When Brett was little–and I mean preschool-aged–they used to think that seasonal graphics on the weather report were the most hilarious things ever. The winter forecast had a snowman. Thanksgiving had a turkey. And Christmas, of couse, had a tree.
It doesn’t take much to keep a four-year-old entertained, but it made me think of when I was younger and I used to look for the same thing when I was watching the local news. I wasn’t a news junkie or anything when I was in elementary school, but for some reason I came to know who all of the personalities were, especially the sports and weather guys.
The other thing I always loved seeing were the holiday bumpers. If I happened to be watching television on Thanksgiving Day, there would be a “Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at channel 5” message at some point during a commercial break. The same could be said for Christmas and New Year’s. It got to the point where I was such a dork that I looked forward to seeing them every year.
I haven’t been watching television on the holidays in recent years, although I do see them from time to time. So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d look at a few that I found on YouTube. They’re all from the New York area, which is where I grew up.
The first is from WNBC 4 in 1977. Obviously, I never saw this when it aired because it’s from the year I was born. But in itself, it’s an interesting relic of television past–the quick bumper for a show that will be on later in the week. There are still some iterations of this around, but they usually have to do with local news shows and not locally programmed specials. I guess it’s also a fun fact to point out that up until I think about the mid-1990s, the Rockefeller Center Tree lighting was a half-hour show that wasn’t cheaply produced per se, but didn’t have the “network special” aspect it does these days. Plus, the feel of this–a still and a muffled narration due to 1977 television quality–has the feel of staying up past your bedtime.
Next up is WPIX 11 from 1984. I’m nto sure when this was first recorded because I found it on YouTube in several places, all with different years listed. I’m not surprised that it appeared several times over the years; WPIX was one of those stations that recycled stuff like this -and would re-air stuff from the Eighties way into the Nineties. What makes this interesting to me are three things: its length (it’s nearly four minutes long), the overtly religious content, and the fact that the guy speaking at us is the general manager of the station. Who these days–or at any time, really–knows who the heck the general manager of a television station is? I mean, for a second, I thought this was the PathMark guy.
Anyway, I wonder if this would even fly today. Because aside from the message, who is going to devote this much time–this much ad space–to something like this?
This one, from WNYW Fox 5 in 1998, is an example of a type of promo I’d see frequently–the idea that the people on the local news were a kind of family (and maybe by extension your family?). Like I said at the top of the post, I developed a knack early on for recognizing the people who were on television, and over the years I remember noticing when someone on one station moved to the other or even moved up to the network, like Al Roker or Sam Champion.
I live in a much smaller market these days and for a long time, the familiarity of the people on the news is still a valued commodity. I don’t know for how long, though, especially since local news stations keep getting bought out and staff is being reduced (my local weekend news has completely disappeared, for example). While I’m not going to flip a table if the weather guy changes again (because they change all the time), promos like this are nice in an age where the news seems less and less friendly.
And finally, there is the WNBC Sing-Along.
WNBC — 4 New York — is the New York City area’s undisputed champion of station promos. There’s more to write about at a later time, but right now is the time to look at one that’s been a tradition for a very long time. Granted, I have not watched television in New York in a few years, so I can’t tell you if that’s true, but I know that well into the 2010s, the entire WNBC staff would gather outside of 30 Rockefeller Center (which is where the station broadcasts from) and sing Christmas carols. The promo would air in 30-second and one-minute forms and would be just another commercial in a commercial break. And me being the dork that I am, would always look to see who I could name whenever it came on. This one’s from 1994 when I would have been a senior in high school.
Seeing this and all the reast always meant that Christmas break was coming and for a little more than a week, I’d be able to turn school off and enjoy a lot less structure in my day. Thinking about them now helps me recapture that feeling as I leave work behind and try to have a happy holiday season.
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.
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.
Without fail, every year, we take down the Christmas before on on New Year’s Day. Symbolically, it represents the fresh start that January brings, even if the rationale behind it is more practical and we just want to get all the crap put away before going back to school and work. It’s not an exciting activity either, unless you find spending a couple of house putting things back in boxes and then hauling heavy bins up the attic stairs exciting. But honestly, how could this be more exciting? It’s just putting away decorations.
