Ho Ho Holograms and Lasers

Holiday cheer is in short supply in 2020. Under the weight of rampant news  the Coronavirus, political turmoil, and economic uncertainty, I find myself desperately grasping at any yuletide diversion. 

If you are similarly in need of such a diversion, you’ve come to the right place. This episode is based on an essay I wrote in 1995. It was originally published in several regional print publications, and was eventually included in the collection There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays, published by Papier-Mache Press in 1997. To my surprise, the book is still available. 

So, for your holiday enjoyment, here is “It’s New, It’s Improved, It’s Christmas.” Let’s see where it goes...

 The holiday season is a time of rituals. Some of these rituals — the shopping, the music, the decorations, and the food -- are comforting in their predictability. But the relentless nature of  the shopping, the music, the decorations, and the food can also leave you curled into the fetal position, whimpering in some dark corner. 

How you react to the various rituals depends a lot on your general disposition and your credit card balance. For my part, I love Christmas. But there is one Christmas ritual that really tangles my tinsel, and that’s the seasonal editorializing about how the modern celebration of Christmas pales in comparison to Christmases past. 

It’s not that the old notions of how to celebrate Christmas aren’t all cozy and romantic -- you can’t binge watch marathon showings of “It’s a Wonderful White Christmas Carol Story on Thirty-Fourth Street” without shedding a teardrop or two into your plate of Christmas nachos. It’s just that the loudest cheerleaders for “old fashioned” holiday celebrations reliably overlook the fact that back in the day people didn’t have the option of doing it any other way. 

Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh? No thanks. When Christmas morning rolls around I’m happy to have a well-equipped SUV warming up in the driveway for the ride to grandma’s place. I figure a horse-drawn sleigh is big fun for maybe ten minutes. After that you’re going to want Old Dobbin the haul ass  back to someplace warm where the eggnog is spiked and the family can gather in the flickering blue glow of a giant Hi-Def television to contemplate the true meaning of football. 

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Sorry, no fireplace. We’ve got a furnace for heat, and stuffing nuts in there  voids the warranty. Any of the roasting we do these days is in the microwave, and I’m pretty sure that if you put chestnuts in the microwave they would become little Yuletide hand grenades. Although, if you’ve got a snootful of Yule Grog, watching chestnuts explore in your microwave might be a real hoot. 

Some people may see microwave ovens as a symptom of creeping non-traditional holiday-ism. But I’ll be you that if microwave ovens  were available in Charles Dickens’  day, the Cratchits wouldn’t have had to entertain an uncharacteristically giddy Ebenezer Scrooge  for however long it takes to cook a fine, fat goose.

Holiday entertaining is, in fact, the one area that even the most severe critic of modern practices would have to admit has not changed much since Tim was Tiny. A good holiday  celebration, then as now, still involved lots of food, free-flowing drink, and a gathering of family and friends -- some of whom you’re as happy to see as a subpoena. Just as the Cratchit’s Christmas was spent with a man who, for all they knew, had suffered some kind of head trauma, so the modern holiday gathering include relatives or acquaintances who, because they watch too many talk shows, and/or have poor personal hygiene, and/or fail to maintain scheduled medication, you would normally avoid like a plate of frosted botulism. But in the spirit of the season, you smile warmly at the mystery uncle wandering around half-crocked, holding a clump of mistletoe over his sweaty, balding head. 

Charles Dickens’ story wouldn’t have become the holiday classic it has if, having spotted on their doorstep an insanely grinning, raw-poultry bearing, fresh off a rough night Scrooge, the Cratchits had pulled their shades and pretended not to be home. Which is probably what I would have done. 

Instead, knowing full well his reputation as a career grouch, they welcomed him into their home, giving us a touching story that teaches a valuable  lesson about how a little Christmas spirit can get the boss to pry a little cash out of his seldom-opened wallet. 

Sure, Christmas has changed over the years. It now starts just before Halloween. And the modern Christmas involves a lot more technology. But that just means a bigger, brighter, louder Christmas, with lasers and holograms and stuff. But even with all the noise and glitz, and by my count three entire cable networks devoted to fatally syrupy holiday romance movies, the holiday season still represents a time of hope that the nut jobs of the world will wake up and realize that peace on earth is a win-win proposition for everybody. If making Christmas bigger and louder and shinier helps to get that message across, fire up the lasers. 

 

Production Resources

• Thanks to the YouTube Audio Library for the following music tracks:
  • Christmas Village, by Aaron Kenny
  • Jingle Bells, performed by E's Jammy Jams
  • We Wish You a Merry Christmas, by E's Jammy Jams
• Sound Effects provided by Freesound.org and PacDV.com
• Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Spicy With a Side of Deadly

Among my friends hot peppers are not so much a culinary matter as they are a gauge of manhood. While some guys go in for bungie jumping or skating down the sides of tall buildings, my buddies test their testosterone by eating things that other people use to repel muggers.

Let’s face it, hot peppers as a flavor enhancer are fine. But at the point where the cook is using life-threatening peppers, it’s gone beyond food. We’re into the realm of self-mutilation here. Why eat something that tastes good, but hurts really bad? If you’re going to do that you might as well just eat a good meal and then ask the waiter to drive staples into your forehead.

One friend is a pepper fanatic, known for his delicious home-made beef jerky (he marinates it for hours in napalm). He’ll often offer samples to his friends. These taste tests are a kind of sadomasochistic, male-bonding, pain-endurance ritual. “Try some of this,” he says. Then all the guys stand around chewing, making appreciative noises, watching each other to see who’s going to cry.

