So this was Christmas

Three things that were great about Christmas:

• My mother-in-law’s country-style steak.
• My wife’s paella.
• My mom’s shrimp ‘n’ grits.

One thing that wasn’t great about Christmas but wasn’t as awful as I had feared it would be:

• Missing my dad.

Whereas, I ask, “What took so long?”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden asks, “Why is there an entire web page devoted to Iron Maiden album covers with Spongebob Squarepants inserted into them?”

The war on Christmas (which, as we know, you can’t handle) is over!

And, to the surprise of no one with an IQ above room temperature, Christmas won.

Hey, crackhead!

Totally nonpolitical humor. Enjoy.

So if french fries are now freedom fries …

… does this make Sylvester Stallone the freedom stallion?

You want a war on Christmas?

Fafblog! reports from the front in the war on Christmas!

If you can’t handle the war on Christmas …

… (and we know you can’t), then you certainly cannot handle the War on Whoville!

Take off!

Looks like human rights, sexually transmitted disease and the Canadian travel industry just got a huge boost.

Snubbed again

What’s The New Yorker got that *I* haven’t got?

Hmph.

The war on Christmas …

… (which, if you will recall, you cannot handle) strikes back!

He’s a loser, baby

Beck, whose one-man-band musical and production skills make him a kind of Prince for the new millennium, turns out to be a Scientologist.

John Spencer, 1946-2005

I’m late to this, but I’m gonna miss John Spencer, Tommy Mullaney on the last four years of “L.A. Law” and chief of staff Leo McGarry in “The West Wing.” His best-known characters were much like Spencer himself: workaholic, workmanlike recovering alcoholics, rough edges and raw soul. I had forgotten that he portrayed Harrison Ford’s detective friend in the film adaptation of Scott Turow’s “Presumed Innocent”. (Fun fact: “West Wing” co-star Bradley Whitford also appeared in the film.)

The show’s creator and original lead writer, Aaron Sorkin, gave the McGarry character a ton of memorable lines, but I think the one that resonates the most came when Whitford’s deputy-chief-of-staff character, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after recovering from being shot, begins to worry that maybe his psychological problems will mean he will have to give up his job. McGarry responds with this anecdote:

“This guy’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, ‘Hey you. Can you help me out?’ The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, ‘Father, I’m down in this hole. Can you help me out?’ The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. ‘Hey, Joe, it’s me. Can you help me out?’ And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, ‘Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.’ The friend says, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been down here before … and I know the way out.’”

That, to me, was always Spencer’s character: the friend who knew the way out and was going to show it to you. Not to compare Spencer to Jesus or anything, but the first time I heard the line, I thought immediately of the Apostles’ Creed:

… was crucified dead and buried.

He descended into Hell.

On the third day He arose again from the dead …

He’s been there before, he knows the way out and he leads you to it. There are much worse epitaphs.

No idea too weird, or, Another shameless plug for my employer

As both of you regular readers know, I’m a writer/editor for the News & Record here in Greensboro. Although I’m an English major and a content guy, over the past 15 years or so I’ve also been the newsroom’s one-eyed man in the land of the blind, the closest thing we have to an early adopter, when it comes to computers and the Internet. Accordingly, every so often, the Powers That Be ask me to determine figure out take a wild-a– guess where we should go next and what we might do to get there.

This is another one of those times.

I describe my assignment in more detail over at my N&R blog. But I’ll give you a hint: buck-wild open-source community journalism. If you want to have a hand in building and contributing content to something cool, c’mon over, read my post and then suggest ideas.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled inanity.

You want a war on Christmas?

You can’t handle a war on Christmas!

Darned good question

Fontana Labs at Unfogged asks: What is the worst idea ever? Only he/she spells it phonetically — “evar” — to be all hip and cool with the kids and whatnot.

I voted for lite beer, but I keep going back and forth between that and the perfectability of humankind. It’s a stumper, all right.