Hey, everyone — special offer. Just for today, no shilling, no opining, no flagrant plugs. Just a quick, simple, and heartfelt Merry Christmas! Go be with special people and have a great day.
Archive for the 'Christmas Party' Category
25
Dec
09
Merry Christmas!
As has become my tradition, with the last Everything But Imaginary before Christmas, I’m running down all the Christmas comics I could get my hands on this year… and this year friends, there are a lot of them! Take a look!
Everything But Imaginary #334: Ghosts of Christmas Comics 2009
Inside This Column:
22
Dec
09
Doctor Who: The Next Doctor
Although I don’t mention it here as much as some of my other obsessions (Peanuts, Superman, bacon…) I’m a really big fan of the TV series Doctor Who. And seeing as how that series almost always provides us with a Christmas special each year, I realized I had to work in last year’s excellent episode The Next Doctor into my Yuletide viewing rotation.
If you don’t watch Doctor Who, here’s what you’ve got in a nutshell. The Doctor is a time-traveling alien, the last of his race, who goes around saving the universe with the assistance of various companions. Early in the series run, when the original actor who played the Doctor was ready to retire, the writers worked in a neat little cheat to allow the series to continue — when a Time Lord like the Doctor dies, he “regenerates” into a new body, complete with a new look and different personality. Thus, they can continue refreshing the series every few years by regenerating the Doctor into a new actor.
David Tennant, the Tenth Doctor, is nearing the end of his run. The Eleventh Doctor has been chosen and no doubt work is already being done on his first series. But when this special was announced last year, nobody knew who would take over for Tennant yet, and as there have been many episodes in the past where the time-traveling Doctor met himself, “The Next Doctor” seemed to provide a clue. Stopping in London on a Christmas Eve in the 1850s, the Doctor encounters a man (David Morrissey) who claims the name Doctor himself, along with the Time Lord heritage and everything that comes with it. The Doctor believes the man to be a future version of himself, his memories somehow damaged by an encounter with their old enemies, the Cybermen, but his investigation proves something else.
This really is a fantastic special for fans of the Doctor. It’s bittersweet, knowing that Tennant’s time as the Doctor will soon be coming to an end, but this began his journey in grand style. While the episode works very well as a standalone story, it does give a glimpse towards the future and nods to the past — Morrissey questioning why Tennant is suddenly traveling alone after being with companions for so long, and a wonderful sequence that pays tribute to the nine Doctors that have preceded Tennant. Morrissey may not actually be the man chosen to fill Tennant’s shoes, but he did a fantastic job in this episode, holding his own against one of the most popular Doctors ever.
Like I said back when the Eleventh Doctor was announced, I can accept a new Doctor coming in. It’s part of the core concept of the franchise, after all. And I’m going to give Matt Smith a fair chance to impress me, because somebody had to follow Tennant. But it’s not going to be easy to see someone else in the TARDIS.
And speaking of time and space manipulation…
Don’t forget!
I’ve got some Christmas stories of my own out there waiting for you! If you’re a fan of the audio book/podcast format, check out Blake M. Petit’s Evercast, in which I serialize novels, present short stories, and give lots of other great content. This December, I’m presenting my Christmas-themed novella A Long November.
If you’d rather read your words than have them read to you, you can also get A Long November and eight other short stories in a totally free (until January) eBook edition, suitable for reading on the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Stanza Reader, PDA, any number of other devices, or even the very computer upon which you’re reading this blog! Check out the eBook at Smashwords.com!
And finally, my friends, I’d just like to ask you to pass these links along to anyone you know who may like the stories. I’m not making a dime out of this, I’m doing it to spread the word and build an audience, and any help you could provide would be a huge help to me.
Thanks a lot, and have a Merry Christmas!
Here we are, friends, the final chapter of A Long November! Duncan and Josiah’s race to the Winter Palace comes to a conclusion, the truth about Duncan’s reformation is revealed, and we discover once and for all if our curmudgeonly friend can find room for Christmas. Plus, an old-fashioned Blake Rant about the perils of Christmas shopping!
A Long November Part Nine: Celebrations (Evercast #10)
Theme music by Jeff Hendricks. Evercast logo by Heather Petit-Keller. Additional music: Merry Freakin’ Christmas by the Mydols & Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Opp Sept Demo, provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network.
Send your e-mails to BlakeMPetit@gmail.com.
A Long November, along with eight other Christmas stories, is now available free of charge as an eBook from Smashwords.com. If you’ve got a Kindle, iPhone, Sony eReader, or virtually any other eBook-reading device, you can add the book to your device. Visit the book’s page at Smashwords.com!
