The Always-Prepared Mom

Most ads blow the big one, and most Walmart ads blow Moby Dick as far as I'm concerned (though I'm not quite sure what that means). But this one comes on, and I like it because of the slight hostility implied by "oh, I know we're not exchanging gifts this year but - " (pulling out the "surprise" gift which is about as welcome as a hurled Clovis point, the implication being, HA, got you, sucker, now you're going to feel guilty and as if you have to reciprocate for the next year!), countered by the even-more-devastating "as a matter of fact, it just so happens. . ."

These are stealth gifts, and I am sure a lot of them are exchanged at this time of year. They mean nothing. Each lady gives the other the exact same box of cheap licorice All-Sorts from Walmart (for less than $5!). Is anybody further ahead? Of course not. They have cancelled each other out.  In the great holiday gift-giving joust, which is usually a battle to the death,  it's a draw. Praise the name of Walmart.

But the real reason I love it, it's that music. Whatever it is, it drives me crazy!

It's a Wonderful Life: is this supposed to be a family show?

This thing comes on every year and I get caught up in it, even worse than Taxi Driver. And I forget every year that it's the longest, most suffocating piece of drama ever created. A festive favorite about a man who wants to commit suicide because his life has been an exercise in futility and failed dreams, capped off by a totally unfair charge of bank fraud.

Ah! It's a Wonderful Life. Ringling, tingling Christmas trees, Zoo-zoo's petals, bleeding lips, newel-post knobs nearly hurled across the room. Chickens on a spit, bar brawls on Christmas Eve, irrelevant songs about Buffalo Gals, and wild-eyed overacting all around.

Dis guy, see, he's like, um. Kind of disillusioned, like, cuz. His Uncle Billy, who's half nuts but was the father in Gone with the Wind so sort-of famous, has lost the eight thousand dollars that the Bailey Savings and Loan has earned in the past fifty years or so. He sort of dropped it somewhere and the Big Fat Man, the Bad Man, Lionel Barrymore in his most Grinchimous role, went and spent it on a hooker or something.

So da guy, this George, he decides he's worth more dead than alive (do I hear silver bells?), and stands there not jumping off a bridge. Then this old guy in a nightgown jumps off the bridge, and. . . the rest is history.

Oh, I shouldn't be so cynical, but this thing - this long thing, this three-hour marathon of hopelessness and small-town suffocation - it's about the farthest thing from festive you could imagine. Even Scrooge has glimmers of hope in it, but this - . George acts like some sortofa downtrodden saint for two hours and forty-nine minutes, then he kind of explodes and screams at his wife and family and tells them he basically hates them for holding him back and completely destroying his life.

His . . . wonderful life.

OK, I have a few problems with the logistics of this thing. When they get married and have to give all their money away to save the bank, Donna Reed gets chickens going on a spit in this old ruin of a house, the one they use-da throw stones at for luck. And they move in to it? make it habitable? On his salary of $2.70 a week or whatever-the-frick-it-is? Raise a family? George wears the same suit for 17 years, for God's sake.

Jimmy Stewart overacts. I'm sorry, but he does, he overshoots. He smears his facial features around with his hand, his hair is wild, he looks like a candidate for the psych ward, and finally he mumbles to his hokey old guardian angel (the guy in the funny shirt that ties up in front because buttons hadn't been invented in the year 1300) that he wishes he'd never been born at all.

Kind of the ultimate in nihilism, wouldn't you say? Jimmy Stewart, the guy with the 6-foot imaginary pet rabbit, the guy in whatever-else-he-was-in, all those Westerns and Mr. Smith and whatever, attempting to annihilate all traces of his existence on earth. A holiday special?OK, another big problem. He has this obnoxious friend named Sam Wainwright who keeps saying, inexplicably, "hee-haw". A dumb-ass par excellence, he lucks into a strange new business just before the war breaks out:  plastics. This assures he'll be obscenely wealthy doing no work at all.

He's George's best friend, for blippin' sake, and George is all stressed out and wanting to kill himself over 8 thousand dollars when 8 thousand dollars isn't even POCKET CHANGE for Sam Wainwright. In the dramatic ending when everyone turns their linty little pockets inside-out for George, he gets some kind-of-a cable from Wainwright saying, in so many words, "your measly little problem that you were willing to die over is peanuts to me. I'll give you three times that amount and change. There, feel better now?"

