Well, another Christmas season has come and gone, and what’s left now is that familiar combination of good memories, misplaced guilt and a couple of other indiscernible feelings that I’m not exactly sure what to do with. The only downside to putting so much stock into the holidays is some weird form of alien jetlag when it’s all over with. Luckily, we get plenty of new toys to help us cope with life-as-usual.

This is the 2006 Christmas Fallout thread, where everyone gathers around the fireplace one last time to trade stories of celebrations completed, and more importantly, gifts received. While coming from such a large family means having to spend a mint on gifts, it also means that I get a lot of gifts. I consider that a fair trade. Here’s this year’s haul!

• NINTENDO WII CONSOLE w/ ALL THAT JAZZ

I finally fired this baby up today, and it’s making me all sorts of things. Happy and excited are in the forefront, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little frustrated that I haven’t mastered the controls yet. That said, even the “cheap” in-pack Wii Sports game is tons of fun. I don’t care how “easy” it is — I could play that bowling game all day long. Getting the Wii provided the first instance in a very long time when I was actually giddy over video games. Even now, with the Wii in the living room and me in here, I can’t help feeling like I’m in the wrong room.

• INSANELY AWESOME TIKI HEADS

Every year, my family does a grab bag, where everyone puts in a gift of around a $25 value, and we all play a game of chance to see who gets what, who steals what and who goes home happy. I was sure that I’d be gunning to take home the gifts that I myself put into the lot, but when my sister’s find — two gigantic resin Tiki God statues that are possibly intended to be outdoor planters — was unveiled, I nearly had a heart attack. After much begging, some cheating and a lot of praying, indeed, I went home with the greatest gift of any holiday-related grab bag exercise in history. Every time I look at these things, I pinch myself.

• AFRICAN CRAZYDOLL GUY

Another grab bag score. I actually had the woman give up her desired grab bag gift (some stupid appliance) to fetch me the Tiki heads, so when someone stole my gift, I went for the throat and stole someone else’s African Crazydoll Guy. I’m not sure if I’m explaining how this grab bagging thing works correctly, but that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that I now have an African Crazydoll Guy to compliment my Easter Island duo.

• THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS
• RAMPAGE: TOTAL DESTRUCTION
• EXCITE TRUCK

I don’t know that I would’ve been so into owning a Nintendo Wii if I wasn’t interested in at least a few of the launch titles. (If it was any different, I probably would’ve waited for the new Smash game to come out.) Getting Zelda was a no-brainer, but I’m a longtime Rampage fan, and something that qualifies in my mind as a sequel to Excitebike made Excite Truck an easy choice. I wasn’t expecting to get all three, but Christmas is a time for miracles. I haven’t played any of the games long enough to offer anything more than a superficial opinion, but Zelda already has me praying for influenza so I can skip a few more days from work to get to the good parts. The landscape is just massive, and though I can see some of the more able gamers maybe complaining that it takes a good while to get to the meat, I’m happy with the slow build. It gives me a chance to remember how to play video games.

Rampage: Total Destruction is exactly what you’d expect it to be — a broader version of the original goal of smashing buildings and eating people. Excite Truck is going to take some getting used to, and by that I mean, I can’t seem to get more than ten feet without being complimented on how stylishly I crashed into a tree.

• WII NUNCHUK CONTROLLER
• 2,000 WII POINTS CARD

The extra Nunchuk won’t come into play until I get an extra Wii Remote, but I certainly will, so it’s good to have. I can’t wait to explore the fancy world of spending Wii points on shitloads of vintage games, but it’ll probably be a week or two before I look into how to do it.

• KING KONG: MEGA HUGE GIANT THREE-DISC DVD SET
• EMPIRE OF THE ANTS / TENTACLES DOUBLE FEATURE DVD

Truth be told, I only wanted this mega giant King Kong special DVD set to see a couple of creature-related scenes that were cut from the theatrical release and not placed on the first DVD release. That might seem like I’m giving too much to one movie, but they’re excellent scenes, including one where the gang goes rafting and several bit players get eaten by a giant sea monster — a sea monster that I’ve owned in action figure form for over a year now. I kind of think it was a bit bogus to hold off on putting this out just so they could get “double money” from those of us who already bought the first release, but for what it’s worth, they put a LOT of stuff on there. I was always more into the sum total of Skull Island than the stars or the monkey, and for those ends, this is an excellent resource.

The other DVD was desired primarily because I absolutely adore Empire of the Ants. I was renting that mofo from video stores long before I ever even heard of a “so bad it’s good” movie market. I actually reviewed the flick very early on in the site’s history, but with this disc, I’ll probably give it another shot. You ain’t seen nothing like that movie, and I’m sure Tentacles just as lovably stupid.

