Posts Tagged ‘holidays’

This year's haul was an odd one, for several reasons.

Absolutely nothing required assembly or sneaking around, so for the first time in nearly three decades I didn't have to stay up late on Christmas Eve (although I did anyway).

Most everyone in the family knew what they were getting, with a few surprises.

There weren't quite enough surprises, as the Bon Jovi-related merchandise I got for Teres from her list of stuff still to get turned out to be the same stuff she had in fact already ordered for herself. Fortunately I also found her one of the "Have a Nice Day" smirk necklaces. The hard case we got for James turned out to be too small for his bass despite our careful measuring. Still, everyone seemed pleased.

I received:

- A safety razor, holder, blades, beaver hair brush and soap dish (all of which I had asked for, as I plan to start wet shaving with a safety razor to save money and, one hopes, get a better shave).
- "Vanilla Ride" by Joe R. Lansdale (the latest in his Hap and Leonard series, from my housemate, marking the 1st time in many years someone has managed to surprise me with a book I didn't know existed but would immediately have bought myself if I had).
- A carved walking stick (from Teres, so I'd have something unexpected, which it was).
The Incredible Hulk TV series Ultimate Collection (from my son James, who decided my DVD shelf wasn't cheesy enough).- A signed autograph of Walter Cronkite (from my son Tony, because he knew I didn't have one and the likelihood of me getting one seemed bleak).
- Money (from mom, who knows what I like) (Also she gave me fudge)
- The Regular Expressions Cookbook (an unexpected gift from my friend Shmuel, who has answered several panicky instant-messaged regular expressions questions from me in the past and apparently decided to head the next one off) (not pictured; it's at my work desk already).

And some of the money that would have gone into prezzies for me instead was diverted towards the Guilt Camera Teresa bought me (not pictured, cuz it was busy picturing).

All in all, a good haul and a great Christmas. My son Tony was here with his girlfriend Laura, my bro-in-law Rodger came over, and we opened prezzies, went to see "Sherlock Holmes" (quick review: not a great movie or a real cinematic gamechanger, but an awful lot of fun to watch if you can get past the idea of Holmes having any sort of romance) and came back to play "ImagineIf" for hours with lots of uproarious laughing and good natured personal abuse.

Hope yours went as well. Happy holidays, folks.

Drive down our street and you'll see decorations galore. Strings of lights, intricate creations of wire and tinsel, huge inflatable Santas and reindeer and Snoopys and rotating snow globes.

Except for our house, where it remains resolutely dark.

Not out of any dislike of the holidays, really. We like seeing everybody else's decorations. We just don't get that motivated to do it ourselves. We have a Charlie Brown tree we stick on a table and that's about it.

Now Halloween decorations are a different thing entirely. We have an extremely unsettling fake rubber bat that's been hanging in a tree by our front door for about six years now, perfect for freaking out pizza delivery guys and hopeful religious visitors. True Halloween decorations should not look like decorations. No "Happy Halloween" or cartoon-eyed skeletons for us. Why put up plastic pumpkins when a few heaps of real bones saved from a month of dinners by the front door can be much more disturbing?

Basically, our goal is to become "The Old Bridges Place," the house in the neighborhood the kids dare each other to approach. Festive holiday cheer, no. Terrifying home decor, yes.

Ho ho ho.

It's National Kazoo Day!

Please plan your activities accordingly, especially if you're planning anything formal tonight. Remember, kazoos fit nicely into even the smallest purse or tux pocket, and nothing finishes off a romantic evening better (or more completely) than a kazoo.

This is also as good a time as any to mention the movement at kazooamerica.org to make the kazoo America's National Instrument. This plucky music maker is an ideal choice for our national musical mascot. After all, it's so democratic: anyone can play a kazoo successfully (for a given definition of "successfully").

The movement has already made great strides with appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Fox and Friends, CBS Sunday Morning News, Martha Stewart, and has won approval from bemused and often bewildered politicians across the country.

So join the hordes of buzzing musicians and help us fight to honor this lowly instrumentby raising it to the level of national recognition. Wouldn't you love to see President Obama playing the kazoo, possibly leading Congress into a rousing rendition of "America the Beautiful"? Some days, I can think of little else.

I love this specific time of year. 2 o'clock in the morning, Christmas day. This is when things happen.

This is the magic time when bikes get assembled, game systems get quietly hooked up, surprise presents make their appearance from carefully concealed locations, and a few cookies get eaten.

