Back from seeing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever movie

"HEY!  UNTO YOU A CHILD IS BORN!!!"

I needed to see this movie right now. 

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a story near and dear to my heart.  I played the head firefighter in two productions of the stage play for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County.  That was years ago and I still  have very fond memories of  those shows.  So I was curious about how this new adaptation, directed by Dallas Jenkins, would be.

This new film (there was a television movie back in the early Eighties, so this is the second time that The Best Christmas Pageant Ever has been formatted for the screen) pretty much follows the plot of the original novel.  The Herdmans, AKA "The worst kids in the history of the world" are the juvenile blight upon the whole town.  But a series of events leads to them not only coming to church one Sunday morning, but also demanding to be in the annual Christmas pageant.  The uppity church folks want nothing to do with the Herdmans.  But as the story progresses we find that the Herdmans maybe "get" the Christmas story better than some ever do.  This is a story that is both heartfelt and hilarious.  A perfect holiday tale out of the Seventies.

I thought the movie was great, although maybe a bit slow-going at first.  I was expecting more "nasty" from the Herdman kids, but what is shown in the movie is pretty much in keeping with their depiction in Barbara Robinson's book.  This is a story more than fifty years old and what seems tame today was no doubt quite shocking then.  So my expectations were biased, through the lens of modern sensibilities (if only we could go back to that more innocent America).  It's a well-cast film, especially the child actors.

I saw it with a pretty large audience for a holiday movie that's not necessarily a "tent-pole" spectacle.  Obviously most of the people at the theater today were there to see Wicked (a film I'm hearing only crazy good about) but in the showing I caught there was still a substantial crowd.  I did notice that I was the only single person, unaccompanied by anyone else, at the showing.  But that's okay.  This story is a part of my life and I was going to be there for that sake.

Is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever on the level of a true holiday classic film?  I'll say it has potential for that.  This is the kind of Christmas movie that there isn't made much of anymore.  You know, films like A Christmas Story, and even National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  I can see this movie becoming something families enjoy together every year about this time.  Hey, it took a long time for A Christmas Story to come around to the level of holiday tradition, too.  I think this movie can make that list, too.

Anyhoo, after all the craziness my life has had lately, my brain very much needed something sweet and endearing and comical to distract itself with.  And that is just what The Best Christmas Pageant Ever delivered.  I'll give it three stars out of five.

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Excellent article in The Assembly about Popcorn Sutton

It's quite difficult to believe that more than fifteen years have passed since Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton left us.  He was a man who I had come to very much want to meet, after hearing so much about him from both the web and people who knew him firsthand.  When I told my best friend from college that I had heard about "this guy Popcorn Sutton" Ed's eyes lit up and told me all about him.  It only made me want to meet him that much more.  Popcorn was the kind of American that they just don't make anymore, and I wanted to sit in the company of that kind of greatness.

Unfortunately that was not to be.  Ten days before he was due to report to prison to begin serving a two-year sentence for illegal alcohol production, Popcorn took his own life.  It is something that still makes me seethe with righteous fury to this day.  Popcorn was never hurting anyone.  He was by all accounts a man so gentle that it's hard to imagine him even swatting a fly.  But the government wanted its cut of "the action" and Popcorn was too obstinate to give up what he believed was not only his right, but his very heritage.  Here are the many articles about Popcorn Sutton that I've written over the years and here especially is the post I made following his "death by government bastards", still to date the first and hopefully only time that I'm driven to use the "f" word in a piece of published writing.

It seems though that the past few years have proven that you can't keep a good legend down, because Popcorn has become a bona fide icon.  A symbol, of what was good about America once upon a time and could still be good again.  I was in a pizza joint near here last year and one of the employees was wearing a Popcorn Suttong t-shirt.  I just had to compliment him on his attire.  He also said that he wished he could have met the man.

Filmmaker Neal Hutcheson, who produced several documentaries about Popcorn Sutton and his craft, has written an amazing piece over at The Assembly about the life and times (and crimes?) of the mythic moonshiner.  I thought I knew most everything there was to know about Sutton, but Hutcheson really surprised me with this one.  It's absolutely well worth your time.  I certainly came away from it a little more saddened, that I never got to meet Popcorn.  But maybe generations still to come will discover Popcorn and in doing so will come to appreciate and admire the Appalachias culture that he proudly represented.

