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12/11/2006: Halfhearted Harking.

Well, we finally started decorating last night. (I know, I can’t believe it either.) Thing is, we’ve been remodeling the apartment for quite some time and only had finished floors as of this week, with some new furniture in and some still on its way. These and other events conspired to make our pad less deserving of the balls-first holiday deck-out. When we checked out our secret underground storage containers to see what we had room for, I was saddened to leave so many boxes unchecked, refusing so many decorations of their right to breathe air for a few weeks each year. Oh well.

We got a few lights up, at least. They’re these really awesome old school big glass bulb lights; I was brought up under the impression that lights like this should never be placed indoors, but the box told me I could, so yay, big glass bulb lights in da livin’ room.

Because we pulled a lot of this stuff out without giving the boxes more than a quick glance, I forgot a lot of the vintage stuff that completes me. Instead, we ended up yanking out a truckload of Version Carrey Grinch dolls that I picked up on a post-holiday clearance sale a few years ago. Apparently, I really enjoyed that post-holiday clearance sale, because I counted no less than twelve different Grinch plushies, including a really large, talking version that sounds more like Tim Curry impersonating an orgasmic porn star than Jim Carrey impersonating the Grinch. I’m not complaining.

There was also a huge stock of still-packaged CHRISTMAS ACTION FIGGAZ — everything from Rudolph to Charlie Brown and beyond. Formerly, we’d tack up these still-packaged figures wherever we could, but in light of the freshly painted walls and the feeble attempt to make our apartment look more like something an adult should be able to stand, I finally took the “OC” out of “MOC,” broke the babies open and let the cigarette smoke slowly yellow their holiday heads. These figures range from “still widely available” to “kind of halfway available” to “ONLY ON EBAY, FUCKAS,” but if you are able to track ‘em down…I most highly recommend the purchase. They’re all really nice and are some of the best Christmas “decorations” based on the bg holiday specials that I’ve seen. And I’ve seen many.

Yes, we are going to dig back into the trenches and add more decorations. Yes, I am going to get a tree. Hopefully soon, because recent years have spearheaded a new tradition where we put up the Christmas tree very late and end up leaving it in our living room until early February to compensate.

The Advent Calendar has been updated for December 11th. It’s nice to be a day ahead again.

I need those misfit toys! haha Pigpen and his filthy snowman. By the way, I think those white things from the advent calendar are “snow mounds” or some such silliness. I take it you shove them up one of the birds’ asses and snap ‘em on the tree. Hooray for snow mounds.

Oh holy night! It’s 4 am! I’m going to bed. (Has anyone else’s family discovered the moronic joy of “Christmas cussing?”)

Speaking of leaving the tree up…
We’ve still got ours up from Christmas LAST year. It’s ok, it’s a funky metal filligree thing-a-me-bob.

Awesome lights. Jeez Matt, I hope you didn’t have to work today! I couldn’t believe it when I came online prior to work this morning and the calendar update for today was there already! What a great surprise! Thanks for the hard work.

This entry starts out very creepy…
And that ending…it can’t be safe to sleep on a bunk bed above your baby.

I couldn’t help but notice that that gun is pointed directly at Pigpen’s crotch as he makes an almost delighted face. Jeez, Matt, where’s the love?

Any chance of a tour of the apt. in photos? And, maybe I’m from Backwater USA, but renovating an apartment? Do you guys own it or something? Where I’m from, you can’t do jack to an Apt. unless you…well, you just can’t. Thanks for the update too.

Speaking of kill, Socks got a little roseate dove last night. ::Sigh:: little bastard then climbed on the couch next to me and went to sleep. Something so cute and yet so evil. Why can’t cats eat lettuce?

Are you trying to kill (Pigpen?) with an overdose of jelly? You’re a cruel man. And I like how Santa’s in a kind of “Rock on!” pose.
Mista Snowman singing about how much hotter he is than my girlfriend is funny on at least four levels.
I never expected to hear the name “James Lipton” in the same 30 seconds as “nude interpretive ass dance” outside of Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
My cat would pull Rudolph down from that cat hut and then take him to go sleep on my bed. Or the chair I was about to sit on.

I finally caught up with the calendar from friday. The delay was from an orgy viewing of 24. The fiancee and I watched the first 8 episodes of season 4 over the weekend.

What is that gun? I mean yes, it’s a gn, but from what? Well I’m gonna go catch up on the advent.

