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Post by timothylane on Dec 23, 2019 21:03:16 GMT -8
We had a lot of Christmas balls and a nice string of lights for our tree, and got icicles each year, so our tree was well decorated (with a star on top). But we didn't have candy canes or popcorn strings, and you could at least tell there was a tree underneath all that. I wouldn't be so sure in that last photo.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 25, 2019 7:20:12 GMT -8
Many op-ed writers have a tradition of suggesting gifts for important figures, and I would like to continue that tradition here.
For Botox Nan aka Petulant Pelousy aka the Wicked Witch of the West, I suggest the gavel given to Lucretia Posey early in "The Night of the Poisonous Posey" on The Wild Wild West.
For Adam Schiffless, any good exegesis on the Ninth Commandment. The symposium on the topic at ST would be a good one if it's available to be sent.
For Mad Maxine Waters, a copy of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. This might also be useful in a different way for Mitch McConnell.
For She Guevara, a set of conservative variants of nursery rhymes. She might especially benefit from the conservative version of "The Little Red Hen".
For the Yellow Jester aka Joe Biden, a lifetime supply of gingko biloba.
For Bernie Bro Sanders, a copy of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism (I think it was by Kevin Williamson).
For Blonde Squaw With Empty Head aka Fauxcahontas aka Gray Beaver aka Lieawatha aka Elizabeth Warren, an annotated copy of Longfellow's Hiawatha.
For Pete Battygeek, a good discussion of the Third Commandment, such as the ST symposium on the subject, particularly pointing out that the original concern was doing evil in the name of the Lord. This would also be a suitable gift for Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today and leftist dupe.
For Chucky the Schemer, a tape of Barry Zero explaining that elections matter.
For Lindsey Graham, a firm backbone, or at least a notochord. I won't say a new one because I don't know that he's ever had one.
For all members of the Budget and Appropriations Committees in both houses of Congress, a good history of the German hyper-inflation of 1923 and its results.
For Governor Blackface Northam of Virginia, a good history of the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1776 as well as a history of the Battle of Gonzalez in 1835. A number of other Demagogues could benefit from the same gift.
I'm sure readers here will have their own suggestions.
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 25, 2019 14:54:28 GMT -8
I thought it worthwhile to bring up the fact that on this day in history, Washington and his troops marched to a turning point in the American Revolution. Trenton |
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Post by timothylane on Dec 25, 2019 15:28:42 GMT -8
The article doesn't mention it, but the foul weather explains why Washington may well have stood in his boat, as the famous painting has it, despite the skepticism of many historians. David Hackett Fischer pointed out that there no seats in the boats, so those who sat froze their rumps as well as their feet.
William R. Forstchen and Newt Gingrich collaborated on a 3-volume series of key periods in the Revolution. The first, To Try Men's Souls, covered the retreat from New York to Pennsylvania and the Trenton campaign. (The next volume covered Valley Forge and Monmouth, and the third covered 1781.)
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Post by timothylane on Dec 25, 2019 16:27:30 GMT -8
It's a little late, but the Blaze published an article on what the writer (no one I've heard of it, but that's usually the case with lists like this) of the definitive versions of 35 Christmas carols. They only have one by Frank Sinatra ("Jingle Bells") and two by Bing Crosby ("White Christmas" and a collaboration with David Bowie on "The Little Drummer Boy"). But they have plenty of other older singers (such as Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Autry, Burl Ives, and Dean Martin) as well as oddities (such as John Denver and the Muppets doing "The Twelve Days of Christmas") and relatively new singers (such as Whitney Houston).
I haven't heard them yet, since I'm in the middle of playing another collection of Christmas music and I don't plan to interrupt it. But I think many here might find it interesting, in any case. The link is:
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 25, 2019 18:58:16 GMT -8
Neither my wife nor I are big turkey fans so we like to have prime rib for Christmas Dinner. This year, I again smoked a small prime rib using apple wood and rosemary. This is what it looked like after about three hours in the smoker at 225 degrees and then 15 minutes in the oven at 450 degrees and 20-30 minutes of rest.
