Yikes

 

Katelyn

 

As a rabid fan of all things Bourne, I spend most of my time thinking of Wareham as the Enemy. We do battle in high school sports,the Cape Cod Baseball League, and even, sometimes, at the Port 'o' Call.

Yet, this Christmas,we give the column to them.

Why? One of their own needs help, and that's a bad time to be worrying about where Head Of The Bay Road ends and where Red Brook Road begins.

I'm sort of funny about food. I try to avoid fried food, as you Americans fry too many things... including the French, if what I saw at that McDonald's place was correct. One of my favorite places in the world to eat fried food is at the Narrows Crossing in Wareham (they spice the bread crumbs.. best fried chicken I've had in America-above-the-Confederacy). It's also one of the few places on this planet we've been to- and we travel a lot- where my husband failed to finish off his plate of food.

Subsequently, we eat there a lot. Over the course of a few courses, we got the same waitress a few times. A nice girl, a local named Katelyn. Polite, charming, efficient.... soon off to college. She played for the local soccer team, which is always a plus to this former ball kicker. She was the kind of kid you tip well,and who you really hook up if you're in there around the holidays. She earns it.

I never got to know her THAT well, though. She worked too hard- whoever ate in her section certainly didn't want for attention,I'll tell you that. I knew her well enough to guess "UMass-Amherst" when I didn't see her after a few visits to the Narrows.

I finally asked the bartender if they had heard from her. Try to imagine the whammy I got hit with when he told me that she'd been diagnosed with liver cancer. I immediately ordered a double tequila to restore my equillibrium, took my supper home in a takeout box, and started writing this article.

Katelyn has good friends, and some of them set up a web site for her. Help Us Help Katelyn! There's a bank account set up for her at The Mayflower Bank in Wareham (396 Onset Ave, Wareham, MA 02538, (508) 295-2110). The family could use a hand- there are considerable medical bills to be paid, and a single Mom is doing the heavy lifting.

If you can give some, do so. If you can't, visit her site anyhow. Go to the Guestbook, and say something nice. Positive thinking has this power that develops if you get enough people into it. Remember... groups of people freed the slaves, defeated Hitler, fed Africa, cured polio... and not all of them were wealthy. Katelyn gets your messages, and they make her happy.

Katelyn got on the wrong side of Mr. Luck. She's a good kid- she may have served you your dinner, taught your daughter how to play soccer, held a door open for you at the library, made you smile as she accepted her diploma while you waited for your own kid to get hers (well...probably after yours... her last name is Whalen)... she's a typical kid you see about town.

Even if you don't know her, you know her.

So... why not put the egg nog down, fatty? Click that link I gave you, go donate some cash, or just sign the guestbook. Show some love for one of our own. If you got this far on your computer, you can handle the rest.

OK..enough nice stuff. Wareham is the Enemy again.

 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

A Festival Of Lights

 In a cost-cutting move, Santa ditched the reindeer team and delivers all of his presents via the Slam Dunk.

Instead of  reindeer hooves on your roof... the only sound you'll hear is the approaching smackSmackSMACK of Santa dribbling your present and throwing down your chimney.

Don't worry about milk and cookies.... Santa has plenty of Venison.

In related news... everyone on Earth is getting a basketball this year.

 

If Kobe Claus isn't enough for you... why not get a 4 story Ohio State Buckeye football lineman?

Silently set it up overnight, then watch your wife's face as she looks out the bedroom window into a bunghole that one could drive a Denali into! After she's done berating you, you can go out into the street and face the contempt of your neighbors.

If Dan Ackroyd went to Michigan or USC, this is how Ghostbusters would have ended.

(pics courtesy of Chris Mottram at The Sporting News, who got them from Elsewhere)

Bonus! A better quality video of  "All I Wanted Was A Skateboard"... fromMusicJesus.com,nonetheless.

Super Deluxe All I Wanted Was A Skateboard Music Video Code by MusicJesus

Dashing

I thought I'd share some of my favoritest Christmas songs with you before I head out to do Evil.

 

YouTube - PO' FOLKS CHRISTMAS / BILL ANDERSON... This is probably my favorite Christmas song... which is funny, because I'm not poor. I must have some poor ancestors, and this song must speak to some deep genetic soul I have that never quite forgets where it came from.

Yeah... probably not. That's why I'm not majoring in Psych or Bio.

