The List: Good, Bad and Ugly of the Christmas Season

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Well, here it is, Christmas Eve.

The lights are up, the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and the hard-working folks at Wal-Mart and Target are getting that haggard, hollow-eyed look, like people who've been under several days of sustained artillery fire.

It's a wonderful season, to be sure. Time with family and friends, good cheer, and celebrations abound. But there's also a fair amount of crassness, commercialism and just plain silliness around this time of year, even more than usual. So, in our usual fair and balanced spirit, we bring you the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Christmas Season.

Best TV Christmas Special: I've thought long and hard about this one, and I've got to declare it a tie.

First among equals is the classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas." OK, when you look at it now, I'll admit, some of the jokes are clearly gags from the "Peanuts" newspaper strips shoehorned into the show as filler, the animation is crude, and you can even hear some clumsy splices in the voiceover track.

But I still choke up at that moment when Linus, having recited St. Luke's account of the angels proclaiming "peace on earth and goodwill toward men," picks up his blanket, walks offstage, and says simply "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

Sharing the No. 1 spot is "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." It's clear that the Whos down in Whoville don't belong to any Christian sect we'd recognize. They're not even human. I mean, they have antennae, for crying out loud. But that doesn't stop the winsome little critters, even in the absence of presents, from joining hands and singing the immortal Christmas lyrics "Fah-who foraze, dah-hoo doraze, Welcome Christmas, come this way," and so on before they invite the even less humanoid Grinch in for dinner, thus proving that Christmas is truly an inclusionary holiday.

Take THAT, Bill O'Reilly!

Worst TV Christmas Special: There are so many contenders for this one, most of which have fallen by the wayside.

There was, for instance, the plethora of horrific Kathie Lee Gifford efforts. But the absolute worst, the Lead Standard by which all bad Christmas specials are judged, is George Lucas' "Star Wars Holiday Special."

This one's making the rounds again on Internet sites such as YouTube, despite LucasFilm's desperate efforts to get it taken down as fast as people upload it.

You can hardly blame Lucas. I'd be embarrassed to have anyone know I had anything to do with this piece of crap, too. It starts with Han Solo trying to run the Imperial Blockade to get Chewbacca back home to his family for "Life Day." (Yes, Chewie has a family, including a son named -- are you ready for this? Lumpy.)

And it goes downhill from there, reaching its nadir with Bea Arthur as an intergalactic barmaid. Singing. It was really, really bad. Back in 1978 when it first aired, I was a major "Star Wars" fan, and even I could tell it stank up the screen.

Best Christmas Song, Traditional: "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing," mostly because of its association with the above-referenced Charlie Brown special.

Worst Christmas Song, Traditional: "The Little Drummer Boy" is pretty annoying, but it gets edged out by the maddeningly insistent "Carol of the Bells."

"Oh how they pound, raising the sound." Exactly.

Best Christmas Song, Modern: Bruce Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," featuring the Big Man, Clarence Clemons, on saxophone and backup vocals.

Worst Christmas Song, Modern: Again, there are so many to choose from here. I have to give the nod to "Jingle Bell Rock," mainly for the way it tries to tack "jingle" on to everything. "Jingle-hop," "jingle-horse," etc. I'm sorry, it just sets my teeth on edge.

Thing I'll Miss Most When the Season is Over: As always, the tree. I love bringing the tree home. I love hanging the lights and decorations. I love having the tree all lit up in the living room. It's always a depressing day when it comes down, sometime in June.

Thing I'll Miss Least When the Season Is Over: The "Peace Love and Gap" commercials, aka "Holiday in Your 'Hood." As my son has observed, "Yes, when people think Gap, they think immediately of the 'hood."

Running a close second are all those jewelry store commercials with women who are supposed to be gazing off camera looking raptly romantic over their new trinkets, but who actually look more like the result of a botched lobotomy.

So, dear readers, let me close with my holiday wish to you: May you treasure the good things about this and every other season, and may you always be able to laugh at the bad. Whatever holiday you celebrate, have a joyous one.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, practices law and celebrates Christmas in Carthage.

Thank You, Graham Powell!

