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“A Family Circus Christmas” & The Great X-Mas Beer Adventure.

Ahhh, made it just in time. Here's my review of A Family Circus Christmas, the 1979 holiday special where Jeffy persaudes Santa Claus into delivering his dead grandfather for Christmas morning. Some of you have probably seen it, though it's by no means one of the more famous X-Massy toons. It's really not too much like the strip, which might not be a bad thing depending on your point of view. I've included four video clips with the review, so go. The calendar will be updated in a few hours.

As anyone who lives remotely close to where I do knows, parts of the East Coast were hit with a pretty massive snowstorm over the weekend. Big nasty one with lots of ice and walks that needed shoveling. Just as the storm was peaking, I realized that I was looking at my last chance to hit the stores before my car was inhaled by snowy terror.

So, we jetted to the grocery store and picked up this 18-pack of Michelob's "Ales and Lagers," pretty much the closest thing to Christmas Beer I could find. From there on out, we were stuck home with nothing but an 18-pack for around 30 hours.

There were six different kinds of wintery beer in the box; with nothing else to do, we used one of each as the tasty backdrop for six different Christmas activities. I'll tell you about the first one a little bit later. It involves beer bottle rolling pins.

Posted by Matt on 12/08/2003. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 78 comments

First Post!

Gotta love a box-o-booze

Chestnuts roasted by Goodolwt @ 12/08/2003 11:31 PM


Great job with the advent calendar Matt. Yes, I always wanted last year’s to be finished, but after Thanksgiving, I have faith in this one.

Any idea what Xmas presents you’ll be getting? I’m quite sure I can expect Unicron under the tree… and suddenly visions of him wearing hulk hands are dancing in my head.

Chestnuts roasted by rizz @ 12/08/2003 11:46 PM


Forgot to mention it before… I sure hope to see my favorite Christmas commercial on this countdown. It’s the folgers commercial where Peter comes home from the army and starts a brewin.

Chestnuts roasted by rizz @ 12/09/2003 12:02 PM


I remember that commercial!!! Didn’t "Peter" eventually star in the other commercials too? Where he flirts with the woman moving in next door? Matt should find out for us!

Chestnuts roasted by Cuddles @ 12/09/2003 12:06 PM


So that "not me" ghost that kept dashing by on the side of the screen and it freaked me out cause i didnt know if i was just seeing things. Its finals week and all ive done today is stare at the computer typing.

Chestnuts roasted by allicat @ 12/09/2003 12:31 PM


I think matt put the not me ghost in there so we wouldn’t fall asleep reading the review. Man that special is so boring even the review would have knocked me out, if it weren’t for not me.

Chestnuts roasted by Bright Noah @ 12/09/2003 12:54 PM


You have to love the generic fire truck the kid got for a gift. When I was a kid it never made sense to watch the XMas shows and see Santa making the toys and s***. Then on XMas morning the gifts would all be from the store. Granted, my sister, brother and I would not have wanted anything less but still. And Santa never signed his name to any of the gift tags. My folks said Santa’s wrist probably got tired from too much writing.

Chestnuts roasted by Killer Duck @ 12/09/2003 1:19 AM


This reminds me of the time Matt’s muffler fell off, and an old man was looking at him.

Chestnuts roasted by wack0 @ 12/09/2003 1:19 AM


that case of beer looks strangely appealing to me, yet I don’t drink, and don’t like beer. @_@

Chestnuts roasted by heeloyd @ 12/09/2003 2:38 AM


Man would I put it to Jeffy’s Mom. That is one tall drink of water.

An 18 pack for a blizzard? That is such a gross miscalculation. I assume you were mainlining the beer since an 18 pack couldn’t get a few middle schoolers buzzed. And I bet you walked in so impressed with yourself like you just rotated rizz’s tires or something.

Chestnuts roasted by I'm not rizz @ 12/09/2003 2:41 AM


Hey, I’m not gonna buy more than an 18-pack of overpriced Christmas beer.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 12/09/2003 2:45 AM


I just noticed that Family Circus characters look sort of like Playmobil figures with wide heads. Maybe this somehow ties in to the Mare Winningham conspiracy. Watch your backs, people.