Big glass bulb lights should never be inside…. that’s why I wrapped my tree in about 8 strands of them…. just so I could break that rule and light up an entire room with the power of xmas tree glow. That and it looks awesome framed up in a picture window. Yeah, I see those passerbys gawking through the windows totally jealous of my tree and its huge rule-breaking lights.

we just started putting our christmas stuff up .. i think i’m going to start in on the little light up houses tonight ..

kb, it’s the water pistol that shoots jelly! From the island of misfit toys!

Awesome, just awesome. I just love all the James Lipton humor. It’s good to know that other people watch Conan as obessively as people like me. I particularly love it when Conan has him for:

1) Reading random people’s myspace blogs when Conan picks a random girl from the audience and views her myspace.

2) Last week, Conan had his regular “College Mascots” sketch and mentioned the “FSU Webcam Manatee” and mentioned the fictional address hornymantee.com. So Conan admits the 2nd night (and through Friday) that NBC, the home of Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and the first color tv broadcast now owns & maintains that site. Then he has on James Lipton to read fan e-mails sent to to the site and he’s obessed with “dancing” with the Manatee.

Santa looks like he’s sitting in Arsenio’s dawg pound, ready to unleash a fit of “woof woof woof” combined with the classic waving of his fist in the air.

I also have a tendancy to buy shitloads of crap on clearance. I probably would have passed on The Grinch toys though, even at 90 cents. =x I love Pigpen’s snowman. I can’t wait til I’m at the point where I can collect toys again.

Matt, just had to say thanks so much for an awesome Advent so far…your site, again, is about the only thing keeping my Christmas spirit alive this year. It’s been really tough to feel Christmassy with no snow (!!), being so busy and exhausted all the time, my first Christmas in my own place, tons of real-life anxieties, etc. etc. etc…but good ol’ X-E has been getting me into the Christmas spirit every time I come to visit. I feel bad that I don’t have enough time to comment as much as I’d like, but I’m lurking in the shadows, I promise.

Oh, and expect something from your WishList from me!

my parents have put the big lights on our tree since forever and we were the only ones i knew that used them. funny that we use the big lights inside and the small lights on our outside trees…….

Matt, you gave me my best visual of the day: Tim Curry as an orgasmic porn star….ah, a girl can dream, can’t she? If it makes you feel any better, we don’t have our tree up yet or decorations up in the house either simply based on procrastination from my parents, my cat’s dental issues and lack of time in a day. We DID get up our lights outside though. I suspect the tree will be up next week at this rate.

Watch out Matt, those big bulbs can bust like an old man’s kidney after too much egg-nog. If they are hot from being on, and you drop them or touch them the wrong way, they explode and leave alot of glass everywhere. And they have a larger chance of catching fire to the house.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my house is very odd. Our tree doesn’t fit in the living room so we put it in the dining room, visible through the balustrade. But since I lost the battle over real tree vs. fake tree, my pre-lit $20 Family Dollar special is sitting ontop of a storage bin full of books. That’s about all I got done so far, because the new dining room set is being delivered on Wednesday.

I can’t believe I’m freakin’ old enough to be excited about buying dining room furniture. Why the hell happened to me?

That’s a crazy-ass version of Band Aid’s song you have up on Knacks’ myspace!

If the lights have fuses in them, no fire worries unless you’re using a faulty extension cord. Saw it on MythBusters the other night.

Invader Norbert, I think the Boss is the patriarch of the Winningham family, Father Winningham, solely because of what we’ve already seen. We got Mother Winningham and Baby Box… but no father figure? Surely the Advent Calendar would stick to “traditional” values and produce a father. Perhaps he was busted out of his hibernation early to take down Mare and the gang?

I was just searching around Google for places that carry the Advent Calendar, and it presented me with a picture of all the contents. Does this mean Christmas is over?

Damn work! I’ve had to catch up on three days worth of Advent Calendar and Blog posts.

I will say this though, alot of your comments make me smile, especially the odd X-Mas memories one and the Voltron vs. Devastator/Predaking one. Makes me feel like I’m not alone.

Actually, I think Voltron would be on the total losing end of that one. Even if Voltron did get past DEvs first, Predaking would own his ass out of sheer animal instinct alone. I mean, who does team Voltron REALLY have, Keith? Pidge is a joke, Hunk is as bright and as useful as a box of hammers, and Sven is, well, Sven. I can’t even remember the other guys name, that’s how much of a none factor he is….

As for which TV you should get Matt, you can’t go wrong with either Plasma or DLP projection. Even the Sony LCD projection TV is top notch.

They’ve since corrected the lag issue that occured with video games (most notably Samsung’s due to the internal scaler) and they have fantastic pictures, and you get more screen for the price. Plasmas are great if you want something thinnner, and may want to hang it on the wall. Just keep in mind they use more power, and if you dont game that much, burn in is a none factor. Other than that, you get better color on plasmas, better viewing angles, and better blacks. LCD’s are still too expensive IMO for the picture sizes. Once they cost about the same as Plasma’s, then they might be worth it.

