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Thursday, December 12, 2013

If These Branches Could Talk...

Happy Thursday, everybody!  I hope that you're excited for this week's video blog because I think that it's on a subject that every single person can relate to.



It also happens to be the twelfth day of "THE POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR"!  I can't believe that we're almost halfway through already!  I think that I'm going to be a little bit sad seeing it end, because it's always a lot of fun writing holiday themed entries!

So, what could I be possibly chatting about this week?  Well, I'll give you a hint.  Have a look at this picture.



This is actually a picture of the family Christmas tree.  Well, an older picture of it anyway.  This picture was taken on December 3, and over the next few days, more ornaments and lights were added on.  The end result is a tree that has a lot of yuletide history to it.

And, I thought that it might be a wonderful idea to do a blog entry based on the wonderful history associated with a few of the ornaments on our tree.

After all, every ornament tells a story.  Hence the reason why I've titled this blog "If These Branches Could Talk".

Now, I have done this blog entry in video format.  But before I do, I want to post a little bit of behind the scenes trivia about the making of this blog.

NO. 1:  The music you hear in the background is actually the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.  I found it online and felt it would be perfect.  I just wanted to credit the album for providing the festive soundtrack.

NO. 2:  This video that you're going to see is actually Take #17!!!  It took me seventeen times to get this video right, because the first fifteen takes I kept flubbing up, and take sixteen cut out because I didn't have enough memory on my iPad mini (apparently fifteen takes on a 16GB iPad mini takes up a LOT of space).  Fortunately, Take 17 was a success!

NO. 3:  Despite all the technical difficulties, this remains my very favourite video blog that I have ever done.

So, without further adieu, let's watch the video to see which ornament on the family Christmas tree is the oldest, how many pop culture characters I have on our tree, which ornament came from Florida, and which ornament is my all time favourite.


Coming up on Day #13...I still haven't decided yet.  Consider it a surprise!


Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Slip-Slidin' Away On A Sled!

Can you believe that we're already almost halfway through “THE POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR” this year? My goodness, you know what they say about the holidays! They really do creep up on you!



But yet, here we are on Day #11!

And, today's one of those Whatever Wednesday entries where I randomly select a card from a group of six Clue characters and come up with a topic based from those Clue cards. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, well, here's what each of the character cards mean.

For Miss Scarlet, we make it a Sunday Jukebox kind of day.
For Colonel Mustard, it becomes a Monday Matinee.
For Professor Plum, we change this day to a Thursday Diary.
For Mrs. Peacock, we make it a Friday Night TV Guide entry.
For Mr. Green, we feature the first two weeks of the Saturday Smorgasbord.
For Mrs. White, we feature the last three weeks of the Saturday Smorgasbord.

(The first two weeks of Saturday represent toys and video games. The last three weeks deal with cartoons, comics, books, magazines, and educational shows.)

So, who will be the subject of this week's Whatever Wednesday?



Ah, looks like a Mr. Green kind of day. So this means that I'm going to be talking about a toy, game, or video game.

And, on top of that, I have to try and make it Christmas related. Not an easy task.

I mean, sure, it is easy in the sense that Christmas is all about toys and games.  After all, in most homes around the world, you can find toys and games underneath the Christmas tree every December 25th.  But I don't really feel like doing a blog entry on any of the hottest toys of the year, because to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what any of them are.  I have no children of my own, and my nieces and nephews are at the age where they don't really play with toys these days.  So, as far as current toys go, I'm totally out of the loop.

And, I really don't want to do a blog entry on a video game.  For one, there's not a lot of Christmas themed video games out there in the world.  Heck, I'll tell you right now that my upcoming Saturday blog entry is kind of stretching it in regards to keeping the Christmas theme going for the blog.  Secondly, although video games and video game consoles can usually be found underneath Christmas trees (I know that I certainly received video games as Christmas presents myself), I don't know if I really want to make today's topic on a toy in which you stay inside for hours on end.

No, I think that for today's topic, I'm going to write about an outdoor activity.  One that you can do outdoors...well, provided that you live in an area that receives regular snowfall between the months of December and March.  Actually, this activity could be one that you could do on Christmas Day morning after you've opened your gifts.  It's lots of fun for all ages, and if you can find exactly the right spot to perform this activity, you could have a ride that is almost as thrilling as a roller coaster at Six Flags!

This is a blog all about sledding!  I'll talk about some of the sleds that I used to ride in, some of the materials that I used to slide down hills, and the one place in town which I considered to be one of the best sledding hills ever.

So, how many of you remember your very first sled?  Do you even still have it?  I am sad to say that my first sled did not survive past my childhood.  But, man did I have a lot of good times with that sled.

The sled itself was made entirely of plastic.  If anything, I think my parents picked up the sled on clearance at Woolco right around the time that I was toddler aged.  I wish I could find a picture of it from way back when, but for whatever reason, I do remember it looking somewhat similar to the image below.



All that I remember about it was that it was bright red with yellow handles, and it sailed down hills at a very fast speed! 

(Well, at least it seemed really fast to me when I was a little kid, anyway.)

I tell you, I took that little red sled everywhere I went as a kid.  My sisters and parents would often use the little yellow rope attached to the front of the sled and pull me around our snow-covered backyard of our house...making sure that they didn't make me crash into a tree or a bush in the process.  And on the rare occasion in which we went out to a park to slide down the snow covered hills in the area, I could count on that little red sled to take me on the ride of my life!

The only thing about using a sled over and over again for five consecutive winter seasons was that over time, the sled would become more and more damaged, and I would say that over time, the sled started to wear away.  The first sign of decay was the fact that the sled began to change colour.  Initially, the sled was a bright red colour.  Five years later, it had faded into a sickly shade of Pepto-Bismol pink.  And then the cracks started to form all along the bottom of the sled, and the handles fell off, and the rope frayed away to nothing.  By the time I was six or seven years old, the sled had broken in half, and it was rendered absolutely useless.