Heather is back this week, joining Blake for a marathon of all four Charlie Brown Christmas cartoons! Tune in for our comments on A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales, and I Want a Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown — plus a special bonus, Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! In the picks, Heather chooses the seasonal novel The Autobiography of Santa Claus. Blake gives us the graphic novel pick, A Kidnapped Santa Claus, and his pick of the week, The Muppet Show Comic Book #0! Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@comixtreme.com!
Episode 150: A Charlie Brown Christmas (or Four)
Inside This Episode:
PLUS: After five years, Walt Disney Animation returns to its traditional style with The Princess and the Frog. But is it good enough to satisfy an old-school Disney fan like Blake?
19
Dec
09
Christmas Shopping: A Quest
I very rarely Christmas shop anymore. At least, not in the traditional sense. I don’t like crowds, I hate trying to find a parking space, and sifting through thousands of items trying to find just the right one holds no appeal to me whatsoever. There’s a reason that the week after Thanksgiving’s Black Friday now begins with a day called Cyber Monday. Shopping online is far more convenient, far less frustrating, and quite often, much cheaper.
A few years ago, my buddy Mike called me up and asked if I would be willing to brave Black Friday with him. He needed a new receiver for his home theater set up, and he was hoping to get a good deal. Being a good friend, I agreed. We wound up in Best Buy, where we found that the entire store had been laid out in a labyrinth of sorts, and just like a classical labyrinth, one would have to walk the entire length of every aisle in the store in order to escape with your purchases. There was a swarm of people there, a mob in fact, and Mike and I had to charge through, pushing and shoving far more than polite young men such as ourselves are wont to do, before we finally found the electronics section… and didn’t find the component Mike wanted. We wound up driving an hour out of our way to a smaller electronics store that was also having a sale. Mike found exactly what he wanted with almost no fight at all. That store is out of business now. Go figure.
Since then, it’s all been online shopping for me. And sites like Things I Want have made it even simpler since one of my relatives found it last year. My entire family, and most importantly, my girlfriend are all on it now. Some people would argue this takes the fun out of Christmas shopping. I say these people are clinically insane. The shopping is the one part of Christmas that I’ve never enjoyed.
This is not to say I never buy anything in a store around Christmas. Far from it. But I never venture into a store with a list, desperate to find just the right thing for just the right person, because chances are I already got it online. When I’m in a store, I typically buy things that are Christmas-related. DVDs, books, CDs or trinkets to review here on the site, or things that I just think are cool. The other day, for example, I found a small Whitman Sampler tin with Charlie Brown and Snoopy, two of the greatest comic strip characters ever, featured both in their original incarnation from 1950 and their final incarnation in 2000, just before the death of creator Charles Schulz. You don’t often see the two depictions next to each other, but with next year marking the 60th anniversary of the comic strip, we’re seeing more and more cool Peanuts stuff hit the stores.
But I digress. I had hoped to take care of all my shopping this year the week after Thanksgiving, but as you may have heard, I suffered a series of catastrophic computer failures throughout the autumn months that pretty much ensured I would instead be spending the bulk of my November paycheck on a new laptop computer. This is the part that sucks about getting paid only once a month. The good news is that our usual payday, the 20th, happened to fall on a Sunday in December, which meant we’d get it on the preceding Friday. I’d have another paycheck and two whole extra days before Christmas. I managed to get a few things during the month, but yesterday when I got home I hopped online and ordered the lion’s share of what I was planning to give this year, and all but one item is guaranteed to be delivered by the 24th. Of course, it’s entirely possible that on Christmas Eve I’ll be posting a rant about not getting my packages on time, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
This morning, old Mike called me again and asked if I’d be willing to take a run with him to pick up his weekly comic books. I said I’d be happy to, if he didn’t mind stopping at a Best Buy. (That’s right, our previous experience did not sour us on Best Buy. Quite the contrary, I take personal credit for the fact that Circuit City shut down, because after a few nasty experiences there I boycotted it in favor of Best Buy entirely). We got in the car and headed out, and as we drove, Mike commented that “at least it’s not Black Friday.”
And, because God has a sense of humor, this is exactly the moment that we ran headlong into the bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“Yeah, you know that Black Friday isn’t actually the busiest shopping day of the year anymore, right?” I said. “The Saturday before Christmas is.”
We got home after several hours and a few unexpected adventures, and I now officially only have one item left to purchase. I know exactly where I have to go for it, but there was no way I was going to subject Mike — or myself — to the mob we’d have to fight. I’ll take my chances going Monday, when most of those loons are back at work.
