#Hooray For Santa Claus

[blacjaq1]

[culturevulturette]

S-A-N-T-A  C-L-A-U-S!

[vodkaandsnakes]

On this day, December 25, in Type O Negative history:

Type O Negative rested on this day.

Central Park in winter, 1956, Courtesy of the Library of Congress

[weepingfoxfury]

Wind is picking up, orange and yellow weather warnings across the Emerald Isle. Time to batten the hatches, man the lifeboats and put on your water wings! There's leaves flying everywhere and I'm sincerely hoping to see some silly person using a leaf blower picked up by the next gust and blown into the next County! ;-D

In other news ... Busterson should be coming home today. Hooray! My biggest 7.7kg kitty cat has been staying at the 'Ritz' for the past two nights due to problems with an enlarged heart and fluid build up. Fingers crossed that he's now stable and his new medication will do the trick and he has some more happy days ahead of him ... though he still won't appreciate being on a diet.

Had to hit the shiny metropolis yesterday. Not fun at the best of times ... even less fun on a Friday. Busy, busy, busy! Halloween decorations to the left of me and Christmas decorations to the right ... next thing you know I'll be seeing the Easter bunny clad in a Valentine costume bringing me my post.

Time for this Victor Meldrew to sign off and go get breakfast ... wish me luck ... I may just find Santa Claus eating my porridge in the kitchen! ...

[mynonsenseistingling]

Spirit Of Vengeance is finished. Hooray!!

I would like to thank each of you for reading these posts for the last month. What started out as little project to make a few Ghost Rider themed images for Halloween massively got out of hand.

Up next is a story about how a merc named V accidentality kills Santa Claus and has to save Christmas with the help of his incorporeal wisecracking chum Johnny Silverhand. They drive around heavily armored Thorton Galena named "Sleigh" assisted by the on-board AI R.U.D.O.L.P.H. while Johnny is dressed up as an elf and V wears a Santa hat. They ultimately face off against another armored Thorton Galena controlled by O.L.I.V.E. the other Reigndeer AI. Where R.U.D.O.L.P.H. sacrifices themself to destroy O.L.I.V.E.. But in true Christmas miracle R.U.D.O.L.P.H. survives and is transferred into a Quadra Turbo-R V-Tech.

That's a joke, I'm not doing that. That also made me a little emotional. I've clearly lost my mind.

[sugaryspeed]

“HO-HO-HO!”

You thought you were going to have a nice, quiet holiday, didn’t you, Pizzelle? Well, here he is, your one and only rival, making his grand return to your inbox (very much alive this time) — the one and only PIZZANO THE PAISANO™!

But… wait, is that Pizzano? Hmm. He certainly sounds like Pizzano, but the jolly man who just crashed down your chimney is wearing a red coat, a red hat, has a big white beard, and he’s toting a giant sack over his shoulder. But a description like that sounds more like ��

Is that Santa? That is Santa!

Hold on. Brief moment of silence here, as good ol’ Saint Nick waits for the studio audience to stop applauding.

“PIZZELLE!” he says, drawing two presents out from the sack. One is quite a bit larger than the other. “There you are! Have a MEEEEERRY CHRISTMAS! YA-HA— I mean, HO-HO-HO!”

And there he goes, somehow rolling his way back up the chimney. That’s the magic of Santa Claus, for you! Surely he had other presents to deliver, that must've been why he was in such a rush. Now, let’s see what you got…

Present number one, the larger one, holds several expensive-looking gift baskets of sweets. You name it, it’s there: chocolate-coated fruits, cookies, candies, packages for hot cocoa, and more. That’s enough sugar to hold you over ’til next year! Wow, you must’ve made Santa’s nice list!

Present number two holds a confetti bomb and a spring-loaded boxing glove.

Pizzelle visibly flinches at the familiar voice as she jerks upright from her rocking chair, almost losing her book. She immediately places it behind her, open and facing down to keep her place, before lifting two fists curled tight.

