That picture above is my (first) plate of food from Thanksgiving dinner at my folks' house. Jason, Amy and the kids were visiting her parents and family in Phoenix. Back here we had Karebear at the forefront making an amazing dinner. Jamie made the stuffing (and it was great). The Admiral poured wine. My Unky B moved here this year was in attendance, as was Cousin Sue. And Jamie's Dad, DocDik, rode up with us. Late, my folks' friend, Janie, arrived and joined us.
It was lovely. Had some nice pumpkin pie, too.
The Phoenix voyagers returned before the weekend, so we did all manage to catch dinner out (where I ate so much cheese, I needed to be rolled home).
Well, Thanksgiving is over and we're headed toward Christmas and New Year.
This weekend, Jamie and I managed to decorate the inside and outside of League HQ. It was a large task, but we'd started by setting up one of our two trees last weekend, and it took a surprising amount of pressure off this weekend.
Starting last year, we quit wrapping the upstairs pillars as we had a friendly owl living in the balcony. But the oak tree in front of our house more or less obscures the lights up there, anyway. So, now you just get the four columns of peppermint wrap and the candy lights in the tree. You're welcome.
Meanwhile, the living room isn't much different from prior years.
We made it. The Holiday season starts in earnest. My mom is making a dinner in North Austin, and we'll be there this evening. Rumor has it she got three kinds of pie, which I am excited about, but for me it's about turkey, Jamie's stuffing (she's been working on it for several days), potatoes and whatever greens are on the table.
I love me a Thanksgiving dinner.
Thankful for so much this year.
As always, Jamie is first up. Especially as she's taken care of me for *months* as I have this busted foot, so I can't drive, and for a while couldn't cook or clean. She's done *everything*. So, thanks, Jamie! But she's also just Jamie, and that ain't bad. So thankful for every day before and every day to come.
Thankful for a new gig I kind of love.
Thankful for my pals near and far. Some of you I know mostly online, and some I barely text with but we get to hang out in person. But a guy needs to count himself rich with how many people he can call a buddy.
Thankful for parents and family! We are a small family, but we are mighty. And the niece and nephew are growing up strong and smart.
I've got my health, if you don't count this foot. Jamie's had a good year, and our parents are doing well.
This year we also adopted Emmylou, and she's been a delight every day. Good dog.
just look at that cutie-patootie
And, if I may, I'm thankful for a lot of silly things, too. Hey, I got two superhero movies I'd always dreamed of this year. Not grateful for my bad financial management when it came to Superman merchandise, but here we are.
And if you you read to the end here, thanks!
Now get out there and eat your favorite foods and get a slice of pecan pie. (And I say it "peh-cahn").
Maybe the ornament is a little weird, but so is Hallmark. And as long as they make ornaments for pretty much any other media franchise under the sun, it makes sense that eventually they'd want to float a trial balloon of what they have to offer from their own networks. And what Hallmark has leaned into of late is "Hallmark Stars" - of which Chabert is a bit singular.
And so it seems, rather than go all in on, say, the entire cast of Three Wisest Men, they've decided to go with one of their biggest stars who has more than a decade with the channel.
the official White House 2024 ornament, amongst some family ornaments
Our mode the past decade or so has been to throw as much Christmas as we can at the wall so when something doesn't pan out or something bad happens, at least *something* Christmassy occurred.
This year we got up decorations inside and outside the house early.
I love Thanksgiving. It's about food and hanging out. Ideal. It's also a nice break between the shenanigans of Halloween and the all-consuming maelstrom that is Christmas.
May you find yourself with some quality plans. Watch the parade! Watch a dog show! Put on some football!
We're not hosting this year - that honor lies with KareBear and The Admiral. Mom is prepping a bird, she'll have potatoes and green beans, and I'll be a happy boy. Jamie is pitching in. She started prep a few days ago, staling bread for stuffing. And Wednesday, she both prepped the stuffing (making the house smell amazing with butter and onion). She also cooked a turkey breast to ensure we'd have turkey for sandwiches if the turkey was fully consumed at my folks' house.