OK I know this was a SNT topic but I missed it and while this is not my story it belongs to a close friend and it was one of the funniest ELFING (clean Christmas cussing) things I have read in a long time. Here goes…

As a joke, my brother used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them. What they say about Santa checking the list twice must be true because every Christmas morning, although Jay’s kids’ stockings were overflowed, his poor pantyhose hung sadly empty.

One year I decided to make his dream come true. I put on sunglasses and went in search of an inflatable love doll. They don’t sell those things at Wal-Mart. I had to go to an adult bookstore downtown. If you’ve never been in an X-rated store, don’t go. You’ll only confuse yourself. I was there an hour saying things like, “What does this do? You’re kidding me! Who would buy that?” Finally, I made it to the inflatable doll section.

I wanted to buy a standard, uncomplicated doll that could also substitute as a passenger in my truck so I could use the car pool lane during rush hour. Finding what I wanted was difficult. Love Dolls come in many different models. The top of the line, according to the side of the box, could do things I’d only seen in a book on animal husbandry. I settled for Lovable Louise. She was at the bottom of the price scale. To call Louise a doll took a huge leap of imagination.

My sister-in-law was in on the plan and let me in during the wee morning hours. Long after Santa had come and gone, I filled the dangling pantyhose with Louise’s pliant legs and bottom. I also ate some cookies and drank what remained of a glass of milk on a nearby tray. I went home, and giggled for a couple of hours.

The next morning my brother called to say that Santa had been to his house and left a present that had made him VERY happy but had left the dog confused. She would bark, start to walk away, then come back and bark some more. We all agreed that Louise should remain in her panty hose so the rest of the family could admire her when they came over for the traditional Christmas dinner.

My grandmother noticed Louise the moment she walked in the door. “What the hell is that?” she asked. My brother quickly explained, “It’s a doll.” “Who would play with something like that?” Granny snapped. I had several candidates in mind, but kept my mouth shut.

“Where are her clothes?” Granny continued. “Boy, that turkey sure smells nice Gran” Jay said, to steer her into the dining room. But Granny was relentless. “Why doesn’t she have any teeth?” Again, I could have answered, but why would I? It was Christmas and no one wanted to ride in the back of the ambulance saying, “Hang on Granny, hang on!”

My grandfather, a delightful old man with poor eyesight, sidled up to me and said, “Hey, who’s the naked gal by the fireplace?” I told him she was Jay’s friend. A few minutes later I noticed Grandpa by the mantel, talking to Louise. Not just talking, but actually flirting. It was then that we realized this might be Grandpa’s last Christmas at home.

The dinner went well. We made the usual small talk about who had died, who was dying, and who should be killed, when suddenly Louise made a noise like my father in the bathroom in the morning. Then she lurched from the panty hose, flew around the room twice, and fell in a heap in front of the sofa.

The cat screamed. I passed cranberry sauce through my nose, and Grandpa ran across the room, fell to his knees, and began administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. My brother fell back over his chair and wet his pants.

Granny threw down her napkin, stomped out of the room, and sat in the car. It was indeed a Christmas to treasure and remember.

Later in my brother’s garage, we conducted a thorough examination to decide the cause of Louise’s collapse. We discovered that Louise had suffered from a hot ember to the back of her right thigh. Fortunately, thanks to a wonder drug called duct tape, we restored her to perfect health!

Those Rudolph figures are the best. The core characters seem to be reissued every year with a few new bit players thrown in. They ALWAYS seem to sell out before I can get my hands on any good characters, though. Went to Toys R Us yesterday in hopes of snagging a Yukon or Sam… and they were all gone. They had tons of the Charlie Brown Christmas figures, though.

Im a Hardcore fan of yours, Your My hero. I was wondering if we Can IM somtime? your sn is in my buddylist but your never on. BTW Looking forward 2 christmas fallout

Cricket: Your story made my day after reading the sad news that the FoxTrot comic strip is gonna be Sunday only starting Dec. 31.

Chaunukka Harry- He’s doesn’t want to save Christmas, despite what SNL says.

Goldberg- Former pro wrestler who played a Satanic Santa in a tv movie last year.

Thanks for the Advent fun. Everyone check out my Xmas story in the blog that had that as the main theme. It is very funny, and has left my family feeling taken advantage of. Everything on your Amazon list is ranked MEDIUM priority, so expect a surprise from the list my good man.