I was devastated and heartbroken.  That sled was a huge part of my childhood, and it was suddenly broken and useless.  I wanted my parents to replace it with one exactly like it, but given that it was an item on clearance at Woolco and this was at a time before eBay and Kijiji even existed, those dreams were dashed rather quickly.



I mean, sure, I had loads of sleds that followed the little red one, but they just weren't the same.  I had one of those toboggan style sleds that were built kind of similar to the one featured in the movie "Citizen Kane", but to be perfectly honest I never really liked those kinds of sleds.  There was something about the way they were built that made them absolutely useless on hills (but were fantastic on flat plains of snow), and as far as I was concerned, if you couldn't go down a hill very fast, it wasn't worth playing on.

Ironically enough, even though I didn't use that toboggan that much, I was so angry with my parents when they gave it away to my cousins who promptly broke it weeks after getting it.  Looking back on it, I wish that they had asked me for my permission before giving it away because there's a part of me that still wishes I had it, even though I am way too big for it now.  Oh, well.  

As I grew older, I decided that sleds were a little bit too childish for me (keep in mind that I was only eleven or twelve at the time), and I decided that I would use other methods of transportation to get down a big snow-covered hill. 

Enter the "Snow Saucer/Crazy Carpet" era.


Now, I never really did have much use for Snow Saucers.  To be honest with you, I was a husky kid and I couldn't really fit properly on them.

I mean, look at the way they were designed.  Unless you were four feet tall and weighed less than eighty pounds, they were absolutely useless.  But for those kids who met the height and weight requirements (or lied to themselves and told themselves that they were), they were a really ingenious way to slide down any hill.  Of course, you also had to make sure that you held on for dear life because if you hit a sharp curve or a sudden bump, you would literally go flying off the sled.




I was more of a Crazy Carpet kind of person.  I don't know if they are still made or not, but mine sort of looked like the pictures up above.  The only difference was that I entered the double digits in age in the early 1990s, which was right around the time that neon colours first started to become popular.

(Mine was neon orange, by the way.)

Anyway, Crazy Carpets were a whole lot of fun.  You could lie on them face down as you slid down the hill, you could peel them up and ride them like a sled, or if you were really feeling adventurous, you could attach several of them together with string and make a Crazy Carpet train!  And, unlike Snow Saucers, I found them easier to control.  Mind you, once you got to the bottom of the hill, you fell off anyway, but at least you didn't have to worry about falling off while you were midway down the descent.

And, in town, there was only one place which was deemed worthy enough to toboggan down.  It's a place called Laurier Hill (named after the street that the hill happens to be located on), a hill with very few trees and a lot of open plains.  Every winter, we would go to that hill and slide down it to our heart's content.  I even remember going on a field trip to the hill when I was in seventh grade and being amazed that I never got injured once on the hill!  Of course, my sock ended up getting completely soaked because on one descent, I ended up losing my boot!  Luckily, it was on one of the last runs of the day, so I didn't get frostbite that day!  And the hot chocolate that we were given afterwards certainly helped.

So, those are some of the memories I have sledding.  For those of you living in Canada and the Upper U.S., you likely have experienced some of these memories and more.  For those of you who live in the Lower U.S...well, I suppose you could try tobogganing down a sand dune.  Just make sure you wear goggles.  Nobody likes sand in their eyes.

(That was a joke, by the way.)

And, do stay tuned into the advent calendar.  Tomorrow on Day #12, everybody's Christmas tree has a story to tell.  In tomorrow's video blog, I share the stories revolving around our family Christmas Tree.  

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

December 10, 1987



I would like to wish all of you a very happy Tuesday, and to welcome all of you to the tenth day of “THE POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR”.

Also known as one of the toughest Tuesday Timeline entries that I have ever done in the entire blog thus far.

And, I don't mean to say that the blog was tough as in emotionally draining. In actuality, this blog entry is quite the opposite. What was tough about it was the fact that December 10 happens to be one of the toughest dates that I have ever tried to do for a Tuesday Timeline. Particularly, a Tuesday Timeline that is set during the advent calendar.

Would you believe that of all the research that I did, and all of the pop culture trivia sites that I consulted, I could not find one decent Christmas reference that took place on December 10? No Christmas album releases, no actors and actresses that were born who starred in a Christmas film. Nothing.

The only Christmas themed pop culture tidbits that I could find for December 10 was the fact that on this date in 1974, “The Year Without A Santa Claus” debuted...but unfortunately, I did a blog on that subject during the last advent calendar. And, when you consider that the only other option that I could find for December 10 was the 1982 Solid Gold Christmas Special...well...let's just say that I struggled to come up with a concept for today's Tuesday Timeline.

And, let's just say that this Tuesday Timeline will focus on a...more personal memory. One that I stumbled upon in one of the most unusual sources. But we'll get to that in a moment.

But for now, I will say that there is an unusual amount of non-Christmas related history to discuss, as all of these events took place on the tenth of December...

