There's Been a Shit-load of Christmas Around Here!

First of all, and I am sorry for not mentioning this sooner, GOD BLESS the Walter E. Smithe Company! This Chicago furniture company came up with a BRILLIANT way to get more people into their stores and build their mailing list for catalog sales. ANYONE who walks into a Walter E. Smithe store is entitled to a FREE DVD featuring two CLASSIC animated holiday shorts, "Hardrock, Coco & Joe" and "Suzy Snowflake" FREE!. All you have to do is ask for your DVD and fill out a form with your address on it and you'll be watching some really bad Christmas fun in no time!

These were shown every damn Christmas season, usually on The Bozo Show or some other WGN TV program so often that even if you hated these films you found yourself becoming quite angry if you didn't get to watch them and sing along. The very sight of them makes the locals blush with embarrassment for liking them so much!

They were made back in the early 17th century I think (or maybe it was the 1950's) and they predated the Rankin & Bass holiday films that utilized similar animation techniques. Really, the only reason you watched these things was to sing along to the "Hardrock, Coco, & Joe" song and even then you'd only want to sing the deep bass "I'm JOE" part.

Needless to say, when my wife told me about this little promotion I started calling Smithe stores and found one that had some DVDs left. As cheesy-awful as these things are to watch, I really feel like I can have Christmas now! Maybe next year Smithe will pony up the dough to get the even more cheesy "Frosty the Snowman" black & white cartoon short too. But I'm not holding my breath.

Next, we just finished decorating our tree! I'll post some pics later in the week. Ever since we moved to this modest little apartment we've tried to have a real tree every year and I really love it!

I spend HOURS stringing the lights, enduring lots of tree sap and prickly needless so we can have a KICK-ASS looking tree even if there were no ornaments. Of course we have lots of stupid ornaments, most of which are penguins or frogs for some reason.

Last year we managed to make the tree that much more exciting for April when we found a place that had MILLIONS of glow-in-the-dark plastic icicles to hang from the branches. What was even better was that they were CHEAP! April had been hoarding the last few surviving icicles from her childhood and had little hope of ever having enough to really decorate a tree sufficiently again. Well, now we have enough to share and we gave packs of icicles to all of her relatives last year.

Our little apartment in rarely clean and organized, but with a pretty tree it is always home!