Everyone in the house is asleep. I feel like I should be doing something. Finished up a last-minute gift for Teres she's not expecting, but it's not a big deal (new homemade bumper stickers to replace the ones she's worn out, a match set of "I LOVE BON JOVI" and 'AND MY HUBBY TOO, PROBABLY"). I'm used to extravagant surprises. Our Christmas mornings used to involve a fair amount of showmanship.

One morning many years back, my oldest (only, at the time) son woke abruptly at six in the morning to see Santa Claus, white beard,, red suit, hat and all, leaning over him. Santa told him "Merry Christmas, Tony," smiled, and ran for it. By the time he struggled out of his carefully-tucked-in sheets and came after me, I was in my own bed, unKringled and snoring better than Gielgud. The rest of the day his presents were almost untouched; he was still raving about his visitor.

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Happy New Year! It’s that magical time of year when the witty columnist dives deep into his or her own personal pool of boiling creativity and emerges, dripping, with one of exactly two of the only possible column topics available: resolutions for the new year, or predictions for the new year. It’s enough to make you long for February to come, just to get past them all.

I, however, am far more imaginative than that, and so I’m going with the third topic: predicting what will happen with my resolutions. Ready? Let’s go!

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So Christmas is coming fast. And you haven’t shopped. And your loved ones will recognize, from painful experience, anything from the somewhat limited gift selections available at your corner gas station. What to do, what to do?

You can try pulling off the old “Christmas has become too commercialized so I’m donating to charity in my friends’ names at the very last minute instead” routine, but it doesn’t work for everyone, especially when the charity listed is mostly famous for its happy hour and all-you-can-eat wings.

Instead, try performing some useful, thoughtful kindnesses for your friends and family that they’ve put off, never knew about, or would never consider. Show that you're really thinking about your friends' well-being by making their lives easier and less stressful in some small way. Some examples:

Do their laundry. Take away your friends' tired feeling of dread of looming household chores by sneaking over to their house to wash, dry, and fold all of their clothes. Take them out to a laundry service if you need to. Wouldn’t that be great to come home to? Especially if your friends have never had anything dry-cleaned before, and you just know that some of those delicate items you found stashed in secret places in their closets will need careful attention. Fold their clothes, add a touch of lilac, and get them back by Christmas morning for a delightful and unexpected surprise.

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Happy New Year's! It's time to fondly remember all the things we've accomplished over the last year, have a drink, and then solemnly vow to never do any of them ever again.

Most resolutions happen soon after the horrified realization of the state you woke up in on New Year's afternoon, but those are usually unthinking, knee-jerk reactions to the sight of your own bodily fluids as opposed to well-thought-out guidelines for a new and improved you. Such panicky resolutions are often extreme and unrealistic, such as "I'll lose 84 lbs by Arbor Day" or "I'll never drink vodka and lighter fluid again."

Me, I prefer to choose my resolutions carefully so that I can carefully craft myself into the perfectly realized paragon of humanity that is my destiny. Also I like resolutions I have a slim chance of keeping, like "I resolve to wake up, most days." Here's my list.

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I'm spending this morning recovering from the holiday. Not the day of the Fourth itself, mind you. I expect that to be loud and boisterous and patriotic and smelling like barbecue, and I take whatever steps I feel appropriate.

But this Fourth landed on a Tuesday and out here in the woods my neighbors have been observing our nation's independence for five days running now, firing off colorful munitions every night in a joyous celebration of the fact that dealers out of state will still sell weapons-grade fireworks to minors, and if that isn't a symbol of this country's freedom I don't know what is.

The Fourth is a day of our country honored, liberties celebrated, forefathers venerated. The Fifth is a day of lessons learned and a slight loss of hearing. The bangs from the night before are all just empty, sulfurous cardboard casings now. Bare sparkler sticks lying in the grass, waiting for the unsuspecting lawnmower next Saturday. Burnt smears on the driveway where Dad lit the brightly colored packages from a roadside tent while the kids stood far, far back, ready to go "ooh" and "aah," with good reason.

All those brightly colored warning labels? All the dire prophecies and wartime stories of kids losing fingers, eyes, and credit ratings because of Improper Use of This Product? They are all, every one of them, true. And these are the lessons I have learned on previous Fifths of July.

Holding on to lit fireworks and then throwing them might cost you a finger. Or a car. Most of the stories of this happening are from kids who hang on to the lit fireworks too long, or encounter a faster-than-expected fuse, or try to relight a dud. In my case it was because I was Darwinian enough to try throwing a lit firecracker from a moving car, not considering that the wind would blow it back through the rear window (which it did) where it would go off, causing the food wrappers tossed in the back to ignite (which they did) where a foolish school chum would think fast enough to pour his drink on it (which he did) but not fast enough to realize he was pouring alcohol onto an open flame (sigh). Once we dealt with the conflagration I was left with a Chevette with a blackened rear floor and a burnt plastic smell that never, ever went away.