"What the HELL! IS WRONG WITH YOU--" God dammit the applause hallucination is back again. Clearly, this baker and confectioner needs to see a therapist. Or a doctor. Or someone.

"Yoooouuu. Gotta lotta nerve. Barging in here. THROUGH my CHIMNEY. Which I DON'T EVEN HAVE! DID YOU JUST BLOW A HOLE IN MY ROOF?!" He's already putting the presents down and making his escape. "GET BACK HERE. I'M GONNA POUND YOU BLACK 'N BLUE, TIS THE FUCKIN' SEASON!!!"

Aaand Pizzano's gone. Er. Santa Claus. Yeah. That was him alright. Nobody else.

Unfortunately for Pizzelle, she... prefers smaller gifts. So once she quits stomping around her living room and prepares to defuse whatever bomb has been placed within the box,

Happy holidays. She now has a black eye, a broken roof, and even more debt to pay off! ... Hooray?

Hey. Hey Pizzelle. Get up.

(+1 concussion.)

[angstics]

89.5 📻

[doyourememberrocknrollradio]

Sloppy Seconds - Hooray for Santa Claus

[writer59january13]

Ah... tis nothing greater than...

malfunctioning heater on that brisk winter day recorded here as proof positive regarding following reasonable rhyme.

While scrolling thru

poems crafted yesteryear, I chanced to jog my memory where

there

occurred power outage necessitated

more than divine intervention yielded courtesy effort

vis a vis wing and prayer

while yours truly kept burrowed

under blankets within

Highland Manor lair

squirting wd-40 into

ears, mouth, and nostrils

failed to activate, lubricate, and remediate

sluggish primary cerebral cog and gear

subjected to bitter cold apartment air.

Thee particular date being December twenty eighth, two thousand nineteen, (three years ago from today), I saith

the then Jack of all trades maintenance technician Kevin Blank said he would notify HVAC expert in good faith,

yet to compliment clangorous din... I called upon the ghost of Marley's wraith.

Thus despite compressor issuing cacophonous, deafening, ear splitting noise clattering din louder than convention of reindeer - doubled as all boys

(choir) followed by cavalcade of Santa Claus, who employed, the missus of course with equipoise, and countless elves pressed for service mending broken brand new toys.

Why... yes twas during most recent brutal bitter cold spell

methought, yours truly got sent, where absolute zero temperature more frigid than when hell froze over

of course, I felt like human popsicle

management didn't give a lick, no matter yours truly gave rebel yell

Billy me you, I immediately yearned (some months back) for April

May, June... some tell

tale sign to alleviate pell mell

bone crushing polar vortex preserved frozen awful botox smile impossible mission to quell, nor avoid frostbite to deep freeze (frieze) every cell;

millenniums later archeologists

discovered embalmed human

once preserved in ice despite climate changed dystopian future

found me thawed out body

reason to sing and kvell.

Forsooth mindlessly jabbering away

jaw frenziedly attempting to convey

how this schlemiel

procrastinated and did delay,

NOT taking page from

playbook of Dick Proenneke

without possessing an iota of survival skills to live alone in the wilderness such cockamimi half cocked notion

would fly in the face

of sense and sensibility

and I a creature of comfort

best be war re: not game

to warm cockles and muscles

loosely translated restrained foray

toward forbidding verboten terrain (exalting in bosom of paramour) think fifty shades of gray

kindling like ice cold tinder thawing

frigid celibate stasis,

an unnatural rut versus making whoopie

to generate body heat hooray,

but clothes minded chap

even entertaining bacchanalian melee

alien fantasy unrecognizable

yielded Abort, Retry, Fail?

– nay

synonymous to when yours truly

adopted Presbyterian sacred ministerial

he pledged allegiance linkedin

and jumpstarting career

parallel to the late Mister Rogers,

his neighborhood of make-believe

immune to weather related events,

thus forever okay,

nevertheless expressed gratitude

confessed, I unconsciously did (as iterated earlier) pray

while suspended animation did stay

slowing or stopping of biological function

physiological capabilities unpitted and preserved - yea.