1520 – Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull “Exsurge Domine” outside of Wittenburg's Elster Gate

1541 – Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham are executed after having separate affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England, and then-wife of Henry VIII

1684 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Hailey

1817 – Mississippi becomes the twentieth state to join the United States

1830 – American poet Emily Dickinson (d. 1886) is born in Amherst, Massachusetts

1868 – The world's first traffic signals are installed outside of London's Westminster Palace

1884 – “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, penned by Mark Twain, is first published

1898 – The Spanish-American War comes to an end following the signing of The Treaty of Paris

1901 – The first Nobel Prizes are awarded, exactly five years after Alfred Nobel – the man whom the prize was named after – died

1902 – In Tasmania, women are finally given the right to vote

1914 – Actress Dorothy Lamour (d. 1996) is born in New Orleans, Louisiana

1927 – The phrase “Grand Ole Opry” is used for the first time on-air

1941 – The HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse are sunk from torpedoes launched by Imperial Japanese torpedo bombers

1955 – The Mighty Mouse Playhouse debuts on television

1957 – Actor Michael Clarke Duncan (d. 2012) is born in Chicago, Illinois

1965 – The Grateful Dead perform their very first concert under their brand new name

1967 – Singer Otis Redding (b. 1941) is killed in a plane crash at just twenty-six years old

1968 – The “300 Million Yen Robbery” takes place in Tokyo, Japan – it remains Japan's biggest unsolved bank heist to date

1996 – Singer/songwriter Faron Young (b. 1932) dies at the age of 64

2005 – Comedian/actor Richard Pryor (b. 1940) loses his life at the age of 65 from a heart attack

2007 – Actress Ashleigh Aston Moore (b. 1981), of the movie “Now and Then”, dies at the age of 26

2012 – Television producer Paul Rauch, who worked on daytime dramas “Guiding Light” and “The Young and the Restless” passes away

Wow...now you see why I had such a hard time with today's blog entry. No Christmas themed topics at all...just a whole lot of celebrity deaths!

So, let's counter that with a lot of celebrity birthdays! Mind you, none of them have a major Christmas link to them, but they are still one year older all the same. Happy birthday to Agnes Nixon, Tommy Kirk, Susan Dey, Paul Hardcastle, Pepsi Dumacque, John J. York, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Schoeffling, Nia Peeples, Bobby Flay, George Newbern, Stephanie Morgenstern, Mel Rojas, Meg White, Summer Phoenix, and Raven-Symone!

So, now we get to the Tuesday Timeline date. And, again, I had to really wrack my brain to try and find a suitable holiday topic to discuss for today. So, would you like to know where my inspiration came from?

It came from a box of Christmas decorations, as well as an old journal that we used to do in elementary school!

I don't know if any of you in public school used to do journals in class, but from first to third grades, we used to have to do a daily journal of what we did during the day. It was an exercise in improving our writing skills as well as using crayons, markers, and pencil crayons to illustrate our journal entries.

Now, I'll admit that my life in first grade wasn't all that memorable...and I'm pretty sure that the entries that I wanted to write about would probably have gotten me thrown out of school (remember, I absolutely hated first grade because I had the worst teacher ever), and therefore, the vast majority of my entries were mostly made up.

However, I do recall one entry that I wrote that was actually the truth. I wrote about doing some sort of craft in my first grade class for Christmas. And, the entry was dated December 11, 1987. Now, because the entry talked about how I made the craft the day before, this would then make our Tuesday Timeline spotlight...



...December 10, 1987.

Now, December 1987 was an interesting month in pop culture.  In December 1987, two holiday specials premiered on television..."A Garfield Christmas" and "Will Vinton's A Claymation Christmas Celebration", two holiday specials that I have loved ever since.  In December 1987, quite a few movies debuted at the box office, including "Moonstruck", "Throw Momma From The Train", and "Empire of the Sun".  And the number one song on the top of the charts was this single below.



Those are all interesting little pop culture nuggets, but none of them work in this Tuesday Timeline.  The Belinda Carlisle song isn't exactly Christmasy, and none of those movies and television specials debuted on December 10.

So, you know what this means? Since I couldn't find a pop culture topic to discuss for today, I thought I'd share a personal story instead...by talking about the craft that I worked on that fateful December day. Would you like to see it?  Here...I posed for a photo with my "friend" down below.




Okay, so maybe I haven't quite mastered the art form known as the "selfie" yet.  At least I'm not making the duck face that so many thirteen year old girls have made since Twitter was first created.  But I do want all of you to say hello to my little friend.  And, I'm not talking about the big goofball in the burgundy shirt (that would actually be me).

I'm talking about this little guy.




Would you believe that twenty-six years ago today, I made this little guy with my own bare hands?  I didn't actually give him a name, but this was one of the holiday crafts that we made all the way back in 1987...during a year that I probably would rather like to forget.

Don't get me wrong.  In the world of pop culture, 1987 was a fantastic year.  The music was all music I liked listening to, my favourite cartoon (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) debuted in 1987, and I think the cartoon schedule for 1987/1988 was stellar.  But when it came down to personal matters, the 1987/1988 school year was actually one of my worst, largely because I couldn't stand the teacher...and to be perfectly honest with you, I didn't care much for half of my classmates in that class either.

Granted, we were all six years old by the time Christmas 1987 rolled around, but it's funny how clear my memory is from that time period even though I'm in my early thirties now.

But I will admit to one thing though.  While I still maintain that first grade was the worst school year ever, it still had its good moments to it.  And, I suppose the reason why I have chosen to spotlight the day in which I made this elf craft is because it happens to be one of the few positive moments that I have of first grade.  I guess I'm at an age where I'd rather remember good things instead of bad.  That's not to say that I won't forget the bad, I'd just rather hold on to the good moments.

Make sense?  I certainly hope so.

Now, here's what's very interesting about the events of December 10, 1987.  I actually have two major memories associated with this day...and both of them were good.  The first memory is that we played some sort of game in class where we all took turns trying to count to ten without actually reaching the number ten.  If we hit the number ten, we had to sit out.  For some reason, I remember winning that game on that day, and winning a special prize...a prize which I no longer remember, but I do have the memory of being the winner!  Funny the little details that are tucked away into our brains over time, aren't they?

