greatest maxmas movies

1) HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS!
Thurl Ravenscroft. I just like saying "Thurl Ravenscroft".
2) IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Get him. He's givin' out wings.
3) THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS
Heat Miser. Cold Miser. 'Nuff said.
4) SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN
"Burgermeister Meisterburger" is the second-coolest nickname anyone's ever called me (the other one's a bit sexier).
5) MIRACLE ON 34th STREET
I resisted watching this one for many years, out of some sort of bizarre loyalty to #2 on this list. I was wrong, i was wrong, i've said it, i was wrong.
6) LOVE ACTUALLY
The most grown-up Maxmas film, the most "real" romantic comedy, and the greatest ensemble film. Ever. If someone described the "naughty" bits to a prude, they'd never watch it. Yet it's so deftly made that it feels like a family comedy, suitable for all...which it is.
7) RUDOLF, THE RED-NOSED REINDEER
Bumbles bounce!
8) RUDOLF'S SHINY NEW YEAR
And the Rankin-Bass stop-motion magic rolls on...
9) 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Rankin-Bass showing they can do conventional animation too...brilliant performances by Joel Grey and George Gobel, and the unforgettable "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand".
10) A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL
The hands-down best performance of Michael Caine's career. The most startling endorsement i can give is that for more than fifteen minutes, i forgot that Jim Henson had died.
************************
Special Awards of Merit:
A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS
-Not unlike a photographic negative of the following two films. But for one moment of (religious) mawkishness, it's quite sublime.
EMMET OTTER'S JUGBAND CHRISTMAS & THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
-Each has one song ("What's This", "River Bottom Nightmare Band") that is as off-the-charts good as any moment of any Maxmas magic ever.

the sap

The trouble with love is...
It can tear you up inside
Make your heart believe a lie
It's stronger than your pride

Yes, i'm quoting the Kelly Clarkson theme song to LOVE ACTUALLY. Get over it.
To me, being a fool is what life is all about. Being unafraid to throw yourself into any situation, without caring how you'll look, whether the world might laugh, or lash out...for a hopeless cause, for love, for a friend...
That's the me i like, when i'm at my best.
So i'm not embarrassed by most of the million and three things that bother regular folk. And when i do get embarrassed, i can't wait to tell you about it.
This time, however, i almost kept a stupid embarrassment to myself. But here i am.
I fell for a fake personal ad.
And not in a small way.
Oh, i didn't walk into a fake rendezvous, to be stripped of my wallet and boxer briefs by Fagin's gang...but in my spirit, oh my did i fall.
I recently returned to the world of online personals. One year ago, i started seeing someone, and it took me six months after the breakup to be able to even look at a personal ad. The only romance site i can imagine using is craigslist, a free site where you can create your own ad or look at others', and come and go as you like. Paying for a romance service invokes a level of neediness that's not me. The right CL attitude? Don't take it too seriously. Early on, i learned another lesson: don't get emotionally involved before you meet. Understand, a part of me wants to believe that humans can connect on an unseen level, even when they're far apart, or have never met. But in a romance ad correspondence, it just seems that you're begging for disaster if you get emotionally invested before meeting. Even if you do end up having an amazing spiritual connection, there are far too many compatibility factors which can trip up the best potential in the world. So i try to have an attitude of easygoing fun, and if i meet someone, cool. CL is, i might add, a phantasmagoria of fraud. A sea of spam. A morass of moronities subtle and glaring. I consider myself an operator with a high level of discernment. It's probably fair to call it a conceit, that i fancied i could never be taken in by a fake.