“Delicious,” I manage to say, while several of my major organs hand in their resignations.

I once saw a chart that described the wide variety of hot peppers and their relative heat. It turns out that the serial killer of hot peppers is the mighty habanero. NASA used habaneros to test the re-entry tiles on the Space Shuttles. Habanero farmers are required to register with Homeland Security. Special permits are necessary to ship habaneros through populated areas.

So naturally, somebody thought that cooking with habaneros would be fun. Probably someone who enjoys shaving with a belt sander.

I once had dinner with some friends in a Manhattan restaurant that specialized in spicy Southwestern cuisine. The menu featured a variety of dishes like “Eat This and Die Pork,” and “Flaming Ulcer Beef.” Right away, a challenge, a gauntlet thrown, a little, mocking voice saying, “What’s the matter, Mr. Pansy Basket?”

After a few Mexican beers my machismo-meter was in the red zone. I was no longer the middle-aged blonde guy from the midwest. I was Paunchy Villa! I ordered a dish called “Death by Chilies.”

Death does not frighten me, amigo.

The meal was a delicious chicken concoction, very potent, but within my range of tolerance. I became overconfident. Off to one side of my plate were two habanero peppers. I popped one into my mouth.

Really hot peppers don’t hit you right away, especially if you’re washing down your meal with beer. It took about a five-count before I stopped breathing. I was pretty sure that the pepper had eaten through my tongue and jaw, and was laying in my lap. I drank water, beer, wine, moist towelettes, anything cold and wet. I was perilously close to writhing. Writhing in a restaurant is frowned upon, even in New York. I sat very still, trying not to weep openly.

“Death By Chilies?” They should have named this stuff “Beg For A Bullet In The Head Chicken.”

After weeks of counseling by sensitive professionals I was able to talk about the experience. I’m a better man for it.

Months later I was sitting in a Cleveland bar when a couple sat next to me and ordered chicken wings. The bartender asked, “You want Mild, Spicy, or Deadly?”

The couple thought it over. The man was tentative. He said, “Could we have Spicy, with a side of Deadly?”

I finished my drink and left a buck on the bar. Amateurs, I thought. Wimps.

[This item was originally published in a slightly different form in 1996 in Howdy, what was then the AOL humor section.]

Klingon for Social Occasions

Being a fan of CBS's Big Bang Theory, I wasn't exactly surprised that this week's episode opened with the characters speaking Klingon.  But I laughed anyway.  The fact that a fictional language -- or maybe it's a real language created to flesh out fictional characters -- remains such a fixture of popular culture is funny in itself. And that was the inspiration for a column I wrote about ten years ago for Howdy, then the humor section on AOL.  In celebration of the wonderful, unrepentant geekiness the interest in Klingon represents,  I thought I'd take this occasion to resurrect that column here.

 

 

Admit it. You've always wanted to attend a Star Trek convention. But you're afraid you just wouldn't fit in. Sure, you're a fan, and you watched all the various episodes. But you don't have a Starfleet uniform, and you can't do that split-finger Vulcan salute. Somehow, you feel that you just don't measure up to the dedicated Trekkers, the ones that know the names of every female character who has ever locked lips with James Tiberius Kirk. Well, have no fear.

The Klingon language is a very hot topic among trekkers. If you take a moment to learn a few simple phrases of conversational Klingon, you'll be rubbing appendages with pointy-eared, exotically-garbed Trek-heads faster than you can say "Live Long and Prosper." Learning the following phrases will take a little practice. Just remember that the key to proper Klingon pronunciation is to pretend that you are walking barefoot on broken glass while trying to cough up a hairball.

Here's your lesson:

"h'Yarg! b'Nok ----- . mM'i d'weebik duRg"
Translation: "Hi! My name is _____. I'm 45 and I live with my mother."

"y'hHah! g'uTza oRomol'a zaSla ak'chEz s'Umuj aPnat!"
Translation: "Whew! Those Romulan burritos are murder! Sorry about the wallpaper!"

"w'ikkEe mukO i'gboy wOoo tookIe'ookie mAa'gne!"
Translation: "Picard might be smarter, but Kirk gets all the chicks."

"oO'eE Oo AhHa wAllaH bIng b'Ang!"
Translation: "Hey, baby, I've got my phaser set on 'love'."

"yAkY blEicka Ima w'oo bAgg'ag G'er!" Translation: "No , this isn't Klingon make-up!"

"hIya ffutS oStsa Ah'ma gG'ahna aMah'Ahnklas!"
Translation: "Hey, watch this, I can do the Vulcan nerve pinch on myself!"

"dAfeIg haArdfi nUmoite pOtue vilGuNe zlIfgna blAdrfo."
Translation: "I'd like to see Patrick Stewart in one of Shatner's wigs."

"uiHo VaZieg yOnbi gdIlrg mUflit gUgh!"
Translation: "Something about bony ridges on a woman's forehead gets me all squishy."

"gIcola uhTifoy mlEgthi fhUtomu varfGiO!"
Translation: "I got your logic, pal. RIGHT HERE!"

"g'Hak! g'Hak! g'Hak! g'Hak!"
Translation: "I'm not talking, I'm choking! Quick! Someone Heimlich me!"

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it? Practice a few minutes every day. Eventually, your larynx will stop bleeding and your throat will develop the thick scar tissue necessary for that authentic Klingon accent. Then, when the next Trek convention comes to town, lay in a course and....Engage!

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