And, of course, the second memory is that I made the little elf.  And, in hindsight, the elf project was a lot easier than I had made it out to be.  Back when I was a kid, I had absolutely zero patience in art class, and I wanted to be the first kid in the class to finish art assignments - even if it meant colouring outside the lines, gluing together random scraps of paper, or drawing naked stick figures.  So, you can imagine that building an elf from scratch made me a bit frustrated.  

But really, all that was needed was red felt, a styrofoam ball, and an empty jar.  In the case of the elf that I made in 1987, the jar was once filled with Gerber baby food.  




Now, when it came down to actually gluing the felt around the jar, that was actually the part that frustrated me the most.  Nowadays, we have glue sticks and glue guns to assist us with crafts (though I'm pretty sure that glue guns are still not allowed in grade school classrooms).  Back in 1987, we had that useless brown sludge known as mucilage.  You know, that messy brown stuff that rarely came out of the nozzle of the bottle, and when it did, it very rarely stuck.  Yeah, can you imagine a six-year-old trying to use mucilage on red felt?  It was impossible.

(That's why when I got home from school after I brought home my elf, my father grabbed his glue gun and made the felt stick on a little bit better!)

We also had to find a way to drill a hole into the lid of the jar that we were using for the base of our elf project.  Luckily, there was an aide in the classroom (one of those high school students who was doing a co-op placement at our school) who helped me with mine.  I was happy that she helped me, because I know that my actual teacher would have either ignored me, or shamed me while poking the hole through the lid.

Once the lid was drilled through, a bobby pin was inserted into the lid, and that was where we stuck the styrofoam ball.  We were required to decorate the ball to make it look like a face.  We were supposed to use the leftover red felt to design a hat and glue on eyes, a nose, and a mouth on the ball.  Now, as you can see from my elf design, making felt hats is not my specialty.  Truth be told, I kind of made my elf look like Mother Teresa.  But I didn't care.  I loved it.

And, I admit that while I didn't set out to make my elf a grouch, it just ended up that way.  After all, I had used the majority of the red felt to make the elf clothing, and I only had limited scraps to glue on the ball to make the face.  I'm sure that if I could have aimed my scissors a little better, I could have made my elf smile.  But, given how I didn't really like grade one that much, I suppose that maybe I was fashioning my elf after myself.

Needless to say, I think the elf turned out very well.  I kind of even like the fact that my elf is grouchy.  It certainly stood out from all the other happy elves anyway.  And who wanted to have an elf that was exactly the same as some other kid's?

I should also add one final thing.  You see, we didn't just stop at making the elves in class.  We were also required to fill up the elves with candy that our teacher had provided for us.  And, what I did was try to fill up the elf with all the good tasting candy.  Unfortunately, I ended up with one piece of candy that I didn't really care for.  It was one of those imitation Werther's Original candies that tasted like feet.  

(Well, okay...maybe it didn't taste like feet...but it certainly didn't taste like a Werther's!)

But what do you think I did with that nasty candy?  Did I throw it out?  Eat it anyway?  




Actually, for some insane reason, I decided to keep it inside the elf.

Just think about it for a second.  When I first made this elf and filled it up with goodies, the president of the United States was Ronald Reagan.  Since then, we've had a Clinton, an Obama, and two Bushes...of course, not in that order.

Somehow, I've managed to keep a piece of candy trapped inside a childhood art project for over a quarter of a century.  The butterscotch candy you see pictured above is twenty-six years old.

And, no...I won't eat it.  I'm actually a little afraid to eat it, considering how long it's been inside that elf.  Though I will say that for a piece of 26-year-old candy, it looks surprisingly well-preserved!  Of course, I guess part of it could be because it's still wrapped.

It would be interesting to open up the elf again in 2037 (the 50th anniversary of the day I made the elf), just to see if the candy still looks the same.  Maybe the preservatives WERE really good in the 1980s and we didn't know it!

Whatever the case though, that's the story of my little Christmas elf...made with love on the tenth of December, 1987.

What's in store for Day #11?  I can't tell you.  I have to leave it up to fate.  Until then, I bid you adieu!

Monday, December 09, 2013

The Christmas Shoes

Good morning, everybody! I hope you're ready for another day in “THE POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR”. Day #9 in a series of twenty-five!



And since today is a Monday Matinee kind of day, I'm going to be featuring a movie in this post...with a couple of little tweaks along the way.

For one tweak, I'm going to announce that this particular film was not released in movie theatres. It was actually released on December 1, 2002 as a made-for-television film airing on CBS.  I typically don't do a whole lot of made-for-television movies in this space, but for this month, I'll make an exception.  After all, we do sell this movie in the Christmas movie section on DVD for five dollars in the electronics department at the store I work at.

Another tweak lies in the fact that this particular film was inspired by a song that was released approximately two years prior, so I suppose that if you really wanted to look at this as a Sunday Jukebox entry being posted on a Monday Matinee, you probably could.

And, yet another tweak comes from the fact that in between the song release and the film release, an author by the name of Donna VanLiere wrote a novel based on the main plot of the song, and that novel served as the screenplay upon which the film was based on.  So, you could also say that this blog posting could have served well under the Saturday Smorgasbord!

So, let's see...the movie aired on television, was based on a song, which inspired the novel that the film was based upon.  I'd call that one epic blog entry, combining four different theme days into one!

It's just a shame that the song that the book was based on, which inspired the film, holds such divide in the community.  There is an extremely vocal camp that defends everything there is to defend regarding the movie and song.  Simultaneously, there is another vocal camp that slaughters the song and the film every chance they get.

Myself?  I admit that I find the song a little bit schmaltzy, but the film itself was somewhat saved by the fact that they managed to attract some convincing actors.  Well, at least I'd like to think so, anyway.