Hence today upon being and getting woke, (where central heater set at a comfortable sixty five degrees fahrenheit)

feeling like I slept forever and a day - no joke

most certainly well rested constitution; dreams did evoke

intensely scrutinizing

Scottish matted cognomen,

chilled wren, and whim hen folk,

who appeared out of this

dreamy Maxfield Parrish world

hybridized, mutated,

and segued into rorschach Roanoke

Island mystery

disappearance smooth

as glass skin cloak immune against ultraviolet rays ordinarily causing skin cancer,

their attenuated limbs

(ala El Greco) strong as oak

versatile to prod

analogous to pig in a poke,

whereby superior petsmart doggone noggin could invoke telepathic communication interestingly enough issuing smoke

signals, whenever danger present

and capable to disappear

as if doing breast stroke,

thus concludes trademark

discombobulated poetic anecdote

of one garden variety generic bloke.

[mondoradiowmse]

12/21/22 Mondo Radio Playlist

Here's the playlist for this week's special edition of Mondo Radio, which you can download or stream here. This episode: "Hooray for Captain Santa Claus and His Reindeer Space Patrol" - A Very Mondo Xmas 2022! If you dig these seasonal sounds, don't forget to also follow the show on Facebook and Twitter!

Artist - Song - Album

Ramma Lamma - Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme - Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme (Single)

The Fireflies - Pretty Christmas - The Fireflies Tackle Your Christmas Tree

Tyler Chicorel Feat. Ashley Smith - Give It All Away - Give It All Away (Single)

Tyler Chicorel - Christmas At Home - Christmas At Home (Single)

Space Raft - Another Holiday Is Here - Another Holiday Is Here (Single)

The Midwest Beat - That's What Christmas Means To Me - That's What Christmas Means To Me (Single)

Dungeon Broads Feat. Jacob Berendes - O Christmas Tree - A Very Messy Holiday

Alligator Indian - Merry Xmas, Melissa Diaz - New Weird Xmas

The Flaming Lips - Little Drummer Boy (Live) - Heady Nuggs: 20 Years After Clouds Taste Metallic 1994-1997

Wooden Shjips - O Tannenbaum - Holiday Cassingle (Single)

Imagene Peise - White Christmas (Binson Echorec Sleigh Ride) - Atlas Eets Christmas

Root Boy Slim & The Sex Change Band With The Rootettes - Xmas At K-Mart - Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Xmas

Henry Rollins - 'Twas The Night Before Christmas - O Come All Ye Faithful: Rock For Choice

Johnny Adams - The Little Boy That Santa Forgot - Christmas In New Orleans With Johnny Adams

Cue Recording Studios/Mel Kaiser - Street Noise At Xmas Time - Documentary Sounds, Vol. 1

Ernest Hare - Santa Claus Hides In The Phonograph - Voices Of Christmas Past

Liberace With George Liberace And His Orchestra - The Toy Piano - Christmas At Liberace's

The Singing Dogs - Jingle Bells - Dr. Demento Presents The Greatest Christmas Novelty CD Of All Time

Roger LaVern & The Microns - Christmas Stocking - Vampires, Cowboys, Spacemen & Spooks: The Very Best Of Joe Meek's Instrumentals

Bobby Helms - Captain Santa Claus (And His Reindeer Space Patrol) - Captain Santa Claus (And His Reindeer Space Patrol) (Single)

Fat Daddy - Fat Daddy - A John Waters Christmas

Detroit Junior - Christmas Day - Blue Yule: Christmas Blues And R&B Classics

Darlene Love - White Christmas - A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector

Solomon Burke - Presents For Christmas - The Original Soul Christmas

James Brown - Santa Claus Is Definitely Here To Stay (Vocal) - The Singles, Vol. 7: 1970-1972

Bob Seger & The Last Heard - Sock It To Me Santa - Heavy Music: The Complete Cameo Recordings 1966-1967

Ramones - Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) - Brain Drain

James White And The Blacks - Christmas With Satan - Off White

Bob & Doug McKenzie - Twelve Days Of Christmas - Great White North

Amil Byleckie - Whats In The Bag (Old Man)? - Good Angels Guard Thee

Heather Noel - Santa Came On A Nuclear Missile - The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four?

