n o w p l a y i n g - s c r i p t b i n - f a n c l u b - s t u d i o

make love to the camera



December 27, 2001 - 3:35 pm

Oh, The Sincerity!

I think that in a sick and bizarre way, I'm really enjoying this war because they just spent about three minutes of the Pentagon briefing talking about Christmas cookies.

I also really enjoy the fact that we have a Rear Admiral named Stufflebeam. The only way that this could make me happier is if he were British, and commanded a vessel called the HMS Pennysnickle. I would also enjoy him wearing a bowler hat and sipping tea at all press conferences. Then, he could have joined in the Christmas cookie briefing and referred to the cookies as 'biscuits,' and I finally could have died happily.

Because of something Francine wrote today, I now have The Pogues stuck in my head.

Half of me thinks that on December 26, winter should just vanish and spring should immediately begin. After Christmas day, what's the point of all the cold and snow? They don't really contribute, now, to any sense of holiday atmosphere. They're just another season. The other half of me is the half that is really going to miss Chicago when I finally move. I like the distinctions between the different types of weather. I like seasons. I like Winter for the look of cold-charred, hoary asphalt. I like walking outside and feeling my nostrils freeze together, the percussion of boots on snow covered, salted sidewalks, the extra-terrestial quiet of a late night snowstorm. I like the way puddles freeze and shatter with a crunch when you walk on them, I like running down the middle of an empty street and suddenly stopping myself to skid on the ice for a few feet. I even like shoveling snow, because it feels like real work. I really like the way winter teases us, making us wait a good long time, for that textbook perfect spring day, the first day you realize that, even though it's still cool, you can finally take off your jacket and feel just fine, and even a bit refreshed to have the wind blow against your forearms again.

So, this year, I'm going to repress the part of me that wants Winter to vanish, because, next year, I'm going to visit it, but this will probably be the last time that I ever live with it.

Yeah. So, how was your Christmas?

Mine was a bit odd. At first, I thought I was unhappy with it, but then, I just realized that I had overblown expectations. I am, of course, speaking of the quality of gifts that I recieved, and not the behavior of my relatives, from whom I expect nothing more than slight variations on the theme of bizarre.

In that respect, my expectations were easily met. On Christmas Eve, we met at my aunt's apartment. After a tasty yet baffling dinner which was one part KFC, one part Boston Market, and one part homemade, we set to the business of exchanging gifts. Since there are quite a few of us, we go with the grab bag, secret santa plan, the names having been drawn at Thanksgiving dinner. I drew my cousin Dave's girlfriend, JoAnn. She's a bizarre woman. She's in her fifties and loves video games. She was the one who, last year, informed us of her brilliant plan to start an eBusiness where people pay money to read poetry. Poor woman. I didn't get a chance to ask her how her dotcom dreams were coming along, as she played sick and decided to stay home. There are two bizarre things about that. 1: She only ever comes to any family function if it's at my other aunt's apartment, and 2: she lives in the same apartment building as both of my aunts. So, they all live in the same building, she's just downstairs, and she can't even come up for the gift exchanging. Freak.

I was especially disappointed. Like I said, I drew her in the grab bag. Knowing that she liked video games, I got her a gift certificate to Gamer's Paradise. Also, knowing that she's something of a white trash closet racist, I put the gift certificate inside a Kwanzaa card. It cost me an extra three bucks, but it would have been well worth it to see the look on her face as she discovered a card that said "Brothers and sisters...We are Black...And we are proud." Dave took the card and gave it to her for me. He told me the next day that she "got a kick out of it." I wonder what her real reaction was.

After that, my two aunts and my mom decided to up the weirdness factor by giving me, my two brothers, and my four male cousins the same gift: Interactive insect robots. It took about 30 minutes for all of us to free our hand sized, insect friends from their far too complicated packaging. We then set them in a circle on the floor, turned them on, and waited for them to do their interactive thing. This was mostly comprised of chirping and taking single steps forward. Confused, we sat and watched as our aunt hovered and took pictures. "Maybe they'll fight," offered my youngest cousin. They didn't. I turned to the manual, and discovered that the robots had several different modes. Me being me, I immediately set my bug to 'leader mode.' The manual promised that now my bug would force the other bugs to do whatever it was doing. Cool. Or so I thought. The leadership capabilities of my bug seemed limited to making the other bugs chirp and flash their eyes. Soon, there was a cacophony of screaming, flashing robot bugs on the living room floor, singing in concert. My bug began to burp, causing all seven other bugs to become excited and burp as well. Suddenly, a renegade bug threw off the demands of my leader bug and advanced on it's nearest neighbor. A cheer went up from those assembled as the hostile bug managed to flip the other bug onto its backside. My insect leader chirped violently, and I couldn't decide if it was admonishing or congratulating the aggressor. In any case, that was the end of that, as the bugs had apparently decided that they had had enough, and spent the next ten minutes silently staring at one another.

The next day, I used my bug to torture my mom's cat. That was the last excitement it saw. It now sits, silent, on the floor of my apartment, wondering if it will ever get the chance to interact again. I read in the manual that it responds to infrared, so my big plans for later today are torturing it with my VCR remote control.

Sheesh, long entry. You still with me?

So, Christmas Day: Like I said, I came away feeling a little bit disappointed with the gifts from my mom. That's really selfish of me, though, as she has given me hundreds of dollars over the past year to help out with rent and flights and food and other stuff. So, there is no justification for any griping on my part, and I'm not doing any extended griping, because I dismissed those feelings about fifteen minutes after I opened my last present. I think I had those feelings in the first place because there just wasn't very much Christmas booty for me to haul home, and, you know, all kids want lotsa presents. She has already given me so much this year, though, so I rightly did not allow myself to indulge in those feelings.

She did get me a black, silk, button down shirt which is definitely going back because, what am I, a Balkan mobster? She also got me another book on urban legends, a topic she must think I greatly enjoy, as she got me a different book on the subject last year.

One gift, though, really threw me. I'm still not sure quite how to feel about it. The one and only time I ever showed my mom FadeIn was when I wrote this entry. It's the one about our last day in my childhood home. She liked it a lot. She was so touched by it that it made her cry at work. She was so proud of it that she printed it out and showed it to all her co-workers. Cool, fine and good. I largely forgot about it, until Christmas.

She had someone at the graphics department where she works re-type the thing on high quality 9x11 paper, insert the picture I used, and then had it framed, covered in glass, and gave it to me as a Christmas gift.

I was amazed. I was speechless. It was the single most thoughtful gift that anyone had ever given to me.

I was also confused. For some reason, it felt like something that I should have given to her, rather than her give to me. It was amazing. Someone had cared enough, and was moved enough, by my work, to create this fragile, physical tribute to it, and give it to me as a gift. Incredible.

I don't really know what I'm going to do with it. It's in a standing frame, so it's not the kind of thing I can hang on the wall. I think I'd feel weird about putting my own work on the wall anyway. It will probably end up in the closet, in a box with other things that are important to me in a private way. The real spirit of the gift, in this case, isn't the thing itself, or how often I look at it, it's that she cared enough, that the content and the skill with which I created it, were important enough to actually forge into a thing. Maybe this is what it feels like to sell a screenplay or have a book published. Just amazing.

Last Time On FadeIn - Next Week's Show

i am one bad updater:

enter email to find out when i update. powered by notifylist.com