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12/18/2006: Manger Christmas.

To celebrate having an apartment that could once again seat more than two people, we had some friends over on Saturday night. Evidently forgetting that our bones are ten years older than they used to be, we threw caution to the wind and plowed through what must’ve been a fourteen gallon bottle of Jager. After six hours of poker, bullshitting, Christmas music and various side trips, the last thing I remember is everyone watching Pee-wee’s Christmas Special and me slurring to my friend to “stay awake for the Little Richard part…oh man the Little Richard part.” I, however, did not stay awake, and spent most of Sunday reminding myself that, as a fifty-year-old, I can no longer drink wheelbarrows full of alcohol.

Somewhere along the way, one of us got the brilliant idea to drive to a local church’s live manger, even though it was past 2 AM by that point. I’ve written about this manger before, but I have to admit — however sacrilegious, it’s a lot more fun to sneak into church mangers with live animals when you’re crocked in the middle of then night than to do it in the afternoon with a bunch of kids shoving you aside so they can have the better “llama petting position.”

During “open hours,” the manger consists of what I’d guess you’d call an open garage connected to a small, hay-covered field. In the middle of the night, though, it’s just a garage. We didn’t have to break in or anything — the door on the side of the garage/barn was wide open, so I don’t feel like I need to Hail Mary my ass out of purgatory. Or at least, I didn’t until I started interrogating the various ostriches and goats. “Where were YOU on the night of the 11th, OSTRICH?! We know what you did, GOAT!” Things like that — drunken stupid things.

Since this was a real church’s manger/nativity, the religious statues weren’t of the plastic, goofy-faced variety. These were the hardcore statues. The big ones. The haunting ones. The kind you cock your head at and try not to blink, because you’re sure they’ll wink at you or something if you just look at them long enough.

There were all sorts of animals in there, and only now do I realize that we probably shouldn’t have been feeding them just because they was an open bag of manger animal food laying in the barn. Oh well, at least we threw some dolla dolla bills y’all into the donation box. I’ll never know for sure if these animals come on loan from the zoo each year or if they retire to an underground utopian animal society from January-November, but for what it’s worth, they were fucking friendly animals. How many times can you say “c’mere goat” and actually have it be paid off?

Fun times. We didn’t stay for too long because we kind of knew we weren’t supposed to be there, and there’s only so long you can tempt fate before a lightning bolt hits you in the head.

On Sunday, I woke up very very late, and realized that if I had any interest in getting a Christmas tree this year, it was probably time to do so. I’ll tell you about that later, but the story involves another manger. It wasn’t a church’s manger this time, so the nativity’s Jesus was less granitey goodness and more plastic with a light-up face.

Hey, I watched Pee-wee’s Christmas Special this weekend too! Nice! Although my favorite scene is Pee-wee practically screaming at Oprah. She wouldn’t let that shit fly today…

At least the goat didn’t answer with, “What?” when you called it. That might’ve out a different spin on your story.

Sounds like fun to me! I never knew that they just left the animals in the manger all night. I don’t know what the hell I thought they did with them–let them in the church?

Awesome times Matt. Jager and Red Bull is a bad combo, but very tasty. I am not sure, but I thought I saw Mare being tied up with a condom on 12-15’s calendar entry.

we have the same playmobile advent calendar at home, but we’re not getting the same items from the boxes on the same days as the storyline. i guess one of us took some liberties when stuffing the boxes.

we also found a playmobile knights advent calendar this year. its much cooler and less girly, but not christmasy in the least. not that a flock of birds is all that christmasy, but at least there is a general feeling of cold-weather.

The gifts in mine are in the order they should be unless I made a goof; it would be against the rules to do it otherwise!

Wait, so the goat didn’t try to eat your clothes? That’s a well behaved goat.

Considering the amount of Jager it sounds like you drank I’m sort of surprised the goat didn’t answer in English.

And the only reason it was Jager to begin with was because the liquor store had this gift set where you got a giant Jager bottle and two pewter elk-shaped shooters.

Ohhhhh Jagermeister….The sight of the bottle gives me the chills, a little spitting action and watery eyes. That’s a drink that will cause Martha Stewart to get into a fart lighting competition. I can’t tell you how many “no shit there I was” stories that has spawned from Jager. At least you didn’t try and ride the llama or something.

One thing my cousin and I would do around this time of the year to annoy my aunt would be taking the baby Jesus from her nativity scene and hiding it someplace in the house. Hmm…I wonder how much that baby jesus weights….

