Festivus, Vintage Christmas Movies, A Holiday Playlist, etc.
In which it's Christmas time in Hollis, Queens, mom's cookin' chicken and collard greens.
┃Happy Festivus, to those that celebrate. A donation has been in your name to the Human Fund.
🎄 The tallest Christmas tree went up in 1950.
🔥 Hunter S. Thompson burned his Christmas tree annually. Almost set his house on fire in 1990.
🍿 Of course I love Home Alone, Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story (and Gremlins!), but I also love what I will call “Vintage Christmas Movies.” If you’ve never seen It’s A Wonderful Life, it’s currently on Amazon Prime; The Shop Around the Corner is on HBO Max; The Man Who Came to Dinner is on Tubi, as is The Thin Man, the first film concerning the lovely Nick and Nora. After The Thin Man starts on New Year’s Eve and they make for a delightful double feature.
“Are you packing?”
“Yes dear, I’m putting away this liquor.”
🎵 RetroDuck made a long playlist of holiday jams, including the obvious classics, plus Run-D.M.C., No Doubt, Adam Sandler and the Ramones, which are obvious classics to us. Doesn’t contain “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells.”
🎧 (48, 49/50) The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Rubber Soul: One of, if not the most contrarian things about me: I prefer the first half of The Beatles’ career. These two records represent them at their most perfectly balanced. A Hard Day’s Night captures their peak youthful energy, relentless hooks, and astonishing songwriting confidence with no filler. Rubber Soul deepens that brilliance, pairing warmth and introspection with adventurous textures. I know a few albums came in between (that are also perfect), but together, they show a band mastering pop craft while quietly reinventing what could be. “Better” and certainly more innovative albums followed, but not ones I love more.
💣 Artstechnia asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper.
👥 How many people have lived on Earth?
🌎 If you have time to kill over break, an animated look at 200,000 years of human history in one hour.
📺 It’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights…
❤️🩹 Feel-Good story time. Chef Saves Man’s Life: Florida chef noticed a 78-year-old regular hadn’t shown up for his usual daily meals, checked on him, and found him injured and dehydrated. The man received medical care and was later helped into a nearby apartment so staff could keep an eye on him.
🕯️ The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.
💚 The Hoping Machine refuses to shut down. Merry Christmas.
Love,
Luke