Putting somebody's eye out with a bottle rocket is the least of your worries. I had only minor experience with these until my friend John planned a war. Twenty of us, adequately armed with bottle rockets and lighters, facing off in a clearing in the woods by his house. Results: several injuries from burnt fingers, one guy hit in the head by a rocket, one guy hit in the head by a bottle, and John getting badly burned because the handful of rockets he had stuck in his back pocket, with fuses tangling, proved to be too much of a temptation for his fellow marksmen.

Smoke bombs — the little round ones — are not useful in espionage situations, at least not at my level. Turns out that releasing clouds of noxious smelling gray smoke actually gets you unwanted attention, rather than hiding you. Who knew?

M-80s are not as useful for anthill demolition as you'd think. Mostly they just made a whoomph noise and the dirt shifted a little, and that was it. And that was with 70's and 80's M-80s, when they were considerably more powerful than the measly legal flash bombs they are today. They were useful for mailbox demolition, but in a suburb neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else and phone calls would get home before I would, this was never a viable option.

Even the prepackaged theme sets from the local grocery store can be hazardous, if you use them right. After being bored by sprits of sparks and another box of sparklers (Ooh. Aah. Yawn.) we'd just cram the whole mess into a paper bag and light it. This provided the extra drama from not knowing what was going to go off next, or what direction it would be aiming when it went, such as the spinning firework that, rather than whirling around in place in an approved fashion, chose to cartwheel after my girlfriend and then set a bush on fire. Lesson learned: girlfriends don't like being blown up.

And the most important firework warning of all: Parents do not like practical jokes involving loud bangs. This applies to the snap pops you heave at the ground, those little crackers with strings on both ends designed for doors and drawers, amusing little loads you shove into someone's cigarette, and other hilarious pranks. I was never in danger of getting my eye put out (I don't think) but I risked much greater peril from my parents than I ever did from a short fuse. Come to think of it, when it came to my fireworks fun my father had a pretty short fuse, too, and I can't blame him a bit. Not now, anyway.

Worst of all, my frivolous use of fireworks invariably resulted in a personal loss of liberties — usually for a couple of weeks, at least — and liberty is what the holiday is really all about.

So please, combust safely. For your country's sake.

Valentine's Day. A name that evokes images of love, romance, moonlight, unrealistic financial burdens, emotional blackmail, and horrific gangland massacres. Ah, love!

This pink and fluffy holiday began as the ancient pagan festival of Lupercalia where Roman priests would sacrifice a goat (for fertility) and a dog (because it wouldn't stop barking). The boys of the village would then slice up the goat's hide and run through the streets, gently slapping women and crops with the bloody strips to improve the fertility of both or because by that point in the festival they really couldn't tell the difference.

But even then, the anguish inherent in Valentine's Day was exposed. The women of the village complained that the boys didn't hit them with the right bloody goat strips, or that they hit that witch Lucia Bustinia way harder than they hit her and why did they like Lucia better, was she prettier? The boys were too exhausted to answer, having been up all night frantically searching the marketplace for the last few goat strips left because they waited until the last minute.

Today the holiday has become a time to celebrate the power of your love as measured in extravagant gifts. But, despite the demands of society and Hallmark, you shouldn't feel obligated to shower your lady with chocolate-covered diamonds just to fulfill some sort of sex life maintenance fee. What she really wants is to know that you love her beyond life itself, or are willing to fake it. Here are some suggestions.

Serenade her. Actual musical ability isn't required; what's needed here is passion, devotion, and the ability to jump a fence carrying a guitar in case the police get called. If she lives in an apartment higher than the second floor you may need to choose a louder instrument with which to express your love, such as an air horn. (BLAAAT! "YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE!" BLAAAT! "MY ONLY SUNSHINE!")

Hire an investigator to get the names of all of her previous boyfriends and invite them over so she can see how much better off she is with you. Won't she be surprised to see the guy whose abusive behavior in junior high caused her to start cutting herself, or the drunken one-night hookup from Fresno she thought no one knew about?

Better yet, invite all of your old girlfriends to show how over them you are and to help reassure her that you're much happier now even if those other women might be more "beautiful" or "smart" or "sexually advantaged."

Valentine's Day is all about making her feel desired, loved, appreciated. Take the day off from work, put on a disguise, and stalk her.

For her, half the fun of the holiday is bragging to her girlfriends about what a cool, sexy, romantic man she has. You can help by sleeping with all of them so they'll know for certain exactly how lucky she is. Make sure they know that your lady can get what they're getting any time she wants.