Unless, however, you’re a Canadian music video channel. I give you the MuchMusic Tree Toss:
While I obviously didn’t grow up in Canada, Cablevision began carrying the channel sometime in the mid-1990s, giving us Long Island teenagers a welcome third option for getting music video content. And it couldn’t have come at a better time since VH-1 was still playing lighter fare, MTV had The Real World and Road Rules stuck on permanent rerun, and as the decade wore one would turn into a solid retro music channel* and the other a showcase for boy bands, teen pop princesses and faux-edgy nu metal.
I could go into everything I found cool about Much or all the bands I discovered because of it, but I’ll save that for a future podcast episode and focus on just the tree toss. I will say that the fact that Much had veejays broadcasting from a street-level studio who actually had personality (because, let’s face it, Carson Daly always looked like he was counting seconds on the clock and waiting for the check to clear) made the music video experience in Toronto seem so much cooler. Or maybe it’s because they were a lot like the MTV I remember going over to watch at my friends’ houses in junior high and high school (before my parents got cable). At any rate, tossing a used Christmas tree off of the studio’s roof seemed like the type of stupid that cooler, fun-loving people would want to do or that my friends and I were likely to try.
That’s because we sort of did.
While we never had the pleasure of throwing a Christmas tree off of a building, my college roommates and I did spend our sophomore year living on the eighth floor of a hi-rise apartment complex that our college had converted into a dorm. And right below the living room window of that eighth floor dorm room was a construction dumpster. I don’t know whose idea it was, but once we discovered that the window opened all the way out, we’d cap off a night of drinking by throwing bags full of empty beer cans out the window and into the dumpster.
It wasn’t the wanton destruction of property that you would expect from your average fraternity house, but it was something that probably would have gotten us into some sort of disciplinary trouble (okay, definitely) and may have even resulted in our ejection from campus housing (which was less likely). And I wouldn’t be writing about it if we did it one time and then moved on to games of quarters, around the world parties, and sneaking kegs into the dorm**. Instead, we decided to do this the nerdiest way possible, which was to have a procedure to prepare the bags for deployment and then track our throws on a poster we hung up in the dorm room kitchen.***
Trash throwing was strictly a late-night activity done usually on a weekend and very often after many beers–we had bought and drank the 30-pack of Icehouse, and we didn’t want our RA to find a garbage can full of empties in our room****. We had one of those huge Rubbermaid trash cans, the ones you would store in your garage, and used lawn and leaf bags for the trash. This was key because the volume the bag could hold combined with the bag’s thickness meant that the throw was more likely to be accurate and the bag would most likely stay intact upon arrival in the dumpster. And to ensure that the bag didn’t open up on the way down, my engineering-major roommate would reinforce the bag’s opening with duct tape. That way, there wasn’t any mess to clean up on the street below.
According to the caption in my scrapbook, this was a night in April 1997 when we threw a record 20 bags of trash. Note the Phillies Blunt and Clerks posters, which were very common in mid-Nineties dorm rooms.
Preparing the bags was followed by lookout. We’d check the hallways for anyone who might get us in trouble (i.e., another floor’s RA doing rounds), then shut the lights off and look out across the building’s parking lot to see if we could see any campus security or passers-by. When given the all-clear, each of us would grab our bags and take turns tossing the trash.
Now, just as there was a specific preparation procedure, there was a technique to successfully landing a bag. We weren’t just chucking stuff out of an eighth-floor window for the fun of it; we were actually taking out the trash. If any of us missed the dumpster or the bag exploded and trash landed on the ground, a few of us would go downstairs and clean it up. The dumpster was about 14-16 feet long and 7-1/2 feet wide***** positioned perpendicular to the building. So we had a margin of error when it came to length but a tighter fit when it came to width.
A good throw, therefore, required finesse. You couldn’t just drop the trash because you risked it falling short of the dumpster, and you couldn’t heave it too hard because it might go too far forward or drift sideways. After all, this was a contest of precision and not strength, so what you had to do was hold the bag out in front of you using both hands, position it over the dumpster, and give it a quick shove as you let it go. This would send it forward just enough for it to float over the dumpster’s center and hopefully guaranteed a straight shot. Heavier bags were better because you could feel the force of the shove against their weight as opposed to the lighter bags, which often led to an overthrow. At least that’s what I found to be the case.
