My Christmas Marathon

Every year before Christmas I run a marathon of Christmas shows at my house.

The marathon runs for 12 hours and I have done it 5 times.

Tomorrow will be the 6th annual marathon.

I have a home theater that seats about 20 comfortably. It seats about 26 uncomfortably.






The schedule changes every year and there are very few shows that have been repeated over the past decade.

Friends & family come and go throughout the day some staying for just one or two shows, others sitting through 3 or 4 hours. Only I have stayed tuned for the whole marathon.

I don't show movies, just shows and specials. I try and make the variety of programs vast and emphasize the obscure over the traditional.

I didn't keep a list of the shows we watched for the first few years, but I am fairly certain I have never shown any of the shows on this year's schedule before... except The Jeffersons Christmas episode. It's the one where George is mysteriously dropping gifts off to another family. I played that in the year two marathon (I think.)

The final program on the schedule this year is "The Star Wars Holiday Special"... but for the sanity of myself and my guests I have edited the special... a lot.

My VHS tape ran 2 hours. I cut it down to 43 minutes. It's still awful, but its a fun campy awful... not a slit your wrists awful.

Below you will find the schedule for this year:

12:00pm 1976 Captain & Tennille Christmas (50 minutes)

12:50pm 2001 Jay Jay the Jet Plane – Jay Jay’s Christmas Surprise (15 minutes)

1:05pm 1965 A Charlie Brown Christmas (25 minutes)

1:35pm 1991 Rugrats Christmas (25 minutes)

2:00pm 2005 The Alpha Bots – Christmas (29 minutes)

2:30pm 1996 Elmo Saves Christmas (58 minutes)

3:30pm 1995 Mary-Kate & Ashley - The Case of the Christmas Caper (25 min)

3:55pm 1952 Jack Benny Christmas Show- (Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy) (25 minutes)

4:20pm 1977 The Jeffersons: 984 W 124 Street Apt 5C (25 minutes)

4:50pm 1990 The Frugal Gourmet: Colonial Christmas (60 minutes)

5:50pm 1978 Christmas at Walt Disney World (50 minutes)

6:45pm 1960 The Twilight Zone – Night of the Meek (25 minutes)

7:15pm 1991 Back to the Future: Dickens of a Christmas (25 minutes)

7:40pm 1969 The Brady Bunch The Voice of Christmas (25 minutes)

8:05pm 1954 Meet Corliss Archer: The Christmas Presents (25 minutes)

8:30pm 1981 Alice –Mel’s Christmas Carol (23 minutes)

9:00pm 1981 A Chipmunk Christmas (25 minutes)

9:30pm 1963 The Judy Garland Show Christmas (59 minutes)

10:30pm 1977 Good Times: Penny’s Christmas (23 minutes)

10:45pm 1955 The Honeymooners Twas the Night Before Christmas (25 minutes)

11:15pm 1970 Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (Rankin Bass) (47 minutes)

12:00am 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special (43 minutes-edited)

It should be a blast! In addition to the shows on the schedule I have a couple DVDs of shorts that I squeeze in whenever I am ahead of schedule.

The shorts include vintage Christmas cartoons, trailers for Christmas films and some odd silent Christmas footage from the Edison film company.

So, now you know what I am doing tomorrow. I will try and tweet a little during the marathon. But I can't promise much. I bet my brain will turn into gingerbread halfway through Captain & Tennile's version of Jingle Bells.

Photos of Mr. T on eBay

I am a big fan of Mr. T.
I have been a fan since I was a kid sitting in my pajamas on Saturday morning eating Mr. T cereal as I watched the Mister T cartoon.

Yeah.

They spelled out "Mister" for the cartoon.
I don't know why.

Checking eBay I found some amazing photos. I guess a better word than amazing would be weird. I don't have too much to say about these, but I wanted to share.

This is Mr. T together with Emmanual Lewis. It's a promo for the amazing Christmas special "A Christmas Dream.
You can buy it here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-MR-T-EMMANUEL-LEWIS-Original-Photo-1984-/110481648067?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19b93829c3#ht_500wt_1055

God, eBay links are ugly.

You know what ISN'T ugly? This:

Hogan and Mr. T butting heads and for some reason Mr. T has Hogan's world title.
Go for it:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GC05-Body-Slam-HULK-HOGAN-MR-T-Television-Press-Still-/390369533386?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ae3d65dca#ht_1796wt_1039

At first glance this looks totally normal. But what the hell is Dick Clark doing? He's holding a couple rods and making a face like he was caught by a fish hook.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dick-Clark-Mr-T-7x9-Photo-B2820-/120708736873?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c1acd2769#ht_484wt_1430

Prior to Rocky 3 and The A-Team, Mr. T appeared on the show "Games People Play" as part of a World's Toughest Bouncer. Of course he won.

