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your hairy bumble hide!

I am home alone. Last time I was home alone of an evenin’, this happened. Thank God I do not have any of this. There’d be trouble.

So what am I doing tonight? Well, peeps, I am watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And I AM NOT ASHAMED!! I love that little freak. You put the names “Rankin-Bass” on a show and I am there.

A few observations while I watch, if I may. Okay, so I’m basically live-blogging Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. So … I should not be left alone. Whatevs.

Anyway …

— I kinda have a crush on that Burl Ives glide-y snowman. Not really an observation. More of a confession. It’s the gliding, really, just the gliding. Like the Norelco razor Santa, the most awesome Santa ever!

— I love it that when Hermie, the elf-who-would-be-a-dentist, is asked what is wrong with him, he glumly admits, “Not very happy in my work, I guess.”

— Head Elf is clearly a rage-aholic. All his lines ARE SAID LIKE THIS!! WITH CAPITAL LETTERS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!! You know, “WHY WEREN’T YOU AT ELF PRACTICE???” and nosy crap like that. Listen, Head Elf Dude, you are basically running a toymaking sweatshop here where tiny little people are forced to make crappy handpainted wooden toys 23 hours a day. Toys that just end up on AN ISLAND in the frozen Arctic whining about what pieces of crap they are. They don’t want to exist and yet you force people to bring them into existence. So what these tiny people do on their time away from making suicidal toys is their own damn business!!

— Donner, Rudolph’s dad, is an abusive ass. When he puts that black mud nose — or whatever — on Rudolph to cover up his deformity and Rudolph can’t breathe and snuffs to him, “It’s not very comfortable,” Donner barks (barks?) back, “There are more important things than comfort. Like SELF-RESPECT! Santa can’t object to you now!”

— Clarice, Rudoph’s would-be lover, wears a Minnie Mouse bow on her head in the middle of the frozen tundra. I have never understood that.

— Wow. Santa’s an ass, too! Rudolph’s real nose was just uncovered and Santa said, “Donner, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!!”

— I love how all the reindeer have little skinny legs and these giant clonky hooves. Those things are like manhole covers. THAT’S the real deformity here, critters, and you ALL have ’em!!

— Clarice comforts Rudolph with “There’s always tomorrow for dreams to come true.” Kinda the reindeer version of my personal favorite: “The sun’ll come out …. tomorrrrrow!!”

— The monstrous swoop in Hermie’s hair is one of my favorite things in the whole show. That, and his lisp. Oh, and BTW, Hermie: YOU’RE GAAAAAAY!!

— I am still kinda scared of The Abominable Snowman. And he looks exactly like a particularly annoying kid I know.

— Why does Burl Ives Snowman hold up an umbrella to protect himself from Abominable? Do those things have previously undisclosed powers? Dude, it’s a stick with a circle of fabric on the end against a huge, man-eating Yeti. Look! He is taller than those giant cardboard mountains over there! What is with the umbrella? Oh, I know what, Burl Ives Snowman: YOU’RE GAAAAAAY!!

— Burl Ives Snowman croons that detestable ditty, “Silver and Gold,” whilst accompanying himself on a BANJO. As the crooning continues, little woodland creatures randomly munch on golden nuggets. “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” starring …. Mister Squirrel! Weird. I did not know that song was about ingesting golden nuggets.

— Hey, Yukon Cornelius: If Bumble’s one weakness is that they sink, how come the Bumble sinks and then pops right up to wreak more havoc and eventually have his teeth pulled? Why is he still alive after sinking? I mean, that didn’t happen on the Titanic.

— Look, “Charlie-in-the-Box,” don’t be such a blubbering baby. “My name is allll wrong! No child wants to play with a Charlie-in-the-Box!” Shut up. SHUT UP! Go down to your local courthouse and change your damn name to JACK! Lord. I hate that victim mentality.

— The whole Island of Misfit Toys is really just the Island of Useless Enablers. It totally pisses me off. That freaky Winged Lion King just allows all those toys to lounge around and whine and whine and sing horrible dirges to unsuspecting strangers. “Can you IMAGINE being an ELEPHANT with POLKA DOTS??” Yes. Yes, I can. I think it would be neato and you need to embrace that Jesus loves the little children AND the polka-dotted elephants. Personally, I don’t think ANY of you whiners is fit company for a kid. You’re all downers. It’s not that you’re “a choo-choo with square wheels” or “a bird that swims”; those things are not the problem here. It’s that you’re all hopeless, helpless narcissists who can only think about how life impacts you. And, also, WHY is it up to Rudolph to tell Santa about the toys, Lion King? Why aren’t you doing something for your whiny misfit subjects? What kind of king are you, anyway? Do you just have the title and no real power? I mean, what are you? British??