Monty Python - Christmas In Heaven - Monty Python Sings

Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime (Edited Version) - McCartney II

Squeeze - Christmas Day - The Big 80's: Christmas

Heidecker & Wood - Christmas Suite - Starting From Nowhere

Sparks - Thank God It's Not Christmas - Kimono My House

Nilsson - Remember (Christmas) - Son Of Schmilsson

Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard Brew

Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody - Get Yer Boots On: The Best Of Slade

John Lennon - Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - Gimme Some Truth

[justsayun]

I’m feeling I made the nice list.

Santa's special day is nearly here.  I overheard a lady at the store complaining how the meaning of Christmas has been lost in all the commercialism.  I expressed how I agreed that this is a time to get serious about celebrating the birth of Santa Claus.  (Yes, another potential friend lost.)  I spent a lot of my shopping dollars online this year, but I have ventured out into the malls and big-box stores a little.  To me, it's not Christmas if I can't see some parent being driven crazy by children that are out of control and hopped up on too much sugar.  Hey, I had to deal with that at one time, why not them?  Welcome to the club young parents.  I know the saying is money can't buy happiness, but actually, it should go that "The lack of money can't buy happiness".  I do find it hard to accept that we are being told not to sing at functions because it's potential Covid Spreaders.  Yep, no singing Happy Birthday. (Don't try and whistle it either.) What about a "For he or she's a jolly good fellow.  Nope can't do it. (Humming it just doesn't give it the same pop.) You've wanted to toss out an Ald Lang Syne on New Years'.  Better not try.  Don't even consider that Hip Hip Hooray for someone.  (Perhaps just some finger-snapping.) It could lead to a crisis.  To that one friend who at get-togethers when he gets to looped would belt out a bit of Bohemian Rhapsody.  That's been nixed now.  (That actually is a good thing.) I've told my wife with Covid putting a damper on so many activities, that I'm determined to kick it up in the romance department for us.  First off I'll be taking our kisses to a new level.  I'm in training now.  My wife asked:  "You've entered into kissing training?  How is that possible?"  I'll simply starting drinking quite often from a slow water fountain.

[xequinn-xscully9362]

New Traditions for @fandomsandxfiles

“Hey Scully,” Mulder called out from the living room, “The kids and I are set up and waiting in the living room,”

“Yeah mom, we are waiting,” Emily repeated.

“Just a sec,” Scully called back, “I was just getting William’s stuffed Marvin the Martian for him” “here you go sweetie,” Scully cooed as she handed over the alien to the four-year-old.

“thank you, mama,” William said around the thumb in his mouth.

“You still think that this is a good idea Mulder?” Scully glanced lovingly at her babies, “It’s Christmas Eve Eve and this movie might be a little scary for them.”

“Mooooommmmmm,” Emily rolled her eyes doing a fair impression of her mother, “I’m 9 and dad said we could,” she looked at Mulder imploringly.

“Come on kids, get settled and we could start the movie,” Scully sighed and looked around, now noticing the arrangements that Mulder had made.

There were sleeping bags positioned in front of the sofa, with bowls of popcorn, steaming mugs of hot chocolate with little marshmallows floating, each mug had a peppermint candy cane for stirring too.

The Christmas tree was lit, as was the fireplace and on the sofa was strewn with piles of faux fur blankets for her and Mulder to snuggle under.

“Get under the blankets with me Scully, I’ve got the VCR all set up to go.”  

Scully stepped carefully around the children onto the couch next to Mulder, laying a hand on his thigh as he reached for the remote to press play.

Scully leaned into him whispering “Who would have thought that when I gifted you this movie all those years ago that we would be sharing it with our kids?”