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I don't do political posts as much as I used to...

I found some time ago that I seem to resonate more with people for whom politics is not the most important thing in the world.  That it isn't the be-all and end-all of the human condition.

Those are the people I tend to write more for.  The ones who are like me: interested in ideas, not ideologies.

So maybe this post will come across as an outlier.  Or maybe not.  I'm only sharing what's been on my mind the past day or two.

I believe that President Biden pardoning his son Hunter for any and all crimes going back to 2014 is establishing a precedent that will come back to haunt us all.

I could say something about how much this demonstrates the wickedness Joe Biden, and even the Democratic Party in general.  In a sane world someone like Biden should never have been allowed to get as far as he did.  The man has a half century of corruption to his name.  A responsible political party would have not given him any path to power whatsoever.

Then again, the American people, from the citizens of Delaware on up, should have never trusted someone like Biden.

And now Biden has damaged the rule of law in this nation, perhaps irreparably.

This pardon will be seen as one of the worst examples of abuse of power in American history.  There is no excuse or rationale for it.  Biden could have put the best interest of the United States over his own.  It was his last chance to prove himself to have some semblance of being a statesman after all.  And he failed.  Miserably.

This pardon will forever hang around Joe Biden's neck, and will ever after be a mark of shame upon his entire family.

Now, I wonder what this portends for the future.  And some president yet to come who may feel so emboldened as to abuse the authority granted him.

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Turkey frying: I just can't even... (Thanksgiving 2024 mishaps)

Longtime readers of this blog know well my fondness for deep-fried turkey.  It's an art that I've been doing since Thanksgiving 2002 and I take it very seriously.  For me there is no finer way to cook a bird as magnificent as the American turkey than to fry it in a cauldron of hot peanut or cottonseed oil (your preference) for forty minutes or so.  It makes the meat VERY juicy and tender.  And there's the machismo thing going there: Turkey frying really is quite a manly task to perform.  It's so potentially dangerous.  Precautions must absolutely be taken to ensure safety for all involved.  I'm as professional as one is apt to be without doing this for a full-time living but keeping everyone safe is something I don't mess around with.  Unfortunately there are always the troublemakers that turn up every Thanksgiving who have to show us now NOT to deep fry turkey.  And here are two examples from this year's holiday that have me shaking my head in disbelief.

First up is this story out of Connecticut where some people attempted to fry a turkey inside the garage of their $4 million mansion.  Here is the result:

The people survived but the mansion was reduced to a smoldering ruin.  To quote Beavis and Butthead: "Huh-huh-huh, dumb-asses!"

This next one, has me really scratching my head.  In video he posted to his social media accounts, none other than incoming Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  is deep frying a turkey of his own.  Can you spot what he's doing wrong?

Let's see... for one thing he has no shoes on!  He's also frying in a short-sleeved shirt.  And he is not wearing gloves!  Any one of those is a major no-no.  Especially operating a fryer in bare feet.  WHAT is he thinking?!?

Without seeing the burner itself it looks like RFK Jr. might be using a tripod-based fryer... which is something I for one would NEVER use.  I've owned two fryers in my time and they've each have a wide square base.  Much more stability with that.  A three-legged fryer is too top-heavy and at risk of tipping over.

I would also recommend wearing eye protection.  I've worn sunglasses (if I have any) most of the times I've fried.  I've never seen hot oil pop anywhere that high up, but you just never know.

I wish that I could report that I've had fried turkey this Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to make any since Christmas 2019, before the COVID plague cranked up.  And the price of both peanut and cottonseed oil has more than doubled: One of the more expensive things that has come to cost more in the Biden-era economy.  Maybe things are going to get better now.  Make America Fry Again, President Trump!  Anyhoo if you want to see what it's looked like when I'm at work here are some pics that my girlfriend at the time took during Thanksgiving in 2012.

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