And then when I got home…
I got back from our little excursion to find something really great in the mail — a large package from Thom Zahler of one of my favorite comics, Love and Capes. As you may have heard, early this year Zahler made an irresistible offer to fans: a chance to be drawn onto the cover of issue #12 of the comic. This was the big wedding issue of Mark Spencer, alias the Crusader, and Abby Tennyson. I’ve spoken at length before of just how much I love this comic book, so I’m not going to get into it again, but I am gonna talk about just how damn cool it is that Erin and I got to attend the wedding. We’re both huge fans of this comic, and to see ourselves not only on the cover, but also in the crowd in the interior of the comic (not part of the original package at all) made me absolutely giddy.
For the price of our admission, Erin and I got drawn onto the cover with such notables as Felicia Day and Dwayne McDuffie, and we also got two autographed copies of the comic and two autographed prints of the artwork, suitable for framing. I bought this around Valentine’s Day, but getting it in the mail was like an early Christmas present. 
Thanks again, Thom, not just for making such an incredible comic book, but for allowing us to be a small part of it. If you haven’t read it yet, the wedding issue is available in finer comic shops right now, or you can order back issues, the collected edition of issues #1-6, and assorted clothes, pins, and goodies from the Love and Capes online store. Seriously, people, I cannot recommend this comic book enough. Go out and get it now.
In fact, one could say it would make a perfect Christmas present for the comic geek on your list, couldn’t one?
For about as long as Saturday Night Live has been on the air, they’ve done sketches around Christmas, and while the show has long since lost its luster, those older segments are just as funny as they’ve ever been. When I saw the ads for a special featuring classic segments, I made it a point to tune in. Sure, I figured there would be some of the more modern sketches too, but a small price to pay to see the genius of Eddie Murphy, Dan Akroyd, Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey again.
When A Very Gilly Christmas began on Thursday night, though, I quickly discovered I was in for a very different special than I was used to. The episode was based around a framing sequence featuring Kristin Wiig as some sort of bizarre, demonic child-thing called Gilly that seemed basically to exist to torment other poorly thought-out, poorly-developed characters. This being par for the course for SNL these days, I let it roll off my back and waited for the old clips to start. It soon became evident that I wasn’t going to get what I’d been waiting for, though. Most of the first hour of the special was filled up with atrociously bad clips from recent years, including two separate routines of Will Ferrell playing lounge singers, the same “angry family dinner” segment we’ve seen a thousand times, and something painful with Chris Kattan. The one lifeline thrown in the first hour, Steve Martin’s classic “If I Had One Wish” routine, was almost ruined itself by pairing it up with another stupid Gilly segment.
We got some of the good stuff in the second hour, but not enough of it. The Dan Akroyd/Candice Bergen “Mainway Toys” sketch was there in its entirety, but Eddie Murphy’s Christmas-themed episode of “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood” was chopped down to about the first 30 seconds or so. We got Dana Carvey’s “lost ending to It’s a Wonderful Life,” but the William Shatner introduction was gone. Garrett Morris’s “Winter Wonderland” number was great, but the Gumby sequence used to advertise the special in the commercial wasn’t in the episode at all! Chris Farley’s motivational speaker? Wayne and Garth? John Belushi’s drunken Santa Claus? Not a bit of it. Throwing out the quick greetings from Tonto, Tarzan, and Frankenstein just wasn’t enough to cut it.
Even those more recent segments that had a little entertainment value were more due to the guests than the regular SNL staff. Justin Timberlake’s “Homelessville” sequence, honestly, wasn’t bad, and we got a scene with Robert Deniro and Kermit the Frog singing a duet that would have been perfect and entertaining on any variety show since the inception of television.
None of the stuff in this special that made me laugh had anything to do with anybody currently affiliated with Saturday Night Life.
It’s just a sad, sad reminder of how far this once-great series has fallen. There’s no life left in this show. The writing is stale, the performers are people who seem to understand the intellectual concept of comedy but have no idea how to actually execute a comedic routine, and the sketches have a level of intelligence and maturity that seems never to have evolved past sixth grade. It’s time someone stuck a fork in this clunker and put it out of its misery.
Don’t forget!
I’ve got some Christmas stories of my own out there waiting for you! If you’re a fan of the audio book/podcast format, check out Blake M. Petit’s Evercast, in which I serialize novels, present short stories, and give lots of other great content. This December, I’m presenting my Christmas-themed novella A Long November.
If you’d rather read your words than have them read to you, you can also get A Long November and eight other short stories in a totally free (until January) eBook edition, suitable for reading on the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Stanza Reader, PDA, any number of other devices, or even the very computer upon which you’re reading this blog! Check out the eBook at Smashwords.com!
And finally, my friends, I’d just like to ask you to pass these links along to anyone you know who may like the stories. I’m not making a dime out of this, I’m doing it to spread the word and build an audience, and any help you could provide would be a huge help to me.