“I’ll remember to thank Maurice and Lyda,” Mulder joked as he pulled her into him, slinging an arm over her shoulder and placing the bowl of popcorn on her lap.

“Shhhhh” William turned to lift a Scully eyebrow at them as the opening credits appeared on the tv screen.

“Sorry” Scully giggled at her mini-me and hunkered down to enjoy the 1964 comedy classic: Santa Clause conquers the Martians.

At the first appearance of Kimar the Martian, William gasped whilst Emily giggled. Seeing that his sister thought that the green man was funny, William settled down again. “Remember what mommy told us William, movies are ‘make believe’, they aren’t real” Emily edged closer to her little brother offering comfort. Mulder and Scully exchanged glances, both in amusement and worry.

“I’m warning you Mulder, if they have nightmares, you are on night duty” Scully hissed in his ear.

He pressed a quick peck to her lips and spoke to his children “How are we doing down there?”

“Da-da! Santa is on TV,” William replied in awe, then gasped again as the Martians busted into Santa’s workshop, freezing Santa’s helpers and Mrs. Clause.

Scully ended up watching her children more than the movie, well because she had seen it many times before and knowing what to expect, anticipated their reactions.

She was quite happy to see them cheering in the end for the new Martian Dropo Clause while Santa Clause go to return to earth with Billy and Betty.

Scully and Mulder joined Emily and William in singing:

S-A-N-T-A, C-L-A-U-S

Hooray for Santy Claus!

You spell it S-A-N-T-A, C-L-A-U-S

Hooray for Santy Claus

Hooray for Santy Claus

Yay yay for Santy Claus

He's fat and round, but jumpin' jiminy

He can climb down any chiminy!

When we hear sleigh bells ring

Our hearts go ting-a-ling

'Cause there'll be presents under the tree

Hooray for Santy Claus!

Now all year long at the North Pole

He's busy making toys

But he knows just what you're doin'

So you better be good girls and boys!

Hang up that mistletoe

Soon you'll hear Ho Ho Ho

On Christmas Day, you'll wake up and you'll say

Hooray for Santy Claus!

Yay yay! Yay yay!

Yay yay! HOORAY!!!

Hang up that mistletoe

Soon you'll hear Ho Ho Ho

On Christmas Day, you'll wake up and you'll say

Hooray for Santy Claus!

S-A-N-T-A, C-L-A-U-S

Hooray for Santy Claus!

You spell it S-A-N-T-A, C-L-A-U-S

Hooray for Santy Claus!

Hoo-raaaaayy forrr Sannn-tyyyy Clauuuusss!

Hooray for Santy Claus!

 Both kids tucked in bed a little while later, Mulder joined Scully in bed, “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he quirked at her hopefully.

She stifled a yawn, “Oh, we’ll see,” she said knowingly. “I bet you Christmas breakfast that William has a nightmare.”

 In the dead of night- the Witching Hour

 “Mamaaaaaaa!” William’s cry pierced the quiet of the house, rousing Scully from a sound sleep.

Scully sat up in bed, heart racing hearing her son sobbing. Remembering just hours before her warning to Mulder she jabbed him fiercely with an elbow to his gut and smugly said “You’re up” before burrowing deeper in the duvet….at his groan she added “I request pancakes for breakfast later,” before succumbing to dreamland once more.

[culturevulturette]

S-A-N-T-A 

C-L-A-U-S!  

[mst3kproject]

Magic Christmas Tree

I thought I’d try something different this year and find a bad Hannukah movie, but everybody I asked had the same recommendation: Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights.  I know for a fact that is a prohibitively awful film, because I know people who’ve watched parts of it (I have not to date met anyone who could sit through the whole thing), but it just doesn’t feel like an MST3K feature to me.  Anyway, I have standards.  My conclusion is that people need to make more Hannukah movies… and until that happens, I’m watching Magic Christmas Tree, which comes specially recommended by RiffTrax.

