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Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category

Happy New Year

Posted in Holidays on January 1, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Also, I owe Jesus a belated happy birthday. I just spent the week in Oklahoma with relatives, and did not post much about my trip. It’s enough to say that Xander had a great time reuniting with his relatives, and shopping in OKC. I spent the flight home yesterday contending with a stomach bug while my toddler kicked me in the belly. A less-than-auspicious end to a wonderful trip.

I hope that you all have a wonderful New Year. I am sorry again for my slack postings, and I’m happy that a handful of you have chosen to keep coming back here, whether it’s for my poems or my Xander photos or just to learn the definition of the word “decathect.” (According to my counter, this post won me more viewings this year than any other article I wrote. That should let you know what the Web community’s priorities are. They not only want to see cat videos and spread political gossip, but they refuse to be one-upped by their friends when it comes to the Word of the Day calendar.)

I’ve mostly had a wonderful year, if a busy one, readjusting to life as a parent while trying to continue living the life of a writer. Before Xander learned to walk, I had completed some seven screenplays since his birth. Since June, however, that number has fallen to zero. Xander has only left me enough time to edit some old novels I wrote, and though I hoped to publish these on Kindle in 2012, it’s now looking like I’ll have to hold off a bit longer. I’ll try to keep you updated on my progress, but suffice it to say that my blog will likely suffer as a result. I’ll just let you imagine what you are missing: Had I been writing every day for the past two weeks, you would have heard nothing but ranting about gun proliferation, the evil of the NRA, and the rank stupidity of defending assault weapon ownership. So, just imagine all that.

I’m going to be entering 2013 the same way I entered 2012: with a whimper. I’ll be with my family, thanking God I’ve got it so good. I’ll be thinking of the victims of the Newtown shooting. If I didn’t say it enough here, let me be clear: It devastated me.  If you’re reading this tonight, don’t take it for granted: Be very happy you are alive.

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Valentine’s Day Sentiments

Posted in Holidays, tagged on February 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »

What do our Valentine’s Day cards say?

–*You are my heart.

–*You are my soul.

–*You are my kidneys.

–*You are the person I have grown to love after I settled for you.

–*Love is like two souls joining. Especially in this community property state of Wisconsin.

–*Top ten reasons you are the only one for me, No. 7:  I don’t really need another public divorce, Love Ronald Perelman.

–*Like Philadelphia, I love you back, but unlike Philadelphia, I am not the meth capital of the U.S.

–*I’m sorry, I am giving the rose to Courtney.

–*I’m giving this Valentine’s Day card to you because my fifth grade teacher has ordered us to give cards to everybody else in the class, and thus I have fulfilled my legal obligation.

–*Valentine’s Day is not just a fake holiday invented by the greeting card industry. It’s also an extra reason for single people to feel awful.

–*I’m pretty sure that this Valentine’s Day card to you, my love, does not violate the restraining order, but if it does, please disregard.

–*Few people know what love really is. But I do. It’s part of the male posturing process among monkeys to dominate other males in order to propagate their DNA.

–*Monkey see, monkey do, roses are red and I love you.

–*Let’s drop the pretense. Let’s do it!

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Happy New Year … and Merry Christmas

Posted in Family, Holidays on January 1, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Dear long-suffering Beauty is Imperfection reader:

You probably feel lately like my son Xander looks in this picture, asking, “Where is Eric? Where are the freakin’ blogs? What did I do? What is happening to me?” If you are still reading, you must crave my abuse like love. I thank you for that. If you’ve been checking in and missing me for the past few months, I apologize.

I confess that although I have been a prolific writer in the latter half of 2012, it was not here. I know that a blogger makes a sort of social contract with you to keep you updated on his doings, attitudes, new thoughts, etc. Indeed, I sat down a couple of times to offer my thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, the Republican primaries, etc. … but often I let these unfinished posts sit on my server through the fall as I labored as a work-at-home father. Even the Christopher Hitchens article I posted earlier tonight was two weeks old. I had it 70% written on the day his death was announced, and I let it sit, unable to get it Christopher Hitchens perfect before I went home to Oklahoma to enjoy Christmas with my family. For most of the fall, I was working on fiction–doing rewrites of the five novels I’ve got on my hard drive. This has been difficult enough to do with a baby, but doing it and being a full-time blogger has been almost impossible. I am considering publishing these novels myself in 2012 as soon as I have a couple of professional editors look them over. (This includes the serial “Letters to My Imaginary Friend, Leticia,” which was first published on this blog.) When that time comes for my books to arrive in your Kindle, I’ll let you, my readers, know right here. You’re special that way!

The thing I most wish I’d done is spent some time talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement. I think it’s one of the most interesting political developments of the last decade, and yet it was something I never went to see for myself in my own city. Mainly this is because of my new family and work situation, which made it impossible to go out. But also I feel, as I get older, that I no longer have to be at the “in” happening to understand it or take what I need from it intellectually. I watched the videos and read the blogs and heard the arguments. So I might add that I also refrained from talking about Occupy Wall Street because even though I agreed with the general idea, I was skeptical about specifics of the movement, which were precious few. My first drafts about it thus turned out curiously negative about the entire venture, and at the risk of being misconstrued without time to perfect it, I let the piece languish in my computer’s sleeping brain. I might publish it later as is or with the promise of a follow up, but at this point, it would be a little bit like staircase wit to talk about OWS, the drum pits and the fetching naked girls dancing about for economic equality, which is apparently what it takes these days to get the subject on CNN.

