain, to – as a friend once put it, “Tune into the same FM station that is listened to by cats, sea anemones, and blondes”.

ME: Ninjas?

WIFE: That’s it!

ME: Ninjas don’t know kung fu. They’re Japanese. They know ninjutsu.

Which didn’t matter, she was already describing something about ninjas and pirates not working together. While out doing the last of my Christmas shopping today, I’m supposed to drop into Hot Topic and inspect this shirt for – harrumph! – brother quality (and try not to feel too damn old, myself).

And before you ask: yes, I love my wife more than life itself.

December 14, 2004
Categories: Senile Ramblings . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 3 Comments

Premonitions

One of the best things about the craze of DVD Box Sets containing entire seasons of TV series is the ability to sit down with old friends and get acquainted again. In this particular case I’m talking about the original Outer Limits series, which is available in two boxes from MGM. When I’ve been working late and feel the need to unwind in front of the tube, but a movie would take too long, an episode of OL is perfect at about 48 minutes in length. The show had some glorious high notes; it also had some dismal failures. I find myself revisiting the oddest entries…

You see, I was only a child when the series first ran, and the series generally terrified me, especially in the grim, darker first season. I rediscovered it as a teenager in south Texas when the CBS affiliate in Corpus Christi started showing it on weekend afternoons. It would crop up occasionally in syndication through the 80s, then a black-and-white anthology series suddenly became the kiss of death for programming. Somewhere in there, the infomercial was invented, too, but we are not here to discuss Satanic activity today.

So, now having access to all those episodes, instead of hoping and waiting for broadcast schedules and free time to coincide, do I visit award-winning stories, like Harlan Ellison’s “Soldier” and “Demon With A Glass Hand”? Do I visit the surreal, elegaic “Shape of Things Unknown” episode/pilot film? Do I once again watch Macbeth in sci-fi drag as “The Bellero Shield”? Do I bupkiss. I watch the episodes that scared me as a kid.

Robert Duvall as a government agent disguised as a crash-landed alien in “The Chamelion” (still pretty freaky). “Fun and Games”, starring Nick Adams and those freaky boar-faced aliens with the saw-toothed boomerang(ditto). And the terrifying beastie in “It Crawled Out of the Woodwork”, now revealed as a simple three-frame animation with a hell of a freaky sound design. Given the relatively harmless things that scared me as a kid, I guess I should be thankful I didn’t see “The Zanti Misfits” back then – I might not have survived.

One episode that didn’t send me screaming to the next room was from the second season – “The Premonition” – and it was with some interest that I sat down and watched it for the first time in – what? Forty years, at least?

It held up better than others, which is not to say there weren’t holes my older, weaker eyes discovered. The story concerns a test pilot who flies an experimental rocket plane at Mach 6, somehow breaking the time barrier and creating a chronal sonic boom that projects himself and his wife – so startled by the incipient crash of his plane, that she was in the process of smashing their car into a boulder – into a limbo state 10 seconds into the future. Everything seems to them frozen in place (as if they were photos, hmmmm…). Investigation proves that everything else around them is moving, just very slowly, at the rate of an hour (to them) for every second passed.

It’s here that the “bear” – the mandatory monster of the week, the basis for the network picking up the series – shows up. Filmed in negative, it’s merely a man, another person unstuck in time, who didn’t get back in place when time caught up with him. He intends to take the place of either the pilot or the wife and escape his prison of “endless nothingness”. One of the problems with the script is that this menace is dealt with very quickly, and never shows up again. Most of the tension in the episode derives from their daughter, left at the Air Force base’s nursery, who has slipped from her keeper and is now in imminent danger of being killed by a runaway truck when time snaps back into place.

The series’ low budget is in very sharp focus through much of the episode – the obvious photographs, the entire teaser before the opening credits and much of the first ten minutes is stock footage… and time is eaten up as the pilot and wife run back and forth between the crash site and the base, over and maddeningly over again. The wife’s character is in keeping with the era, alas, having to be slapped out of a panic, deferring to her husband when she’s not imploring him to do something. There were a number of strong female characters in the series, but she, unfortunately, is not one of them.

Still, it’s a very novel concept, and one which stayed with me for years and years; characters having to puzzle out an incomprehensible situation crops up over and over again in my writing. I’m glad I finally got to see it again, and am intrigued by the possibility that it had much more to do with shaping my creative endeavors than I had originally thought.

December 13, 2004
Categories: The Wonderful World of Crap . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Grand Theft Auto Saves the Day

The Galveston County Daily News has a story where stupid crooks in a home invasion intersect with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City , to their detriment. Nice to see video games on the right side of the law in the media, for a change.

Though I have to note that the woman’s grandchild was likely too young to be playing GTA…

December 10, 2004
Categories: Senile Ramblings . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Quick Catch-Up

I’m working semi-feverishly, trying to get all my work-related writing done (or at least this phase of it) by the weekend of the 18th so I can take a week off for Christmas travel with a clear conscience. Don’t think I’ll quite make it, especially since I came home today to find my wife vomiting in the downstairs bathroom, and I’ll be pretending I’m a single parent (with one surprisingly mature and very sick child along with the standard six-year-old) for the next couple of days.