No - We will not have too much turkey. I love turkey. I understand people don't, and that's fine as it means: more turkey for me. The likelihood I'll just slowly eat a couple of turkeys given the chance is greater than zero. As is the possibility I'll make like a 1930's cartoon and just inhale a turkey, leaving a pile of bones.
I wish those of you who can be with family the absolute best. It could be a colorful year. Take care of yourself. But it may go really well. Here's hoping.
Our plans currently include dinner with my folks and watching football both Friday with some Nebraska fans, and Saturday - as we see if UT can beat A&M in the their first match-up in some time.
And, of course, we'll be putting up our share of Christmas decor, inside and outside the house.
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. It's a Federal holiday established for Americans to take a moment with family and friends and consider what good fortunes they've had over the year. Or maybe count blessings in a year that wasn't so great.
As kids we get a "teach the legend" version of Thanksgiving and believe that we're celebrating a feast partaken of by the weird-o's who were so miffed they couldn't comfortably be uptight enough in 17th Century Europe, and so essentially moved to an equivalent of what would be a moon colony for us, just so they could burn women as witches in peace. They happened to have their asses saved by some locals, and giving Thanks seemed like a keen idea.
That comes loaded with the egregious history of how Europeans would then colonize and wage 300 years of war on the people already living here. So, understandably, if that was what we were celebrating, I get how one would pause to reflect and wonder how this led to finishing dinner quickly to watch The Dallas Cowboys and/ or seeing how much wine is in the remaining bottles and keeping a slow burn til it's all over.
But that is not what we're celebrating. This isn't Christmas which has deep roots in Christian history, or Hannukah which refers to a specific moment in Jewish history. I don't think most Americans really think of Thanksgiving as a specific day to sit down in honor of Pilgrims and Native Americans. That would be particularly weird.
From the earliest days of the U.S., Thanksgiving was a tradition in regions, but not universally celebrated. While some Presidents observed the holiday, as early as Jefferson, the holiday was eschewed as religious and therefore not a National holiday.
Normally I don't post cheesecake comic art, because I find it distasteful and believe it just reinforces some negative stereotypes about comics. But... Ah, heck. Why Not?
Well, trying to keep our levels of Christmas Cheer set to "Jingle-riffic", Jamie and I headed to The Trail of Lights at Austin's Zilker Park.
The Trail of Lights faced a lot of challenges this year. In the spring, the city spent a truckload of money laying copper wire to enable better power for the mile long trail of lights. In the Summer, the City figured out somebody had come along and STOLEN all of the copper, likely for a tidy profit.
Then, ACL Fest was a bit rough on the lawn and the city is having to replant that grass, etc...
The Zilker Tree is a longstanding tradition. Its actually several strands of lights attached to a Moon Tower, and while quite lovely from far away, the longstanding tradition is to get underneath the tree and spin until you barf. Good times.
I hadn't been to the Tree or the Trail of Lights in many, many years. Due to the challenges, the trail was a lot shorter this year, and on the other side of the park from the last time I was there. Also, they had like, five funnel cake stands.
Anyhow, we had a good time. And that's all you get for a post tonight.
My folks were not unwise. I recall many-a-conversation when they would ask "are you sure this is what you want?"
1 and 2) Dingbot and Verbot
You may remember the line of Robot toys from Tomy that hit stores in the mid-80's.
The four main toys were Dingbot, Verbot, OmniBot and OmniBot 2000.
Based on the commercials, I had high hopes for what these robots would do. I had visions of a robot buddy, a sort of Robot Friday that was going to be a bit of robot butler, side-kick and confidante. Seriously, look at this thing:
My folks, privy to my high-minded visions of how I believed the robots would work, talked me down to the lowest tier robot, DingBot. DingBot had no programmable features, but it sounded okay.
Here's a video of DingBot in action.