So, I guess you're probably wondering what this topic is all about.  I suppose the title is a dead giveaway...but before I talk about the movie, I'm going to post the song.  If you love the song, great.  If not...well, I suppose you could always mute it.



ARTIST:  NewSong
SONG:  The Christmas Shoes
ALBUM:  Sheltering Tree
DATE RELEASED:  October 10, 2000
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS:  #42

Okay, so as I said before, the video is kind of schmaltzy.  And, normally, I try not to reveal the ending of films, but of course, the video kind of spoils my plans, so consider this to be one of the few film discussions that I ever do that will speak of how the movie ends.  But, I may hold a couple of details back.  I can't lay it ALL out on the table.



Today's discussion is going to be on the 2002 film "The Christmas Shoes", which stars Rob Lowe, Kimberley Williams-Paisley, Max Moore, Maria del Mar, Hugh Thompson, and Amber Marshall.

Okay, so before I go into detail about the film, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the song itself.  The song was written by two of NewSong's members (Leonard Ahlstrom and Eddie Carswell).  NewSong itself being a contemporary Christian band that first formed in 1981 in the Valdosta, Georgia area.  And right around the time that the band was recording and writing the music for the album that "The Christmas Shoes" eventually appeared on, the band faced a tough year.  In May of 1999, one of the band's founding members, Bobby Apon, passed away, and a few months later, two more members would quit the band.  By the year 2000, NewSong would also have Ahlstrom depart the band after agreeing to move to Florida to assist a friend in running a record label, leaving Carswell to replace practically the entire band's line-up within the short space of a year.  How is that for stress?



Fortunately, before Ahlstrom's departure from the band, he had managed to complete the songwriting tasks for the band's 2000 album, "Sheltering Tree".  Funnily enough, "The Christmas Shoes" single was actually added onto the album as a bonus holiday track, with the band not expecting the single to perform all that well.

To their surprise, not only did the single almost reach the Top 40 on the Billboard Charts, but it topped the adult contemporary charts in early 2001!

Now, I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that because the song was released around Christmastime that the single would be filled with warmth, joy, and peace and love.  And to an extent, the song does offer up all of those things.  Yet, there's one festive elephant in the room...one that sort of makes the single bear a lot of tragic irony, if you will.

You see, the song's plot takes place on the eve before Christmas, and the stores are just about ready to close.  From the narrator's point of view, we get the picture that he is around the back of the line, as he has a couple of presents that he still has to buy and wrap as the precious minutes tick away.

(In the film, this narrator...a.k.a., the man who had 364 days a year to shop for Christmas and yet still waited until December 24th...is played by Rob Lowe.  And as the movie explains, Lowe plays the role of Robert Layton...and his moodiness and impatience is explained by the fact that he is having marital problems of some sort, which has caused a lot of tension between them as well as their daughter, Lilly, while dealing with the fact that his own mother is sick during the holidays.)

Of course, before the man can check out his purchases, he has to hold on until the little boy in front of him, pulling out all the loose change he has in his pockets (something that the then 11-year-old me would have also done in order to rent a video game from the local video store) to be able to afford a present for someone very special.

(In the film, the boy's name is Nathan Andrews, and he is played by Max Morrow.)

It turns out that the little boy is wanting to purchase a pair of shoes for his mother.  And, they are not any ordinary shoes either.  They just happen to be one of the most expensive pairs of shoes in the entire store.

(As well as some of the ugliest looking shoes ever seen.  This is how they looked in the movie.)



Now, I suppose that if one were to wear them on Christmas Day, they would be perfectly fine.  The snowflake type designs and crimson hue are certainly appropriate for the day.  However, they wouldn't be very practical the rest of the year.

Nonetheless, Nathan wants nothing more than to purchase the shoes for his mother.

(In the film, the mother is named Maggie Elizabeth Andrews, who is played in the film version by Kimberly Williams-Paisley...though in this film, she is credited as Kimberly Williams, as this movie was shot before her marriage to Brad Paisley.)

You see, the whole premise of the song/movie "The Christmas Shoes" is time...and just how precious it really is.



In the movie, Maggie is living a life that most people could only dream of.  She has a loving husband, Jack (Hugh Armstrong), and her loving son, Nathan, and she has a good job teaching music at the local elementary school.  Everything seems perfect...except for the fact that she seems to not be as active as she once was.  

Case in point, the opening scene in which Maggie and Nathan are playing football and they accidentally throw a football through the window of the car that Robert Layton happens to be in.  Of course, Layton snaps at Maggie and Nathan, as he has enough problems of his own.  His commitment to work has caused him to miss out on pivotal moments of his daughter's life, which has in turn caused his wife Kate (Maria del Mar) to resent him for it.

But, of course, Nathan and Maggie have absolutely no idea that any of this is going on in Robert's life, so they shrug it off and head inside.  But it is here that we start to see that something is seriously wrong with Maggie, as she has a rough time keeping up with the little boy.



Flash forward a few days to the set-up for the school Christmas concert, where Maggie is trying to set up the auditorium for the production, but is getting winded just from setting up the chairs.  Luckily for Maggie, she gets help from Kate, who arrives at the school to drop off Lilly (Amber Marshall), who is set to perform in the concert.  After Maggie gives Lilly a pep talk because Lilly is nervous about performing on stage, Maggie and Kate quickly become the best of friends, and the two share almost everything with each other.

But Kate begins to notice that Maggie is not feeling well at all, and Maggie too realizes that something is terribly wrong.  She proceeds to ask a reluctant Kate to take over the leadership of the Christmas concert, and she decides to find out what is wrong.