This is what it looked like on the plate.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 25, 2019 19:50:19 GMT -8
That's one nice-looking prime rib. As I recall, I first encountered prime rib at Adam's Rib in New York in 1975. I was thinking in term of barbecued ribs (or maybe ordinary spare ribs). It's also where I first encountered a Caesar salad, though I had at least heard of that before.
Usually Elizabeth and I ate out for Christmas. This was often at hotel dining rooms, which had nice (but crowded) buffets for the holiday dinner. They had various meats, including lamb as well as turkey and ham, but not prime rib. More recently we started going to the lunch buffet at Shalimar, an Indian restaurant. (When we had some trainees from Bangalore to set up a branch there, that's where they mostly ate.) Just after we moved out of the house, we spent Christmas weekend in a hotel in Lexington where Elizabeth had just gotten out of rehab. In that case, we hunted for someplace to eat and finally came across an Asian place, where we got enough to take some back for our next day.
I have no memory of Christmas dinners from my childhood. No doubt my mother cooked, though we may occasionally have visited relatives or friends.
I don't recall how the presents were stowed when I was a child, but I suspect it was overnight like that. You might like the novelty Christmas song "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus", which is a parody of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", except the child narrator learns a bit more. More recently Elizabeth and I put what few gifts we had on a table where she also had her Advent wreath. Of course, now that we both live in (separate) nursing homes, we don't have anything like that.
Incidentally, while we never had much of a Christmas display (aside from the tree itself) when I was young, we sometimes toured the area looking at other people's displays. Elizabeth and I renewed that tradition. We no longer had a tree (there would have been no place for one, actually), but she did put up a lighted star in the living room window and had a wreath on the door. We usually kept them up until Epiphany.
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 25, 2019 20:00:36 GMT -8
When we lived in Asia, we did too. Whether we were on vacation or staying in Hongkong or Singapore for the holidays, it was very convenient to have Christmas Dinner outside. The American Club in Singapore had nice food for the holidays. The prime rib there was the best in Singapore and it was pretty cheap as well.
I can't recall the first time I had prime rib. It might have been in New York. Being from Texas, it was common to eat a lot of beef. My parents would buy a quarter or half a cow and have it cut into various steaks, roasts, etc. and put it in the freezer. In my late teens, or earlier twenties, if I felt like it, I could take a sirloin steak out of the freezer and put it in an iron frying pan for lunch.
That brings to mind images that I would rather forget. 
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Post by timothylane on Dec 25, 2019 20:26:24 GMT -8
My mother occasionally got a beef quarter and had it cut up for our downstairs freezer. There was a good bit of ground beef, stew meat, and chuck and round steaks (and perhaps other types of steak). When we moved to an apartment we tried to fit the freezer into the kitchen/dining area so we could continue to do that, but it didn't work out.
Needless to say, in "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus", Santa turned out to be "Mommy in disguise". But they went a little further than in the original song (which the child found engrossing). I have it on one of my Dr. Demento CD images.
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 25, 2019 20:51:20 GMT -8
Thanks for the clarification. It puts my mind at ease. I wonder if mommy was Chinese?  |
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Post by timothylane on Dec 26, 2019 14:03:35 GMT -8
I finally managed to listen to the 35 best Christmas hits (except for "My Favorite Things", by Tony Bennett, because it's neither a Christmas nor a winter song). I wouldn't say these are the definitive versions of each song, though some may qualify. They are generally good, anyway. The Crosby-Bowie duet turns out to be the inspiration for one of Bob Rivers's novelty songs, which explicitly parodies it.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 28, 2019 9:34:24 GMT -8
Wow. What a beautiful multi-colored tree. Sometimes trees that are two-toned (blue and green, for example) or monotoned are great. But nothing beats the old-fashion multi-colored Christmas tree. As you obviously know, getting good indoor photos can be difficult. Surprisingly, even relatively inexpensive camera phones produce better low-light images than even expensive DSLR cameras. It’s just brilliant technology they’re packing into these phone cameras these days. I love the popcorn garland. That is very old-fashion and no doubt a labor of love. I love the post-Santa shot of the tree. What a nice assortment of presents. And that photos really shows off well the star at the top. An amazing job with the prime rib. Looks delicious. And I’d say it looks done the way I like it. Medium-rare, perhaps a bit on the medium side of things. That’s a wonderful looking potato as well. But those toxic Brussels sprouts….well, I have to disagree on that one.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 28, 2019 9:42:55 GMT -8
They were that bad. My older brother has blotted out a lot of his childhood past. But I remember all the good times and many of the difficult times. For some reason, my older brother would get so exited during the Christmas season that he didn’t know what to do with himself and would lash out. That’s what makes the movie, “A Christmas Story,” so good. It’s wholesome American white middle class, for sure. But it’s not over-idyllic. It’s hard to pick a favorite scene from that. But I like the one where the two brothers are running up the stairs. The younger one got a head start but the older one overtakes him by tripping him and man-handling him aside. I’ve been on the receiving end of that too many times to count. Try as people do to emphasize the religious aspect, I think Christmas has morphed into a time for children. In the best of instances, this is so. Without children around, Christmas has very little meaning for adults. |
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 28, 2019 21:12:58 GMT -8
I have been down with a head cold for the last 24-30 hours, but it seems to have run its course, at least mostly.