This is the only Christmas movie I’ve ever seen which starts with cheerful holiday music over footage of… Hallowe’en decorations. Obnoxious bully Mark and his two pushover friends decide to go investigate a supposedly-haunted house. Naturally the old lady who lives there is a witch, and in exchange for Mark rescuing her cat, she gives him a seed for a magical tree that will grant him three wishes.  Two months later, with the tree fully grown, his first wish is to have magical powers for one hour – he uses them to torment unfortunate people who were already having to work on Christmas Eve.  His second wish is to kidnap Santa Claus and extort unlimited presents from him, but that attracts the attention of the spirit of Greed, who intends to keep Mark as a slave forever!  Good thing he’s still got that third wish.

God, I hate this movie.  I’d say it’s the worst Christmas movie I’ve ever seen, but Elves exists, so instead I have to say it’s the worst Christmas movie that didn’t have any Nazis in it.  It reminds me more than anything else of Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, in that it’s an absolute mess that seems to have been put together by people who have no idea what they’re doing.  It spends most of its time on boring, annoying irrelevant bullshit, and then when it gets to the plot, that’s boring and annoying, too!

Magic Christmas Tree is only an hour long, but that’s twice as long as it needed to be.  A plot summary makes it sound like most of the film will be dealing with Mark’s three wishes and how he uses them, but it’s half-over before we even get to that point.  The time leading up to it is spent watching Mark follow the witch’s complicated instructions on how to grow and activate the tree, and his parents dealing with this unwanted thing appearing in the middle of their back yard.  All of this is presented in excruciating detail.  We watch Mark dig the entire hole to plant the seed in.  We see his Dad struggle with the lawnmower at unbelievable length, while the Mom yacks about nothing on the phone with her friend Betty.  The Dad tries to cut the tree down with no success.  Mark has to say a set of magic words over and over and over.

It goes on so long, it passes the are you fucking kidding me? point and wanders into territory where you wonder if there’s something wrong with the disk and you’re playing the scene over and over.  It actually starts to feel like it’s on purpose – especially when the slowness is repeatedly emphasized by shots of Mark’s pet tortoise, Ichabod, who seems to be eating his patch of clover far faster than anybody else is accomplishing anything.  You’ll swear the movie is making fun of you.

The sound that accompanies all this is sometimes very peculiar.  The old lady has exactly the voice you’d expect from a witch in a cheap kid’s movie, but Mark’s Mom sounds like she’s being dubbed by a twelve-year-old boy, possibly the same one who provided the voice for Mark himself.  The tree speaks (oh, yes, it does) in the voice of a smarmy stereotypical gay man.  Santa Claus sounds like he’s half-senile and wondering what’s for lunch.

The lawnmower makes some very strange noises indeed. I guess they’re meant to be cartoonish and funny.  They’re definitely the former but they’re never the latter, possibly because they never sound remotely like a lawnmower.  When Mark’s Dad is trying to get it started it sounds like the ghost of a consumptive horse, and three hours later when it actually gets going, it makes noises like a traffic jam in Whoville.

Besides sounding weird, the actors are just plain bad.  The guy playing Santa Claus is half-asleep.  We’re told that the tree’s magic means he’s trapped in the chair he’s sitting in, and I honestly do believe that actor could not have gotten up if he tried, no wishes necessary.  The woman playing Mark’s Mom looks like she’s high as a kite and only barely keeping her grip on reality.  Maybe that’s why they had to dub her.  Mark’s Dad recites his lines like a guy on a game show reading his own life story off a teleprompter, and does his yard chores in a way that’s probably supposed to be pantomimey but is the opposite of entertaining.  The Dad gets an inordinate amount of screen time, which I can only chalk up to the fact that he’s played by director Dick Parish.

The worst of the lot are, of course, the kids, who are predictably terrible 60’s child actors.  They yell all their lines, with the volume and exaggerated emphasis you expect from a school play.  It wears thin very, very quickly.  The kid playing Mark is the worst of the lot, although I might just think that because he’s the one we spend the most time with.  He’s a huge part of why this movie makes me so mad.

