Month: December 2023

1993: The Year in Sports

As another year draws to a close, I’ve been reading a lot of list-based blog posts and articles, most of which are about books, movies, and music that I more than likely missed this year because I have no idea how to pay attention to any of it anymore. I miss the glory days of Entertainment Weekly because while I was a regular reader and subscriber, I at least knew what was out there even if I didn’t always see, read, or listen to it. And you could say the same for sports, which I have been watching more of lately but still have a problem following. I don’t know what it is, but since I don’t watch SportsCenter anymore, I can’t seem to remember to check standings or keep up with what’s going on in various leagues. Shit, I can barely tell you who the major players on a number of the teams I follow.

This was always kind of true, even when I was younger. My parents did not get the newspaper and we didn’t have cable, so the only way for me to keep up with scores was the local news; I often missed standings and stats, though. But I knew a lot of what was going on in the world of sports because I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

Of course, that’s nothing unique among teenage boys in America in the 1980s and 1990s. Sports Illustrated was one of the most subscribed to magazines in the country and so iconic that getting the cover could be a blessing in a “cover of the Rolling Stone sort of way” or a curse, depending on how your team was doing (Long before the “Madden Curse” was the “SI Cover Curse” where a team or player was on a hot streak, got themselves on the cover of the magazine and immediately started to slump). I can’t tell you how much of it I read on a weekly basis–although it’s not hard for you to guess that I spent a lot of time looking at the swimsuit issue every year–but I can say that it was a formative piece in my “sports education.”

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The Joy of Off-List Christmas Gifts

It’s once again the Christmas season and as I’m writing this, I’ve already had one “Christmas” because my parents and sister came to visit last weekend and we opened gifts. There wasn’t anything unusual about the gift giving or anything, although I did find myself chuckling at how often someone opened a package and my mom said, “Well, it was on your wish list.”

When you think about it, it’s an odd thing to say to someone after they have opened a gift. Why explain to them that you bought something that they asked for? I have to think that this is a version of something my parents (and their generation, really) have been doing for decades, which is offering an explanation or detailed story as to the history of the gift or the rationale behind it, maybe so that you won’t make a face or seem ungrateful when you open it with an less than enthusaistic response. And I understand how you can have anxiety over someone opening something they bought for you–I’m in therapy for a reason, after all–and therefore preempt an unwanted response with some sort of explanation, self-deprecating talk, or even pointing out that the gift receipt is attached. But we’ve all been putting together wish lists for years, even before Amazon made it a feature. So why the worry?

I am sure the blame for this doesn’t rest squarely on the shoulders of Amazon, but I can say that having an online wishlist where you simply have to click a button in order to get something that someone wanted instead of planning a trip to Toys R Us like you’re in a heist movie has exascerbated the “greedy asshole” attitude that we all have each Christmas season when we don’t get what we want. And I say that we all have it because we do all have it; it’s just that we all express the attitude in different ways. Some of us thank a relative for the $50 gift card and mentally make a list of things that were on our wish lists that we didn’t get and will now buy; some of us make passive-aggressive comments; and yes, others of us throw temper tantrums.

And when those people get an off-list gift? Holy shit.

I can’t say if I had a good or bad attitude about opening gifts as a kid. I will claim that I was always grateful and polite, but I think that we all know that anyone who claims that is full of shit, so let’s just say that more often than not I had good manners. Then again, most of the time, I got what I wanted and if I didn’t, it was usually something that was either hard to find or a moonshot of a gift (the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier, for example). Usually when I got a gift that wasn’t on my list, it was clothes (which even as a teenager I rarely, if ever, actually asked for) or a small-sized toy or game to keep me busy while at my grandmother’s like travel-sized Hi-Q, some Matchbox cars, or yet another deck of cards. They came from my great aunts and uncles, my parents’ cousins, or friends of the family (whom I rarely, if ever, saw) and even as a kid, I knew that my parents probably didn’t mail them a photocopy of my Christmas list every year, so I just rolled with it. Besides, surprises were fun and every once in a while, an off-list gift would wind up becoming a personal favorite.

Like what? Well, I’m so glad you asked.

In the spirit of the season, and because I really have nothing better to write about right now, I’ve decided to do a rundown of some of the most random and most cherished “off-list” Christmas gifts that I received from the time I was a kid until the time I was a teenager.

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Pop Culture Affidavit Episode 149: The Night They Saved Christmas

A corporation is blasting and drilling for oil and if they don’t find it at Site A, they’re going to dynamite a Site B and that means killing Santa! Take a trip back with me to North Pole City in 1984 as I review the TV movie The Night They Saved Christmas starring Jacklyn Smith and Art Carney.

Apple Podcasts:  Pop Culture Affidavit

Direct Download 

Pop Culture Affidavit podcast page

And here’s a couple of extras …

A TV promo for the film that aired on ABC in 1984:

A commercial for the Tomy Omnibot, which I mention in the episode:

These are a few versions of “My Favorite Things”

I’ve been asking myself the same question for years around the holidays: When the heck did “My Favorite Things” become a Christmas song?

If I were to turn on the all-Christmas-all-the-time radio station right now, I’d probably hear at least one version of “My Favorite Things” before we hit another commercial block courtesy of Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé, and it’s always puzzled me. I associate the song with The Sound of Music, not the holidays, so why must I be forced to endure weeks of this radio station playing a song from a movie I can’t stand.

Now, before you say anything, yes, I do just avoid the song when possible; in fact, I’ve stopped listening to that station altogether because their selection of songs got so milquetoast and repetitive that I couldn’t take it anymore. There’s a limit to the amount of Pentatonix one can ingest before it becomes toxic, and I think if I heard Andy Williams sing “Doop de doo and dickery dock and don’t forget to put your sock” (or whatever the lyrics are), I was going to lose it.

Anyway, back to “My Favorite Things” and why a song from a music about singing children resisting the Anschluss became a Christmas stable. In the original Broadway production by Rogers and Hammerstein, the song appears in act one as a duet between Maria and Mother Abbess just prior to Maria being sent to oversee the Von Trapp brood. There is no Santa Claus, no Christmas tree, no holly, no mistletoe; the only Christian imagery is the fact that the two characters are nuns. Which is strong Christian imagery but not Christmas imagery. Hence the mystery. Was it always meant to be a Christmas song? Did the capitalist machine decide that a lyrical wish list was good for encouraging rampant consumerism during the holidays? Did Andy Williams simply need another song for a Christmas album? Or is the association more organic?

The answer, as it turns out, is easy to find because “My Favorite Things” has its own Wikipedia page and the source for its holiday-ness is the person who is most associated with The Sound of Music: Julie Andrews. While Mary Martin originated the role on Broadway in 1959, Andrews played Maria in the 1965 film, which would win Best Picture and Best Director for Robert Wise (director of such films as West Side Story, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Whether or not you like the film or her performance, Julie Andrews is undeniably iconic as Maria. But it wasn’t her performance in that movie that made the song a holiday song, it was Andrews’ performance on a 1961 Christmas special of The Garry Moore Show on CBS that did it.

Knowing that, should I stop my pissy attitude whenever I hear the song come on and accept that “My Favorite Things” qualifies as a Christmas song? Yes. After all, songs have become associated with events many times throughout history even if they were not directly about or for them. “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, for instance, became a World War I standard even though it was not directly written for or about the war. So, I guess Maria’s raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens can provide holiday cheer.

With that in mind, I decided to take this a little further and opened up Spotify to take a look at five different versions of the song, some of which are known for putting their own spin on its tune.

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