They had a little person tossing contest. Wonder if Mr. T considered tossing Webster in the Christmas special.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mr-T-Games-People-Play-Original-7x9-Photo-C4326-/120788664478?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c1f90c09e#ht_500wt_1055

Mr. T and Bob Hope hula dancing. Yep. This was part of "Bob Hope's Wicki-Wacky Special From Waikiki, Hawaii".
Nothing I could add would even be noticed by any of you at this point. I assume you are in a state of shock.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bob-Hope-Mr-T-A-Team-7x9-Photo-B3032-/110671871051?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19c48ebc4b#ht_484wt_1430

This appears to be Mr. T giving Ed McMahon 5 million dollars. Then he butted heads with him and tossed him... I hope.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ed-Mcmahon-Mr-T-Original-8x10-Photo-C7369-/110784518953?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19cb459b29#ht_500wt_1055

Michael Jackson punching Mr. T. One of the cool things about this photo is that Mr. T is holding all of his gold chains. The chains he wore on A-Team were designed to have 1 hook in the back for all of them. That's why he can hold 'em with one hand.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MICHAEL-JACKSON-1985-MR-T-1-RARE-8x10-PHOTO-/120640116304?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item1c16b61650#ht_4995wt_1039

What a fantastic group of pictures. I hope you love em.

Art is stupid

The other day I was at an event at Citizen's Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies.

I was waiting in a line which meant I had to stare at that painting for 47 minutes. Or something I wasn't counting.




Just look at this awful thing. Everyone has tiny heads and Kim Kardashian sized rumps.

BTW, that's a total shot in the dark on the spelling of her last name. If it's wrong, then imagine I have a similarly named friend who also has a huge caboose.




Just look at that rear end! Seriously! This dude enters a room in the morning and his butt gets there at lunchtime.




I like that the little smoke detector thingie looks like a parolee ankle bracelet.

By the way, the reason I was in line was to see Santa, this Santa:



Now THAT is what I call art... and he has a big butt too.

Sesame Place Christmas 2011

I cannot tell you how much I am enjoying the Sesame Place Christmas event. I mean that literally. I can't tell you because I am typing this on my phone and it would take longer than I wish to type on this thing.



I've written about Sesame Place before. You can search for it, but it's probably full of broken links, missing images and gimmick commenters.

You know what? You should look for that!

In the meantime...



Sesame Place is a kiddie park and I have a kid... but I'm not fooling anyone, I enjoy it more than my son.




Normally the park shuts down at Halloween and stays shut until it's springtime.

But this year, they transformed the place into a tacky (in a good way) winter wonderland.



Characters dress in winter scarves. Stage shows about jingle bells and 2 different places to meet Santa... actually that's pretty weird. It's not that big of a place. Must be a union thing.

At night they light the place up, and it snows on Sesame Street. Every night.






The shows are all fun. Most are your standard Santa and jingle bells stuff. The Elmo's World Happy Holidays show is a bit of an exception. It's based on the home video of the same name.

The DVD covers the birth of Jesus, Kwanza and Chanukah.


This version is abridged but gives a nice overview of the three holidays.




To me few things say "merry Christmas" like fake facades and costumed characters. I know that's weird... but I am glad there's a place to find that just outside Central Jersey.

Spooky

Do you get "Something Weird" on your cable box's ON DEMAND menu? Something Weird is a company that puts out odd old movies and seems to have a treasure trove of nonsense with no place to put it.

So, they put it ON DEMAND.

This particular bit of motion picture madness is a featurette designed to advertise some kind of horror stage show starring Kara Kum. First a nerd comes on the screen and tells us all about it.


He says each line slowly followed by the 'sinister laugh' that is so cliched I have seen four year olds do it on Halloween night.

This ad is old, so perhaps the 'sinister laugh' still scared people. Even when it came from some postman's disembodied head? Maybe not.




Then they show us title cards as an announcer repeats the same nonsense about Kara Kum... or Kara Kum's. They can't make up thier minds.


They promise 1001 thrills. That's a whole lot of thrills.


Then they back it down to 18.




Still, 18 uncanny acts is a pretty dang good show.



Wait... whaaa?

That's a neat trick. I would tell him to produce Ice T. Then see if he produces the rapper Lifetime TV cop show actor.

That's pretty cool. Especially if you went to this stag.


Wow. Again, now I don't know if I want to be in the theater. What if I am THAT audience member?

Yeah, at this point that wouldn't be impressive.... unless she is wearing the sexy body suit this poorly drawn lady is wearing in the ad.


After a whole bunch of these claims the voice over poses a question:



No. I don't believe.

Shhh.... I'm Santa

I am sure most families have a relative that plays Santa for the family.

For my family, it's me.

Every year I make the rounds on Christmas Eve and tell the kids to go to sleep on time and be good all next year.