It turns out that the news is not good.  Maggie has been diagnosed with a terminal illness (though we never really do find out what Maggie has, the movie seems to suggest that Maggie has cancer), and that she only has just weeks to live.  A horribly devastating blow to the Andrews family, especially during the holidays.  It's bad enough that Maggie's husband is struggling to find a way to cope with the news...how in the world will Nathan understand?

Now, the good news is that Maggie has Kate by her side, and Maggie's acceptance of her own impending death (as much as she really doesn't want to die) causes Kate to finally open up to Robert about how things really are between them, and how she is willing to make the effort to fight for them if he will do the same.  Appropriately enough, the epiphany begins to happen at the Christmas concert that Kate agreed to take control of from Maggie.

Of course, as if life in the Layton household isn't stressful enough, Robert's mpther suddenly passes away just before Christmas, and the funeral also seems to be a changing point for Robert, as it causes him to re-evaluate everything that is really important.  As a result of his mother's death, plus all of the stuff that was going on with Kate and Lilly, Robert almost forgets to go Christmas shopping, so he makes a last minute dash to the main street of town to pick up a few things...

...which is where he crosses paths with Nathan, who happens to be in front of him in line, armed with a fancy pair of shoes and a fist full of change.  Unfortunately, he has not got enough money to buy the shoes, which breaks Nathan's heart.  Nathan explains that he hasn't got much time left, to which the cashier misunderstands him as thinking that he doesn't have time to buy the shoes before the store closes.  But Robert is listening closely as the little boy pleads to sell him the shoes anyway, as they will likely be the very last present that he ever gives his mother again.  

In fact, there's a reason why the shoes are so important.  Maggie has taken a turn for the worse on Christmas Eve, and it is expected that she won't live long enough to see Christmas morning, so Nathan makes sure that she has to have a pair of shoes that she can wear when she goes up to Heaven to see Jesus for the first time.

(His words...not mine.)



And, wouldn't you know it, Robert decides that he will step up, purchase the shoes himself, and gives the shoes to the boy, who hurries home to give Maggie the shoes before she passes away.  Needless to say, it takes a while for the boy to run home because of the fact that A) it's snowing outside, and B) a group of people from the school have gathered outside of the Andrews' residence to sing Christmas carols outside as a final farewell gift for a wonderful woman.

So, yeah...I'm sure you have figured out that Maggie ends up losing her battle with illness at the end of the story.  But I'm sure that she left the world happy, knowing just how many people loved her and cared enough about her and her family to make it her greatest Christmas ever...even if it did end up being her last.

Granted, "The Christmas Shoes" has all the makings of it being a really bleak, depressing special.  Basically, the plot is "Here, Mom...have some shoes before you die."  But there's a lot more to it than that.  And if you can overlook the schmaltz of the actual song itself, the story of the movie is quite consistent and good.  And while there is a lot of sadness within this movie, there's also a lot of joy to be found as well.  And, if you click HERE, I have a special surprise for you.  If you're up to it, that link takes you to the full movie.

And, this wraps up the 9th day of the advent calendar.  Tomorrow's Tuesday Timeline marks the tenth day of the advent calendar...which in turn was one of the most frustrating days to write a Timeline entry about.  But a little personal touch can potentially save it!

You'll see what I mean tomorrow.

Sunday, December 08, 2013

Last Christmas, I Gave You Some Wham!



Hello, everyone! I hope that you're feeling great because we're entering Day #8 on “A POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR”!

And on this day, we're steering the Sunday Jukebox smack dab into the 1980s!  

Because we are smack dab in the middle of December, today's Sunday Jukebox entry will focus on a Christmas song.  And as it so happens, this song just happens to be almost three decades old!

The singers of this festive hit?  George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, who between 1981 and 1986 performed together as the British pop duo, Wham!  




I'll give you a little bit of information about this band before I post today's holiday favourite.  As the year 1984 was drawing to a close, Wham! was already making it big with the release of their sophomore album, "Make It Big" in their native UK.  "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", "Careless Whisper", and "Freedom" were already huge radio hits in the United Kingdom, and in North America, the band was starting to get some recognition as well, with "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" becoming a #1 hit in November 1984 and staying on top of the charts for three weeks.  

By December 1984, Wham! had a ton of projects on the go.  George Michael had lent his voice to the collaborative charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas", which would end up being one of the biggest Christmas singles ever released in the United Kingdom.  And, just a few days before Christmas 1984, the band was getting ready to release the final single from "Make It Big".   

Now, the final single was released as two separate songs.  And back in the days of the early 1980s, singles were still released on LP's, with an A-side and a B-side.  The A-side was the widely successful "Everything She Wants" (which coincidentally happens to be my very favourite Wham! single), and that single topped the charts in both Canada and the United States.  

But, the B-side...because the single was released in December of '84, the B-side was a Christmas themed song.  And, who knew that this Christmas single would end up becoming a worldwide success?

Would you like to have a listen for yourselves?  I'm just going to go ahead and post the video right now.  We'll discuss and make fun of the video later on in this blog entry.  





ARTIST:  Wham!
SONG:  Last Christmas
ALBUM:  Music from the Edge of Heaven
DATE RELEASED:  December 20, 1984
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS:  #40
PEAK POSITION ON THE UK CHARTS:  #2

USELESS TRIVIA:  This video would be one of the last videos that would feature George Michael without facial hair.  Beginning in 1985, George would begin growing his now signature beard.




So, in regards to "Last Christmas", I have heard some rather mixed opinions about this Christmas classic.  There are some people who absolutely love this song, and consider it to be a modern contemporary piece to any holiday playlist.  I think that back when this single first hit the shores of North America, my sister really liked this song, as she was a fan of Wham! back in the day (though my sister admittedly had more of a crush on Andrew Ridgeley than she did George Michael).  

