There's No Place Like Geekdom for the Holidays...

Hail all!

First I want to apologize for my lack of posting. Not a lot of good geekdom across my desk of late.

However, I am prepared to rectify that, now that the world will indeed continue and the celebrations for the holidays can move full speed ahead.

To Bulbly Go Where No One Has Gone Before...

Happy Life Day...

"The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass... then you see it!"

"What? Gandalf? See what?"

"White frostings... and beyond. A far gummi country, under a swift sunrise."

For more views and a vid, click

And just to cover the rest of the geekdom verses

The 12 Days of Christmas: Gingerbread + Geek Edition

I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday and a very Happy New Year.


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Eight Precisely Calibrated, albeit Eclectically Roundabout, Nights

Happy Hanukkah regardless of transliteration! To celebrate, io9 points us to this probably-still-kosher approach to lighting the menorah:



Not to take anything away from the Maccabees, but I suspect that if they had access to nitroglycerin the rebellion may have been a tad shorter in duration.

Holiday Tradition

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Normally this is when the first candle of the Advent wreath is lit in church, although now when I think of candles and wreaths and Christmas I immediately think of the dinner scene in the holiday classic The Ref (really, do check it out if you've never seen it).

One of my favorite Christmas songs is "O Holy Night," which is a beautiful piece of music requiring - this is important - a professional-level voice to really nail the high notes. I know my limits and tend to drop a few octaves when singing along in the car, because a missed note at a lower register is better than a sonically-shattered windshield.

That being said, please enjoy endure this bravely misguided rendition:



As Leonard Pinth-Garnell would say, "That wasn't very good, now, was it?" If you can make it all the way through, you'll applaud as the singer takes a vocal mulligan on the final long note.

PS - You're welcome!

A Hanukkah Present for All of Us

No sooner has the sun set than a new contributor joins the award-disdaining* P4500 team! Please welcome the blogger known as Deadly Spoons to the masthead. I am sure there is a story behind that nom de blog.

His Blogger profile gives little away, so out of respect for his privacy and, of course, fear for his spoons, which I am assured via grainy YouTubes that they most certainly are deadly, I will withhold what I know about him in lieu of his first post, which he has rashly promised to produce by Christmas. He cleverly did not specify a year, so he might be safe for now.

*should anything remotely like a nomination come our way, in an as-yet unimagined category

I Hope I Remain as Timeless

Here's a great story about the origin of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is more or less exactly as old as I am. We finally got it on DVD some time ago as a replacement for the VHS copy my parents made for me off of good old WHEC in Rochester, NY. While we gained the lost footage pared away through the years by increasing amounts of commercials (no irony there whatsoever), we did lose a PSA recorded by a pre-Next Generation Michael Dorn as well as this essential Pavlovian moment:

We also have How the Grinch Stole Christmas! on DVD and can recreate the unparalleled one-two punch of CBS' lineup of the two greatest holiday specials of all time, period, the end. Nothing against Rudolph or Year without a Santa Claus, that's just how it is.

Make your list, and check it twice to make sure none of this is on there

Let the heavens rejoice! Dave Barry's annual Holiday Gift Guide is here! Please do not get me any of the items on the list!

H/t Gene Weingarten's Twitter feed.

Project Gingerbread: Character Will Be Built

So the kids wanted to build a gingerbread house. OK, great - fun holiday activity and keeps them busy for a few hours. However, when looking for a gingerbread house kit, all I found was this, which, with a well-placed recommendation by Giada de Laurentiis, placed the hook firmly in the cheek of this Food Network aficionado. It was also substantially discounted at the grocery store. (Clue Number One.)

I will admit it looks a bit daunting; for one thing, you have to make the gingerbread dough, roll it out and cut out the walls etc. Knowing this, I took a moment to review the instructions last night. Among the hidden delights nnot mentioned on the outside of the package:

1) It assumes you own a Silpat, which I don't, although frankly they look pretty useful and I may end up getting one. Fortunately, I had bought a roll of wax paper for use on the layout, so I will trust in that to get the job done.