• ENCYCLOPEDIA PREHISTORICA: SHARKS & OTHER SEA MONSTERS

This book is some kind of wonderful. It’s a really intricate and elaborate pop-up book, but calling it a “pop-up book” sounds like an understatement. I’ll say more when I get over my fear of tearing pages by thumbing through it.

• GIZMO HEAD PILLOW

Words can’t describe how awesome this thing is. Very simply, it’s a pillow shaped like Gizmo’s head. This thing is absolutely huge. If you hold it from ear to ear, it’s about three miles long. Appropriately fuzzy with big drowsy eyes, I look forward to staining it with head oil on a nightly basis. Going to sleep on Gizmo makes going to sleep seem so much cooler than it ever has before.

• A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS BOOK
• JIMMY BUFFET “CHRISTMAS ISLAND” CD

The Peanuts book is an excellent look back at an excellent Christmas special, and it’s not at all limited to anyone-can-write-this fits of nostalgia. There’s a lot of good info in there, covering the special’s “prehistory,” casting, Schultz’s own attitudes towards it and all sorts of press clippings that’ll give you a better idea of what the show meant in its own time.

The Jimmy Buffet CD makes me wish it was Christmas for another week. I don’t want to put it away yet.

• STAR WARS “COMPLETE LOCATIONS” BOOK
• LITHIUM BATTERIES
• DEODORANT!!!

Deodorant and batteries make great stocking stuffers, but that Star Wars book is seriously terrific. I’m a big fan of those “cross-section” books that offer glimpses of what goes on inside everything from medieval castles to submarines, and the book is pretty much that with a Star Wars twist. Including intensely detailed, charted diagrams of the Mos Eisley Cantina, Jabba’s Palace and the Death Star, the book takes even the most minute shots from all six movies and expands them to the point where I feel like they really exist and I can vacation there. If you’re into the worlds and environments of the movies, you have to get this book.

• iPOD RADIO REMOTE
• GROW BUMBLE

One of the saddest parts of my commute to work each morning is listening to talk radio (currently O&A) on my two minute drive to the bus stop, and then having to totally give up on it and stick with whatever’s in my iPod as I sit on a bus for sixteen hours. I’m not going to carry an old Walkman and an iPod, because that’s just absolutely insane. Now, I don’t have to. With the Radio Remote, I can do it all.

And Grow Bumble? A tiny Bumble figure that will grow 600% larger whenever I get around to drowning it? Hell yes.

• NINTENDO MINI-CLASSICS: DONKEY KONG
• NINTENDO MINI-CLASSICS: ZELDA

It’s only now occurring to me that I can’t write two paragraphs for each gift if I want to be finished with this tonight, so from here on out, shit gets shorter. Here’s a pair of cute handhelds that remind us of simpler, less fun long car rides. Each handheld is designed kind of like a crude little cousin of Game Boy.

• UNCLE JOHN’S GIGANTIC BATHROOM READER
• BOGGLE

I wish Uncle John would get past the idea that his books that are only meant for reading in the bathroom, because it comes this close to ruining it for me. If you’re not familiar with Uncle John, he makes all sorts of wonderful “random factoid” books that’ll keep you occupied for hhhhhooourrrss. There’s usually no real theme to the books — one page might be about why Wendy’s makes square hamburgers, and the next’ll be about why yawning is contagious. If you’ve ever spent a night just drifting mindlessly from Wikipedia entry to Wikipedia entry, this is kind of the same idea.

And I love Boggle!

• CONNECT 4

Even if you make me go second, you cannot defeat me in Connect 4. Accept this and move on. Also accept that I’ve reserved the black tokens for every game I may ever play.

• STREET FIGHTER “BLANKA” FIGURE

Blanka is just one of the many Street Fightaaa figures available from SOTA Toys. I’ve only recently discovered the line, but still feel perfectly okay with naming it one of the best action figure sets ever. Each figure comes with an alternate head and pair of hands, and they’re all super detailed and really beg for collectors to give into the dark side and free them from their mintyfresh cardboard and plastic prisons. I’ve got a feeling that Blanka will ultimately grace my desk at work, because nothing breaks the silence of awkward meetings quicker than a glow-in-the-dark Blanka.

• DARTH VADER’S IMPERIAL CHOPPER

I don’t want to say too much, because this thing deserves its own blog entry. Let’s leave it at this: “Darth Vader. On. A Motorcycle.” Some fans are in an uproar that Hasbro made this thing, claiming that it goes against whatever Vader is supposed to be. Obviously, Vader never rode a motorcycle in any example of Star Wars fiction, movies or otherwise. I dunno, though. I think it looks kinda cool.

