Christmas Movies and specials

[Ed. note: I started writing this on Monday morning before work. When I got home from work Monday night, Scrooged was on ( the first of four nights in a row AMC) and tonight Rudolph is on, I have already seen Miracle on 34th Street and Elf. It's not even December yet, something is very wrong here]


Wednesday is December 1st so bring on the Christmas specials. Oh, I guess I'm a little late, they have been showing Christmas movies for a couple of weeks now. Here is my list of the must see movie and specials for Christmas.



The Classics

A classic doesn't have to be in black and white but some times it helps.



It's a Wonderful Life, The 1946 Frank Capra film tells the story of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) who his entire life puts the needs of others ahead of his own. When all seems doomed for George he finds out just who his friends are with the help of Clarence (Henry Travers) his guarding angel. Also staring, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore and Thomas Mitchell.

remade in 1977 with Marlo Thomas as a TV movie It Happened One Christmas. Pass on the remake.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947), is the tale of Kris Kringle (Edmond Gwenn) who believes he is Santa Claus. He is hired by Macy's and they find he has instilled the spirit of Christmas in everyone. He becomes friends with Macy's staffer Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara) and her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood). The Walker's neighbor, Fred Gailey (John Pyane) a lawyer, has the hopeless job of defending Kris in court when the state wants him committed because of his beliefs. Remade for TV in 1959 with Ed Wynn as Kris Kringle and again in 1973 with Sebastien Cabot in the Kringle role. The film returned to the big screen in 1994 starring Richard Attenborough, again stick with the original.

White Christmas (1954), A successful song and dance team ( Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye) team up with a sister act (Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen) to save the Vermont Inn of their old commanding General. If this sounds a lot like the plot of the 1942 film Holiday Inn, you're right. Holiday Inn is the story of an Inn only open on holidays where a crooner (Crosby) and a hoofer (Fred Astaire) vie for the affections of a beautiful up and coming performer (Marjorie Reynolds). The song White Christmas is sung in both films. This is one of those times that the remake is better than the original but if you have the chance give Holiday Inn a viewing.

Scrooged (1988). Director Richard Donner's take on the Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. This comedy version stars Bill Murry and Karen Allen. A Christmas Carol has been done no less than 30 times, Ebenezer Scrooge has been played by actors ranging from Mister Magoo and

Fred Flintstone to Fredric March and Albert Finney. This is one of those things were you just can't go wrong with your choice. Sit back and relax and enjoy Dickens at his best.

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) This animated special is a mainstay of TV. Lovable loser Charlie Brown wants the best Christmas pageant ever and all his friends, including his dog Snoopy, want glitz. Does anybody know the real meaning of Christmas? Charlie Brown's choice of the tiny neglected tree is the center point of the pageant and his friends come through in the end. (sorry if I spoiled the ending for anyone). A must see with your family.

Elf (2003) The story of Buddy (Will Ferrell) the adopted elf, on his quest to find his real father in New York City. Ferrell excels in the role of naive Buddy heading to the big city. Santa (Ed Asner) gives Buddy some advise for New York, "you see gum on the street, leave it there. It's not free candy" and "there are like 30, Ray's Pizza, they all claim to be the original. But the real one's on 11th"

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964) This stop-action animation special tells the story of the Christmas that was almost cancelled due to bad weather. The story is told by Sam, the snowman (Burl Ives) and includes the songs Holly Jolly Christmas, Silver and Gold and of course the title song, all sung by Ives.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) Chevy Chase and Beverly DeAngelo return as the Griswalds in the third film in the vacation series. This time the Griswalds stay home for the holidays and end up with a house full of obnoxious guests. Anyone who ever put up a set of Christmas lights will love this movie.

Honorable mention

The Homecoming The depression era story of John Boy Walton heading out into the snowy night to help his father get home for Christmas. This led to the TV series The Waltons

A Christmas Story. really, how many times can you watch that kid stick his tongue on the pole.

Little Drummer Boy another stop-action animation. What worked in the snows of the north pole doesn't do as well in the desert.

Die Hard My son Michael's favorite Christmas movie. It all happens at a Christmas party on Christmas eve.

Home Alone What happens when the family goes away for the holidays and leave ten year old Kevin home. More three stooges than Christmas.

Alright then, here's the list, I hope some of your favorites are on it, if not enjoy my picks.

What Happened to Thanksgiving?