— Oh, Burl Ives Snowman just did the “Protect me, Mister Umbrella” move again. “Ooooh, telllll me when it’s over.”

— I like how Rudolph’s pupils roll around like marbles when the Bumble hits him.

— Hermie pretends to be pork in order to save Rudolph from the Bumble. Oink oink oink. Unfathomable.

— “God blast your hairy Bumble hide!” Hahahahahaha, Yukon.

— Yukon just cacked it. And all Burl Ives Snowman says is, “They are all sad at the loss of their friend.” Uhm, ingrates, he saved your lives. So lemme get this straight: You can sing no end of gloomy ditties regarding square wheels and stupid names, but there’s nothing — no feeling — about your friend tumbling to his death?? Where is the Anthem for Lost Cornelius or something? Sick. Selfish and SICK.

— Okay, well, Yukon just came back from the dead — with the Bumble in tow. “He’s a reformed Bumble. He wants a job. Looky what he can do!” Hm. Where have I heard something similar? “Look! It’s her poop! Look what she did! It was inside her and now it’s here!” Beware, Yukon Cornelius, the Timothy Treadwell delusion of perceived cuddliness.

— Santa. Okay, look. You obviously have a hormonal imbalance. You gained, like, 50 pounds overnight. Anyone who did that should go immediately to a doctor, not spend all night delivering choo choo trains with square wheels to all the kiddos of the world.

Finally, Rudolph is the hero and Santa exploits him.

Annnnnnnd ….. scene.

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the airplane

Oh, people!

PEOPLE!!

So I’m at The Beanhouse — of course, because everything unsettling happens there — minding my own damn barista business. Several feet in front of me, using three tables they have pushed together, huddles this group of flighty, twenty-something, first-year law students who have basically moved into The Beanhouse since September, taking advantage of the double-edged sword that is our free wireless. They hijack these tables for their impressive bank of computers, purchase the small cups of coffee they will nurse for the next 6 hours, and then, oh! then, they really get down to work. They blab and blab and blab. They lollygag. They slouch. They watch YouTube. They throw wads of paper at each other. They abandon their laptops for long stretches of time to go … lollygag elsewhere, I guess. But they always come back because, after all, they’re first-year law students and they haven’t gotten to the really important work yet.

Like making paper airplanes.

They’re all kind of annoying, but there’s something endearing and pathetic about their annoyingness. I guess I look on them with big sisterly affection. I mean, I’ve been there, in those shoes, not as a law student, but as a college student, where YOU are the whole world, where study groups are a social event having nothing whatsoever to do with studying, where your behavior is something to make a 9-year-old proud. I remember being that person. Sometimes, I am still that person, but with age comes, blessedly, a wee more self-control. These guys are all probably, oh, mid-twenties or so. Most of them are probably gay, just like 99% of Beanhouse customers and they just laze and flop around, acting like big, ol’ clumsy puppy dogs. Whatever the next impulse is, they do it.

Like making paper airplanes.

So, I’m minding my own damn barista business, as I said, when this little 3×5 card airplane comes swooping down in front of me. I glance up and one of the law students — let’s call him B — is looking at me. Grabbing the plane, I loft it back, laughing kinda absentmindedly, oh, hahaha. Silly boy. Reminds me of my grade school drama students. That kind of thing. Several seconds later, it swoops in front of me again. I’m busy at that moment, but I glance down and notice some very small writing on it this time. I take another quick glance, but with my nearsightedness, it takes several peeks for me to realize just what the darn thing says.

Here is the actual darn thing:

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Uhm, whhhhhat???

My face instantly gets hot.

And you knnnnow … one thing I really wish I could control about my body is that damn blushing reflex. It shows up and gives a girl grief at the worst possible moments. And, frankly, that’s pretty much its only purpose, as far as I can tell: To out you and make matters worse. It’s not like it protects you from predators or anything, like a turtle’s bony shell or a chameleon’s mutable skin. It just makes you hot and bothered and the butt of comments from various purveyors of the obvious like, “Wow. Your face is riilllllyrillllllly red.”

Really?? You mean, like, this feeling that, like, my entire head is a bonfire means my face is red, too??? I am gobsmacked.

I’m sorry. I utterly disagree with God on this whole red-faced deal.