I doubt if he would. But think about it. Would Wainwright ever let George be dragged off to jail for such a shabby little amount? Money is power, right? Wainwright could make Old Man Potter dance like a jerky little marionette on a cold winter's night, and George is all stressed out about jail? (I liked his idea that Uncle Billy should go, instead. Made sense to me.)

But hey. He might get conjugal visits from that, who's that little floozie anyway? Jeez, what's she doing in this thing? Spozed to be a family show?

Oh, oh, and I just thought of this: it gets me every year. Why is it that after George yells at Uncle Billy that he's a mental defective, a moron and a lunatic, a squirrel jumps up on his arm? What the - ?? a squirrel? Up to now we've only seen ravens, tortoises, cows, etc. Could this be a foreshadowing of the squirrel from hell in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? (Actually, it screams of "cut the animal scenes, this thing is running too long." But for some reason they left in the squirrel.)

This time around (when as usual I kept saying, "OK, I'll turn it off in another 5 minutes" for 6 consecutive hours), I noticed a few other discrepancies, such as George's mother (Beulah Bondi) bawling and dabbing at her eyes during the final cash-spilling orgy in George's living room. Well, about ten minutes ago when George was on the phone with his brother Harry in Washington, where he just got the Congressional Medal of Honor for filing his nails or something, George repeats to the listening crowd, "Mother had lunch with the President's wife."

Not only do the writers of this thing obviously not know who the President was then, but Mother must be able to teleport herself from Washington to Bedford Falls in a matter of seconds! Hey, lady, tell me how you can be in two places at the same time and I'll buy the patent.

But I gots-ta confess to one thing. No matter how I prepare myself for it, no matter how cynical I try to feel, no matter how cornball I know it will be (and it is), that final scene has me bawling every time. Just bawling. I don't know what it is. The generosity of the people. The look of astonishment on George's face. Zoo-zoo. Beulah Bondi, beamed down from the planet Zargon.

I remember a superb SCTV satire of this scene, in which a succession of ever-more-notable people kept sweeping through the door, from George's brother to the President of the United States to, finally, His Holiness the Pope. It's a potent fantasy, all right - one we wish would come true for ourselves. That one day, in spite of futile sacrifice and grinding toil and zero recognition, something wonderful will happen to make us see that it has all been worthwhile.

This has something to do with the American work ethic, always handing the glory to someone else like that ratfink brother-who-got-the-Congressional-Medal-of-Honor-while-we-got-stuck-with-goddamn-rubber-drives-during-the-freaking-war. Let's face it, there are more Georges than Harries in the world. We all have our lunatic uncles, our goddamn rubber drives. Our eight thousand dollars.

And if George hadn't-a saved Harry when he slid down on that slippery old thingammy on the ice, why then -

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
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Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
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Giphy is down!

My giffinator is down. That means I can't gif, not now anyway. Could it be too heavily trafficked, might it have crashed? Who knows. I have all sorts of vintage Santa cartoons, you know the kind I mean, that I want to excerpt in gifs, but I can't. So I am left to trawl web sites, such as a bizarre collection called giphy. Most of these I already have in some form or another, except for the multitude of titled Safety Last ones (and I still haven't found all of those).

These I have seen, but they pair up nicely, expressing my feelings about this time of year. If only it were possible to die temporarily, which is perhaps what drugs and alcohol are supposed to do.

REALLY Bad Santa photos: watch out for that balloon!

I have promised to share with you only the best, or shall we say worst, of the Bad Santa sites on Facebook. This is one of those scraped-off-the-sidewalk souls they used to use in department stores for a buck a day and all you could drink. But what happened to his gloves? His scabby bare hands all over those innocent children. . .

Truly terrifying. In the back of the station wagon is a sign reading, "Hey kids! Come get your free candy!" A menacing Santa stands there with rope or electrical cord in his hands, while the getaway driver keeps the engine warm.

Santa works in a radium mine!

I call this the Santa Does Citizen Kane shot. Note that his head is at crotch level.

Oh Santa, that was a ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-d balloon.

Why Watch Safety Last? This is shorter

Twelve Days of Rob Ford (Best of the Season)

Oh, oh, oh!

 http://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1057703&playlistId=1.1585000&binId=1.1184694&playlistPageNum=1

Wrenched

I don't know what I did yesterday, or at least I think I don't know. Last night it was evident something had happened, as I tried to sleep with a knife-blade stuck in my hip bones. Or maybe it was an axe. I don't usually get this sort of thing - oh, maybe once in a while. I hate to admit to arthritis or anything else, as secretly I think of illness (all illness) as "weakness". "Sickness is for mortals," my husband once said - no, he says it all the time, sending me up.