2) The instruction sheet proudly proclaims at the top, "No need for Royal Icing!" I probably don't have to tell you what Step 9 instructs you to make, although it helpfully includes Royal Icing mix in the package.

3) One step requires adding eleven teaspoons of water to the mix. That would probably have taken the most time of all, had I not had my mother on hand to translate that into tablespoons (3 2/3).

All other adults have mysteriously found other things to do today while I assist the children with this. Nothing like a vocabulary lesson for the holidays.

I may liveblog this depending on how early I start drinking. Wish me luck, and Happy Holidays!

Update 4:30 PM: Structural gingerbread construction complete, resulting in a favorable sun-yardarm relative position. To the bottle opener!

Fun Massachusetts Holidays You Can Celebrate. Next Year, Anyway

Monday was Patriots' Day, or rather its observed version in Massachusetts, as well as Maine and, for schools, Wisconsin. The third Monday in April is the designated date, although this year the official holiday coincided with the actual anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

This highly appropriate holiday nevertheless pales in comparison to my favorite regional holiday of all: Evacuation Day. This commemorates the day the British army left Boston in 1776, having been forced to withdraw by the infant Continental Army. In what is perhaps an early example of delayed-action demolition, the British chose to depart on a day of great significance to a people that would become, having been driven from their land by a famine exacerbated by British policy, a large proportion of the City of Boston: March 17, otherwise known as St. Patrick's Day. Coincidence? I think not.

March 17 is a holiday in Suffolk County, which includes Boston. I distinctly remember walking past The Black Rose on my way to work (kitty-o'shea-corner from that pub, as it happened) and seeing the interior packed with city and county employees. That was on the way TO work, mind you.

New York City had its own Evacuation Day, "celebrated with much adult revelry and corresponding beverages," until before World War I, when the Royal Navy finally stopped impressing Americans on the high seas US-UK relations began thawing permanently. However, anyone who has lived in Boston could tell you that the Special Relationship never made it to Southie.

S Novym godom!

Happy New Year from all of us here at Potpourri for $500. I hope the year ahead brings more good than bad your way.

Had blogging been available 24 years ago JJV and I could have liveblogged from the Astoria Hotel in then-Leningrad. OK, to be honest my liveblogging would have tailed off before midnight, but JJV would have kept the entries coming.

I look forward to seeing what my co-contributors can come up with in the coming year. For my part I hope a layout update is in the near future, as I have pulled the trigger on a couple of gift certificates for tools and scenery items. A man can dream...

A Festival of Lights for the Rest of Us

The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" has been one of my favorite songs for the last I-can't-believe-it's-been-eighteen years. Last year I was disappointed to not hear it, but I was able to check it off this year on the day after Thanksgiving, as I heard it while more or less supervising the kids at the McDonald's indoor playground down the street from our house.

Imagine my delight when I found this:



I was about to post this last night when I realized that it was the first night of the holiday everyone transliterates slightly differently. Desirous of preserving my reputation as one of the more sensitive bloggers out there*, I postponed its publication until today.

*JJV's tenure on the masthead now makes more sense, ne c'est pas?

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Except for This

Continuing a holiday tradition, please assume crash positions and enjoy.

For the Record, I Fell on My Knees

Apologies for the lack of posts - nothing like serious illness and the holidays! In the meantime, please enjoy what can only be called a classic.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Inappropriately early ads for holiday stuff? Check.

CVS full of lights, tinsel and cards? Check.

Monks of rival denominations scuffling in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem? Check. The holiday season has begun!

Tip o' the kamilavka, once again, to my intrepid contact in the world of Eastern Orthodoxy. When I remarked that the monks should just go ahead and schedule the brawl, and do it in a neutral location like, say, a Lutheran church, he suggested they could call it "The Thrilla with a Kadila," explaining, "For those of you who do not speak churchese, a kadila is the incense burner, attached by chains, and used with deadly accuracy by Eastern Christians-Greeks, Russian, Armenians etc."