Okay. Hm. Where was I? As an aside here, it might be useful to know I drank sangria last night and I’ve never had sangria before and now it seems that I probably shouldn’t drink sangria. Just generally. I’m very fuzzy today. To prove my point, when I first typed “fuzzy today,” it came out “guzzy todday.”

Anyhoo …

Back to the airplane and my raging facial conflagration.

My face is burning, we’ve established, and while I’m moving about, doing my job, I feel frozen by the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing. I am totally silent. I DO NOT KNOW what to say. He is slouched there with all his friends, head down now. My mind is swirling:

Is he kidding? He must be kidding. First of all, I’m married. He knows I’m married, right? I mean, MB is here all the time. He must have seen him. Right?? Second, dude, you’re like, 25. You seem like a kid to me. Do you think I’m in your age group? Okay. I look younger than my age, but not THAT young. Okay. This is now seriously weird because neither of us is saying ANYTHING. Gah. Third ….. dude, you actually decided — as an adult now — to throw a girl a paper airplane with “yes” and “no” boxes to ask her out on a date??? What — are you 12?? Fourth, did u really write “u”?? FIFTH, uhm, aren’t you GAAAAY??

I’m a robot now, doing my job. He’s a robot now, pretending to study. I am talking with people and have no idea what I’m saying. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, pointedly NOT looking at me. There’s now a strange electric current named “horrible” connecting us together.

Look. I am not in junior high. I am an adult. Mostly. I am NOT putting a checkmark in the “no” box and swooping a paper airplane back to where you’re sitting with your friends. If you’re actually serious, I think that would be humiliating to you. I mean, it’s not like you could shrug it off and pretend that that isn’t a paper airplane swooping towards you, right? A paper airplane heartlessly checkmarked “no.” Your friends have clearly witnessed the whole hideous hoopla and, I assume, would want to know what your little airplane said.

And if you’re joking, well, may I speak for all women here for a moment? Women generally don’t like it when you pretend to ask them out, when you do it as a joke. Women might actually think it’s a little hurtful to be the butt of some romantic dare or caper or hijinks. So, dude, if you aren’t serious and I swoop the “no” airplane back to you while you laugh and laugh because I took you seriously, that would be a little humiliating to me.

So I do …. nothing.

Moments later, a co-worker meanders by. Before I have a chance to stop him, he reads the airplane and chuckles, saying rather loudly, “So Tracey, are you gonna go out with B?”

Here comes that burning ….

Co-worker stares at me. B’s friends giggle. This is now officially the dumbest thing ever — and how, exactly, did I end up involved when I’d been carefully minding my own business? Knee-jerk, I decide B is kidding, and so I reply, rather loudly — but with a smile and my can’t-miss “good humor”:

“Oh ….. well, I’m sure that B knows I’m married.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him slouch even lower. Did his cheeks just redden? Ah, my can’t-miss good humor working its magic again. He lingers for another hour or so and then slinks out the other door. He usually says a big goodbye. He leaves without a word.

Ugh. Ugh. UGH.

Oh, dude! What am I supposed to do now??

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birth: the visited planet, part 1

Throughout this Christmas month, I’ll be posting an entire chapter — in parts — from Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew. I’m always so grateful for his books, for the different perspective he gives, for how he doesn’t try to gloss over the hard questions, for how he refuses to speak in the Christian platitudes I SO despise.

Anyway, I love this chapter from this book. I can’t remember when, exactly, I first read this book, but I remember how much this chapter enriched my perspective on Christmas. I read it every Christmas and I think it lifts out pretty well.

So here’s the first part:

Sorting through the stack of cards that arrived at our house last Christmas, I note that all kinds of symbols have edged their way into the celebration. Overwhelmingly, the landscape scenes render New England towns buried in snow, usually with the added touch of a horse-drawn sleigh. On other cards, animals frolic: not only reindeer, but also chipmunks, raccoons, cardinals, and cute gray mice. One card shows an African lion reclining with a foreleg draped affectionately around a lamb.

Angels have made a huge comeback in recent years, and Hallmark and American Greetings now feature them prominently, though as demure, cuddly-looking creatures, not as the type who would ever need to announce “Fear not!” The explicitly religious cards focus on the holy family and you can tell at a glance these folks are different. They seem unruffled and serene. Bright gold halos, like crowns from another world, hover just above their heads.

Inside, the cards stress sunny words like love, goodwill, cheer, happiness, and warmth. It is a fine thing, I suppose that we honor a sacred holiday with such homey sentiments. And yet, when I turn to the gospel accounts of Christmas, I hear a very different tone and sense mainly disruption at work.

