Perhaps you noticed Christmas happening all day yesterday. My fiancee (note continued lack of interest in adding accent mark) and I celebrated the birth of The Bearded One in a traditional way: by attending a screening of a blockbuster epic movie. And that movie was, of course, Drumline. It was better than I expected, especially when the orcs stormed the football field and tore the livers out of everyone in the marching band. Then the band members, now slavering revenants, bopped right back up and executed an inspiring, nonthreatening hip-hop rendition of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” during which they somersaulted and did splits and just in every way looked really cool and impressive, given their liverless, undead state. SPOILER: Gandalf is back, and he’s got some mad rhymes, like “Balrog” with “ball hog.” Also, we were drunk.
Then, having symbolically given the finger to the J-man, we went home for a genuinely traditional Christmas activity: playing with all our cool new shit. Here’s an abbreviated list of my crap:
1 bottle Laphroaig (that’s scotch). This is for the sweet drinking and hello floor.
1 bottle of some highfalutin’ cognac. It’s so highfalutin’, I cannot determine the actual brand name. After a couple glasses, I call it “Pwim!” As in the construction, “Gibbe mena gassa pwim! Gibba gibba!” And then I am gently informed that I’ve had enough pwim.
1 Spider-Man game for the Game Cube. I am praying that, as seen in the TV commercial, there is a game option that lets me be an enthusiastic heavyset black man who chases Spider-Man around hassling him verbally.
1 All-Clad 16-Qt. Stockpot. This costs more than my apartment, so it’s only fitting that we have to live in it now. Finally, the world can know the answer to the vexing question, “What does Skot-flavored broth tastes like?” The result will most likely be, it seems, “Well, booze.”
2 kitchen mandolines. This due to poor communications skills amongst friends. I have big plans for these babies, not unironically involving Bruce Hornsby: I’m going to kidnap him and swiftly slice all his fingers into neat little piles of medallions while he screams along to the strains of his old hit “Mandolin Rain.” Christ, I’m a fucking cutie!
2 DVDs of Bull Durham. See above re: my friends are all closed-mouthed hermits. Also, they drink. I must find a hiding place in my stockpot for all this goddamn booze. Hmmm. Easier still just not to invite them over any more. It’s not like I don’t have an excuse. “Sorry. I live in a stockpot.”
And then there’s a bunch of other crap, but I . . . well, I can’t talk any more. It is time. If you hear the metal-on-metal rustle of, oh, a stockpot lid being stealthily lifted? Picture a shadowy figure emerging, cautiously, because the figure appears to be listing slightly. The figure is clutching an empty booze bottle. From inside the stockpot, you perhaps can hear muffled . . . are they screams? Is that MOR piano music too? You can’t tell. The figure is on the move; a staggering, halting move. Then–then! He takes to the skies! He’s unspooled some webbing from his wrist, and is brachiating uncertainly into the night. You can just make out some mysterious words: “Spiddama! Spiddama! Wait up! Youwanna watcha Budderam! ‘Sfunny movie! Spiddama, wait up! I gotsa lotsa pwim!”
With great power comesh gribba baltoods.