• THE BEASTS THAT HIDE FROM MAN
• ANATOMY OF THE SEA

A pair of absolutely kickass books on two of my favorite subjects. The first one deals with our pals from the cryptozoo, and even though I’ve only read a few pages so far, I’ve already learned about a tree on some remote island that wraps vines around virgin sacrifices and eats them alive. Yes! I haven’t touched the other book yet, but that just means tonight will be historic.

• CHEESE RACLETTE & GRILL

I assume this item to be some form of a slap in the face to George Foreman’s monopolistic inclinations, but I can’t say for sure until I look up the word “raclette.” The photo on the box tells me that I can now cook scallops and hot dogs simultaneously, and that’s exciting.

• CARNIVOROUS CREATIONS PLANTER

The reviews for this thing are just terrible, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed it. It’s alleged that I will be able to grow and maintain everything from Venus Fly Traps to Pitcher Plants, but I don’t need bad consumer reviews to tell me how utterly impossible that will be with only a mid-quality plastic terrarium and some pouches full of seeds and soil to guide me. I don’t care. It’ll make for a fun article someday, and just the box photo of a tub full of death plants is worth the price of admission.

• FLY TRAP FIENDS (2)

From the same maker, here’s a pair of smaller kits that skip on all the other killer plants to focus solely on Venus Fly Traps. Will probably end up being equally impossible, but I love the idea all the same. A brief glance at the instructions tells me that I have to leave the soil in the fridge for eight weeks before doing anything, so I can totally understand why people are getting so pissed when nothing grows. And yet, I still can’t wait to try!

• THE MYSTERY AT DISNEY WORLD
• MASTERING THE UNIVERSE

Some more books that only I would like. “The Mystery At Disney World” is mostly for kids, and tells the rather headscratchin’ story of a child being kidnapped in the parks. I read that it somehow manages to double nicely as a Disney World trivia book, and that’s why I wanted it. “Mastering the Universe” is a screwy autobiography written by a bitter former Mattel employee who claims that he invented He-Man, Skeletor, oxygen and the cure for cancer. At least, this is what the reviews say. I’m excited to read it. Sounds like a 200 page bad blog entry put into book form.

• SUPER SUSHI DINNERWARE SET

This really nice sushi dinnerware set came to us from one of my sisters and her husband, and solves our age old problem of never wanting to eat sushi at home because we don’t have the right damn fancy plates! It even comes with ceramic chopsticks in case whichever place we order from forgets to throw ‘em in the bag.

• THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MAMMALS

Thicker than a phone book and heavy enough to kill my adversaries with, “The Encyclopedia of Mammals” is 50,000 pages of warm-blooded wonders from around the world. I envision many nights spent twisted on the couch with a dirty throw blanket, string cheese and this book.

• THE FACTS OF LIFE: SEASONS 1 & 2 DVD SET
• POKEMON SEASON 1 DVD SET

Why hello there, amazing DVD sets! HELLLOOOO!

A big reason why this year’s Christmas Fallout thread came so late is because the lady and I have become absolutely hooked on these The Facts of Life DVDs. Holy shit, I totally forgot how much I loved that show. Of course, the first season featured a far larger and very Jo-less ensemble cast that would change quite a bit by season 2, which we haven’t gotten up to watching yet despite our best efforts to do nothing but watch The Facts of Life all day long. I would’ve been satisfied just with the episodes, but even the special features are pretty good. Yay!

Haven’t opened up the Pokemon set yet, but it’s got close to the first thirty episodes of the cartoon, which are the ones I loved the best, and I’m not just saying that because they’re the only ones I’ve seen.

When I note how many hours of unbridled ecstasy can be had with the DVDs shown above and elsewhere in this post, I’m very depressed that I am an employed human being.

• WACKY NAPKINS
• NOT-SO-WACKY EATING UTENSILS

The martini-themed napkins (more on this in the next blurb) all feature art that absolutely looks like it was drawn by Gary Larson, but absolutely wasn’t unless Gary is currently using a pseudonym so he can produce cheeky napkins in peace. The utensils came to us from a family member who knew me well enough to realize that most of our forks and spoons get lost somewhere in the vicinity of my computer desk, and most typically end up covered with fire ants, which is such a psychological stain that no dish detergent can ever really clean them enough. As such, it’s good to have as many as possible. Also, the spoons in this set are very roundish and not very ovalish, and remind me of the spoons that I always assumed Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale used while eating soup at that cold, long table.

• MARTINI GLASSES (5)

We were given six of these, but one broke in transit. Oops. The martini glasses were part of a big brown bag full of martini-related gifts given to me by my brother, and when I say “my brother,” I really mean his wife, because the closest my brother ever came to buying a present was confirming that “it looked okay” to my sister-in-law. This is fine with me, because they’re excellent martini glasses. Doing away with the naughty glass stems that so often crumble under the might of my granite fists, these have something more akin to stumps on the bottom.