What happened to Thanksgiving? Some holidays are world wide, Christmas, New Years, and some that are American only, The Fourth of July, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Now there is Canadian Thanksgiving, how'd that happen? Pilgrims from the Mayflower moved north and held another dinner? Who cares, give the Canadians Thanksgiving we don't want it anymore. If we do we sure don't show it.
What makes a holiday special? Songs, carols, Peanuts Special shown every year. What song is for Thanksgiving? To Grandma's House We Go, that can easily be put in with Christmas. So no songs or Carols, how about Peanuts? A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, so there is a Peanuts special, but it's the worst one. Even Halloween has a better Peanuts special.
But wait you say, Thanksgiving has football and the Macy's parade. You are correct but let's look a little closer. In the past few years the NFL has been putting games on Thursdays during the season making the Thanksgiving Day games routine. Macy's Parade ends with Santa so really it's a Christmas parade. think about it, the movie that starts with the Macy's parade is a Christmas movie. AH HA, you shout, what about Alice's Restaurant? I have to give you that one, Arlo Guthrie's epic song and movie contains the Thanksgiving Massacree and some people, and TV stations, seem to play the movie every Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving has been reduced to part of an Arlo Guthrie song and the first two hours of the Macy's parade ( coincidentally that's the length of the song also).
I'm sure there are still a few of you who disagree but think about this, what do people talk more about, Thanksgiving or.............black Friday. I think most people would rather have the Friday after Thanksgiving off from work than Thanksgiving itself. Black Friday has become such an obsession in this country that it has moved to Wednesday. Watch the ads on TV, Black Friday sale prices starting Wednesday. How can you go shopping on the day before Thanksgiving when you should be baking all those pies. Think of what would be the present day Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving, the family around the table or people fighting to get in the doors of Best Buy at midnight. Thanksgiving has become nothing more than a little speed bump in the way of Christmas shopping.
How did I become so cynical about Thanksgiving? I blame it on the Post Office. A day set aside by the government to be with family and to give thanks for the things in your life is just another day to the USPS. In my 25 years with the PO I have been forced into work on most Thanksgivings. The powers that be, think people really care that they get their mail on Friday. They think that people can tell the difference between the mail that they would have gotten on Thursday from the Friday mail had there not been a holiday.
It's too easy to blame just the Post Office. Americans themselves are to blame. Ironically, we as a society that over indulges in everything we do, has pushed aside the very day set aside to overindulge. So let's sit back a second this Thanksgiving, really think about what matters the most to us( family and friends), and enjoy the day. After all you still have thirty shopping days till Christmas (and that's a whole nother blog)

Oh you can get everything you want at Alice's restaurant
You can get everything you want at Alice's restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
Oh you can get everything you want at Alice's restaurant

Best Irish Ballads

Recently, one of the bloggers on Irish Central.com posted 10 Irish Ballads that melt your heart. It's tough to argue with their list when they start with Mary Black's, Song for Ireland but as any list goes, it's open for others opinions. In this case mine. I would start my list with a song that I think is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. The Town I love so Well, Phil Coulter's love song for Derry. Although it has been recorded by many, when it is sung by Mr. Coulter himself you can really hear the emotion. A close second is Mike DeAngelis of Hair of the Dog. If you are at a pub or festival in the northeast and get a chance to hear Hair of the Dog and they sing this song, sit back and enjoy, you are about to hear something special.

The rest of the songs on my list are in no numeric order, they are just the songs I like and I hope you do too. Christy Moore's, City of Chicago. I like the live version best. The one where in the middle of the song he recites the manifest of a ship leaving Cork harbour during the great hunger. As millions of people were starving in Ireland, the British shipped out tons and tons of food to other parts of the empire.

Four Green Fields, Tommy Makem's ballad for Ireland. Tommy doesn't have the greatest voice in the world but again, when the person who writes the song sings it, there seems to be extra emotion and for a ballad that works.

Some of the songs on the list have been sung by so many people over the years that it is hard to settle on one version. Songs like Fields of Athenry, Isle of Innisfree and The Galway Shawl. Everyone one from The Dropkick Murphys to the Dubliners has recorded The Fields of Athenry, it's hard to find a bad version of this song (techno) so I have to go with what's on my ipod. Patty Reilly's version. I just heard Charlie Landsborourgh's Isle of Innisfree and it's pretty good but I still have to go with Tara Fox. Oh yeah you had to be at our Family St. Patrick's party to hear her so.....Bing Crosby, no, not after Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy's Chowder. How about John McNicholl. Jimmy Kelly gets the nod for The Galway Shawl because he recorded the version his mother likes and that earns you points from this blogger.