I think the best way to describe Mark as a character is to say that the first time I watched this movie I assumed his name was ‘Billy’, despite the fact that everybody kept calling him ‘Mark’. He just seems like the type of nasty little brat who’d be named ‘Billy’ in a bad 60’s Christmas movie.  We meet him having lunch with his two friends by the playground, and learn that he’s a greedy little shit when he drives a hard bargain in a sandwich trade.  Greedy-little-shit-itude continues to be his primary character trait and is, of course, the core of the movie’s lesson.  His attempt to monopolize Santa Claus makes him such a greedy little shit that Greed himself takes an interest in him.

Greed is a huge hairy man who takes delight in kidnapping little boys.  I think he’s supposed to look like a fairy tale giant.  Watching him manhandle a child is an intensely uncomfortable experience.

I guess ‘don’t be greedy’ is a standard message for a children’s movie, and it seems like a particularly appropriate one for Christmas, which presents children with a great opportunity for avarice. What seems a little odd is that Mark never actually suffers any consequences for his selfishness, only the vague threat of them. There was a perfect opportunity for some of this when Mark kidnaps Santa Claus.  Santa, after all, brings toys to good girls and boys… surely by this point, after his brief reign of terror with his magical powers, Mark has been naughty enough to deserve only coal.  Apparently that’s not how it works, though.  Mark just wanders off into the woods in search of small animals to shoot with his new rifle, runs into the giant, and immediately repents even though Greed is offering him all the toys and candy he wants.

What supposedly prompts Mark to become a better person is seeing how the world has responded to Santa Claus going missing.  Curiously, there is very little emphasis on the children who are sad because they didn’t get any presents.  Maybe somebody thought that would have made them seem greedy? Instead, the vision Greed presents to Mark is of the United States military mobilizing to locate Santa and bring him home, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians-style!  So… I guess Mark becomes a better person because he’s afraid of what’s going to happen if the army finds Santa trapped in a chair in his house?  I guess that is pretty terrifying.

Another thing that blunts the lesson is the fact that Mark is given his three wishes as a reward for a good deed.  He got the witch’s cat down from the tree, so she offers him the magical seed and doesn’t let him refuse.  What then was he supposed to use his three wishes for, if not to get stuff for himself? Was this intentionally a poisoned gift, because you shouldn’t accept things from witches?  The witch insists that there are good witches as well as wicked ones, but she’s not exactly an unbiased source.  The movie never tries to blame her, though.  The situation is presented as Mark’s fault, and Mark’s alone.

Finally, at the end Mark wakes up and finds that of course the whole thing was a dream – there was no witch, no magic tree, and no Santa Claus.  This is less annoying than it could have been because at least it’s not a surprise. Mark did hit his head when he fell out of the tree the cat was in, and the movie changed from black and white to colour.  We’ve seen this before in The Wizard of Oz and we can guess where it’s going. The audience might assume that Mark will wake up and immediately take the opportunity to be generous instead of greedy, perhaps by giving his friend something to make up for the lunch trade. Instead, the woman who owns the cat (who is not actually a witch, but looks even more like one in this part of the film than she does wearing the Hallowe’en witch costume in Mark’s dream) offers him milk and cookies, and he delightedly accepts.  This just gives the impression that he’s learned nothing.

Is there anything in this movie I didn’t hate?  Well… among Mark’s school friends is a token black kid, who is not differentiated in any way from his peers.  He talks like them, he dresses like them, and the writers did not use either his lunch or his Hallowe’en plans as a way to demarcate a class difference between him and the others.  So yeah, the movie sucks, but the writers tried really hard not to be racist.

Happy fucking holidays.  I want to say hooray for surviving 2020, but we’ve still got a week to go.  That’s plenty of time for oh, I don’t know, an alien invasion, or a giant meteor, or the Yellowstone supervolcano, or zombies, or whatever.  At this point, if most of us aren’t dead by this time next year, I’ll count that as a win.

[esepoimipullula]

Incoming Scanlation!

So, yesterday was January 6th, which means here in Italy, it was the Epiphany.