I am glad you liked the Christmas Tree. My wife likes to decorate it even more than I do. She will put a lot more tinsel and stuff on it than I would, but it seems to come out very nicely each year. The popcorn garland took a while to make, and will probably be the last one we will do. I don't know how long it will keep.
Your are certainly correct about getting in-door photos. I always have to take several of each view to get one which is good enough to post.
I was very surprised at the post-Santa tree as I did not believe there would be so much under it. The year has been lean, but my wife knows how to make a little go a long way and keep things looking good. She even got that prime rib at below $5/lb, which is a great price.
The prime rib was delicious and about medium-rare. I got it to an internal temperature of 135 degrees in the smoker and then quick seared it at 450-500 degrees in the oven. Before cooking it, my wife used salt and pepper to rub it and cut little slits into which she put fresh garlic cloves and off-the-bush rosemary twigs/nettles.
We got the potatoes at Sam's Club or Market Place and they were very nice. I don't know that we could have done as well and when cooking for only three, it is sometimes just better to go ahead and take advantage of the expertise and creativity of large grocery stores. I saw one ready-made Christmas Turkey meal at Sam's Club for something like $11-12.00. There was enough turkey and potatoes to easily feed four. With a salad or green beans, it would have been perfect. If I were living alone, I would certainly buy something like that.
I have always liked Brussels Sprouts, but my wife is not a big fan unless she cooks them herself. She seasons them and then roasts them in the over.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 28, 2019 21:53:20 GMT -8
When I was young, my father strung the lights on the tree and presumably put the star atop it, but we all joined in placing the ornaments and then the tinsel. I tended to prefer the fancier ornaments rather than the ordinary mono-color bulbs. I assume these were left behind when we moved from a house to an apartment, unless they'd already been left behind when we moved to Louisville after my father was buried in the family plot at Sweeden Missionary Baptist Church in Sweeden, Kentucky. (My mother is also buried there as well as my grandparents on both sides and many other relatives. I also have a plot with a gravestone already there with my name and birthdate on it.)
In any case, my father had been the one to get the tree and we never got one after he died, or probably even the Christmas he spent in Vietnam. (He sent us some gifts he picked up on a furlough in Thailand.)
