Car Seat Is Freezing

Because December 26 is still time enough for discussions about Christmas — and all the more so if said discussions are tainted with the bitterness that only the post-holiday hangover can bring. Case in point: the special Santa Claus punchbowl my mom found at an antique store:

Let’s face it — what says holiday happiness better than ladelling cheer out of Santa’s hollowed-out skull? Last Christmas, in fact, my mom made a special candy cane punch. It’s egg nog, sherbet and crunched-up candy canes, the red dye of which gives the concoction a wonderful pink color. Yes, minty and sweet thought it may have been, the foamy punch had every appearance of scrambled brains. As the sherbet melted, pink goo would dribble down the sides of the bowl, making the effect work all the better. We all felt like we had done something very, very wrong to Santa. Really, look at his eyes — heavy-lidded and altogether blank, they give the appearance of someone who has undergone unnecessary brain surgery.

Now, happily, we can put him and the rest of his crew away for another forty-eight weeks.

One-Tenth of a Plausibility Unit

Christmas cheer for your face.

As Reliable as Roast Mutton

One more piece of photographic evidence from the Holly Jolly Christmas Party. I think Megan (Megan!) captured it well.


It's the rubber Christmas chicken.

Arch Stanton and Paula Schultz

Three obscure words for your face:

• mammothrept — meaning "a spoiled child," its etymological roots go back to the Greek for "a child raised by one's grandmother"
• logodaedaly — meaning "clever in the use of words," it's the Greek word part for "word" (as in "dialogue" and such) plus a permutation of the Greek mythological character Daedalus, who designed the Labyrinth and other ingenious things
• jumentous — meaning "resembling horse urine," and simultaneously useless and wonderful because of that

[ source: Erin McKean's Weird and Wonderful Words ]

Less Than a Snow Fairy, More Than a Sugar Plum

Just to prove that we didn't completely debauch the spirit of the holiday, here are some entirely more wholesome pictures of us in the post-party aftermath, during which we mustered the energy to go ice skating at Earl Warren.

Photo credits go to Laura.

Among Other Unusual Things I Did Before Nine-Thirty This Morning

So, yeah. I talked to John Stamos. And I didn't do that yesterday. And when I talked to him, I was wearing a bathrobe and disgusting slippers.

That's all I'm saying about that.

Keister Egg

Although I was initially disappointed that KTLA had pre-empted last Tuesday’s “Veronica Mars” in lieu of some sports garbage, Super Bri wisely pointed out to me that the episode would instead be airing on Saturday. I turned in just in time to see the opening credits. The best part of the episode, by far, was its guest star: Patty Hearst, who played an heir to a retail fortune and the granddaughter of the robber baron founder of Hearst College, the fictional school Veronica now attends. Thus, Patty Hearst is playing a thinly veiled version of herself.

In the show’s long-standing tradition of naming its characters with good reason, Hearst’s character is called Selma Hearst Rose. The “Rose” comes from her husband, Bud Rose. As in “rosebud,” as in “Citizen Kane.” It’s the first name that really gets me, however. I wondered why the writers would have picked such an uncommon name for the character, when I realized that the only association I have with “Selma” is the more mannish of Marge’s two twin sisters on “The Simpsons.” Then I made the mental leap. Patty Hearst. Selma Hearst.

Oh, and the episode also involved sodomy-for-humiliation, a suicidal tanorexic named "Patrice,two uppity personal assistants and the best implementation of “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” I have ever heard. All this from a show that has already given us an Asian frat boy named Charleston Chew. We truly have so many reasons to be happy.