Now I sit in my not-so-great office chair, but at least better than the last one, with an ancient heating pad jammed against the vicinity of my left hip. It's too well-upholstered (the hip, not the chair) to do much good. The chair has a huge gap under the arm where, if it had something solid, the heat would go exactly where it needed to go. I have to hold it there with my left hand, constantly.

How did it happen? I'm not sure. I went to Erica's Christmas extravaganza yesterday, perhaps the sweetest moment of a grandmother's year - little kids in Oliver costumes, an 8-year-old girl playing Silent Night on a 3/4-size violin. This year, unlike other years, a little bit of (actual!) Christmas music snuck back into the proceedings. Last year there was just nothing, no Frosty or Rudolph, just a winter festival with completely unknown songs. Still nice, but unfamiliar, an obvious bow to political correctness.

Maybe there were complaints, who knows, which brought about the changes this year. In any case, there was Erica in the very front row, singing songs from Oliver: Food, Glorious Food, and Consider Yourself. Though these aren't strictly Christmas songs, all the sooty plate-banging Dickensian waifs somehow fit in beautifully. I had never seen my gorgeous granddaughter with her blonde curls all braided up, wearing a grey gingham dress and scuffy old tie-ups like something out of a storybook.

At the end of the concert I felt a rush of icy air, looked around, and saw double doors opening out to a very rare scene in this part of Canada: SNOW! I could practically hear Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney singing White Christmas. Then the girls, let out of school early, ran out into the playground. There was NOT ONE KID there - maybe it wasn't allowed, who knows - so they had the run of the huge place, dotted with giant snowballs and half-snowmen (can you believe kids don't know how to make them here?). When they finally hightailed it out to the play equipment, it was so slippery from frost that they shot out of the end of the slides as if forcefully ejected. Lauren (whose concert is today - double joy!) couldn't get up on the swing. The seat of her snow pants was too slippery.

"Nanny, lift me up," she said, and I did. Was it then that something snapped, or went out of alignment or what? I lifted her, gave her a few pushes (she's six and does not normally need such help, but bundled up like the Michelan Man, I had to get her going). I didn't notice anything until I got home, then -

Jesus! Or whoever! Someone was shoving a hot blade between two bones, and twisting. I knew taking any kind of pain medication would be futile, though I did it anyway, and I was right. I had "done something to my hip", the hip that tended towards arthritis that usually didn't register more than a twinge or a low-grade ache.

So I sit here now. I just went on Facebook, damn it - one of the worst habits I formed this year, after swearing I wouldn't use it. It had something posted like 25 Questions You Should Ask Yourself At The End Of The Year (That Will Probably Make You Feel Really Lousy For Not Accomplishing Any Of Your Personal Goals).  I see I have not taken adequate care of my body, have in fact said screw it most of the time while I try to cope with other things.

Losses. Some gains. Each stressful in their own way. Having to cut loose from a  formerly-close friend whose communications had devolved into boredom and bile. Worse, her integrity had failed, and she was sneaking around planning to leave her husband while insisting it was her grim duty to stay with him until he dies (he has Parkinson's, and she makes him feel bad about spending time with a buddy because my friend does not like the buddy, and wants to separate the two of them for reasons of her own. This means he can't go sailing any more, one of his favorite activities.)

Though we used to say we were sisters in all but blood, I find, to my shock, that I just don't like her any more, that her empty distress calls and perfunctory phone calls to make up for the abyss of her silence ("and how is so-and-so, and how is so-and-so," once asking after my DOCTOR whom she knows nothing about) leave me drained and disappointed. Those so-called conversations were no more intimate than talking with a stranger at an airport. Except for her huge dumps of venom, the whole thing had gone dead for me.

My part, I think, was to let it go on too long. Which I did, still hopeful. Contrary to conventional non-wisdom, hope is NOT the best thing in many situations. I did however land a book contract for Harold Lloyd, amazing to me, but also full of anxiety because now I am hearing that it is almost impossible to get any attention for a book, particularly literary fiction. But Rich Correll called, he really did, after years of futile attempts to get hold of him. Somehow-or-other he got my samples of The Glass Character and seemed to like what he saw, or at least the idea of it. I made the mistake of sending him the whole manuscript, which must have been overwhelming. After the editing process, I realized it wasn't even the same book and that the post-edited version was 100 times better, but by then. . .