Not to mention that Half-Life 2 is teh awesom. As the young folk say.

In a mad attempt at writing something not related to nutrition or video games, I’ve put up a review for the bizarre Indonesian horror movie, Mystics in Bali, at my other endeavor, The Bad Movie Report. If you see only one movie about a woman’s head flying around with its entrails hanging below, looking for newborn babies to eat, this should probably be the one. Or maybe Polar Express, which I think is the same thing.

December 10, 2004
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Holiday Gift Guide, Part One (and hopefully only)

Lightning Reaction – Shocking Game of Skill was found, appropriately enough, at stupid.com. Apparently one of a series, as there is a special deal if you buy Lightning Reaction along with its companion game, Shock Roulette. It’s like that video game the Bond villain had in Never Say Never Again, only horribly, horribly real.

It’s not all destructive lawsuits-waiting-to-happen, though. Stupid also sells a nifty zero blaster that will work very well in the retro SF movie I plan to make. And believe it or not, I’ve been looking for one of these for a couple of years now.

December 6, 2004
Categories: Mindless Blather . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 4 Comments

Wow, Another Personal Milestone

When you’re like me, pushing 50, new personal milestones don’t tend to be good in nature – in fact, they’re to be actively dreaded. Oh, there are some upsides – first grandchild (still years in my future), perhaps – but rarely do they come as such a surprise, as did last night’s.

A bit of background: for close to six years, I worked at a dinner theater that performed murder mysteries on the weekend. I quit last summer, but agreed to sub in as needed over the holiday season. Last night was such an occasion, at a private party. Now, over the holidays, when a lot of offices hold their Christmas parties, the mystery of choice is one called Let’s Kill the Boss (big surprise, right?). Like a lot of these comedy murder mysteries, it’s populated by cartoon characters and humor less sophisticated than a Looney Tune’s. I had the peach role, the hateful boss of the title, which means I exit, festooned with various plastic knives, at the end of the second act and spend the remainder of the evening listening to my Nomad Zen.

But not last night. At the end of the first act, one patron came backstage (luckily, when no one was dressing – I nearly came to blows with a drunken patron last year over that particular breach of etiquette and good sense) and asked us to “tone down the sex stuff”. Now, the Boss show is considered our most blue show, and prime time television still meets or exceeds most of the stuff on display there, but heck, we figured out what needed to be excised in the next act.

We never got to it. In the middle of a complex comedy bit which was to lead up to my murder, two people rose from their seats and physically stopped the show. After a moment of confusion and no small amount of anger and bewilderment on my part, we changed into our civvies and eventually retired to the hotel bar, waiting for the patrons to finish their meals and leave so we could go in, pack up our show, store it, and go home ourselves.

Intriguingly, some of the folks in the room made a point of seeking us out and – well, not apologizing, as “I don’t know what their problem was, I was enjoying it” isn’t exactly an apology, but it went a long way toward dispelling my resentment. Doubtless the actual problems will eventually filter down the grapevine to me, but whatever the reason, the result will always be the same:

After 27 years of working in professional theater, I have played to houses that dwindled through the night. I have done shows for a house that started with twelve people and were reduced to five by show’s end (at curtain call, I shook each and every one of their hands). I have been at shows that have been cancelled due to sudden illness or lack of audience. But last night was the first, the very first time that an audience has risen from their seats during the show and called, “Hold! Enough!”

Then again, last night was also the first time I’ve had an apple martini, and that was good. Not quite balance in the universe, but I’ll take what I can get.

December 5, 2004
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 1 Comment

Even More Rumble Roses in the News

The Brits may not get Rumble Roses for PS2 until next year, but they do get models doing cosplay, at least according to The Sun Newspaper Online – UK’s biggest selling newspaper. This may not be safe for work, considering one picture of a model wearing a costume that’s little more than body paint.

That photo of the model dressed as Miss Spencer, the kneepad-wearing shoolteacher, though – that one I want as wallpaper.

December 2, 2004
Categories: Old Men Playing Videogames . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Hey, I Know – Let’s Talk About Movies For A Change

The Houston Chronicle picked up a Knight-Ridder wires story: HoustonChronicle.com – Fed-up film fans getting interested in geography. The story itself doesn’t have much to do with film fans, past a desire for the alliteration of four f-words in a row. Rather snarky in delivery, it’s about a growing discontent among filmmakers who are told to make Toronto stand in for various American cities.

You know, I’m a sap. I’ll generally buy in to whatever pack of lies a moviemaker asks me to swallow, just like if I go see a theatrical presentation of 12 Angry Men, I know I’m not looking into an actual jury room. Movies that are awash in genuine location and atmosphere tend to rely on that locale as an uncredited actor. It’s nice if you can do that, but is it always necessary? In the back of my head I know that a lot of CSI:NY I am seeing is not shot in New York, but it doesn’t stop my enjoyment of the series.

This bears all the markings of a slow media news day.

December 2, 2004
Categories: Senile Ramblings . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

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