When the bag left your hand, it arced for a moment and seemed to hang in the air for a millisecond before it began the plunge. Sometimes, we’d hear the flapping of the plastic bag as it dropped; other times, there was a whoosh. But each time, there was the sound of impact, which would be a soft crash if the dumpster was full or an incredibly loud boom if it was empty. And if you listened closely enough, you could hear the cheers from the eighth floor.******
In fact, one of those incredibly loud booms nearly got us caught one night, as we threw a bag, shut the window, and a few moments later saw flashlights pointed in our direction. We all hit the deck and scattered to various corners of the dorm room as the phone started ringing. Despite being drunk and scared, I managed to sound completely baffled when someone from campus police mentioned things being thrown from our window and the front desk attendant reporting an explosion. While I was on the phone, another campus police officer knocked on the door and I heard my friend telling him the same thing, then inviting him in to take a look. I panicked for a moment and then got off the phone to see him checking out no evidence whatsoever–in the time it took for me to answer the phone and bumble my way through that conversation, my friend had put the screen back in the window, set up the display of empty beer bottles we kept along the windowsill, and hid everything else.*******
To bring this back to the MuchMusic Tree Toss, I was home on winter break during my senior year in December 1998 and channel surfing when I came upon Ed the Sock dressed in a tuxedo anchoring that year’s events. I was immediately transfixed–they weren’t going to do what I thought the were going to do, were they?
Oh, they were.
The crew–one of whom included Rick “The Temp” Campanelli, went up to the roof of the studio, positioned the tree on the ledge, and then tossed it over, setting the tree alight (and one year–either ’98 or ’99, almost took Rick’s face off). It would then land in the dumpster. Okay, if you watch the clip above, you know that it rarely actually made it into the dumpster. Then again, I can’t imagine that the Much crew put as much thought into the accuracy of their toss as we did our trash tossing. Had we been in charge, my roommate would have done the proper equations to compensate for the thrust of the pyrotechnics. Still, the motivation for the Tree Toss was obvious–we’ve got the time to fill, we’ve got nothing better to do, and the tree and the dumpster are there.
I am not sure when Much stopped the Tree Toss–the last one I remember seeing was probably 2000. I did get the channel in Arlington for a while, but it was only at certain times of the day and was gone pretty quickly. The same was true for trash tossing–after the police incident, we didn’t toss it very much except for a “last hurrah” right before spring semester finals. The following year, we were in a different building without any accessible dumpsters.
In a still from the Tree Toss retrospective video embedded above, the MuchMusic tree flies out over the studio parking lot en route to the dumpster.
But I did get the chance to go to my old dorm room one day in my junior year when one of the residents called me to say that they had received some mail with my name on it. I headed over, thanked them for hanging onto the mail for me, and before I left, I pointed to the dumpster window and mentioned that it opened out all the way.
“Oh, we know,” one of them told me.
“Nice,” I replied.
* That is, when VH-1 wasn’t playing Shania Twain videos between reruns of the Shania Twain episode of Behind the Music.
** I’d held on to the box for my computer’s monitor and we quickly discovered that it fit a pony keg. One roommate’s fake ID got us the beer; the box got us past campus security.
*** Lest you think we bought poster board for this, we tore down one of those ubiquitous “get a MasterCard” posters that were all over campus in late August and wrote on the back of it with a Sharpie.
**** To be fair to my sophomore year RA, she was awesome in that she didn’t give a shit as long as we didn’t draw too much attention to ourselves.
***** Just to be clear, I never measured the dumpster. I simply Googled “dumpster dimensions”.
****** Watching it from the ground was hilarious, and I’ve often wondered if anyone from the floors below ever glanced out the window to see a random bag of trash go whizzing by.
******* Oh don’t look at me like that, every college dorm room had its “various brands of beer bottles” display. Sometimes there were several varieties of empty Absolut bottles.
It’s a holiday-themed follow-up to last episode, as Amanda joins me to talk about what we watch on PBS during the holidays. From European Christmas Markets to Rick Steves to GBBO, we talk about all of the programming that brings us comfort and joy in December.
Spend this holiday season with some of your favorite families in TV Land! This time around, I take a look at seven sitcom episodes from the 1980s to 2010s that center around or take place around the holidays: Cheers, Married … With Children, Saved by the Bell, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Friends, and Schitt’s Creek. I take a look at one holiday-themed episode from each that I find memorable and give each a quick review. It’s all a bit of cheer to close out 2020!