Ahem.
See that supine bowling pin with my face on it?
It's not just that i fell, but it's the extent to which i did, even before i'd finished writing my response. My heartrate went into overdrive. As i awaited a reply in the hours after, i felt a stronger feeling than i have felt for any real woman in years. Frankly, i can't swear that i didn't feel a stronger feeling than i've felt for a woman ever. I suddenly knew that when the reply appeared, my life would change, probably forever.
And then it arrived. Ready to know the first personal thoughts of a woman i had dreamt of all my life, i opened it.
And the enthusiastic note asked me to come talk to her on a paid dating site.
Her enthusiasm would have been more affecting, if there were one single thing in the note to indicate that she was a living human who had, y'know, actually read my letter.
It took me less than a minute to chuckle at myself.
But wow.
Any other conceits you'd care to cultivate, smart guy?
A part of me wishes i had the text of the ad to share with you, and a part of me is relieved i don't. It just seemed so sincere and off-beat...a paragraph or three of a woman talking about how this materialistic society is such a put-off, and then pushing more of my buttons, for good measure. And with it, a pic of a perky pixie dressed the way i'd imagine my love dressing. That the visual element was a factor in my response, i cannot for a second deny.
I guess the part that's most distressing (though looked at from another way, it could be encouraging) is the thought that i'm generic enough to fall for a fake, even a fake aimed at non-generic sorts. I guess i considered myself at least two levels of generic removed from the norm.
Conceit number two, come on down!
But it's about more than conceit, it's about how even though i rail against our society's attitudes on romance (unnatural views on monogamy, unhealthy stress on defining our lives by romantic status), i'm such a profound semi-closeted romantic. It's idiotic beyond belief, but there's a part of me waiting to embark on one of the greatest love stories of all time, or some such nonsense. This week my "heart" believed a lie, in a most profound way...and all it took was a bogus ad. I've always wanted to throw blunt objects at anyone reading a Harlequin novel, yet i cry within moments of seeing LOVE ACTUALLY, a movie in which many of the people get absolutely creamed by love, yet the movie plays like a romantic comedy, and you love and cheer those who do find "the dream". The idiotic, numnut dream.
I'm not kidding, either. The dream is idiotic.
And that strong feeling i felt? Just Narcissus staring at his reflection. Do you know what the difference is between that and the "real thing"? If most people knew the answer to that question, we'd have a social revolution the likes of which the world has never known.
The woman i broke up with this year let me into her most sacred places, and dared to dream a dream with me as the hero. I walked away, though she was as wonderful as any of us. I walked away, because the difference between "wonderful" and "wonderful for me" proved to be too big a chasm.
WROB: Stop waiting for a dream, wrob.
wrob: No WROB, i don't think i will.
WROB: Idiot.
wrob: Yeah, sure. Would it make you feel better if i said i just like sex, and this kind of idiocy is the only way to get the really fan-fuckin'-tastic kind?
WROB: Are you trying to bullshit me or yourself, wrob?
wrob: Complex question, WROB.

