It's a Wonderful Life: chicken on a spit!

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 -

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Chapters/Indigo

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My garden's full of snails!

My Garden by T. E. Brown

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Fern'd grot --

The veriest school

Of peace; and yet the fool

Contends that God is not --

Not God! in Gardens! when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I have a sign;

'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

My Garden by J. A. Lindon

A garden is a lovesome thing? What rot!

Weed plot,

Scum pool,

Old pot,

Snail-shiny stool

In pieces; yet the fool

Contends that snails are not -

Not snails!  in gardens!  when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I see their trails!

'Tis very sure my garden’s full of snails!

Julia Roberts eats like a giraffe

I'm just sayin'.

Mad Squirrels: the true meaning of Christmas

This time of year, God. If I'm not all sparkly and euphoric, I'm rehashing, in detail, every embarrassing thing I've ever said or done, every moment of ignorance or awkwardness, every hurt, every humiliation, or else just contemplating the uselessness of life in general. Great stuff. Very festive.

So I decided to make some Blingees.

Harold blings up surprisingly well, especially if you leave the black-and-white foreground alone and concentrate on background. Stille nacht, heilige nacht.

I like the idea of a Christmas squirrel because squirrels already look so stunned. When they're not frozen to the bark of a tree, eyes staring in bulging unintelligence, they're flapping their fat little tails wildly up and down for no good reason, or doing that blood-curdling "chattering" which is more like a nasty shriek of rage. A good subject for a Christmas Blingee.

He doesn't stand a squirrel's chance in hell.

I already like this picture well enough without blinging it up. This time of year, I miss cats around the house, especially OUR cat, who was around the house for 17 years. Funny how things turn backwards. They shouldn't, but they do. The savage way he bites the string of beads, the frightening unsheathed claws. . . festive.

I wish I could enlarge this, originally a Facebook cover, one of five thousand or so I've made in a pathetic attempt to get someone to pay attention to my third failed novel. Noel!

(P. S. A friend pointed out to me how this resembles the gifs I made of They Saved Hitler's Brain. Only it's a little more. . . festive.)

The only gifts that I could want are you

The real tragedy of the Sydney Siege

Seriously. I am not making this up. This is the decline and fall of civilization as we know it.

Sydney siege casts pall over Christmas shopping

December 15, 2014 - 4:33PM

Sue Mitchell and Carolyn Cummins

Police have sealed off part of the Sydney CBD. Photo: Getty Images

Martin Place siege: Live updates
Dollar brushes fresh lows as Sydney siege unfolds
Business disruption as thousands of office workers evacuated or locked down

Retailers fear the siege in Sydney could further dampen already subdued consumer sentiment in the countdown to Christmas.

"I don't want to be prophet of doom and gloom but you do worry about how this could affect spending," Australian Retailers Association chief executive Russell Zimmerman said.

While major retailers such as Myer and Woolworths said their stores in Sydney's CBD were trading as normal, David Jones closed the doors of its flagship Elizabeth Street store - which is less than two blocks from the besieged Lindt cafe - and customers and staff left the building.

Many specialty retailers in the area around Martin Place were also forced to close and consumers have been prevented from accessing the centre of the city.

"For Sydney city retailers it's going to be a huge drain on cash flow and a huge issue for them," Mr Zimmerman said.

"In the short term people will question whether they go into the city to do their shopping," he said.

"You could also get people questioning whether to shop where there are major crowds. They're going to miss out on a lot of business - this is the time you want people to get out and spend money." (Italics mine.)

The siege is likely to further dampen consumer sentiment, which has fallen this month to the lowest level in more than three years.

Many retailers are already under pressure and have been forced to step up the frequency and depth of discounting.

The Australian National Retailers had forecast that consumers would spend a record $8.3 billion nationally this week but those forecasts could now be in doubt.

"One would hope consumers would look at this and say it's a once only event and its not going to happen again," Mr Zimmerman said. (Oh?)

"I suspect that retailers will need to reassess various aspects of their business moving forward, such as security," he said. (But if it ain't going to move merchandise, forget about it. Hostage-taking happens.)

About 100 stores in Westfield Sydney in Pitt Street Mall were closed, and other main shopping centres in the CBD were empty of people.

Priceline Pharmacy chief executive Stephen Roche said its stores in Westfield Sydney and Pitt Street were closed to allow staff to leave the city.

The seige in the Lindt Chocolat Cafe comes with only a week to go before Christmas, which is the time when retailers make a significant amount of their yearly turnover. (Do you seriously think the hostage-takers are too stupid to know about this?)

Westfield said tenants in its Pitt Street shopping centre were given the option to close and send staff home.

A store operator in the shopping centre confirmed most of the shops had closed, while Martin Place jewellers Tiffany & Co and Fairfax & Roberts also shut and sent staff home.