Traditions are different around the world, but in my country, Epiphany is a feast day that celebrates the Three Mages finding Baby Jesus and bringing him their gifts. But it’s also paired with another, more popular and folkloric festivity geared toward kids... la Befana, named after its central figure.

That’s why I wanted to post my scans of the story Amelia befana per forza, where Magica de Spell si forced to take the Befana’s place for one night and has an... interesting meeting with Scrooge. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite manage, so the scans are coming later today!

But first... a little bit of background on the Befana, and also on the smorfia napoletana which is mentioned at one point in the story, to help y’all understand the story better.

La Befana

La Befana is a little old lady who flies on her magic broomstick on the night of January 5th and fills children’s stockings (think Christmas stockings in any and all Christmas specials from the US, basically) with candy if they’ve been good or coal if they’ve been bad, so that they may find the reward or the punishment for their behavior on the morning of January 6th. Before Santa Claus became big in Italy, she was the main gift-giver of the winter season, though Baby Jesus used to sometimes bring gifts on Christmas, too.

Traditionally, the Befana is kind but ugly, with a face full of warts and all covered in soot due to all that coming down from chimneys, and wears an old dark dress, a dark shawl, and broken shoes. She brings both candies and coal in a big bag or hamper. There are few origin stories for her, but this is the one I’m most familiar with:

When the Three Magi where going to Bethlehem to worship Jesus and bring him gifts, they stopped at a grumpy old woman’s house to ask if they were going the right way. The woman, probably because she was just a random Italian lady being inexplicably asked to point out some place in Palestine by three wealthy, possibly Persian foreigners who were way off the mark, didn’t know what to answer. Besides, she was busy because she had a lot of sweeping to do. The Magi asked her if she would like to come see Jesus with them, but she refused - again, she was busy, unlike some other people who could just drop everything and walk off to Palestine on a whim! And yet, after the Magi had been gone for a while, she began to reconsider her decision. Eventually, she filled a bag with sweets, hopped on her broom, and set off to find Jesus... except, she still didn’t know where he even was! So she decided to stop at every house and give some candy to every child she found, hoping to find the right one at some point.

Despite the Befana’s generosity, if someone calls any random woman a befana, that means they’re calling her either ugly, old, ill-tempered, or all three at once. In fact, if you know an older Italian person armed with Facebook or WhatsApp, chances are that they’ll spend January 6th jockingly sending “Hey, I heard it’s your big day!” and other such memes to all their female friends...

To be fair, the association with the Epiphany probably doesn’t help. As the Epiphany is the last big winter festivity in Italy before everybody needs to go back to work or to school until Carnival or Easter, this proverb is all we really have to say about it:

L'Epifania tutte le feste le porta via!

The Epihany, it takes all festivities away!

Anyway, here's a traditional rhyme describing the Befana:

La Befana vien di notte Con le scarpe tutte rotte Col vestito alla romana Viva, viva la Befana!

The Befana comes at night With her shoes all broken With a dress in Roman style Hooray, hooray for the Befana!

La smorfia napoletana

... or, the Neapolitan smorfia, being traditionally associated with the city of Naples and the surrouding area. Basically, a dream dictionary mixed with numerology. Its name may or may not be derived from the Greek god of sleep and dreams, Morpheus, or Morfeo in Italian.

According to the smorfia, everything you see and experience when you dream (be it a person, an animal, an object, a situation, a feeling...) corresponds to a number. Fear is 90, women’s legs are 77, and so on. These numbers, given to you by who knows what supernatural influence, are the numbers you’re supposed to select in lottery games (especially the Lotto) to actually win some monetary prize.

A trope or cliché when it comes to the smorfia is dreaming of a dead relative, like for example a grandparent, explicitly listing the numbers you must play, presumably so you don’t misinterpret any symbols. 

The smorfia has been referenced many times in popular culture, and not just on Topolino. It even pops up in movies by Totò, often considered the best Italian comedian ever and the Prince of Laughter.