go (star wars) figure

I opened the greatest gift of my life on Christmas morning, 1977. The movie STAR WARS had been released seven months before. I was nine years old, and will forever maintain that no demographic was ever more perfectly vulnerable to the cultural flashbang George Lucas had dropped on the world that May. The moment Vader walked in, i was inextricably, forever taken.
I had dreamt of this gift. I tried not to think about my chances of getting it. I was still a year or two away from being able to conceive of acquiring such a gift on my own. Perhaps never again would my desire for something be so pure, and my grasp so tenuous.
I unwrapped it, and my starry eyes beheld...the Star Wars Creature Cantina action figure set.
I already had a few figures. But this set was special. Not available in stores. I'd never seen one in person, and was now the only person i knew in the world who had one. It consisted of four figures and a cardboard backdrop which folded, dividing it into a wall section and a ground section. The wall was the outside of the cantina, with aliens walking by, and one sandtrooper. The ground had holes in which you inserted plastic foot pegs, on which you could stand your figures. The figures were Greedo, Hammerhead, Walrus Man, and Snaggletooth. Snaggletooth would become a rarity, as the version finally released in stores was shorter, more stocky, and bootless. The one i had was regular height, with a blue uniform, not red. I played with my figures and took good care of them, but a couple years later i threw out the backdrop after the seam wore out, and split apart. Had i been just a year older, i perhaps wouldn't have let it come to that point of disrepair, or would have kept the pieces.
Other kids were tougher on their figures, playing with them until the paint or limbs came off. When my original Luke lost some paint, i got a replacement. I also noticed when Kenner started using a different mold for Han's head. I got the new one, and kept the old. I started keeping my figures individually wrapped in ziplock bags. I never lost accessories, and the one exception to this led to the only time i ever stole anything as a child. Princess Leia had the thinnest blaster, and back in the seventies we had a thing called shag carpet, which in my room was a mix of brown, tan, and black. Not the best place to keep track of tiny black pieces of plastic, but i only ever lost one: Leia's. With Mom's supervision, i took apart the vacuum cleaner bag, but to no avail. I carried the weight of that loss for a year or so, resolving to someday reunite Princess and pea shooter. Then one day, i found myself in a department store, looking at a row of figures, and noticed that someone had taken a Leia out of its box, but left the box. And there, taped to the dangling plastic shell, was the blaster. I took a long, hard look into my soul, and then a look in either direction. I reached out my hand, and made my collection whole.
I wasn't proud, but i learned that day that anyone's principles can be bought.
Did i have all the figures? Can you even ask? I remember the first one i didn't have, and the whole flap over Boba Fett's spring-loaded, child-choking jetpack rocket. I hadn't gotten Fett early enough to have one of the banned ones.
By EMPIRE, i was saving my weekly allowance to get the figures for myself. As much as 90% of my weekly 50-cent allowance from 1977-1983 went to Kenner. They started out at $2.75, and were $5 or more by the time JEDI finished. I got 'em all...and some more than once. I remember when the sales tapered off after EMPIRE, they had a $1.99 clearance sale. I picked up seven or eight stormtroopers, and two Imperial commanders (the ones with the black domed helmets, who weren't really commanders, but that's another story). And therein lied my passion-within-a-passion: the Imperials. You might not guess this, given my life's quest for goodness and truth, but my favorites were the Imperials. They were just too cool (though when i went through my naval history phase, i gravitated to the Axis powers, so there was obviously a trend going on). The coolness stemmed from Vader, with the stormtroopers close behind. I never got doubles of single-identity figures, but by the time my chest was full, i had ten troopers, four snowtroopers, and three rebel snow soldiers for good measure.
I kept the faith until JEDI. But the "Gold Medal" series is the straw that broke this camel's back (or possibly the two separate Niktos). I had been slowly facing the reality that there was a certain amount of bald-faced, corporate greed going on. The number of figures released per film kept going up, and the characters kept getting more obscure, until there were ones you didn't even recognize. The "Gold Medal" series was maybe the fourth for JEDI, and my principles finally won out over devotion. I said "no more", and didn't buy a one. In years to come, i sometimes regretted that just the teeniest bit, particularly because i missed out on having Han in carbonite.
There were a handful of others i had missed by the end of JEDI. It would be many years before i finally found Zuckuss, a TIE fighter pilot, and Artoo with sensor-scope.
I had actually manifested a little resistance to corporate greed even from the start, though. I'd decided that figures were sufficient, and that i didn't need the vehicles. With a couple exceptions (X-wing, Imperial troop transport), i maintained that purity. By EMPIRE, my brothers were old enough to be enamored too, and i let them get vehicles while i focused on figures.
I saved every proof-of-purchase, too. For what, i'm still not sure. I might have made one or two trade-in deals over the years, but that leaves a hundred or two at the bottom of my chest, to this day.
And i never understood the fans who kept the figures in the case. If you're an investor, go play the market, but if you love your figures, take 'em out and let 'em run around.
The only time i almost regret not getting the vehicles is when i see one of the old Death Star sets. But i could do better than Kenner anyway. When they finally released the Falcon, i almost did a spit-take at how pitiful it was, all shrunken and distorted. I had made my own in the early days. I took a piece of cardboard over three feet wide, and cut out a Falcon shape. I made walls four or five inches high, divided the ship into sections, and then made a topside. It hit the trash after a year or so, but it was better than what the store-going kids had. I also made some Hoth fortresses out of styrofoam.
I have a friend whose young son has fallen in love with Star Wars. He gave him all his old figures to play with. He's a better man than i, Gunga Din. Me, i dream (along with my brothers) of that future day when one of us has a house with a Star Wars room.
And here's another dream...for anyone else who remembers 1977 like i do. A couple decades later, when they released a Tarkin figure for the Special Edition, yeah, i bought it. A Tarkin figure had long been the one gaping hole in the Star Wars universe. Peter Cushing, however, had been perhaps the skinniest actor in the history of Hollywood, and the figure that finally emerged did not reflect that.
So imagine for just a moment that it's 1977 again, and instead of the Death Star droid, they released a Tarkin. Picture what it would have looked like...hold the image in your mind, and lock it away in a special place.
Okay, come on back now.
I love you all.