Global cosmetics chain Sephora was one of the retailers to close for safety reasons. Its first Australian store in Pitt Street opened less than two weeks ago.

Stockland and AMP Capital also told retailers in the city malls and arcades they could close for the day.

"Our advice to all centre managers remains the same: to maintain high awareness and vigilance," a Stockland spokesman said.

With the recent bad weather in Sydney and job-security concerns, retailers had already been feeling the pressure of weak consumer sentiment.

Many shops have been quietly discounting before the traditional post-Christmas sales officially start to entice shoppers.

The retailers say they had been predicting a busy season, but the poor weather along the eastern seaboard had hit them, and they expect the latest round of discounting to continue well into the new year.

It's great to know that at this festive time of year, the malignant spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well. After all, commerce should always trump safety, shouldn't it? It won't happen again, will it? Well, maybe not here, and maybe not now. So get out there and go shopping, you ignorant people! Don't ruin our holiday profit margin with your ridiculous concerns about survival. Surely buying perfume and ties and chocolate is more important than making sure your kids are OK. Or at least, it should be. Don't you know "values" refers to sale prices and not some lame attempt at a moral compass?

I'd say this would all come home to haunt them, but it probably won't. Increasingly, I see a numbing of compassion and concern in the human race that is the real villain in a dehumanized, hostage-oriented world. This is the thing that will finish us, and a lot sooner than we realize. 

I didn't mean it! I didn't!

I was only trying to find some documentary footage of my favorite poet of all time (smirk). Honest! And I couldn't find ANYTHING except still pictures, all black-and-white, with the overblown oboe of his windy recitations playing in the background. Makes me feel he lived in a black-and-white world, perhaps blowing invisibly from pub to pub as his poems boomed over the loudspeaker at the Wretch and Parrot.

Then I found this, and my God. I don't know who does these things, but they are both a fascination and a punishment. It's not highway robbery if I steal six seconds of it, is it? A rooking girl who stole me for her side.

Let this be my Christmas card

For all you've done for me.

Springtime for Uno Who

What's lower than zero? Worst movies ever made

And here it is: Rotten Tomatoes' list of movies with a zero rating. I've seen some of these, and while many are just plain bad, some (Leprechaun 4: In Space; Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer) are of the "so bad they're good" variety. Because I am sure you will want to know more about these movies, each title links to a Wikipedia entry. Did you think I went to a lot of trouble? I did. Nothing is too good for you, my darling readers: I go to the grocery store for you; I get up in the morning for you; most especially, I go on Facebook and tell the world how fabulous I am, JUST FOR YOU. You are almost as good as real people. In many ways, you are superior, because I don't have to look at your vapid face all the time and get tired of it.

I don't know how many of these there are, because I haven't counted. I got too tired out making gifs of They Saved Hitler's Brain, something I've been wanting to do for over 40 years. Can't get through them all? Then don't.