And as it is the week of Christmas, I wanted to take an opportunity to thank everyone who reads this blog and listens to this podcast for your support, especially during this very tough year. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours!
A rack of greeting cards of various categories. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
“Do you have any cards for granddaughter and husband?”
“Oh my God, you’re the reason we still do this,” I muttered under my breath as I scanned the rack of Christmas cards. I’d already been there ten minutes longer than I wanted to; hell, if I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have even gone to Hallmark to begin with.
As I get older, I’m failing to see the need for buying Christmas cards. I’m not talking about the cards that you buy in a box or customize with a photograph or two and mail to people you haven’t seen, heard from, or spoken of in at least a decade; I’m talking about the individual cards you give along with a gift to people you are going to see on Christmas Day to whom I can say “Merry Christmas.” Is a card really that necessary, especially when it’s going to wind up in the trash sometime before New Year’s Day? And why, if I am complaining about having to buy Christmas cards, did I wind up dropping $34 in Hallmark?
I think it probably boils down to the idea of obligated tradition, a “We’ve always done it this way” thing for Christmas that is probably one of the few things keeping the greeting card industry afloat. Because if you’ve actually stopped and thought about it, there are very few people who actually want to buy Christmas cards and that’s because we’re all secure in our feelings toward each other. Unfortunately, we cater to the insecure and the manipulative, either to shut them up or avoid drama, and if you haven’t mastered the art of manipulation yet, I can confidently tell you that there are five types of people that you have to look out for.
The Indexing Continuity Freaks. I’ve already given you a glimpse of these people at the very opening of this post, but let me go a little further in depth here. These are the people who own accordion files where they keep greeting cards for every different type of person and every possible occasion that may be celebrated. Is your second cousin-in-law a secretary? Here’s a Secretary’s Day card! Does anyone possibly celebrate Arbor Day? She does! Is anyone going to be able to tell that you’re giving the same card to your grandmother this year that you gave last year? This person, of course! Look, I understand the mentality–after all, I’ve been known to obsess over how exactly to organize my comic book collection from time to time (alphabetical by title? Should I put all the parts of a crossover together? Do I arrange things pre-Crisis vs. post-Crisis?)–but there’s a point where it gets ridiculous. Not only that, but greeting card companies have been catering to these nuts for years. I can’t look for a plain birthday card for my sister without having to sift through shelves of “sister and deadbeat boyfriend,” “sister and her 10 cats,” or “when are you going to settle down, sister” cards.
The Backhanded Complimenters. There was a point, a few years ago, that I stopped buying mother-in-law cards. Why? Well, first, there were only three mother-in-law cards that existed and I’d bought all three of them (see also: Hanukkah … do stores in the South really not think that Judaism is an actual religion?); furthermore, they were all so insulting. If I’m buying a card for someone and it has to say something inside, I’d like something nice and simple, not some screed about how tough it is to get along with your mother-in-law. The “Daughter” and “Son” cards are just as bad. I mean, I understand that the woman or man your son married did not spring forth from your womb, but do you really need the quotes? Does anyone, other than the Indexing Continuity Freak, really want to open up a card and find out that they’re a sub-category or that they’re “loved?” Even Roger Maris had his asterisk taken away, for crying out loud.
The Emotional Momenters. You know who I’m talking about. They’ve bought you a gift that’s very nice, but they spent more time on the card and while you open the envelope, their eyes grow with anticipation, waiting as you read the card and searching longingly for the first sign of tears. It’s a calculated move they use every holiday and they are outright disappointed when the card doesn’t have the desired effect. After all, they read every card in the store in order to choose the right one, so you’d better cry. Oh, you’d better cry. And if you don’t? Then, cold shoulder it is! These people are the hardest to please because not only are they looking for just the right reaction, they are examining the opening and reading of the card so closely that you have to time everything just right or they’re going to know the moment you’re faking. There’s no way you could read a card that quickly and react like that! I watched your face as you read slowly–you didn’t mean it! Emotional Momenters are powderkegs of dramatic irrational crying waiting to go off, so make sure you practice.