 

MySpace.com - Done Lying Down - London, UK - Punk / Grunge / Indie - www.myspace.com/donelyingdown... On that page somewhere can be found "Christmas Shoplifting," which is also my favorite Christmas song. I love them all equally, you see.

 If you call WBCN in Boston and request this song on Christmas Eve, 'BCN program director Oedipus laughs and tells you that the guy who sings it is now a bartender in Allston. "I'm heading down there this week... he'll be thrilled that someone asked to hear it. It's been 10-15 years since someone last requested it."

 

YouTube - Snoop Dogg - Santa Claus Goes Straight To The Ghetto... "Santa Claus on the ceiling, Jack Frost chillin', pinch the Grinch for bein' a holiday villain." Probably the only Snoop Dogg song that old people will like.... We plan to test this on Solon Economics,or whoever that CCTimes old guy is.

Eazy E does a Christmas rap song as well, but his is XXX. Most of it is a hardcore version of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.""I used to believe in Saint Nick back when Elvis was alive/but all that BS got played when I was 5." We'll save that one for when we need it.

 

YouTube - All I Wanted was a Skateboard Super Deluxe... After hearing this song, I ceased buying sweaters for people... even my brother,who needs some. There is no bigger buzzkill than getting clothes when you want a toy.

Anyone reading this who actually knows me offline...I gladly accept sweaters, but they'd better be GOOD sweaters. Don't come at Nor'Easter Blues with that knitted-it-yourself looking  sh*t. 

 

YouTube - Christmas Lights - Peanuts Theme.. some dude synched his Christmas lights up to "Linus and Lucy," which isn't-but-sorta-is a Christmas song. The lights flash to the beat of the song, you see... no doubt to the continual delight of his neighbors, as well.

This was also the very first song I ever learned to play on my piano.

He Who Would Be King

Here's my history class essay, due Monday...

 The Best Americans Who Were Never President

Some got smoked, some cashed their own check, some never cared for the job, some just never had the time... but here are a few people from History who should have had 4-8 years running Les Etats-Unis.

Not all of these choices would be Good..but they would all be Great, in the sense that people might describe an explosion or a plague as being "great." At least we'd have been entertained, and that's what it really comes down to once you cross the Is and dot the Ts.

 There are generals, pols, businessmen, natural leaders, con artists,visionaries, and men of great style on this list. It's just one girl's view, so let the debate begin!

 

George Patton

Think of all the Cold War money we would have saved if we nuked Stalin in 1945. It would also have been funny to see the Presidency run from a tank heading east across the Ukraine.

Tell me this guy wouldn't have won like 5 straight terms if he wasn't killed (murdered?) in a very,very shady Jeep accident. If he were alive today, he could STILL kick most of our asses.

 

Benjamin Franklin

He did most of the heavy lifting required of the job,was well-respected both in American and European political circles, bled red, white, and blue, and is still viewed as one of the more intelligent men of a great era.

He's also on the $100 bill. 22% of Americans surveyed believe he was the President once. Every state has a town named after him. His recent Freemasons commercials were a big cross-demographic success. He'd campaign much like Perot did-as a quirky but effective outsider- and I'd bet that he'd be big on the Internet.

The fact that George Washington once never said "I'm not a homosexual... but if I had to let one man f***me, it would most likely be Benjamin Franklin" pretty much quells the debate,as far as I'm concerned.

 

Martin Luther King

MLK had the charisma, if nothing else. Those speeches he made were simply magic, and maybe he could have brought us all together if he didn't get moped out at a Motel 6 by some redneck whacko.

There's no Thomas Jefferson or FDR Day. Most kids couldn't tell you who Frederick Douglass or Eugene Debs were. Even the Great Emancipator sort of got shafted out of his holiday.

MLK has moved past all of them, in his own way. With the glorious 20/20 that is hindsight, I can say that History has given him all the props that a President needs. He just never held the office.

 

Alexander Hamilton

He's most famous for either the $20 or for getting smoked, but he was there for all the Founding Fathers stuff, and most likely would have had his turn driving if Aaron Burr wasn't so easily offended.

Even if you go to Harvard, kids... learn how to handle a firearm. It's better to be tried by twelve than carried by six. 

 

Donald Trump

 I don't know if he'd scare the Red Chinese, but he probably could have won in the 1980s if he somehow could have snuck past Bush I into the Dukakis election.