By the same token you should be sure to look your best around her at all times. Take the money you would have wasted on flowers or dancing and buy yourself some new clothes instead, to give her the absolute best-looking date she can have. You'll need some new golf clubs, too, and maybe an iPod. But it's all for her.

Give her something unexpected that speaks of your love and eternal devotion, like a suicide pact.

Take her to a fancy restaurant and right there, in front of the other diners, get down on one knee and ask her to marry you. Every girlfriend, especially yours, dreams of this magical moment and you owe it to her to make it as dramatic and romantic as possible. You can even add that extra sense of excitement and urgency the same way car dealers and realtors do, by suggesting she might not be the only one interested. ("You wanna hurry this up? I've got someone waiting in the car.") Just make sure the ring is three sizes too small so you'll have to take it back "to be resized" and can later claim it was a hallucination brought on by bad shrimp.

The point is that it's not expensive gifts she really wants, no matter what she says. She wants attention and affection, which, as it turns out, is amazingly cheap.

And if that doesn't work, sometimes the old-fashioned ways are best: break out the bloody goat strips. Ah, love!

The holidays are fast approaching and, like many of you, I'm looking forward to waking up on Christmas morning and rushing downstairs with a giddy feeling of dread. This is because our family holiday traditions involve disembodied body parts.

I realize that unless you have bizarre, illegal, and unsavory habits, or you're Billy Bob Thornton, this may seem strange.

It began a few years back when my wife, Teres, on her way to get groceries, made the mistake of asking me if I wanted anything. I replied with the sort of playful, arrested puberty type of response that makes wives and girlfriends roll their eyes and reconsider the benefits of living alone, possibly with a nonverbal pet. She nodded and left as I went back to work chuckling, unaware of what I had wrought.

Hours later she returned and presented me with my request, sort of: a pair of artificial breast prostheses designed to help women who have had mastectomies even out their appearance. Teres was barely restraining her giggles and seemed inordinately pleased with herself. The fact that the breasts didn't even remotely match in size or color only heightened the effect.

Be careful what you ask for, gentlemen, especially when your wife approaches shopping like an extreme sport.

I placed my new breasts on my desk to serve as paperweights, juggling utensils, highly effective conversation starters, and constant reminders that I married a silly person. (To be fair, so did she.)

The tradition had begun. That Christmas I unwrapped the large, ungainly present that had been taking up half the under-tree real estate to find she had gifted me with a torso. A mannequin torso, that is, that she had painstakingly painted to be lifelike and alluring in a creepy, body-snatching sort of way. This truncated beauty was also wearing a painfully tacky, pumpkin-colored nightie that bore a powerful resemblance to the painfully tacky, pumpkin-colored nightie I had inflicted upon her with great hilarity the previous year. There's nothing like retaliation as a driving force behind gift-giving.

It was after she gave me a porcelain hand on my birthday — pale, white, reaching — that I finally realized her goal: Teres was making me a woman, piece by piece, the way Dr. Frankenstein might have done if he had been forced to use layaway.

Ultimately the reason for this is simple: I'm hard to buy for. Not because my tastes are complicated, but because generally anything I'd want I've already bought for myself. What do you buy for the man who's already bought everything? Something he'd never buy for himself. Like, say, a prosthetic foot.

Birthdays, Father's Day, anniversaries, the fractional body count rose. I received eyeballs, a squishy brain, a mannequin head that entirely failed to match the torso, and even an entire stuffed leg complete with stuffed high heel shoe at the end. Little by little our house began to resemble the nip/tuck "Factory Seconds!" storeroom.

Everything found a use. The hand is in our flower bed by the front door, poking up at a slight angle to wave at passersby and disconcert delivery people. The torso is on the piano bench in the living room with different outfits to match events and seasons. The head had been precariously attached to it but has since fallen on hard times due to constant cat attacks and is now missing in action. The leg became a popular item to steal and hide in new and unusual places and it's an unparalleled weapon during pillow fights.

And all of the items, alone and together, help our decor accomplish its intended goal: keeping our guests unsettled. I find it's good to keep your visitors on edge and visibly jumpy; it keeps them from peeking into your cabinets and seeing things they'd rather not find, like lips.

I'm honestly not sure what will happen when she succeeds in getting enough parts for a complete person, although it will probably involve her sewing machine, lightning, maniacal laughter, and Igor handing over makeup utensils.

All of my presents to her, of course, have been perfectly normal, thoughtful, and romantic, tacky nighties aside. Don't believe anything she tells you. You're going to trust someone who gives body parts?