Name	Year	# Reviews	Ref
A Farewell to Arms	1957	10	[5]
They Saved Hitler's Brain	1963	5	[6]
Manos: The Hands of Fate	1966	11	[7]
Gator	1976	5	[8]
Empire of the Ants	1977	16	[9]
The Bad News Bears Go to Japan	1978	15	[10]
The Villain	1979	7	[11]
Heartbeeps	1981	5	[12]
Megaforce	1982	12	[13]
Zapped!	1982	13	[14]
Staying Alive	1983	24	[15]
The Lonely Lady	1983	10	[16]
Amityville 3-D	1983	17	[17]
That Was Then... This Is Now	1985	5	[18]
Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer	1985	6	[19]
American Ninja	1985	5	[20]
8 Million Ways to Die	1986	7	[21]
Rad	1986	5	[22]
Deadly Friend	1986	7	[23]
Firewalker	1986	10	[24]
King Kong Lives	1986	9	[25]
Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol	1987	18	[26]
House II: The Second Story	1987	9	[27]
Jaws: The Revenge	1987	31	[28]
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie	1987	11	[29]
Return of the Living Dead Part II	1988	15	[30]
Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach	1988	6	[31]
Johnny Be Good	1988	11	[32]
Mac and Me	1988	23	[33]
The Toxic Avenger Part II	1989	8	[34]
Police Academy 6: City Under Siege	1989	7	[35]
The Horror Show	1989	7	[36]
Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland	1989	6	[37]
Heart Condition	1990	7	[38]
Loose Cannons	1990	17	[39]
Madhouse	1990	5	[40]
The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter	1990	6	[41]
Highlander 2: The Quickening	1991	23	[42]
Return to the Blue Lagoon	1991	30	[43]
All I Want for Christmas	1991	13	[44]
Once Upon a Crime	1992	6	[45]
Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil	1992	6	[46]
Deadfall	1993	5	[47]
Look Who's Talking Now!	1993	23	[48]
Benefit of the Doubt	1993	5	[49]
Car 54, Where Are You?	1994	14	[50]
Leprechaun 2	1994	15	[51]
It's Pat: The Movie	1994	11	[52]
Wagons East!	1994	29	[53]
Jury Duty	1995	12	[54]
Leprechaun 3	1995	5	[55]
A Pyromaniac's Love Story	1995	10	[56]
National Lampoon's Senior Trip	1995	7	[57]
The Big Green	1995	5	[58]
Big Bully	1996	8	[59]
Ed	1996	16	[60]
Plump Fiction	1996	5	[61]
Leprechaun 4: In Space	1997	6	[62]
Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas	1997	7	[63]
Lulu on the Bridge	1998	8	[64]
Slappy & the Stinkers	1998	5	[65]
Simon Sez	1999	19	[66]
Shark Attack	1999	5	[67]
The Suburbans	1999	10	[68]
Foolish	1999	16	[69]
3 Strikes	2000	29	[70]
Heavy Metal 2000	2000	9	[71]
De Sade	2001	6	[72]
Teddy Bears' Picnic	2002	19	[73]
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever	2002	115	[74]
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True	2002	8	[75]
Merci Docteur Rey	2002	22	[76]
Pinocchio	2002	55	[77]
K-9: P.I.	2002	6	[78]
Killing Me Softly	2003	22	[79]
The Singing Forest	2003	9	[80]
Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2	2004	45	[81]
Sex Lives of the Potato Men	2004	13	[82]
Mulan II	2004	5	[83]
Constellation	2005	20	[84]
The Truth About Love	2005	11	[85]
Kronk's New Groove	2005	6	[86]
I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer	2006	6	[87]
Karla	2006	12	[88]
The Fox and the Hound 2	2006	8	[89]
The All Together	2007	10	[90]
Redline	2007	27	[91]
Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour	2007	12	[92]
Scar	2007	18	[93]
One Missed Call	2008	79	[94]
House	2008	12	[95]
Cover	2008	12	[96]
Long Weekend	2008	5	[97]
Strange Wilderness	2008	44	[98]
Sagan	2008	11	[99]
A Beautiful Life	2008	12	[100]
Surfer, Dude	2008	18	[101]
Echelon Conspiracy	2009	12	[102]
Super Capers	2009	17	[103]
City Rats	2009	10	[104]
S. Darko	2009	7	[105]
Home	2009	5	[106]
Homecoming	2009	24	[107]
Transylmania	2009	19	[108]
Stolen	2009	20	[109]
Shank	2010	10	[110]
Fred: The Movie	2010	13	[111]
Pimp	2010	13	[112]
Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back	2010	8	[113]
Kalamity	2010	17	[114]
Father of Invention	2010	15	[115]
The Last Seven	2010	8	[116]
The Nutcracker in 3D	2010	30	[117]
Raajneeti	2010	5	[118]
An Invisible Sign	2011	15	[119]
A Heartbeat Away	2011	13	[120]
The Abduction of Zack Butterfield	2011	7	[121]
Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star	2011	35	[122][123]
The Undefeated	2011	15	[124]
Mercenaries	2011	7	[125]
Playback	2012	5	[126]
The Perfect Age of Rock 'n' Roll	2011	14	[127]
World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2	2011	7	[128]
Swinging with the Finkels	2011	19	[129]
Run for Your Wife	2012	15	[130]
That's What She Said	2012	11	[131]
Confession of a Child of the Century	2012	11	[132]
Keith Lemon: The Film	2012	12	[133]
Elfie Hopkins	2012	15	[134]
Generation Um...	2012	15	[135]
A Thousand Words	2012	54	[136]
Last Ounce of Courage	2012	15	[137]
Four Lovers	2012	10	[138]
General Education	2012	14	[139]
Dark Tide	2012	19	[140]
Assassin's Bullet	2012	14	[141]
For the Love of Money	2012	7	[142]
Sir Billi	2012	5	[143]
InAPPropriate Comedy	2013	5	[144]
The Starving Games	2013	10	[145]
Stranded	2013	15	[146]
American Milkshake	2013	5	[147]
Antisocial	2013	6	[148]
Mission Park	2013	5	[149]
Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn	2013	6	[150]
I Spit on Your Grave 2	2013	7	[151]
10 Rules for Sleeping Around	2014	7	[152]
War of the Worlds: Goliath	2014	5	[153]
Best Night Ever	2014	13	[154]
Persecuted	2014	13	[155]
Pudsey the Dog: The Movie	2014	12	[156]
Behaving Badly	2014	12	[157]
Cam2Cam	2014	5	[158]
I Am Happiness on Earth	2014	5	[159]
Atlas Shrugged: Part III	2014	10	[160]
But Always	2014	6	[161]
Saving Christmas	2014	12	[162]