We did it. Thank you. Raised nearly a thousand dollars for NY hunger rescue charity City Harvest. City Harvest’s unique approach is to match hungry recipients with nearly-discarded food. They’ve received Charity Navigator’s highest rating of four stars, and it only costs them 27 cents to rescue and deliver a pound of food. A tad shy of last year’s donation, but every bit makes a difference. You can still donate through CityHarvest.org, or via our fundraiser on Razoo.
Thanks to our bloggers Li, Nicole, Cristy-Lucie, Jason, Ellie, and since we donate our ad revenue, each and every reader. This means you.
The winner of the vintage 1991 Hess truck was the most generous Hank Corwin. Hope your holidays were unbeatable. Same time next year?
So it’s Christmas. Thank you for reading and contributing to our blog, contributing to the baked goods in our stomachs, and attending the movie screenings this year. We hope your hearts are as warm as ours. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Peace on Earth, in your day-to-day, and especially your day today.
I’d like to take this moment to remind you that we’ve got a week left in our fundraiser for hungry New Yorkers via City Harvest. Please help! The biggest donor will win a 1991 HESS truck, still in its box. This is self-evidently the coolest of all Hess trucks—its lights turn on, and on its back it carries a friction racecar. Donate now, it’s tax-deductible and the fund drive ends New Year’s Eve.
Christmas is a time of giving, a time of loving, and a time where a mound of valuables is conveniently piled in one spot in your house. It is somehow reassuring then that most Christmas criminals are of the Pesci/Stern variety, because on the world’s biggest day off, even a marginally competent jerk could surprise everybody with a bomb in his underwear.
Perhaps the ‘best’ Christmas burglar ever was 4-year old Hayden Wright, who in 2009, got drunk, broke into his neighbors’ house, put on a dress, and stole the presents from under their tree.
In one of the more emotionally traumatic—if not actually criminal—stories of Christmas crime, a Rock Hill, South Carolina mother had her 12-year old son arrested for petty larceny after sneakily opening one of his gifts on the 3rd of December, 2006. Remarkably, the mom already had the gift wrapped weeks in advance (I always tempt fate waiting until Christmas Eve), and although the kid was obviously a brat, who among us could wait to see what the hell a “Play Station Game Boy” is? (The police report.) [Read on →]
Having faith in the rapidity of the USPS, the Obamas have sent out their annual Christmas card, picturing Bo, their Portuguese water dog, by the fire. Just as rapidly, Sarah Palin has come out against the Obamas’ Christmas card. Because we live in an era of such exaggerated political enmity that people are opposing Christmas cards.
Back on earth, the campaign season is in full swing. Rachel Maddow warned us that the holidays and the primaries were scooching dangerously close together. Fortunately New Hampshire did not decide to preempt Christmas, but the proximity of the Iowa caucus on January 3 has me hoping to see a lot of candidates in holiday sweaters. [Read on →]
Thirty years ago. December 22, 1981, The Teardrop Explodes play Liverpool’s Club Zoo. The version of their first single and surprise hit “Sleeping Gas” presented that night contains such audience-savagery as “a face solo” and quotes of Buffalo Springfield and ‘Mercenaries’ by John Cale. Makes you wish The Teardrop Explodes weren’t miming along to a recording when they performed on Top of the Pops on acid.
To top it all off, in the middle the young Julian Cope screams, “This is a crass version of Sleeping Gas. A real crass, crass, crass version of Sleeping Gas. Whoop-de-do. I said whoop-de-do. This is the CHRISTMAS version of Sleeping Gas! Wow, what a crass version!”, before the song gate-crash-lands in the New Year of 1982. It’s not a Christmas song, but the lyrics are non-sensical anyway, so draw your own festive meanings.
This live recording was originally released as a b-side to the “Tiny Children” 12″ single; these days you can get it on the second disc of the Kilimajaro (Deluxe Edition) issued last year by Island. Click the little button to play the song on MySpace.
We wanted to post something for the first night of Hanukkah, but it turns out that was last night. Whoops. Our forgetfulness has taken us by surprise. When we were a kid, the first night of Hanukkah meant whole classrooms refusing to focus at Hebrew school. The rooms hummed with anticipation! Nobody could could sit [...]
If you’re from the New York Metro area and have ever spent Christmas with the TV on, chances are you harbor some affection for the ingenious tradition of the WPIX Yule Log. The original “Log” was a 16mm loop of the smoldering fireplace in Gracie Mansion, the 1966 home of NY Mayor John Lindsay. Unfortunately [...]
Think Google Chrome themes are entirely made for tweens? Time for a Christmas surprise: there are a bazillion Chrome themes made special for the holiday season. Or at least, by our count, 9. Google’s Chrome web store makes it weirdly difficult to search themes by their, ahem, theme, but the internal tagging system (which links “related” [...]
The website Quickmeme is basically LOLcats 2.0. “I Can Has Cheezburger” for Dummies. You upload a picture and write a one- or two-line joke. If it’s charming enough, it’ll be reiterated into ubiquity, poorer jokes, and your authorship will be forgotten forever. W00T. A star Quickmeme performer, The Condescending Literary Pun Dog meme has tackled [...]
The winner of the vintage 1991 Hess truck was the most generous Hank Corwin. Hope your holidays were unbeatable. Same time next year?