But then there are those who find the single to be the epitome of cheese and wish that the single was never recorded.  Trust me, I know at least a couple of people who rush to change the radio station whenever they play the song "Last Christmas" because the can't stand it.

As for my own thoughts about the single...I admit that my opinions are mixed.  As far as a Christmas song goes, it's not the best one that I have ever heard, but it is far from being the worst.  I mean, if you take a look at the video, it's got that right mixture of holiday postcard and gouda and parmesan cheeses...and while that combination might seem quite insane to some...it sort of works.

Apparently, the video is set at a ski resort during a Christmas vacation that the boys of Wham! are taking along with a few of their closest friends.  Among them are British pop duo Pepsi & Shirlee, and Spandau Ballet bassist/EastEnders actor Martin Kemp.  Although this particular ski resort is meant to be just like any other ski resort in the world, it is later revealed through clues in the cable car scenes that the setting of the video is in Switzerland.

(Hey, when you are a part of one of the top selling groups of 1984, you can afford to go anywhere you want!)

Now, at first glance, this music video looks like a nice, warm, wonderfully festive place to be.  After all, it's filled with food, friends, warm fires, and lots of love and romance.

But wait!  There is a little bit of tension between George and Andrew.  Which is surprising, since in the video, both George and Andrew are paired up with a girl each.  But there is something about Andrew's girl that makes George a little bit uncomfortable.

Which seems kind of strange upon retrospect given how infamously he came out of the closet fourteen years after this single was released.  But, again...we've already discussed this story in the blog during a previous entry.  No need to revisit that here.

Back in 1984, George's sexuality was still under lock and key, and at the time this video was filmed, George was quite uncomfortable with Andrew's choice of girlfriend...because some time prior to this video being filmed, George himself had been in a relationship with Andrew's woman!




I know!  Scandalous, isn't it?  

But, wait.  Where is the proof?  What makes us think that Andrew was dating George's former flame?  Consider this.

Clue #1:  You can easily tell apart the woman that has been linked to both Andrew and George by one distinguishing characteristic.  She is the only woman wearing red!  Now, interestingly enough, the main character in "The Scarlet Letter" wore a bright red "A" for adultery...and red is a known colour that represents passion and lust.  Not suggesting that our mystery girl cheated on George with Andrew, of course.  There's no proof of that.  But, it's interesting how the lady in red seems to interact with everyone at the ski lodge.  And, I'll get to more of that in a second.

Clue #2:  Since the song talks about how last Christmas, George gave the girl his heart, but the very next day, she gave it away, clearly, we're going to see some flashbacks of Christmas past...a time in which George was happier and in love with whom he believed was the one.  In this case, during Christmas past, George had bestowed a present of a golden brooch to his love, only for the girl to kick him to the curb just twenty-four hours later.  

But interestingly enough, when the action shifts towards the present day, we discover that the girl is still wearing the brooch that George gave to her!  Now, considering that George and the girl are supposed to be finito by this time, you can understand why George might feel a little bit heartsick and confused.  Certainly, she seems to be sending some rather mixed signals.  And, as if that wasn't bad enough...

Clue #3:  Have you noticed how much love and affection that the girl seems to give to her newest beau, Andrew?  Yeah, me either.  You know, come to think of it, I think that the girl seems to be treating Andrew with a lot of indifference, given that he seems to want to do everything for her (and quite possibly to her).  In fact, I have to be honest with you.  If I were in Andrew's position where I had a girl rebuff my advances even though she made me believe that I were her one and only...I'd likely have questions too.

Of course, since nearly every holiday video has to have a happy ending, everyone is paired up at the end of the video, Andrew is still with his new girl, and George has seemingly moved on with his new squeeze.  

(Of course, in real life, it is assumed that George is still single, while Andrew has been linked with Bananarama's Keren Woodward for well over twenty years.)

Still, the single did do a lot of good besides being a worldwide hit.  Did you know that Michael and Ridgeley donated all of the proceeds from the royalties taken in from "Everything She Wants/Last Christmas" to the Ethiopian famine relief?  It's true!  After all, George Michael did sing on the Band-Aid track the same time that "Last Christmas" was released.

And, here's one more final fact that I should bring up before I close the book on "Last Christmas".  Did you know that the single is considered to be the most successful Christmas themed single in the country of Germany?  Believe it or not, the single spent a total of two consecutive YEARS on the German pop charts!  That's 104 weeks on the charts between 1984 and 1986!  And, the single has since entered the German charts at least once during the year since 1997!  

Not bad for a Wham! single, huh?

Coming up tomorrow in Day #9 of A Pop Culture Addict's Advent Calendar, we're going to be taking a look at a made-for-television movie that came out in 2002...that was based on a song that makes many people...well...cringe in disgust.

Never knew that a pair of shoes could elicit such harsh emotions...but we'll discuss all that tomorrow!

Saturday, December 07, 2013

Foundation of a Gingerbread House

Today's edition of A POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDARis brought to you by the number 7 and by the letters Y, U, and M!



Yes, Day #7 is here, and I thought that for Day #7, I would do a spotlight on a holiday treat. Okay, so I know that technically, the Saturday Smorgasbord entry for the first Saturday of December is supposed to be about some sort of toy or game, but somehow, I think that you will understand why I've decided to offer up a sweet treat in place.

Besides, it's one of the few foods that you are actively encouraged to play with.

Now, I'll preface today's entry by saying one thing. I am a huge fan of sweets. In fact, I probably eat way more sweets than I really should admit to, but they are likely the one thing that I find incredibly difficult to turn away. I mean, you can keep your potato chips, pretzels, and nachos with cheese and sour cream. Give me chocolate cake, ice cream cones, and Mars bars any day of the week. Whether it's caramel, chocolate, nougat, or fudge, there is very rarely an occasion in which I will turn down sweets.