I thought today was supposed to be a “manly” post. What’s so manly about cat furniture and Grinch plushies?

Takes a man to lift a hundred pound 5′ cat house up the stairs, and I used the Grinch plushies to hit baseballs.

Oh and my hats are off to Robert Smigel’s Christmas With Tingles as well. Awesome short from the early TV Funhouse stuff. I have said it before, and will say again that Robert Smigel is the man.

The Boss, to put it simply, is the Santa from the 2002 Advent Calendar, furious about how he is the only Santa to date to be denied his chance at Santa-dom.

Tingles, The Christmas Tension- Kudos to whoever remembers this one besides me.

Well my family has totally had a tradition of the Christmas Pand for the last 13 years. Some commercial ripped off of our family tradition, so most people scoff as soon as they hear about this story. I forget what product the commercial was for, but our whole family feels robbed as a result. Being that it is almost impossible to trademark family traditions, we have had to swallow the bittersweet pill that is having precious family moments used for profit by some dastardly company. Anywho, we set out in 1993 to a costume shop for a Santa suit to make all the young kids piss themselves in amazement. The only costume shop that still had a Santa suit this late in the year (we didn’t even call until December 20th) was a good two hour drive from any of us. We decided to make the trek anyway as it was our only hope to get that suit. When we get to the shop, the lady over the phone thought we called in to reserve a PANDA SUIT instead of a SANTA SUIT. There was no Santa suit in the whole store obviously, and we were stuck coming back home empty handed. I decided to rent the PANDA SUIT anyways and just make do from there. The Christmas Panda was born that Christmas Eve at the family party. We decided it would be better to make this a surprise for everyone. I wanted to see the look on Grandma’s face when she saw the Santa Suit workaround. Everyone sat on the floor of my Aunt’s game room and waited eagerly shouting “who is that” and “I think I hear Jingle Bells”. No you didn’t, no one heard any bells. Quit lying to the children all ready. In walks the biggest, blackest, and happy facedest Panda the world has ever seen. The kids went nuts, doing ad-lib Panda breakdances right on the carpet. Cheers were lifted to the heavens as presents poured out of the Newly crowned bear’s sack. Christmas Panda was king with the kids. This must seriously have been the coolest shit they had ever seen. Grandma on the other handâ€¦ not so much. They were pissed that the money we were sent with for a Santa Suit was spent on this obviously not Christmas-ish in any way Panda getup. The kids loved the Panda so much that we ended up having to BUY the Panda suit, and it is still worn every Christmas Eve since. Since then the Panda has gained Christmas accessories making him more seasonable, but it is still the same junk suit. I love this memory because it reminds me of how a family is able to overcome obstacles when there is love and togetherness involved. So go stick that in a Hallmark Card and rip off another of my precious family memories. We WILL remember who you are Mr. Company, and the Christmas Panda will exact his yule tide revenge.

You know who could take down Predaking–besides Voltron? Harvey Feirstein as Heatmiser, that’s who. Yeah, I said it.

Is it just me or do we need Windmiser, Earthmiser, Watermiser, Boltmiser, Biomiser, and Gravitymiser? Dare I say Curemiser?

I’m gonna try to talk my friend into getting a Pitch Black Icee on Wendsday. I KNOW I saw it at the Deptford Target.

Most of my decorations went up last week, including the tree. All I have left to do is the paper snowflakes for the window. That’s one of the reasons I moved in the first place. My Christmas decorations are now kept in a big room in the back of my apartment instead of in my mom and stepdad’s garage. Whenever I want to feel the holiday spirit, I now just have to walk in the back.

I’ve seen most, if not all, of those figures in various stores in the South Jersey area over the years. I’ve always wanted to buy them, but A) I never had the money, and B) until this year, they lacked a proper display place in my tiny Wildwood apartment. Maybe I’ll splurge if I have any money left after Christmas shopping this week.

Hey matt will we get to see everything once it’s up? also I have noticed that (at least as far as I have seen)its been a LONG time since there has been a pic of you up here. Is there a reason for this? was tehre some sort of accident? Did you go all Phantom of the internet on us?…..this post is pretty lame…you probably should ignore it.

We have our house up for sale, so we weren’t able to really decorate as much as usual this year. This is the first year ever that we didn’t get a real christmas tree, cause our realtor didn’t want the needles everywhere. The only thing that we had was some little lights outside, but my puppy chewed through the wires twice, so we gave up on that.

the chair, it looks like a ghost. …
that whole photo looks like something from a coffee-table book of the supernatural.
mostly that chair, BAM, front and center.
anyone else have that kind of eerie feeling / spookiness from the chair?

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