Chestnuts roasted by marioshoku @ 12/09/2003 2:51 AM


Oh, this is SWEET. No sooner did I finally not find one of the nonexistent Dysfunctional Family Circus archives, then this arrives, like a sequel in it own respect.
Man, makes me want to find my own copy, so I can redub it into a DFC Christmas special, that won’t really exist either…

Chestnuts roasted by G'Tron @ 12/09/2003 7:16 AM


the ghost scared me!

Chestnuts roasted by chad @ 12/09/2003 9:43 AM


Holy shit! Damnit, Not Me. Well, I don’t need coffee this morning anymore.

Chestnuts roasted by Nachokhaki @ 12/09/2003 9:53 AM


I didn’t drop the s-bomb. That was not me.

Chestnuts roasted by Nachokhaki @ 12/09/2003 9:54 AM


Wow! The Family Circus special, certainly gave me that refresher I needed for my study break. I can also apply Jeffy’s problems to my abnormal psychology final. This kid needs major therapy. Not only is he schizophrenic, but also suffers from illusions of grandeur and bouts of mania. Not to mention how bipolar Dad seems.

Also I was watching some of the clips…the music sounds like its from a porn. Seriously, close your eyes and listen to the soundtrack from the clip with Jeffy on Santa’s lap…its a porn track I swear.

Anyways, this all just makes me glad that I’m Jewish.

Chestnuts roasted by zacwax @ 12/09/2003 10:43 AM


No offense, but some of the voices sounded similar to those of the Peanuts specials. I’ll have to look that up later on. I must admit that the music played in the background where the mall Santa appears made me laugh more than the corniness of the special. Great work!

Chestnuts roasted by mjf7583 @ 12/09/2003 11:03 AM


I also don’t drink, so instead of consuming overpriced beer during the worst of the storm, I decorated my Christmas tree by flashlight. Ok, I really just put the candy canes on, but you can’t have a Christmas tree without candy canes, even in the dark. Just isn’t done. I never eat the darn things after the holidays and last year they melted made a big, sticky mess on my kitchen table, but it still didn’t seem right to neglect them. Even with no snow, I somehow managed to lose power for at least two hours (it was off when I got home from work). I’ve never been so thankful for having a gas stove and heater, instead of all electricity.

As for the special, I do occasionally read "Family Circus" but am no great fan, and this bit of schzophrenia isn’t going to change my reading habits. It has a problem similar to many Christmas specials – ie, it’s just too darn heavy and sentimental for what’s supposed to be a light holiday tale. Not that I’m not all for sentiment, especially during the holidays (I watch "It’s a Wonderful Life" every Christmas Eve), but the story line is taken far too seriously here. What it needs is someone like Grandma from "Garfield’s Christmas Special" or Yukon Cornelius from "Rudolph" to ad a bit of vinegar to the overwhelming sugar.

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 12/09/2003 11:24 AM


Man, that explains it all. The tree star totally looked like one of those masonic stars you see on the back of cars. Maybe daddy was sad cause he had to kill grandpa in a masonic sacrifice?!?!

Chestnuts roasted by Jughead @ 12/09/2003 11:32 AM


That "Not me" ghost idea was brilliant.

Chestnuts roasted by RUSKULL @ 12/09/2003 11:56 AM


Okay, I’ll bite … HOW IN THE HELL IS THAT "NOT ME" GHOST RUNNING AROUND? It’s freaking me out.

Chestnuts roasted by Al Boondy @ 12/09/2003 1:00 PM


Not Me…. Holy Norns on a stick….I thought I was on drugs….X_X

BTW, Matt, you need to change the color of your font on this review and any other one where you had BLACK font on DARK background. I had to highlight the whole article to read it. No one should have to work to read X-E articles…. Please think of the college students who, as allicat said, have to stare at nothing but computer screens all day for finals~~!! *weeps uncontrollably*

Chestnuts roasted by CardCaptor Loki @ 12/09/2003 1:57 PM


The font is set to white and shows up on my comp that way — are you using IE or a different browser? I’m sure it’s just a matter of adding a "#" here or there…browsers sometimes use slightly different shit. (if you can remember any others that had this prob, I’ll fix those too)

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 12/09/2003 1:59 PM


"Family Circus" is one of the unfunniest comic strips we have here. And doesn’t it slightly disturb the family to know their dead grandfather is watching them from the grave? Creeepy. Matt, you should review the Easter special next spring.

Chestnuts roasted by icymatt @ 12/09/2003 2:04 PM


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