"Lies My Teacher Told Me"

(Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong)
-by james w. loewen
2007
Within a chapter, i knew it was one of the greatest books i'd ever read, one that will soon appear on my "required reading for every human" list: http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2008/12/8-books.html. In 1995, loewen deconstructed twelve high school history textbooks to find out what they say, what they don't, and then he sought to find out why. He investigates why history classes are the subject of such profound student apathy. It turns out that students are too smart for the crap we feed them. When presented with a history which celebrates only the eurocentric american experience and avoids the hint of anything even the tiniest bit controversial, students subconsciously know they're being conned, and manifest resistance behavior. Loewen offers statistics on how history is unique among school subjects, in that the more classes one takes, the more measurably dumb one becomes. The higher one climbs on the educational ladder, the more one identifies with one's society, and subconsciously adopts the view that one's country is "right". Loewen also talks about the myth of american exceptionalism, inherent in which is the notion that our moral and ethical growth has been an upward constant. As just one rather stunning counter-example, in 1870 a white state senator from Mississippi married a black woman...and got re-elected. To say nothing about this continent's ethical/moral plane pre-columbus, which was at a level we're still well short of. And don't get loewen started on columbus. Not only did people NOT think the world was flat before he sailed, he was quite the johnny-come-lately, as archaeological evidence suggests that sailors from Indonesia, Africa, Asia, and other parts of Europe explored this land centuries, if not millenia, before columbus. To say nothing of explorers from this land themselves, who visited Scotland or Scandinavia some two thousand years ago. But columbus fits the "Europe-leading-the-world" archetype, so hey-ho, with columbus we go! Anyway, there's lots more, and it's not all euro-bashing; i'm much more a lincoln fan now than ever before.

"The Cartoon History of the United States"

-by larry gonick
1990
Brilliant. I was going to rattle off a long list of adjectives, but really, "brilliant" in every sense of the word pretty much covers it. It's the first history book you'll ever read that is both page-turner and giggler. Everything that was wrong with your high school history book (the avoidance of anything controversial or resembling a viewpoint other than "Yay, eurocentric America!") is set aright. I first learned of gonick through "The Cartoon History of the Universe", which only impressed me enough to make it the first book that every thinking human should read. It was successful enough to spawn over ten sequels...i myself can't wait to read the one on genetics, and (whee!) the one on sex. His website: http://www.larrygonick.com/. Gonick doesn't disappoint in this one. There's an initial letdown that his drawings are less fleshed out, as though he'd been facing a publication deadline. But you get used to that quickly enough, for the content is lovingly fleshed. Gonick is beautiful at making the big picture accessible. The big picture often escapes even the most intelligent among us, but i here offer twenty words from this book that will give any seventh grader a better understanding of the world than the four stupifying (or stupidifying?) years of history courses to come: "And technology begat industry...and industry begat capitalism...and capitalism begat communism...and communism begat anti-communism...and anti-communism begat fascism...". If you're looking for the perfect gift for a young mind, or a youthful mind, or a mind that you'd given up on, look no further.