Thanks a lot, and have a Merry Christmas!
This week, I get geeky again with a discussion of Santa’s lieutenants in his Christmas mission, or as I like to call them, the Kringle Korps. After chatting about the likes of Rudolph, Grandma, and Leonardo DaVinci, it’s time for part eight of A Long November. Duncan and Josiah are both approaching the mountain of the Winter Palace, and the road is getting harder along the way. Who will reach the palace first? We’re approaching the finish line of this Yuletide adventure!
A Long November Part Eight: Transformations (Evercast #9)
Theme music by Jeff Hendricks. Evercast logo by Heather Petit-Keller. Additional music: Merry Freakin’ Christmas by the Mydols & Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Opp Sept Demo, provided by the Podshow Podsafe Music Network.
Send your e-mails to BlakeMPetit@gmail.com.
A Long November, along with eight other Christmas stories, is now available free of charge as an eBook from Smashwords.com. If you’ve got a Kindle, iPhone, Sony eReader, or virtually any other eBook-reading device, you can add the book to your device. Visit the book’s page at Smashwords.com!
We stand here at about the mid-point of the month of December. Christmas is rapidly approaching, and the week after that, the new year – and with that, a lot of people are putting out their year in review pieces. But is it quite time yet? There’s still a full twelfth of the year left, but the people in charge of the wrap-ups act like nothing that happens in December matters! So for the sake of those poor, orphaned announcements that have been left out of the year end lists, I thought I would talk about a few of them in the here and now. And fans of the Christmas Party, fear not — I talk about the Christmas collaboration between Scott Kurtz and Neal Adams, as well as the new Ghostbusters Christmas one-shot!
Everything But Imaginary #333: The Year Ain’t Over Yet
Inside This Column:
What with the way I’ve been gushing over Disney’s new film The Princess and the Frog, such as in Episode 12 of 2 in 1 Showcase at the Movies, I was starting to worry that people may misunderstand my thoughts about computer animation. I don’t dislike CGI movies — not at all. There are two things about the avalanche of CGI films in the last decade that bother me, though: first, the utter disappearance of traditional animation; second, the idea in some minds that great movies are great because they’re CGI instead of traditional animation. That notion is patently absurd, of course. You can’t tell me Beauty and the Beast would have been any better if it was computer animated. And some CGI projects would have been better served in traditional animation. Watch the traditionally animated Disney special Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas and compare it to the CGI sequel, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas. Some characters just don’t look right in 3-D.
But I digress. The point is, when the project is right I like CGI just fine. Let’s look at the new Disney Christmas special Prep and Landing. In this half-hour special we’re introduced to an elf named Wayne (voiced by Dave Foley) who is part of Santa Claus’s “Prep and Landing” squad. These are the elves tasked with scouting out houses before Santa’s arrival, making sure there are no creatures stirring, that there’s room for the gifts beneath the tree, and that the reindeer have a landing strip ready to bring them in. Wayne is bummed, however, when he’s passed over for a promotion and decides to start slacking off on the job — a decision that could have disastrous consequences.
It may not be the greatest Christmas special of all time, but Prep and Landing was actually very good. The animation was sharp, with wonderful colors and brilliant snowscapes throughout much of the film. Wayne is a really good, relateable character, and Scrubs star Sarah Chalke lends her voice to a harried elf executive. The other, lesser-shown characters aren’t bad either (an elf named Tiny steals the show). In fact, if anything the special feels a little rushed in its 22-minute running time. This easily could have been expanded to an hour, or maybe even a feature-length film (given the short running time of most feature-length animation).
At any rate, I really enjoyed this movie, and while it may not be Charlie Brown or Rudolph, if it gets shown again next year, I’ll definitely watch it again. And if you missed it the first time around, you can watch it now, for free, at Hulu.com.
And speaking of free Yuletide entertainment…
Don’t forget!
I’ve got some Christmas stories of my own out there waiting for you! If you’re a fan of the audio book/podcast format, check out Blake M. Petit’s Evercast, in which I serialize novels, present short stories, and give lots of other great content. This December, I’m presenting my Christmas-themed novella A Long November.
If you’d rather read your words than have them read to you, you can also get A Long November and eight other short stories in a totally free (until January) eBook edition, suitable for reading on the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Stanza Reader, PDA, any number of other devices, or even the very computer upon which you’re reading this blog! Check out the eBook at Smashwords.com!
And finally, my friends, I’d just like to ask you to pass these links along to anyone you know who may like the stories. I’m not making a dime out of this, I’m doing it to spread the word and build an audience, and any help you could provide would be a huge help to me.
Thanks a lot, and have a Merry Christmas!
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