Let me join my fellow bloggers and extend my warmest thanks to Graham Powell, whose most excellent site CrimeSpot.net brings together the best of the crime-writing blogosphere, and this site as well. When I check the site stats, way over half of the people who come here come from CrimeSpot. It's a great resource for us all, and a true labor of love on Graham's part. Thanks, Graham.

What Rough Beast?

Virgin dragon prepares to give birth : "CHESTER, England - In an evolutionary twist, Flora the Komodo dragon has managed to become pregnant all on her own without any male help. She is carrying seven baby Komodo dragons.

'We were blown away when we realized what she'd done,' said Kevin Buley, a reptile expert at Flora's home at the Chester Zoo in this town in northern England. 'But we certainly won't be naming any of the hatchlings Jesus.'

Other reptile species reproduce asexually in a process known as parthenogenesis. But Flora's virginal conception, and that of another Komodo dragon earlier this year at the London Zoo, are the first time it has been documented in a Komodo dragon.

The reptiles, renowned for their intelligence, are native to Indonesia. They are the world's largest lizards and have no natural predators — making them on par with sharks and lions at the pinnacle of the animal kingdom.

"Komodo dragons seem to be able to switch ways of reproducing to deal with a shortage of suitable boyfriends," said Dr. Rick Shine, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Sydney, Australia. Shine was not involved with the Nature paper. In contrast, other lizard species that reproduce asexually cannot mate normally.

That might give Komodos a distinct survival edge. Only about 4,000 dragons remain in the wild, of which 1,000 are female. Concerns about dwindling Komodo dragon populations might be allayed by Flora and Sungai's recent self-induced motherhood.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Santa's Butt Is Comin' To Court

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I love The Christmas season; don't get me wrong. But I swear, every year it seems to get weirder and weirder. Take, for instance, the strange and terrible saga of Santa's Butt.

It seems that the Shelton Brothers Brewery, located appropriately enough in Belchertown, Massachusetts, distributes an English-made brew called "Santa's Butt Winter Porter." The company swears that the name does not refer to anything naughty. "It was inspired," Shelton Brothers insists on the company Web site, "by this famous line from a well-loved children's story book: 'And Santa sat on his great butt, drinking a hearty brew.'"

A "butt," they hasten to add, is a type of whomping-huge beer keg holding 108 gallons, upon which, one presumes, Santa could take his ease while enjoying a well-earned cold one after a long day in the workshop.

So there's nothing suggestive at all, according to the brewers. This might be a lot more convincing, however, if the label didn't feature a colorful cartoon Santa facing away from the viewer, with his enormous red-clad posterior dominating the frame.

This label ran afoul of the Grinches at the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement, who banned Santa's Butt from the shelves of the Pine Tree State (seriously, that's what they call themselves). The label might cause the beer to appeal to children, a spokesman for the Maine State Police stated.

Yep, nothing gives a drink kid appeal like the exaggerated, bloated rump of a morbidly obese 800-year-old-guy.

Two other beers, a French ale called Les Sans Culottes ("Those Without Pants"), and a Belgian beer called Rose de Gambrinus ("I Have No Idea What This Means And I Am Too Lazy To Look It Up") were banned because their labels featured bare-breasted women.

"Basically, the standard we use is what are people going to see walking up and down a store aisle," the MBLE spokesman explained.

Frankly, I think we could stand to see more bare-breasted women on labels as we walk up and down the store aisles. It'd make things way more festive, so long as it was done, you know, tastefully. Nothing, say, larger than a DD cup. And let's get real, it'd just be the next logical extension of the basic marketing philosophy behind most beer advertising, which is that "if you drink lots of our beer, women with large breasts will want to have sex with you." But I digress.

It's not the first time that Shelton Brothers labels have caused controversy. Their Seriously Bad Elf beer (not to be confused with their Bad Elf beer) was banned in Connecticut. Not because of being risqué, mind you, but because the label (an evilly grinning elf firing Christmas ornaments at Santa's sleigh with a slingshot) might, again, "appeal to children" due to the presence of St. Nick on the label.