I recall watching an episode of the TV show thirtysomething in which Hope, a Christian, argues with her Jewish husband, Michael, about the holidays. “Why do you even bother with Hanukkah?” she asks. “Do you really believe a handful of Jews held off a huge army by using a bunch of lamps that miraculously wouldn’t run out of oil?”

Michael exploded. “Oh, and Christmas makes more sense? Do you really believe an angel appeared to some teenage girl who then got pregnant without ever having had sex and traveled on horseback to Bethlehem where she spent the night in a barn and had a baby who turned out to be the Savior of the world?”

Frankly, Michael’s incredulity seems close to what I read in the Gospels. Mary and Joseph must face the shame and derision of family and neighbors, who react, well, much like Michael (“Do you really believe an angel
appeared ….”).

Even those who accept the supernatural version of events concede that big trouble will follow: and old uncle prays for “salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us”; Simeon darkly warns the virgin that “a sword will pierce your own soul too”; Mary’s hymn of thanksgiving mentions rulers overthrown and proud men scattered.

In contrast to what the cards would have us believe, Christmas did not sentimentally simplify life on planet earth. Perhaps this is what I sense when Christmas rolls around and I turn from the cheeriness of the cards to the starkness of the Gospels.

to be continued …

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after dinner

We went to dinner this evening for MB’s birthday. Lovely, upscale-ish place. Our server was a perfectly benign fellow. Solicitous — but not overly so. No problems whatsoever. We’re always careful to be good tippers, because, well, chintzy people suck. But after dinner, as we were walking to the car, I did some calculating in my head and said, “Hm. Guess we should have left another dollar for a full 20% tip.”

Without hesitation, came the reply, like talking about a kid in timeout:

“Ohh. He’ll think about what he did.”

I burst out laughing. The guy had done nothing wrong. Not one thing. I’m laughing right now, writing this, because I hear MB’s tone all over again.

Literally, the world’s most perfect waiter:

“Ohh. He’ll think about what he did.”

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I am still bothered by

… the dancer from “A Chorus Line” who danced in The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in sneakers. I saw you, Nike Boy. I saw you. It was definitely NOT a singular sensation. Also, if you’re going to have your cast in The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade dancing the big finale to “One,” uhm, can you please have them wear their costumes — the golden, top-hatted matchy-poo, we-move-as-one costumes? DON’T have the dude at the very front of your V-like formation posing and stubbing about in sneakers:

SHEEEEEE’S

— stub-stub-stub —

THHHHHHHE –

– stub-stub-stub —

ONNNNNNE!!!

–stubba-stub–stubba-stub–stubba-stubba-stubba–stub–stubba-stub –stubba-stub–stubba-stubba-stubba-stub …..

So so gross.

Seriously, do I have to start doing everything around here????

That was almost two weeks ago and I am not over it. It’s too egregious to ever get over. I’m sorry. Also ….

… the numerous audience members who laughed at the wrong moments when we went to see “Stranger than Fiction.” Oh, hahaha. It’s Will Ferrell! He’s always funny! He’s only funny! I was literally going insane listening to them. Shut up. SHUT UP. And it’s weird, they all seemed old enough to understand with other levels of understanding that the movie might actually have layers to it; that Will Ferrell might be doing something wonderful with this performance. But, no. They watched it on one emotional channel only, lazy and self-satisfied and laughing.

See why I do the “oops, I spilled water” trick on the seat next to me at the movies? It’s to keep me from killing, really. And since I’ve been doing that, I’m proud to say I’ve noticeably cut back on my homicides.

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googling “it’s a wonderful life”

Day 5.

Uhm, is this “Santa Claus vs. the Martians” or “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” or something? Someone will know, I’m sure.

I put this up because I know that MB will like it AND because IT’S HIS BIRTHDAY!!

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY BELOVED! I LOVE YOU WITH EVERYTHING.

Please feel free to wish MB a happy day and tell him how much you love him, too. 😉 Or tell him a joke instead.

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best tip ever

The kayoootest little black boy named Daviar gave this to me at The Beanhouse, as a tip on his birthday:

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That didn’t scan well — and believe me, I tried. It says:

“I wrote a birthday dollar from Daviar and it’s a one-hundred dollar bill.”

It was his 6th birthday. He knew how to write “it’s.”

So cute. I am in love with Daviar.

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googling “it’s a wonderful life”

Day 4.

Sometimes, I’m a sucker for folk art like this. I’m not really sure why, actually, but I think it reminds me of something from my childhood, something I can quite place. Strange, in a way, that the chord it strikes for me is so mysterious.

Anyway, happy “wonderful” Google!

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