As you can imagine, the whole Butler/ Buddy thing didn't work out quite as I'd envisioned. It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy turning that thing on and watching it whack into walls, but I knew I'd just picked the wrong robot. My NEXT attempt would go better.
After all, the commercial for Verbot made it clear THIS was a robot that was going to listen to me:
Verbot never really worked correctly from Day 1. And, hey, funny thing. Every time you turned Verbot off and back on again, you had to reprogram the @#$%ing thing. Also, it didn't seem to particularly like my voice, so I spent a lot of time cursing at Verbot.
By 8th grade, I remember getting curious about what was actually inside Verbot, and taking him apart and putting him back together, at which point, ol' Verbot quit working at all. Wouldn't even turn on.
3) In 4th Grade, I got a Cabbage Patch Kid.
His name is Rhett Delbert, and I have no idea if he's in a box somewhere in my parent's house, or if he's been gifted via Salvation Army to some much-more worthy kid.
The Cabbage Patch craze sort of peaked when I was in 3rd grade, and in that way kids and readers of "Us" magazine do, I had to have an object because everyone else had that object. It was almost a check mark at the time more than any desire to have one. And, as a family we were often late to the party on this hip stuff, we sort of waited until the dust and tramplings cleared until I was a little too old for... dolls.
My grandparents had apparently secured the doll, and my folks made sure I knew they'd put themselves out to get this thing (and keep in mind, this is when people were literally getting killed wrestling for these dolls). So I knew I had to be extra appreciative.
So, yeah, there are some goofy pictures of me in these awful tan pajamas on Christmas,morning circa 1984 with this doll. The pictures themselves are doubly creepy to me because (a) I was really a big kid for my age. I was frequently mistaken for someone 2-3 years older than my age (these days, everyone assumes I'm in my 40's). So it looks like this pudgy 7th grader who is way, way too happy to have just received a doll. (b) I also was just getting to the point where I didn't really play with toys, per se, anymore. And I think I knew it when I opened that package, but the look of fulfilled avarice on that kid's face... anyway. I sort of hate that kid.
But I'd asked for this thing for two years, my grandparents had bought it, and I felt that I sort of needed to get my money out of the thing.
Nothing about the awkwardness of the situation was helped by having an older brother who made sure to point out I had a doll, or by the fact that a new kid who'd moved to town who I played with was really into his Cabbage Patch Kid. Which, in the end, was sort of helpful.
When I look at the thing, I remember with stunning clarity having the realization by sort of watching my friend that I really, really was past this particular part of my childhood. Because my folks have that "we built all this from nothing" work ethic, giving gifts was happily done, but we understood that we weren't one of the families that was getting new bikes every Christmas. Even then, I couldn't tell anyone that I had no idea what to do with a Cabbage Patch Kid once I had it. And I sure as @#$ couldn't ever let Jason know I, too, in my more lucid moments, thought this was a pretty dumb thing for a ten year old kid who didn't want to get his ass kicked to have in his possession.
The odd thing is, I am sure I found some way to play with that damn doll, but I have no idea what I did with it.
And so, after a while, poor 'ol Rhett Delbert, who never did nothing to nobody, got stuck in the back of my closet, right along with a whole lot of embarrassment.
#4) Laser Tag
It did not occur to me until AFTER Christmas morning that it was a very good thing that my friends had also asked for a system that you need at least two people to play. Sure, there were games that you could play by yourself, but they all were about as interesting as seeing if you could hit a spot on the wall with a flashlight.
Once again, the commercials looked totally awesome:
I had never been to "Photon" in Dallas, but I'd heard about how cool it was. That same Christmas that we all got Laser Tag, the Photon franchise released their own home-game version of their equipment which had the added bonus of noting that the only target on a person is rarely a red disc about the size of a coaster, and because it came witha helmet that registered shots from any direction, it also suggested (unlike Lazer Tag) that one could be shot from any direction.
Because we all had the same Lazer Tag equipment, in theory it was a level playing field. However, being 12 or so, the first thing we all set out to do was cheat, either by turning off our receptors immediately after the game started, or covering them or by changing the width of our beams (yeah, the guns were oddly sophisticated).