three as a bird

(many possible titles for this piece have been percolating in my brainpan...most of them pretty bad)
The Power of Three.
Three's Company.
When Two Become Three.
When Three Become Fun.
(yes, those were Spice Girl homages)
The Giving Three.
Born Three.
The Chimes of Threedom.
I Feel Three.
(any more semi-obscure song references, you wonder?)
No, but how 'bout "A Three Grows in Brooklyn". Whee!
(okay, i'll stop now)
I have seen the future, the future of love.
Alright, what i've seen is less vague and poetic, but "i've seen the future, the future of the child-rearing family unit" doesn't quite have that MLK panache.
The ship of marriage is creaking and leaking. Will it be patched, or will the bulkheads split wide, pouring all of our throbbing erections and yearning uteri into the sea of humanity, with nary a life preserver to be found?
Some blame feminism for marriage's woes. This is not entirely baseless, as modern woman embraces the concept that she's more than a cow (yes Daddy, moo, yes husband, moo). But i think it's truer to say that capitalism killed Dick and Jane, by isolating them in their single-family dwelling. Cut off from any support system, is it any wonder that even the most loving couples are at each other's throats after a decade or so? In a time gone by, extended families lived under the same roof, providing on-site marriage counseling and full-time babysitting.
So marriage is dying. Okay. If it were up to me (and it may well be), we can toss the baby, the bathwater, and the unrealistic treatment of monogamy out the window.
But someone's gotta raise the kids.
Whither shall we go? (drumrolls, please)
Him and her...and him.
Or her and him and her. Or him and her and that other one who's never felt comfy with the whole him/her thing. Whatever.
Crazy talk? Sure. But lay down your sense of decency, and think about it.
In the two-parent isolation paradigm, there's no reprieve from the presence of the other (except in bolting to the pub, or the arms of the nearest Mr. or Mrs. Jones). Introduce a third person into the mix, and you suddenly have a buffer between any two personalities, to keep them from scraping each other raw.
In the two-parent paradigm, once children arrive, the honeymoon is over. There always has to be one parent looking after the kids, so couples find their together time essentially gone. With three parents, that third set of hands means that any two of them can run off at any time, to rediscover the joy and love that brought them together in the first place.
Need i even mention the added benefit of slowing down population expansion, in a world ill-suited to supporting six billion, to say nothing of the ten billion coming in the lifetime of anyone not named Abe Vigoda? Curiously, this side benefit may be the way this paradigm gets in the door, as nations search for ways to stem a literal human tide. It wouldn't be the first time a great idea came to fruition not because of its merits, but because of some fluke of history.
Not convinced? Ready for the most compelling part of the argument? Three (or even four or five) parents would be a FAR healthier atmosphere in which to raise children. Sometimes the personalities of a child and parent clash. It doesn't mean anyone's right or wrong - some personalities just clash. In the two-parent paradigm, there's little escape from that, and parents/children end up with decades worth of emotional trauma, just trying to coexist. In a multi-parent paradigm, there are more human resources to deflect any conflicts. It's like always having your favorite aunt or uncle around. Kids would be less neurotic, and parents would be less stressed (and less likely to break up the family, which is the rule these days, not the exception).
So how would this new paradigm work? To be sure, it would take a generation (or three) to adjust. There would be pitfalls, the biggest being that NO ONE PERSON can be the focus. There has to be deep affection between each member, strong enough to survive the loss of any one of them.
Is this necessarily a bisexual paradigm? Not at all! Each family would work that out for themselves. You could have one threesome who share everything at any time, another threesome in a conventional heterosexual menage a trois, or another who keep the sex limited to just two at a time. Heck, you could even have her and her and her, or him and him and him. Go crazy. However you arranged it, this paradigm would undoubtedly lay to rest the specter of homophobia just as surely as couples like Tiger and Elin (and their beautiful babies) will forever end racism on this rock. By the way, did you notice how i slipped the phrase "conventional heterosexual menage a trois" into the discussion? Sneaky, eh?
Beyond affection, there would have to be a natural balance between the three parents. Personality clashes and synchronicities would have to even out. Disputes would be settled by majority, but as long as the members of the majority shifted from time to time, you'd be okay. If two of the three love tennis, but the third hates it, there would have to be other mutual passions to offset the imbalances.
And the best part of all?
A million girlfriends (and a few boyfriends) would never again have to pretend they like STAR WARS.

not-ends 9

Sometimes i try to convince myself that that the difference between The Beatles and Poi Dog Pondering is just happenstance (and to a certain extent, it is). But then i remember that in terms of their greatest music, the Beatles became history's biggest act while still clearing their throat.

The biggest nonsense issue of our time is abortion. The two sides aren't even arguing about the same thing. And if we devoted all the resources we spend bickering to contraceptive research, we could eliminate the issue within a decade.

Reality TV? Has there ever been anything more unreal than humyn behavior when a TV camera is on?

Many are horrified that we spend over a third of our money on the military...but that's not even close to the record. George Washington's administration spent 80% of the budget on Indian-killin'.

Christians have no concept of how they're perceived as idiots by other religions. Even the Jews laugh at them...Jews know their own bible is moronic, but at least it's consistent.

The search for historical truth is necessary, and still doomed to failure. History is half events, and half intrigue. We don't even get the events straight.

Last year, 1 in 15 wimyn were so afraid of being alone, they paid a doctor to mutilate them.

A printer's error in 1631 resulted in Bibles that proclaimed, "Thou shalt commit adultery". Like we needed prompting.

If all wimyn decided to never again be beauty's slaves, do you know what would change between the sexes? Not one single thing.

Homophobia has been a tyranny of holocaustic proportions. "Homosexual" is a tyranny too. Humans are sexual. End of story.

TRUST NO ONE OVER FORTY...who doesn't have wrinkles. They ain't been laughing.