TBS has a 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story at Christmas each year, and I finally got to see it. Just think of all those years wasted without having seen it.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 29, 2019 10:07:44 GMT -8
Tis the season. I’m glad it’s run its course. Like I said, there are some more minimalist approaches to Christmas decoration that work well too. But superabundance is as much the Christmas Spirit as anything else. An old friend of my tells the story of a certain house back east where the owner literally did a Chevy Chase-like superabundance of exterior lighting on the house…so much so that a bit of Schadenfreude became attached to this yearly occurrence. Because the house attracted so much attention, it was common for car accidents, and worse, to occur in the vicinity. In particular, a heavy toll was taken on the squirrels. Who doesn’t love the story, The Gift of the Magi? Della sells her hair to buy a watch chain for Jim’s prized gold watch. Jim sold his prized watch to buy Della a comb for her beautiful hair. Hopefully your wife did not sell your computer in order to pay for the presents. Because you are still online, I assume this is not the case. For me, the simplicity and dedication of that one string of popcorn and that tree loaded by the love and thriftiness of Mrs. Kung speaks volumes about the true meaning of Christmas. Brussels sprouts, not included. |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 29, 2019 10:29:46 GMT -8
Same routine in our household (if you don’t count all the fighting caused by my rambunctious brother). This leads me to believe that the art of light-stringing is an inherently solitary craft. The lights must follow a definite path to properly decorate the tree and is not a function of chaos theory which tends to guide the placing of tinsel and ornaments. The placement of tinsel and ornaments is like the randomness of falling snow. Each individual flake may be well-placed or misplaced, but the overall effect of many such flakes will be pleasing. I believe fancier ornaments are usually preferred. We had both. Sometimes you would have a large gold glass ornament. And that added a splash of simple, bold color. Other times you’d have something more complex that added to the richness and texture of the overall effect. This..  And this…  …work toward the greater harmony of the Tannenbaum. And you get the best of both worlds in old-fashioned ornaments that look like this:  The uber-designed trees that you might see in a bank or department store can be exquisite. They can be works of art. And there’s nothing wrong with that.  In fact, the one pictured above is especially good because it combines the formal with something that looks a bit more home-made. But some are so artsty-fartsy that they are technically beautifully but barren. Maybe something like this:  But that Mitsubishi actually had a tree (somewhere) in 2009 is a good sign. One wonders if they have devolved to just a “winter holiday.” And I'm not sure what to call this: ![]()  |
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Post by timothylane on Dec 29, 2019 10:30:47 GMT -8
Della got the better of that gift exchange. Her hair would eventually grow back, a point she in fact made (at least in the movie version). Incidentally, in addition to having been one of the ST fiction entries many years ago (probably where I first encountered it, in fact), "The Gift of the Magi" was one of Mark Steyn's Christmas story readings he does for his club each year. As well it should be.
TCM periodically shows O. Henry's Full House, including twice this Christmas season, so I get to see it on occasion. Oddly enough, when it first appeared in the theaters, viewers didn't like "The Ransom of Red Chief", or at least their version of it, so it was cut. Fortunately, TCM (as usual) shows the whole movie.
We had an abundantly decorated tree when I was young, but not much else. Elizabeth had a modest amount of Christmas decorations (such as the large lighted star she hung in the front window and a wreath she hung on the door), but I don't recall any tree decorations. If they had any, presumably another sibling claimed them. But they did their fair share of moving, just like my family did, and their father died well before their mother did, so they may just have been lost on one or another move. I brought no decorations with me from what our family used to have.
But there are certainly people with some spectacular outside displays, as we saw when touring before Christmas (at night, of course) to see the sights. The Kentucky Horse Farm (I think that's the name; we only visited it once) has a nice Christmas display each year, including displays showing the Twelve Days of Christmas.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 29, 2019 10:34:36 GMT -8
That first bulb looks somewhat like a Faberge egg. (The art museum in Richmond has a collection of those, but it was unavailable when Elizabeth and I visited it. Most disappointing.) The second definitely looks like some of ours, but that's a pretty standard appearance. The third looks interesting; I don't think we had one quite like it. A good display overall.
That Mitsubishi displays looks good aside from being too close to monochrome. The last display makes me think of a bell, which isn't exactly inappropriate at Christmas.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 29, 2019 10:40:54 GMT -8
Yes, Della mentioned in the story that her hair would grow back. “The rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey might say, is that Della went into prostitution to buy back Jim’s gold watch. In despair, Jim left Della for “Bob” (who was transitioning at the time, so his gender is as “fluid” and indefinite as an electron entering a double-slit experiment).
Should one even joke about such a thing? The point is (as a recent National Review article stated regarding the great Christmas songs that came out in the early part of the 20th century), such kind sentiments as found in this story are no longer possible, or at least likely. We’ve grown into a coarse and cruddy people. And if we do try to ape aspects of the love evoked in this story, it will more likely be narcissistic virtue-signaling about “the homeless,” “climate change,” or love for the ever-central homosexual.
Imagine a story where a transsexual sold his breasts to pay for his “partner’s” operation to have a penis added. You can do the rest of the literary math from there as to the further details. But I guess something like that could indeed be written today. Whether it tugs on any heartstrings is debatable.
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