I’m loving the milk carton of Goldfish in front of the Jager. So immature, yet quite resourceful. Goldfish are an amazing Jager-drunken-stupor snack.

Nice Drunken story, I wish they had live Nativity scenes here, might re-new my lost faith in religion.
on a side note, I do hope at least one of you was sober enough to drive because I’d hate for you to be all splattered on the interstate and not finish the advent calendar. Because then I wouldn’t have anything to laugh at, and that wouldn’t be cool.

Gene, yeah, we had a DD. (Which was pretty much a requirement considering that some of the people partying lived a borough away.

Ok not condom. I see the rubber band now (gumband here in Pittsburgh). I want elk shooters. Are they shot-sized or like oversized shooters?

I’m pretty uneducated when it comes to this sort of thing, but I’d say they’re normal sized shooters. Like shot size width but about 75% taller?

I just began the Christmas vacation from work and I am back at the folks house. I noticed our Nativity set and the baby Jesus is placd in a pottery holder that I made in art class back in ‘86 when i was 8. As I remember that was suppose to be an ashtray because I a no talent assclown of a kid and that was the only thing that it resembled. Matt, do your folks bring out the artwork decorations from elementry school this time of year or is it just mine?

You’d enjoy this Bill, my mother found a whole load of art projects from grade school up in the kneewalls of the third floor right before Thanksgivings. She scanned and copied this stupid looking pilgrim I’d drawn and colored and make ‘em into place cards for dinner.

50? Why do I have you in my head as some 20 something punk who makes me laugh all the time? For that matter why I do somehow always put Strongbad’s voice over both Kuse and Knacks? What the hell is wrong with me???

Please help…I need a new advent entry for the day or a shot of Jager if you can spare it…you choose! I am dying here.

Your Saturday night sounds very similar to my Friday. Except for the manger part. I haven’t seen one in town yet, which means there probably isn’t one. And, I passed out next to my laptop singing along to the Jukebox.

We got the very same Jager gift set last year. The shooters were stolen at my B-day party less than two weeks later. Stupid drunk people. I’ve also come to realize that I am too old to drink like I used to, and I find it depressing. I try anyway though!

LemurCat: That’s awesome. My girlfriend saw my artwork ornaments last year and she asked if I was enrolled in the Target program. ( that’s a program for kids with a 180 IQ but eat crayons)

Aw, my friends never wanna do cool shit like have drunken escapades at 3am. Instead they make me go to redneck bars and then I hear about how the one just took her Girl Scout troop on some big trip and the other just got her CPR certification renewed and I’m just like, “Yeah well… I watched cartoons all day and then I played with expired Tinkerbell cosmetics…. fuck you.”

At the aformentioned Frat Xmas Party, a common gift in our Grab Bag was a gift pack for Jaeger, or Jaeger itself, at least 4 cases of this happening. I hear you get to Time Travel with that stuff, and I see it did not disappoint.

Apparently ’tis the season for learning alcohol based lessons– I discovered at about 1 am Saturday Night that chugging rum is never a good idea, even if your precious, precious pride is on the line. I didn’t unswallow or anything, but I got reeeeallly drunk reeeeaaally fast. Tickling and Taco Bell ensued.

Mystie, do you have any of the peel-off nail polish? LOVED THAT SHIT. I’d totally be playing with expired Tinkerbell makeup if I had any!

Wow, Mystie…I’d completely forgotten about Tinkerbell makeup! I used to love it…I think I only ever left the peel-off nail polish on for 10 minutes, tops.

I used to love the weird feeling of peeling off the polish…it felt tingly … Oh yeah, my brothers friend was at this party once and drank some yeager and tried to ride his friends goat.

I am mad pissed! right now! I have been awaiting for my father’s annual bestbuy giftcards and christmas presents for me and my husband, and the friggin postman came at 8 am of all times! and i was at the hospital getting an MRI of my shoulder, so now we gotta wait til tommorow to go to the post office and get it….I’m gonna grab that gift card as soon as i get home and buy me some DS games(elite beat agents, and i dunno what else yet) the package was insured, so i hope mabe there is something REAllY nice in there like a tv or ps3…hee hee

They had a “living creche” outside one of the churches during our little town’s annual tree-lighting, but I guess it got too cold for the people involved, because they stopped after a few years. We have a DJ instead, but he only plays Christmas songs half the time. (Unless you can convince me “Macarena” is a Christmas song, and there’s already a few “Christmas” songs I could rant about as being only “winter” songs, but that would be a blog post unto itself.) However, the “set” is still up, and considering how warm it’s been this year they could have easily done it without hypothermia setting in. But we can’t even get Salvation Army bellringers lately, and the last time we left the kettle unattended some worthless scumbag piece of untreated sewage spawn stole it. (Did that sound angry enough? It *is* Christmas.)