The Comedians. I love a good funny greeting card. Love them. But I can’t stand the lowbrow ones. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m, oh, I don’t know, smart, but when I’m giving my wife an amusing card for Christmas, I’d prefer not to have to have her read a card about sex acts out of a bad porno movie. Furthermore, why does every joke about Santa involve reindeer poop or yellow snow? There is such a thing as a smart joke; can’t I get a card that tells one of those? People who give these cards most likely will present them to you in front of people who would easily get offended by said jokes and therefore, you wind up doing that nervous laugh that says, “Okay, I see how funny this is but you obviously have no social skills or you wouldn’t have given me a card involving 50 Shades of Gray in front of my 80-year-old Born-Again Christian grandmother.” Please … if we all stop buying poop joke cards, maybe they’ll stop making them.
The People Who Didn’t Pay Attention in English Class. I teach high school English. Whenever I assign a novel, the first question is, “How long is it?” Well, either that or students open the book, look at the last page, then look at the first page and celebrate the fact that the book begins on page four instead of page one (because that makes such a difference). These people seem to think that quantity begets quality; therefore, these people are more likely to buy greeting cards that have multiple pages of sappy sentiment, as if that makes them better than something that is simply stated. Thankfully, I married someone who majored in English and knows better, so the two of us get simple cards–that is, if we remember to get cards at all. I’m convinced that nobody who buys these long-winded cards actually reads said long-winded cards. They just see a lot of words, grab the card, pay for it, get in their IROC with a “Tommy & Gina 4-Eva” license plate frame and speed off into the night.
One year, I’ll actually not buy cards at all. I’ll rip the Band-Aid off and allow for the disappointment of “Oh, you didn’t buy cards?” to wash over me until it’s repeated enough times over enough years that people forget I ever gave anyone a card. That won’t be this year, though, because I’m too lazy to deal.
BECAUSE NOBODY DEMANDED IT, it’s time for yet another Christmas episode! And this year, I’m saving you from the barrage of crappy Christmas “classics” out there with my own TOP TWELVE COUNTDOWN of CHRISTMAS FAVORITES! Plus, a special long-distance dedication!
It’s the holidays and that means that at some point before Christmas Day my family and I will sit down and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas. This has been one of my favorite Christmas specials since I was a kid and remains so despite my lack of regular church attendance or adherence to any religious code. I happen to like the simplicity of the message and how Linus’s moment on stage is done in a matter that is straightforward and respectful. Then, Linus and company gather around a Christmas tree that they have rescued with decorations and sing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”; the show doesn’t end with Lord of the Flies: War on Christmas Edition.
But for all of the nicety found in A Charlie Brown Christmas, there is one thing I cannot stand and that is the character of Violet.
One of the earlier characters in Charles Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts, Violet is the girl in the green dress whose main characteristic was that she was a snob. She had quite a number of appearances prior to 1960 but as characters like Lucy, Sally, and Peppermint Patty began to be seen more in the panels, Violet faded into the background like a first-season sitcom character that is eventually written out of the show. But since A Charlie Brown Christmas aired in 1965 and Violet was still in the early stages of her fade out, she’s still considered part of the gang and has about three lines, including:
“I didn’t send you a Christmas card, Charlie Brown.”
which she says in response to Charlie Brown sarcastically thanking her for a Christmas card that he never received (in fact, he never receives any Christmas cards); and when Charlie Brown brings back his sad little Christmas tree, she joins in with the other kids, saying:
“Boy are you stupid, Charlie Brown”
and
“I told you he’d goof it up. He isn’t the kind you can depend on to do anything right.”
As a kid, I more than likely didn’t pay much attention to those lines, choosing instead to focus on the antics of Snoopy and his mad quest for victory in a decorating contest. But when my wife and I were in our twenties, we found ourselves having a visceral reaction to Violet’s lines. She became, to us, the epitome of the snotty little bitch who contributes absolutely nothing to the entire scenario except nasty comments. (more…)
Wait, didn’t we just have an episode of this MONTHLY podcast LAST WEEK? Well, we survived the apocalypse so it’s time to celebrate Christmas! And what am I doing to celebrate Christmas? Well, I’m taking a look at one of my favorite toy lines ever, G.I. Joe!
While I am also a fan of the cartoon as well as the Marvel comic book series and do mention them a couple of times, I decided to stick to the toy line. Over the course of this episode, I talk about the my five favorite action figures, my five favorite vehicles, and five action figures and vehicles I always wished I owned but didn’t.
Pop Culture Affidavit 