 

Don King

"Only In America" would be a great slogan, and what says "American Dream" better  than a guy coming off a manslaughter bid to rule the Free World? It's sort of anti-recidivism, with really cool hair. Most of us are here because we flunked out of Europe, and King would speak to that Boy Made Good in all of our hearts.

Also, the election that produced President Don King would be studied for centuries.. most likely even on other planets, once we made inter-galactic contact with other civilizations.

 

Metacom

If things broke just a little differently in King Phillip's War.. and we're talking a tribal alliance here and a bit of bad military work there... this little blip of a man in our history books may indeed have been the leader of a powerful Indian confederation that moved down and attacked Virginia after clearing the crackers out of Massachusetts.

From there, it would be off to the west to deal with the Apache/Sioux/etc.. who would most likely hitch their wagons to the juggernaut if they had any idea what was good for them. The Spanish would be easy pickings at that point. If they could figure out how to grow and trade tobacco or cotton, they might even be in the UN right now.

The line between "American Genghis Khan" and "had his head chopped off and displayed on a pole outside Plymouth" is often thinner than you think. I even personally believe it was close in a DNA/ancestor/land bridge sense.

 

 Robert E.Lee

Pretty much the same deal as Metacom, except that it involves a Pickett's Charge breakthrough, a march on Washington, a Union thrown into chaos, a Confederate military dictatorship, maybe a Napoleon III invasion to bring us together under the strongest army... and it all spirals down to where we have an all-white Olympic basketball team that loses to Angola a lot... and no one is very much surprised.

While it probably wouldn't have broken down this way, it would be funny seeing James Longstreet on the $50 bill, and Bo + Luke Duke fleeing from the 5-0 in their "General Meade" car. Rap music would most likely suck, though...

 

Douglas MacArthur

A lot of people today fail to see that it's all eventually going to come down to the USA and China fighting it out somewhere. Dougie Mack saw it all too clearly in 1950. What would have come of us taking on China then? Sure, they kicked us down to Pusan, but we killed them by the bushel-basket. I wonder how many of their cities we'd have to incinerate before they tapped out of a Sino-American war?

I'll tell you this... if I'm fighting a billion Chinese, I'd rather do it when I have nuclear bombs and they don't. Also note that the Japanese had been kicking the sh*t out of them before WWII, and we beat the Japs into economy-car-manufacturing subservience. We'd also have a Taiwan to mess with them with.

Once we polished off China,we could turn on the Middle East and take all their oil... then it'd be us vs.the Martians in 2187 AD.

Wars aside...the Truman/MacArthur campaign would be the nastiest feud eva. Shaq/Kobe or Hatfield/McCoy would look like an orgy next to a Harry/Doug throwdown.

Some Christmas Stuff

We had to try photographing this dude's yard in the daytime.

 

Santa likes when people donate to Toys For Tots... and if you fail to, he pulls up on his bike and beats your ass with a stocking full of coal.

 

All of Santa's bikes are named after the reindeer. This one is "Blitzen."

 

You thought we were kidding about the coal, didn't you? Nope.

 

Here's Buzzard Bay's first real snow of the winter.

 

Santa rents out his train (which looks mysteriously like someone got clever with a riding lawnower) to Mazzilli's Farm Stand, and they take it around the building if you show up with enough kids. Not a problem with this Catholic family...

 

Santa also covers the bills by selling the occassional shed....

 

... or posing for Stacey's Merchant Marine Santa lamp.

 

Stockings for Gabby, Melissa, Stacey, the Colonel... and Sloppy.

 

We weren't joking when we told you about Stacey's lighthouse obsession.Here's her Christmas stocking.

I want to say it's a Phallic Symbol thing, but I'd hate to have to fight her before Christmas.

 

These look cool IRL. Little presents, all lit up... or my blurry photograph.

 

I like this one. The tree is a Scotch Pine, in pale blue lighting... photographed through a window.

 

 

I only took home 4 or so of these.

 

Stacey's cottage is on Lite Brite Blvd.

First Snow Of Winter

Cape Cod's First Snow Of Winter, 2007.

We got off to a late start this year, and so far- midnight- we just have a bit on the ground... but it's enough for First Winter Snow honors.

Sloppy has a history of not posing for pictures...especially where this camera sort of has a pause between the flash going off and the pic being taken.... and the flash generally sets Sloppy into action.