In the end, gameplay turned into all of us eying one another with suspicion and nobody trusting one another enough to NOT cheat the minute they were out of site.
In addition, to make Laser Tag half as cool as Photon, you had to start buying the multitude of accessories, and if everyone didn't have the same accessories, it immediately changed the playing field. And, while our folks could afford the starter kit, nobody's folks were going to shell out an extra lump of cash for the helmet, rifle, etc...
Photon, by the way, just looked cool.
Looked cool, that is, unless you were a kid in a helmet designed for adults. When all the rest of us got Laser Tag, this kid Dave got Photon, and he looked sort of like a crazy person with all the wires and gear hanging off of him. Especially when he was playing with his 7 year old sister.
That not too specific language in the Photon commercial was their way of saying "dummy, if you buy Lazer Tag, you have to buy all the peripheral crap, and none of it is synched like our system". Nonetheless, both more or less failed.
But we atill have a place called "Blazer Tag" very near Jamie's dialysis clinic that I always threaten to take her to.
yes, it was usually used in scenes of role-played cowardice as I evacuated Rebel bases, but it was fun.
Also fun?
My blue Team Murray BMX bike I got in, I think, 2nd grade.
I was officially too old for Teddy Ruxpin when the talking bear debuted, but that didn't mean I didn't want to see how one worked. I was sad to see that Teddy Ruxpin's moving animatronic parts took the cues from electronic tones on the audio tapes. However, a more cheaply made competitor, the Cricket doll, simply responded to whatever sounds were on the tape. Once my friend Todd and I discovered this, we spent hours finding ways to make Cricket insist to Todd's sister that she was possessed by Satan, and that one dark night, she would choke the life out of her and turn her into a doll.
Pretty much exactly what one sees at League HQ come Christmas time.
Leaguers may not know, but I once had an affinity for the vocal stylings of Mr. Bing Crosby. It has greatly informed my approach to singing Christmas Carols. Except... I can't sing. So... it gets interesting.
This clip is from "Holiday Inn", which will run on cable over the Holidays. There are some seriously dodgy moments in the movie when it comes to race-relations of the time, and some versions cut out a particularly questionable sequence (the film loses nothing, and its about as offensive of a scene as you're likely to find).
Anyhow, Crosby's cover of "White Christmas" is one of the best selling records of all time, and, in fact, spawned a movie entitled "White Christmas", also starring Crosby. Both are a good way to kill an hour or so over the Holidays.
Crosby was considered a bit of a heart-throb in his day, and had a mind-blowingly long career, spanning around 5 full decades, dominating the charts for much of the pre-Rock-n'Roll era. He was, in fact, a hero of Sinatra's before Sinatra was Sinatra.
Anyhow, here's Bing and Bowie.
Throw in David Byrne, and this video would literally melt my brain.
So, I'm kind of counting on the fact that my folks never watch the videos I put on here to work in my favor, so... seriously, those of a sensitive nature. Don't click here.
I also don't know how many of you watch The Venture Bros. on Cartoon Network, but its become one of my favorite shows. Just... don't expect me to explain Dr. Girlfriend, or the fact that her voice doesn't phase me anymore at all.
But a few years back, it seems they produced a Christmas Special. I'd never heard of it until today, when The Dug recalled seeing it as it features... The Krampus!
So, if you want to see the first animated appearance of the Krampus in the US that I'm aware of, click here. Just be aware that... Venture Bros. is aimed at non-emotionally-mature adults.
A week ago, co-worker Dan Z. started telling me all about Krampus, and we all had a good laugh about terrorizing his children. I actually wrote my Krampus post while watching Glee on my DVR, starting around 9:30. So... yeah.
Now Colbert, in my final two weeks here at The League, is making me look like I'm copying stuff off TV and passing it off as my own.
Anyway, seems last night around 10:30 central time, Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Report aired this (skip to 2:34):