I have to ask here: So it "appeals to children." So what? They're not going to be able to buy the stuff.

I have trouble believing that a 5-year-old is going to see a six-pack of Seriously Bad Elf on the shelf , think "Look! Santa! I have to drink that stuff right now!" -- then take it off the top shelf, toddle to the counter, plonk down a sawbuck, and be found passed out in the gutter three hours later. I guess that's the kind of lack of imagination that explains why I'm not on the Massachusetts Liquor Control Board.

Well, you'll be happy to know that the freedom-loving brewers of Belchertown are not taking this blow to our civil liberties lying down.

With the help of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, they've filed a lawsuit in federal court against the MBLE, claiming that their rights under the First Amendment have been violated by not being able to sell Santa's Butt or their other beers with the nekkid ladies on the label in Maine.

"The illustrations on these labels are artistic, and art is entitled to the protection of the First Amendment," said Zachary Heiden, a staff lawyer with the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

Doggone right. If Santa's Butt is suppressed, if the good people of the state of Maine are not free to quaff fruity European beers with partially nude women on the labels -- well, by golly, we just might as well start learning to speak Arabic and eat humus or loofah or whatever it is they eat over there. After all, aren't beer and half-naked ladies two of the very freedoms the Islamofascists hate us for?

The Shelton Brothers may win, or they may lose. But there's one thing I know for sure: I seriously want to party with those guys.

God Bless Santa's Butt, God Bless America, and God bless us, every one!

I'm Not Sure I Trust This "New Blogger" Thing

Blogger keeps trying to get me to "upgrade" to the "new and improved" version. But years of dealing with "upgrades" that occasionally end up rendering programs temporarily and sometimes permanently non-functional have left me deeply suspicious. Plus, the Blogger site tells me I'll have to "sign in with my Google Account" and I'm not sure I have one, and less sure I want to.

How about it, blogosphere? Anyone tried this "new and improved" Blogger (formerly Blogger Beta)? Your experiences?

Non-Viable Strategies For Living, Redux

From My Hometown Paper:

An Ohio man wanted for several bank robberies -- including one in Pinebluff earlier this week -- was arrested Wednesday in Hope Mills after a chase and car crash.

Pinebluff police have taken out a warrant charging Terry Ira Nichols, 48, of Proctorville, Ohio, with the armed robbery of First Bank on U.S. 1 on Monday. He is wanted for five total robberies, according to law-enforcement officers.

Nichols is charged with robbing the Lumbee Guaranty Bank on Main Street in Hope Mills at about 10 a.m. Wednesday. Police responded to the scene, and an officer spotted Nichols as he was driving away in a 1995 Oldsmobile.

Hope Mills police chased the man until his vehicle struck a semi-truck near U.S. 301 and overturned. He was crawling out of the vehicle when police arrived and took him into custody. He had cuts on his head and stomach, and several broken ribs.

Pinebluff Sgt. Chris Sanderson said the suspect was wearing the same clothes that he wore while robbing the Pinebluff bank and that he was covered in ink from two different exploding dye packs.

"You have to thank the Lord for people like that," Sanderson said.

Wait, it gets better...

Nichols will be charged with entering the bank in Pinebluff Monday and handing the teller a note saying that he was armed and he wanted money.

The teller at First Bank emptied the drawer and the man left the bank on foot. As the suspect made his way behind the bank, a dye pack exploded, covering his left side with characteristic dye.

Cue the music from Raising Arizona here...

A bank security camera captured several pictures of the robber. The bank had updated its security after being robbed in a similar way in July.

The images showed a white man, about 45 to 50 years old, wearing a green hat and jeans jacket.

A man fitting that description robbed a bank in Raeford later that afternoon.

After the robbery in Hope Mills, another dye pack exploded.

"The one here got his left side and (the one in) Hope Mills yesterday was on his right," Sanderson said.

You know, I've gotta figure, after that second dye pack blew up all over me, I'd start thinking maybe this whole bank robbery thing just wasn't working out and maybe I should find another line of work. But that's just me.

Nichols was treated for injuries from the accident at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. He was kept overnight and guarded by police. He appeared before a magistrate Thursday.