So I don't know what to do here. I never do. Phone him again? In the new year? Ever?  I have a tendency to wear out my welcome after two calls. People don't want to deal with me, I guess. I lost Kevin Brownlow that way, after sending him an impulsive, gleeful link to my blog post.

Bad idea. But no one told me.

I can't write about all the rest of my life because this is probably boring enough. Part of my dream came true, but the rest of it looms and creates anxiety, terrible anxiety. I may still lose this dream, it may just drop into the abyss like everything else I've done. I don't know what I expect to happen, or how to handle what MIGHT be tiny little specks of hope that someone will notice it beyond the Canadian literary wilderness.

So I sit here wondering where I got wrenched, how, and why it's so hard for me to bend and straighten and walk. There will be no running around in the snow after the concert today, not for me anyway, no heavy lifting. What I've been given in my life has rained down from the heavens (supposedly, though maybe I did have something to do with raising kids who turned out to be wonderful parents). What I want: I feel like I have these pliers in my hands and am trying to pull out the back tooth of a hippopotamus.

It's not good to be ambitious, unless you are hard enough, unless you have the right stuff, and it looks like I don't. I always hang on too long. But if I let go, would there not be an even more formidable abyss below me? Would I ever stop falling?

These are the festive thoughts I have, at this festive time of year.

Bad, bad, BAD Santas: watch out, boys and girls!

I promise to post only the BEST of the horrible Santa pictures we see all over the internet this season. Or the worst. Whatever.

Death rays appear to come from this man's eyes. And what of the girl on the pony? Yes, she looks happy, but slightly glazed, as if her happiness is chemically induced.

Stoner Claus. 

One more weird thing, do you notice Santa's left and right hands seem to belong to two different people? He has the right hand of a six-year-old. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!

Is it mental illness, do you think, or does this photo hark back to the time when indigents were rounded up to play Santa for a buck a day and all they could drink?

Someone should explain to this man that the moustache goes BELOW the nose. Or perhaps this is just Santa's idea of a ski mask.

This is my personal favorite, because it makes no sense at all. We will reserve comment on Santa, his demented stare and yellowing, moldy beard, but what in hell is that thing with the pink bowtie? The evil entity on the right is beyond describing. Could it be an Easter Bunny left over from the Third Reich? The Nazis celebrated Christmas too, didn't they? Are these from Himmler's family snapshots?

Feel like I'm made out of gingerbread

So this was the idea, the thing I was hoping to do: a little knitting project, short but sweet, cute enough to hang on the mantlepiece or pop in a stocking.

All I wanted was a pattern. A pattern like all the other ones I've snarfed up on the internet for free.

I saw one I liked. This one. A cute little knit-man sitting in clover. The site, called Big Fat Crafty Mama or something like that, teasingly described how wonderful it was to knit Mr. Ginger, then said nothing about the pattern. Relentlessly, I hunted on.

This time of year can be horribly depressing, and this is why. This is a "craft", a "FREE" craft you can Do Yourself, but who would want to? Hanging this on your tree might scare away crows.

This is a vintage pattern, only useful as a curiosity, but what's this? Someone actually posted the above graph or chart or whatever-it-is, handwritten in pencil.  Just tell me how many rows to knit!

At some point, it just gets bizarre. I am NOT going to knit this. It's supposed to be a "hot water bottle cover", when hot water bottles haven't been seen for 97 years. My grandmother used one, and the plug would always come out and flood her bed. Personally, I think this is just an obese gingerbread man, having eaten too many cookies.

Perhaps this one is meant to be cute, but it isn't. Someone knitted a rectangle, then sewed in some lines for arms and legs, along with what looks to be leg-irons. This little man is entering the oven, and there isn't a thing he can do about it.

If you're going to make a costume as silly as a gingerbread man, why not make it a GOOD gingerbread man, a cute one like the little guy sitting in clover? Though the brown oven mitts are a nice touch.

Having given up on knitting, I found myself in the netherworld of gingerbreadism: screaming victims, ginger-people with obvious and quite huge genitalia. A gingerbread bacchanalle of sorts. Bring on the cocoa.

Oops, this guy's the wrong color, and I'm not sure you can eat him, but he'll work a powerful mojo on your enemies. I suspect the Haitians use the same pattern.

Guess somebody left him in a little too long.

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