(The only way I won't eat them is if they are covered in strawberries or coconut. The first one I have an allergy to, and the second one is just...yuck.)

So, needless to say, my insatiable sweet tooth was attracted to all kinds of sweets, and of course, the more creative looking and visually appealing the sweets were, the more I wanted to eat them! Let's just say that there is a reason why I stalk the local Tim Hortons restaurant in order to get my hands on a “Smile Cookie” or the latest doughnut flavour.


I honestly don't know where my love of sweets came from. Most everyone else in my family prefers salty snacks over sweet ones. But I'm pretty sure that the moment I bit into my first Jersey Milk chocolate bar, or swallowed my very first Junior Mint, I was instantly hooked.

And, certainly I had my favourite candies.  I find the combination of peppermint and chocolate to be absolutely irresistible, which explains my love for York Peppermint Patties and Terry's Chocolate Mint Oranges.  I am also equally in love with the marriage between chocolate and peanut butter, which is why it has taken everything inside of me to avoid those new gigantic size Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  Sure, it would be tasty, but I know that I would pay for it later.  And, don't even get me started on the wonderfully tempting store known as "Bulk Barn".  From sour jujubes to broken bits of Skor bars, I find it a struggle to avoid sometimes...especially since the closest Bulk Barn to me is just a block away!  

Yes, my name is Matthew, and I am a choco-holic.  But, I suppose being a choco-holic is slightly better than being an alcoholic.  Maybe only slightly better.

But, you know, there are many more uses for candy other than eating it.  After all, when it comes to one familiar Christmas pasttime, candy makes a perfect decorating tool!

I'm talking about building a house made entirely out of gingerbread!  Or, as Hansel and Gretel would call it...lunch!



Seriously, if you've ever built a gingerbread house, you know exactly how much fun they can be.  They can also be a lot of hard work, mind you, but they can be a lot of fun too!

In fact, I think I can go back in time and remember the first time I ever built a gingerbread house...well...okay, maybe it was more along the lines of a gingerbread shack, but it was most certainly one of the coolest things that I ever remembered doing in school.

Now, here's the kicker.  The teacher who taught us how to build the gingerbread houses (I think her name was Mrs. Shannon), was a teacher who I don't remember ever having in school.  But back when I was in the fourth grade, we would have Christmas activities in which all the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students would swap classes every period, and perform a Christmas activity in class.  And, Mrs. Shannon's class was the place to go if you wanted to build a gingerbread house!

Or, again...as I called them, gingerbread shacks.

You see, because a standard elementary school period lasted at most, forty minutes, we didn't have the time to build a huge, elaborate gingerbread mansion.  Anyone who has ever tried to build a proper gingerbread house knows that it takes a lot longer than 40 minutes to build one from the ground up.  So, Mrs. Shannon decided that we would make a miniature version using graham crackers.  I mean, yes, graham crackers weren't exactly gingerbread, but they did the trick for the time being.

Now, when building a gingerbread house, you never ever use glue.  Glue may hold the walls together, but it also tastes terrible.  So, instead of glue, we used icing sugar.  And, if I remember correctly, I think the teacher gave some of us trouble for actually eating the icing sugar and not using it to build our houses.  But how could you resist it?  It was so tasty!

Because the icing sugar was so tasty, I knew that I had to put as much icing sugar on top of it as I could.  Luckily, Mrs. Shannon had made more than enough for the entire fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classes to use, so it didn't matter if I coated the entire roof of my gingerbread shack with icing.  After all, in Canada, Christmas falls just a few days after the official start of winter.  There's likely going to be snow on the roof!

Once the icing sugar dried enough for the gingerbread shack to stay up, we then had the opportunity to decorate the shack with whatever candies we wanted.  And, because the gingerbread shack activity was so intricate and filled with a lot of steps, it was actually split up into two separate days.  And on day number two, my group was in Mrs. Shannon's classroom again to decorate our gingerbread shacks.



And, believe me, there were a ton of supplies to use.  We had sprinkles in both chocolate and coloured varieties to sprinkle on our shacks, or we could use those swirly mint candies for windows.  My personal favourite decoration to use were the coloured chocolate candies known as "Smarties".  Now, I myself prefer M&M's to Smarties, but Smarties were better to use for gingerbread shacks because they came in a bigger variety of colour options.  Keep in mind that when I was in elementary school, there were no such thing as blue M&M's, so we were fairly limited in colour combinations that we could use had we used M&M's.  So, needless to say, I pretended that the Smarties were Christmas lights and I put every colour under the sun all over the roof to make it stand out from all the others.

In the end, my final creation was absolutely beautiful.  A realish gingerbread shack that was designed and decorated with love.  I only wish I had the idea to snap a picture of the gingerbread shack when I brought it home from school, but it ended up getting eaten before Christmas Day!

(What can I say?  I designed such a good gingerbread shack that it became too irresistible for me to not nibble on!)

Now, over the years, various family members have made gingerbread houses at their own leisure.  My sister made one in the late 1990s that was beautiful and delicious.  And, it actually took her two whole weeks to get the whole thing finished, it was that beautiful.  And, again, I wish that someone had the foresight to take a picture of it because it really was that good, but at the time, nobody had a working camera.  I hate it when I have all these memories, and yet I have nothing to show you.

So, to finish this blog entry off, I thought I'd post some examples of gingerbread houses from all over the world, just to show you just how beautiful they can be!



Coming up tomorrow, it is Day #8 in the calendar...and for the upcoming edition of the Sunday Jukebox, I thought that I would post a song that combines winter imagery, heartbreak, and 1980s New Wave?  Interesting combo, don't you think?