• “ICE SHOT” SHOT GLASSES
• HOT TEXAS MARTINI OLIVES
• APPLE MARTINI MIX
• FONDUE LIGHTER FLUID OR SOME SHIT

More treasures from the big brown bag of drinking tools, I really appreciate my family’s ability to hone in on that one special thing I love and take it to the limit. The fondue lighter fluid would seem to be a throwback to a few years back, when the woman and I proclaimed that we wanted to try fondue and were given no less than seven fondue sets for Christmas. Of the four items above, I’m most interested in the olives. I’m not sure they’ll last long enough to hit any actual martinis.

• E.T. WALKIE TALKIES

A gag gift picked up for me by my nephews at some closeout store. Well, the joke’s on them: I already own these. They were part of the ill-fated merchandising blitz when E.T. phoned home on the big screen re-release several years back, which reminds me of this old blog post, which I really like, because I think it’s the Internet’s only resource for E.T.’s Chips Ahoy! cookies with “glow blast” chips.

• “G.I. JOE VS. THE TRANSFORMERS” GRAPHIC NOVEL, VOL 1
• THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: A FAMILY PORTRAIT DVD

The Joes/TF comic is really cool. I read it yesterday and was totally into the story, which is more than I can say for a lot of the Transformers comics I’ve read in the past few years. (I don’t like many of the newer takes on the lore — the stories are often plainly boring.) The book is a bit of a reimagining of what we grew up “knowing” about both franchises, but all of the revised elements are done in such a way that longtime fans will feel more curious than pissed. I can’t wait to get the rest of the set.

Haven’t watched the Texas Chainsaw DVD yet — seems like something that shouldn’t be put on until it’s dark and rainy, and I’ve only gotten dark covered so far.

• POKEMON “EEVEE” DVD
• ALF SEASON 1 DVD BOX SET

I have a soft spot for Eevee. During the first Pokemon wave, he/she/whatever was one of my favorite characters, partly because Eevee is a cute little puppyish thing, but mostly because it had the ability to evolve into three totally different other Pokemon by way of strange, colored stones. I like my Pokemon convoluted. There was a great cartoon episode that played on this aspect of the game, where an Eevee trainer was being pressured by his brothers to evolve it into one of the three possibilities. He ultimately decided not to evolve it at all. I still kinda think he should’ve went the Vaporeon route. Vaporeon ruled. Fishdog!

I’ve only seen ALF a handful of times since its original prime time run, so I can’t wait to dig into these DVDs and see how it holds up. I was an ALF lunatic as a kid, because wisecracking furry aliens equals RATINGS.

• STREET FIGHTER “M BISON” FIGURE
• AMAZING LIVE SEA-MONKEYS FIGURE

Bison is another SOTA Toys special, and is just as cool as Blanka. The Sea-Monkey figure is everything a Sea-Monkey action figure should be, portraying the tiny shrimp as they were seen in several thousand comic book advertisements through the decades. Between Blanka, Bison and this Sea-Monkey, I’m starting to question whether I really grew up during the action figure golden age or not. I mean, yeah, we had Trypticon and Princess Leia in Bespin Fatigues, but we didn’t have no Sea-Monkey.

• 20 Q GAME
• LUKE & YODA HALLMARK ORNAMENT

The “20 Q” game has become a pretty cliched little gift, but at the same time, it’s such a good time waster. It’s very rare to beat the computer if you answer every question correctly. Assuming you do answer every question correctly, marvel at the electronic gods as they successfully theorize that you were thinking of an OWL.

The Star Wars ornament was rather oddly placed inside the aforementioned big brown bag of drinking equipment, but it’s a welcome addition to my growing collection of blasphemous Christmas tree ornaments. Since it’s made by Hallmark and since Hallmark liked it enough to subcategorize it with their “KEEPSAKE!!!” logo, this is a seriously high quality ornament that will likely decorate far more than Christmas trees in the coming months.

• “MEG” NOVEL

I rarely read fiction, at least in outright “here is a fiction novel” form. I will do this for MEG. MEG deserves this. MEG is the story of a megaladon (big ass prehistoric shark) relic terrorizing landlubbers once more, and in the few pages I’ve already read, I got to envision a giant shark biting the kidneys out of a T-Rex. Hell yes.

I still have a few more pictures to take, but that’s the brunt of it. I’ll update the rest when I can. Christmas was excellent as it usually is, but now that the dust has settled, I’m pretty okay with letting life move forward in more colors than red and green. Thanks for being a part of the site’s sixtieth holiday season!

(And a big thanks to the readers who sent gifts this year! I’ll be contacting you personally to bow and kiss your ring soon if I haven’t already.)

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!