Forgot to add, one of my female coworkers loves llamas.
…
NOT THAT WAY, YOU FREAK!!!!!!!! I wouldn’t hang out with that kind of person.

Wow, just finished the 14-17th advent in one sitting. Pretty impressive stuff. Looks like a Willow type battle scheme. oh boy!
One question, is it just me or does Tigerboy have a pube in his mouth on the last entry? I might have a dirty computer screen but that might explain his private MySpace account.

and, I was wondering if anybody has heard about the new X-MEN flick thats in post-production, its a prequel based on logan and how he became wolvie, check it out if you wanna, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458525/

project-b: Matt’s AC is in the right order ‘cos my dad put mine together and, unless my dad is psychic or something, I’m getting the same toys on the same days as Matt.

The animals are going to rat you out, Matt. They’re going to go to the priest at some point this week and tell him all about your little adventure. Manger animals are not to be trusted.

Matt, you’re a Jager man. For that I will be hopelessly devoted to you. I’m serious. If you see a guy following you to and from work and hiding in your bushes and rifling through your underwear drawer, that’ll be me.

You can’t be any older than me, if at all, and I’m sure you can still handle it. You just have to get back into it. Shots of 151 anyone?

Thankfully, my age hasn’t slowed me down any, which keeps me wondering, when the hell AM I going to be too old to keep drinking like I did on Saturday at my friends party. Or any other previous Saturday. That’s why I usually miss the SNT since I’m out somewhere, doing things I probably shouldn’t doing with people I shouldn’t be doing them with…..

Apparently, we took many pictures of the wusses who fell asleep at 5 AM. Wih various props I might add.

Seriously, I want to say I’m getting to old for that shit, but I don’t feel it yet.

Oh, and the Calendar is f’ing awesome this year. I thinks this is better than any previous year.

Mista Snowman needs a kick in his frosty nads though. He’s too cheery for my taste.

Please, Matt, I’m the same age as you. Don’t make me feel older than I already do.

I remember the Tinkerbell cosmetics. My sisters had bags and bags of the stuff. I was never really interested, and still rarely wear make-up to this day.

Ehh, I don’t drink. Never developed the taste for it, and I don’t hold it too well. Running around taking pictures of living nativities sounds like fun, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a living nativity here in the South Jersey area, just big ones.

Jager rulez all. OH my God, if only I could count the number of jager bombs I’ve thrown up all over my bedroom, hallway, and bathroom floor…..

I can honestly say that 90% of my “bad drinkin’” nights started with three shots of Jaeger. It doesn’t matter what you drink after that, because you can’t taste it anyway.

As for Live Nativies, I used to live in beautiful, historic Ocean Grove NJ, which is one of the few remaining active Methodist Camp Meetings left in the country. Crazy town, the church owns all the land and people lease it from them. It’s all Victorian and pretty and just plain odd as there is a real dichotomy between the Campies and the rest of the town. Anyway, they do a Live Nativity and Train Show every Christmas season. But they only get a couple of live animals — no llamas, just a couple of goats and a cow that got lose a couple of years back and escaped the Great Auditorium to go graze on the lawn. But the bizarre thing is, they dress up the kids as animals. One year, my neighbor’s kids ended up as the front and back ends of different camels. They even hung angels from the ceiling the last time I went — and I’m talking about live people too.

Oh, and Matt — Watch out for those Nativity animals. You know they all get to talk at Midnight when Christmas Eve turns to Christmas. They might decide to spend their one shot at verbal communication for the year on diming you out.

You cannot tell me that Mista Snowman is not cracking your shit up. Everytime I get that EXTREME close-up of him, I know that I am about to recieve comedy gold. Mista Snowman delivers every time.

OK 151 is awesome, and needs to be brought back. I swear every time I ask for a shot of it at a bar they look at me like I am a frickin lunatic and pour it shaking their head back and forth. On a side note, I just bought about 30 packs of the Harry Potter Jelly Beans for Xmas Presents. I find alot of the flavors way too gross to handle but figured I had to taste each one before subjecting others to the madness. The rotten egg jelly bean is gonna stay with you for hours though. It seriously overpowered Vanilla Mint Listerine. Then again I could have eaten Sardine, vomit, grass, black pepper, soap, earwax, booger or one of the other bajillion gross flavors. I love these things.

