christmas

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I will go to my grave believing that the Nineties gave us the best television animated series that have ever been produced.  Think about it: Tiny Toons, Gargoyles, X-Men… and of course Batman: The Animated Series, a show that forever raised the bar and redefined what cartoons were capable of.

But of all those shows and more, it’s The Tick that holds the most special place in my heart from that era.

Based on Ben Edlund’s underground comic book, The Tick premiered in 1994, ran for three seasons and stunned everyone with its unique style of superhero parody and screwball comedy.  The Tick was the one show I made a point to always watch on Saturday mornings (even if I worked late the previous night and was low on sleep).  It was such a big influence on me that when I finally got Internet access for ...

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Kristen and me on Christmas Day at her parents’ house…

Despite everything she says, I still insist that she is far too sweet, fun and beautiful for a guy like me to be blessed with 🙂

I am feeling led to say something here. That this Christmas was, for more reasons than I can possibly count, THE best Christmas that I have been able to enjoy in a very long, long time.

It was the first Christmas that I have had without Mom. In fact, it was a year ago today that we had her funeral. And in a lot of ways this was a trying and difficult year in other aspects as well.

But when I see the person I was a year ago, the time that I was going through then… and then now, how far God has brought me in that time, how He has blessed ...

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This evening I had the opportunity to do something that I’ve wanted to do for most of my life: attend the Christmas Eve Mass at a Roman Catholic Church.

I am very happy to report that it was as beautiful as I had long expected it to be. Although I am not Catholic, nonetheless I came away from the experience feeling that God had ministered to my spirit in a way that I have needed Him to these past few days especially.

That, and it was a pleasure to celebrate the birth of Christ with my Catholic brethren. Turns out that just about all the Christmas hymns were those that I had already grown up with 🙂

Here’s a photo I shot just before the Eucharist tonight at St. Veronica’s…


The church was packed solid! We had to sit in one of these three adjoining hallways that had been ...

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Awright, so it’s hard to make out in the pic… but trust me, it is snowing at my location. And at a pretty good clip too! Maybe we’ll get a White Christmas. There was one in Reidsville two years ago. Where I am now, perhaps a chance for an even bigger one.

Oh yeah, no traditional Christmas post this time as in years past. May be some pretty neat stuff that I’ll be putting on the blog the next few days 🙂...

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Don’t ever let it be said that anybody in this wacky family lacks for gifts on Christmas!

This pic is actually a few days old, but I wanted her to go ahead and start enjoying it. Here is Tammy – now a very psycho eight-months old – with her new doggie bed 🙂

She’s come a long way from the bed she made on her first day with us…

...

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Two thoughts about the reindeer who went down in hist-o-REEEEEE…

1. If Rudolph’s nose is THAT bright, and also such high-energy because of its intense red hue, assuming it’s radiating out the lumens of at least the running lights of a commercial airliner and that it’s shining right at his face…

…Rudolph should be totally blind by now!! Even one trip around the world would have been more than enough to burn out his retinas.

I hope Santa sleeps easy with this on his conscience.

2. Johnny Marks wrote “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in 1949 as part of a publicity campaign for the Montgomery Ward’s department store chain.

Just think: if the company had insisted upon royalties every time that song was played or performed or sung in public by school choirs and Brownie troops, Montgomery Ward’s would still be in business!...

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In six days “The Snowmen” cometh. And it’s just been announced that they’ll be voiced by Ian McKellen (yup, Gandalf himself).

And the Doctor will be waiting for them. Not just in new threads but a whole new control room for the TARDIS…

The Doctor Who Christmas specials have been very hit-or-miss for me. One one hand we’ve had “The Next Doctor”, “The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe” and the beautiful tale that was “A Christmas Carol”… and then there have been turkeys like “Voyage of the Damned” (right up there with “Love & Monsters” as one of the all-time low points of Doctor Who history). But I’ve a ridiculously good feeling about “The Snowmen”.

Anyhoo, the more I look at this redesign of the TARDIS console/control room, the more I’m digging it. And apparently that really IS a whole new costume for the Eleventh Doctor! Matt Smith describes ...

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Let’s dispense with the floridity and get to the point:

The holiday season has been damn near ruined by commercial madness.

I’m hearing that some families are having their Thanksgiving gatherings destroyed by Wal-Mart and other retailers mandating their employees be working on Thursday morning. Yeah you read that right: a number of stores are opening at noon on Thanksgiving when everyone else will be gorging on turkey and watching football.

I got a bad vibe when stores like Wal-Mart and Target began putting the Christmas stuff out before Halloween. That’s two full months of holiday marketing. One-sixth of the entire year devoted to holiday spending.

Now the radio stations are following suit. 99.5 out of Greensboro – which has traditionally not begun playing Christmas songs until the day after Thanksgiving – is already blaring out 24 hours round the clock of holiday music.

Gad-dommit, STOP IT ALREADY!! I’m ...

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Still on my traditional holiday break but I couldn’t resist sharing this photo from yesterday of Kristen and I on our first Christmas as boyfriend/girlfriend! 🙂

Incidentally, plans had to be changed and so we weren’t able to watch this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe” together. But since we’ll be together again tomorrow (for our six-month anniversary, yay!!) we’re gonna catch it from DVR then and I’ll post a review soon after.

In the meantime, hope y’all are still enjoying some Christmas 🙂...

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