It's that time of year, when I'm practically comatose from cookie consumption and don't feel like writing anything. That's when I like to dish out my YEAR IN REVIEW.  Here's what I blogged about this year:

January: I complained about being overweight, groused about the Smurfs, and praised Ron Jeremy for being a cultural icon. It's possible I was still in my cookie coma and not thinking straight. 

February: I waxed poetic on my favorite Superbowl ads, though the only one I still remember is the Radio Shack ad, and only because there were aging wrestlers in it. Also I returned to the corporate world and complained about commuting, but praised Pop Tarts in the workplace. Am I shallow? Maybe.

March: I said something about Truman Capote, probably because I like mentioning him every once in a while. Also I detailed Pugsley's explosive diarrhea attacks. Honestly, why do you people continue reading my blog? 

April: I wrote about food. I like to eat. I also gave some valuable parenting advice, because since I don't have kids, I like to tell everyone else how they should raise theirs.

May: I listed all the things I don't want to do before I die, made some farmer's daughter jokes, and most importantly, talked about Richard Hatch. Because to the puzzlement of many, I sure do love me some Richard Hatch. I don't think I should have to justify this to you.

June: I wrote about dieting (are you sensing a theme yet? The "being overweight/I like to eat/time to diet" theme?) and snapping turtles and being funny. Also, I did a little experiment at work involving wearing makeup. The result? I should wear makeup. Should, but don't.

July: I talked about how not-terrible Connecticut is, which I'll admit, was a bit of a stretch. I also detailed my quest to find out if I was Frank Sinatra's child. It was actually less of a stretch than trying to make Connecticut sound fun.

August: You know what? If you click on the word "August" to the left, you can actually find out for yourself what I wrote about that month. I feel like eating another cookie.

September: September found me waxing poetic about having your writing rejected, about being an outgoing introvert, and about my quest for a new author photo. (Random fact: that author photo blog was probably my personal favorite this year.)

October: I listed fun facts about New England, and did some Halloween-type blogs. Plus I tried some home beauty tips. And, of course, I took the opportunity to mention Richard Hatch again.

November: I broke up with my radio station. And wrote some other stuff. My sister-in-law's sister-in-law, Pam, makes the best chocolate-chip oatmeal raisin cookies ever. I didn't blog about that in November, but I'm eating them right now, and they are goooood.

December: December is a hard time of year for me. It's difficult for me to even muster up the energy to get out of bed and shower during the holiday season. It's all that Christmas garbage: songs on the radio, specials on TV, happy people . . . it makes me sick. That's why I spent December skewering Christmas shows. Because someone needs to be brave enough to say "It is NOT a wonderful life. It's mediocre at BEST, Clarence."

There you have it. My year in review. What's coming up in 2015? From the way I've been shoveling down the cookies, I'm guessing January will start with me complaining about being overweight.

Happy New Year!

My next entry on this list might surprise you: "The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth." It's surprising because I hate both "The Little Drummer Boy" and Bing Crosby. But I am, at heart, a child of the eighties, and as such, one thing I really do like is some David Bowie. What makes this song even more enjoyable is that Bowie didn't want to do it. So he likes Bing about as much as I do.
Let me clarify. According to this article from the Huffington Post, Bowie was supposed to sing "The Little Drummer Boy" in tandem with Bing. Bowie didn't want to, because when you're Ziggy Stardust, you don't give a rat's patootie about offending a legendary crooner like Bing Crosby. Atta boy.
So at the last minute, the writers for Bing's holiday special wrote an accompanying piece ("Peace on Earth") and Bowie . . . agreed to sing it. The result? A bizarre duet that is so uncomfortable to watch, it'll put you right in the "I'd rather be anywhere else but here"  mood that's so common around the holidays.

Next up is a song that isn't traditionally considered a holiday classic, but I think it should be. It always takes me back to a happy time. Picture it: late November, 1994. I was a young, naive college student, buying a frozen Stouffer's microwave dinner at the corner UniMart. It was there that the creepy sales clerk told me the news: Jeffrey Dahmer had been murdered in prison.

In short, a Christmas miracle. Stacey's small grinch heart grew three sizes that day.

To this day, nothing gets me in the holiday spirit quite like the Violent Femmes' holiday ditty, "Dahmer Is Dead." Go on, have a listen. You can't tell me that doesn't evoke some sort of emotional reaction in you.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that old feel-good chestnut, "Teddy the Red-Nosed Senator." When I think about Christmas, I think "Sure, it's about the birth of the savior and all that, but how can I poke fun at Teddy Kennedy at the same time?" Because isn't that really what the holiday is about? Making fun of a dead Kennedy's addiction problems? Yes. Yes it is, in my book.

You may think I’m a grinch, and you know, you’re absolutely right about that. I make no bones about the fact that I can’t stand holiday music, movies, stories, or Bing Crosby. But surely I wouldn’t be so grinchy as to make fun of the most revered holiday classic, right? Not It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart, a man so impeccable in his conduct and reputation that he is still being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church? I wouldn’t dream of going there, would I? Well, buckle up, Jimmy, because your saccharine lump of stupid is going down.

It’s a Wonderful Life opens with a suicidal George Bailey getting ready to jump off a bridge. This movie would’ve been a whole lot shorter and potentially more enjoyable if the director had just let him do his thing, but no, a meddling angel named Clarence has to interfere. First we are shown flashbacks of George’s life. We see George as a pharmacist’s assistant, saving a kid’s life when the pharmacist fills the kid’s prescription with the wrong pills. Great, right? But does George tell anyone else that the pharmacist is losing it and might be doling out death to everyone  in town coming in for a harmless antibiotic? Heck, no. George goes on his merry way, never tipping off the cops as to the true identity of the mysterious Bedford Falls Poisoner.