Two Kevin MacKrell songs are next. Donegal sung by Mike DeAngelis and I Miss the Rain sung by Kevin himself. Both songs are in the style of Clare to Here and Spancill Hill ( both are great songs and should be on many list) longing for home.

The Wolfe Tones song Boston Rose is a little different from the rest. It's the story of an Irishman who falls in love with a tourist and misses her when she returns to Boston. If any of you know Martin Kelly ask him to sing this song. I first heard him as a young teenager get up in front of a large group of people and sing and I was really entertained and I know you will be too if you get the chance.

The last song on the list has special meaning for me. I had the album for years and had heard this song over and over but never really heard the words. One day on a long road trip the words hit me like a hammer. I had to play the song over and over. It is now a favorite of mine, Frances Black singing Wall of Tears.

I know I left off a lot of songs but that's where you come in, what are some of your favorite Irish ballads?

Time

Time, good or evil? They say that time heals all wounds, they being Chaucer ("As tyme hem hurt, a tyme doth hem cure") or Greek playwright Menander ("Time is the healer of all necessary evils"). So is time good or evil. In theory, If Money is the root of all evil ( Timothy 6:10 ) and time is money ( Benjamin Franklin) then time is evil. However, if time does heal then time is good. This whole question is a waste of time and do you care if you waste something evil, so time is good. Time is the bane of society it seems. We as a community don't have enough time in the day to do everything we would like. Are we overdoing it or are we just poor when it comes to time management? Play dates, I hate the word itself. Do we have so many things going on that we have to schedule time for our kids to play? I hate to look ahead and see that the next few weekends already have things planned for them. Where is that free time I was promised?

We our proud of ourselves when we multi task, aren't we wonderful we can work more into our 24 hour day. Screen in screen TV, watch two things at once. DVR, HULU or OnDemand, watch TV when you want ( notice they don't say " when you have time")

I guess the point of this is that we need to stop and smell the roses sometimes.

as far as time goes, we have:

Good times, bad times, hard times, fast times, if you are at Ridgemont High, down time, high times, New York times, time of your life, as time goes by, no time, time comes today, baby one more time, back in time, biding my time, wasting my time, prime time, olde time, signs of the times, time flies, time drags, one step at a time, time after time, take your time, the first time, the last time, the longest time and ain't it funny how time slips away.

times up.

Election day is over, time to clean up all the mud.

The Republican wave, as they were calling it, crashed over the country like a tsunami. The Republicans found that the Teabaggers vote, what hurt the GOP in primaries was used to win House control over the Democrats.

The Senate on the other hand, stayed in Democratic control. Tea Party candidates running on the GOP line were not the best the party had to offer. In Delaware, TP/GOP candidate Christine O'Donnell was seen as a joke when ever she opened her mouth. Mountains of videos from her past appeared and the world got to see a side of the candidate that I'm sure she would have liked to have left in the closet, but the past is the past and we were all young and naive. So let's look at her on the campaign trail, during a debate with her opponent, in front of an audience of law professors and law students, she asked, "where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?". Her opponent, the now Senator elect from Delaware, Chris Coons, explained the First Amendment to her, she replied, "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?". What amazes me the most is not that she is unaware of the Constitution and is a candidate from a party that one of it's fiercest principals is adherence to the Constitution but that this exchange was over the teaching of creationism in public schools. Creationism is a whole other blog.

So the Senate stays Democratic, let's look at the House. Fox news was all giddy last night as they reported the slaughter. Nancy Pelosi is out as Speaker and John Boehner will soon be in. The results pouring in last night, all the networks showing maps of the Country with blue representing Democrats and red the color of Republicans. Who ever came up with this has a dark sense of humor. The GOP, the people that shout family values, that crave the days when mom stayed home and vacuumed in a dress wearing pearls ( think June Cleaver), the people that think Mad Men is a documentary. The people that want it to be the '50's again have forgotten the biggest scare of the times. Better dead than red. The color used to represent the Communist of the world is now the color of the Grand Old Party. Ironic isn't it?

So now, with control of the House of Representatives in the hands of the commies, sorry GOP, color threw me there. With the House in the hands of the GOP, will they work with the President for the good of the Country or will they try to impeach the President like they did to Clinton? If that's the case and the Federal Government is going to grind to a halt for the next two years. I would rather have Christine O'Donnell in there talking about cavemen eating Brontosaurus burgers.