Man, I miss drinking- glad to see Matt’s done enough for all of us. :) Those looked like good times. I too spent Saturday night playing poker- I came in second. Damn!

By the way, what kind of booze is Jagr? We don’t have that here…is it rum? whiskey? gin?

I also love Mista Snowman, and wish he’d be my magical special Christmas friend. I wonder if he likes to snowball. *snort*

I cannot think of anything more Christmassey then getting drunk with good friends, and tresspassing into a living nativity scene. One day I would like to live in this magical place in which Matt lives…lol.

That’s an emu! My friend’s dad used to raise them. Awesome critters. Like giant chickens. It was fun to go feed them because they’d basically knock you over to get to the food bucket. And jaeger is like… nyquil without medicinal content. It tastes like black licorice in a liquid form, with the taint of alcohol. It’s one of the best liquors ever.

We finally got a tree today, and by that I mean I broke down and bought an artificial one for $50 at Kmart. At least the kitten will have a harder time knocking it over/poisoning himself.

I cannot wait for the new advent calender adventure! It appears that the mysterious boss could be a Mare from the unfinished 2002 advent calender.

Muppet Baby — Jaeger is a licorice-flavored licquere — an apperitif if you will. It’s not grain-based so it’s not a whiskey or a vodka and it’s not sugar-based so it’s not a rum. It’s not fruit-based so it’s not a wine. It’s in the same caterogy as Aftershock, Southern Comfort, Drambuie, and anything that is distilled in a unique process that mixes tastes.

Old E — Ask for Black Seal rum. It’s a Bermudian 151 that I believe is starting to make in-roads here. More and more places around me are carrying it now. I bought 8 bottles of it back through customs when I took a cruise out there — that and a rum-based apperitif called Rum Jumbee that is particularly fine with banana puree and orange juice. Gotta love cruises — one customs agent for 1200 people.

Muppet Baby: It’s a pretty rough drink that will give you a different drunk. It’s like liquid black licorice. :( I had this Jager in Croatia when I was in the Army and I swear it had a hallucinant in it because I kept seeing a penguin walking around the beach. It turns out there was a coke promotion with a penguin on a billboard. All I can recall is doing a very poor Adam Sandler “It’s too damn hot out here for a penguin. We need to put you in a zoo.” I can only imagine what the locals were thinking.

“TASTE THE RAINBOW!” and “I’m Santa, you can’t kill me with purple lines!” will now officially enter the Lexicon, motion passes.

Who called it to be Claire?! I don’t think I posted it here myself, but she was high on my list.

Awesome! PURE awesome! And yet, like Advent calendars of the past, even thought the primary conflict SEEMS to be over, I’m sure something is gonna pop up to trouble our heroes. My question? Has Matt kept Claire actually frozen this WHOLE TIME?

Was Claire frozen in a pushup-pop? I’ve always been partial to the Flinstone orange pushups. But that’s just me.

That wasn’t very nice what you did to Albedo. I mean, honestly, he was under mind control. You so would have named him Albedo if you played Xenosaga, Matt

For some reason tonight was the first time I ever thought to look X-E up on Wikipedia. (It’s such a part of my life, it’s like wiki-ing “toothbrushes” or something.)

It’s a pretty good entry, actually. Doesn’t really capture the spirit, of course…

[...] The nativity scene was, uh, interesting. Maybe it’s just because I was coming off of a church’s nativity where everything had to be primped and proper, but I swear, the camels looked straight out of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, all with crude black painted smirks and neon pink feet and stuff. Also, the statues (plastic statues that lit up) were obviously from a bunch of different sets, lest anyone believe the Virgin Mary had a hundred pounds on the Three Wise Men. [...]

By the way, how do those candles work? I keep seeing them on TV. Do they smell as good as the commercial suggests?

i’m the same age as you matt. i feel old at times, but at least we got to live through all of the best decade ever. since i really don’t go out, i’m doing a little drinking on my own. rum and coke is the sheeit.

Funny article from which I could almost fell the atmosphere of one of the most important festival there.In fact,I’m a chinese.I suppose you have it just like our chineses have the spring festival.Merry chrismas and best wishes to you.

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