After George’s father dies (because nothing says “feel good” like the death of a parent, you sicko freaks) George is forced to give up his dreams in order to run the family business. He doesn’t want to, but George is a bit of a doormat, so he just does it, settling into a life of misery and unfulfilled dreams. Personally, I can’t believe he waited as long as he did to try and kill himself. His brother Harry is supposed to take over the business after using George’s college money for his own purposes, but we can all see where that’s headed, can’t we? That’s right—Harry leaves George high and dry, taking a job instead with his father-in-law. Thanks, bro. You’re a peach.

George then marries Mary, a woman he has bickered and sniped with since they first met, always a great way to choose a mate. They have to use their honeymoon money to bail out the Bailey Building & Loan after a bank run nearly ruins them. World War II starts, because that’s cheery, and George and Mary continue to struggle, which is evidenced in the fact that they name their fourth kid Zuzu. Clearly they have both lost their minds.

$8,000 is stolen from the Building and Loan’s cash funds, George is about to be arrested, and he can’t get a loan to save his business. George decides to get drunk and off himself. Can you feel the uplifting holiday joy radiating off of this stinker yet?

Clarence swoops in and shows George what life would be like if he’d never been born. There’s a cemetery instead of Bailey Park (and I personally don’t understand why that’s worse: I’ve always enjoyed a nice cemetery) and the poisoning pharmacist is thrown in jail (again, why is this a problem?). His brother is dead, his uncle is crazy, and his mom is a bitter widow—all things that would’ve happened eventually anyway, methinks. Bedford Falls is now Pottersville, a thriving city filled with booming nightclubs and pawn shops. Looks good to me, but apparently this shocks George into wanting to live. He returns home, where a bunch of people have donated money to save his neck. A nice gesture, but who is going to save George’s behind the next time this happens? Then George’s kid with the dumb name lisps something about angels getting their wings, but since I have no patience for children or speech impediments, I had to turn it off.

This movie is depressing. The main message here, which I took to be “Hey George, it could be worse,” is the worst possible thing you can say to a depressed person. Trust me on this. When I hear “It could be worse,” I think “I don’t give a crap. This sucks for me right now.” You know what gets me down even faster than “It could be worse?” Having to sit through a nauseating and pointless holiday movie like this slop. No, I much prefer the Married with Children version, in which Al Bundy begs angel Sam Kinison to give him his life back, just so he can make his family miserable again. At least Al had a goal. Something to live for.

Now that’s a wonderful life.

I may have mentioned in the past that I do not enjoy Christmas specials. I find them insipid, and they perpetuate horrible lies that only set children up for a lifetime of disappointment. While I despise Frosty, and find Rudolph sorely lacking in decent nasal hygiene, today I’m skewering the big guy himself. That’s right: you’re going down, Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

A nauseating effort from Rankin & Bass, or as I like to call them, Ache In My As—never mind, you get the picture--Santa Claus is Coming to Town stars Fred Astaire as the narrator. Thanks, Fred, for teaching kids that even the most reputable of actors will prostitute themselves for a buck.

This holiday special starts with a little kid named Claus being discarded on the doorstep of Burgermeister Meisterburger. Meisterburger is portrayed as the villain here, simply because he doesn’t want to raise a baby, has probably spent his whole life actively avoiding having children, and yet some idiot too stupid to use birth control abandons her baby on this guy’s porch and he’s the “bad guy” for sending the kid away to an orphanage. Whatever, Ache In My As—just whatever. The baby never makes it to the orphanage, because he’s kidnapped by a bunch of scary woodland creatures and dumped in a village full of trolls (sure, call them Kringles if you want to cutesy them up, but you’re not fooling anyone). The trolls call the kid Kris and start teaching him how to make toys. Toys, you realize, are illegal in the nearest village, Sombertown. This is the equivalent of setting a child up with his or her own home meth lab. Don’t you stupid trolls understand what illegal means?

Since Kris has now been raised to blatantly ignore and flaunt the law, he volunteers to deliver toys to the kids in Sombertown. No, you didn’t read that wrong—he’s volunteering to hand out illegal contraband to young children. This does not make Meisterburger happy, since he was once viciously attacked by a toy duck, resulting in a sprained ankle that surely required physical therapy and probably still aches every time it snows. Meisterburger demands that Kris Kringle be arrested, but the outlaw gets away, birdnapping a penguin named Topper in the process. Kris also manages to seduce a teacher named Jessica before leaving town. Lessons learned: penguins make adorable pets, breaking the law is okay if you don’t agree with said law, and those schoolteachers sure do go for bad boys.

I really hate this Christmas special.

Kris meets the Winter Warlock, bribes him to be his friend by giving him a cheap toy train, and returns to Sombertown. (I should mention here that he returns to town to bring the kids more toys after Meisterburger was forced to burn all of the old ones for heat to keep warm. ABC no longer shows the toy-burning scene, because it's "too scary," which is the politically correct way to say they are a bunch of corporate wussies.) Kris, Topper, and the Winter Warlock are thrown in jail (and rightly so—you’re breaking the law!) and all seems lost. But wait! Old Man Winter there, a bit of a hippie, has some “magic corn” that can make reindeer “fly.” The reindeer get high and break Kris and company out of jail. Lessons learned: jailbreaks are fun, and when an aging hippie offers you drugs that will make you fly, by golly, take them.

Eventually Kris marries Jessica, they become Santa and Mrs. Claus, and the trolls become “elves.” The old stoned winter hippie makes it snow (har har, I’ll bet he does). Burgermeister Meisterburger, misunderstood his whole sad life, dies toyless and alone. Fred Astaire collects a sizeable paycheck, and they all live happily ever after.

Bah.