I had a wonderful Christmas; it was very important to me to go home because my son got to meet his relatives–the large extended family I grew up with in Oklahoma City. I was blessed to have all my aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins grow up in the same town with me (symmetrically arrayed on both mother’s and father’s side). The family I grew up with has just about everything in it: rich, poor, intellectual, down home, cosmopolitan, alcoholic, certifiably crazy and criminal … you name it. And though I left home at 18, I have never taken for granted what they offered me as a kid: My entire psychological makeup comes from having all these points of light on a string. The idea that Xander wouldn’t have as many contributors to his development as I did … especially now that I have moved away and my parents are not alive … well, it makes me too sad, and makes my trips home that much more important and poignant. I especially enjoyed some talks with my 84-year-old grandfather about his life, which I hope to share in memoirs eventually. We had two new babies this year, Xander and his cousin Scarlett, and though I always love my family’s attention, this year I was greedy only for the babies to have it.

Stephanie and Xander and I are spending this New Year’s at home recovering from Christmas illnesses we picked up in Oklahoma. Tonight we’re spending New Year’s Eve in our apartment and keeping it low key. I don’t feel the need to be anywhere other than with my little family and appreciate the things I have. But if you are reading this, then I’ll also say I appreciate you, dear reader. My postings will probably remain sparse, but hopefully I can do a little better than I have recently.

Have a happy New Year.

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April Fools!

Posted in Holidays on April 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I couldn’t resist using the photo one more time, though. If you hadn’t tuned in today, the following four posts were part of my special April Fools’ edition.

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My Sister-In-Law Kathy Ups the Ante

Posted in Holidays on January 4, 2011 | 2 Comments »

This year, my sister-in-law Kathy served us this cake for Christmas. It’s a true Willy Wonka creation, almost every part of it edible, even the parquet floor under the chimney.

Kathy makes these creations with ganache and fondant. I’m not sure what these things are, but I’m pretty sure they were stolen from the Germans and chemical company IG Farben at the end of World War II, along with the country’s rocket technology, in “Operation Paperclip.”  Asking Kathy her trade secrets will likely get you a Vulcan nerve pinch and a swift death.

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What New Barbies Are Coming Out This Christmas?

Posted in Holidays, tagged , on December 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

–*Independent filmmaker Barbie with a can of the wrong ASA film to throw at your freakin’ head.

–*Ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyer Barbie

–*Barbie with septicemia from a hard-to-close wound

–*Video camera Barbie with a real camera stuffed in her decolletage, a doll that allows you to videotape yourself and allows your parents to spy on the baby sitter (she’s admissible in court!)

–*Expert witness against predators Barbie (she’s adorable in court!)

–*Bratz Barbies (she’s easy to pass off as a competing brand)

–*Licensing Barbie (making sure you’re not violating her intellectual property and trademarks)

–*Health care quality control specialist Barbie (making sure you’re out of the hospital in two days)

–*Medical lab tech Barbie (making sure the insurance companies are getting charged for unnecessary procedures)

–*Top 2% Barbie (she’s making 433 times more income than the lowest 50%)

–*Mullet and rat-tail Barbie. She doesn’t need money. She’s got love and smokes.

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Christmas Under Attack

Posted in Holidays, tagged , , on December 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

A letter from a disgruntled reader*:

Christmas, as you know if you’re a regular Fox News viewer as I am, is under attack. From the streets of Tulsa where holiday parades have been renamed, to Texas classrooms where little girls writing paeans to Jesus are removed from class, to New York City, where some school halls have been decked out with pagan items like menorahs, the battle against the Christian religion has been joined, and the dismantling of our official national religion has begun. You are probably asking yourself, how is it that I, as a Christian, am always being persecuted? Why it’s almost as if somebody gave us a persecution complex!

Everywhere you look these days we suffer religions repression as Christians. We no longer are allowed to say “Merry Christmas” to each other in front of those 1,000 foot Christmas trees at the mall. We are made to feel embarrassed when we hang 200 foot crosses on our skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan. Our “Merry Christmas” cards are being moved over exactly six inches to the side to make room for “Happy Holiday” cards, or worse, or even something in Hebrew, which has nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever.  If you look hard enough, and by hard enough I mean if you call up numerous churches in the southern states asking specifically of anything out of the ordinary, you are bound to find somebody who writes a blog who claims he was personally persecuted for his religious beliefs.

Things have gotten so far out of hand with political correctness that even the Texas House of Representatives has fallen under the leadership of a well-known Jew. How, you might ask, could this happen at Christmas, the holiday we Protestants invented?

The watchwords for the new age are “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” These used to be innocent words–it simply meant that Christians, Jews, Africans and Muslims could all live freely and celebrate Christmas together. However, something has happened to those innocent words, perhaps something we could associate with the immigration of more non-Christian Mexicans into our country. Diversity now means acknowledging other people’s absurd magical beliefs at a time of year we’re supposed to be acknowledging Jesus’ virgin birth. If you, like me, are a Christian, you know that acknowledging other people this way is impossible and will get you an eternity of having bleeding-eyed Mollochs and fire-farting demons shove torches of flaming pitch into your ass all the way up to breakfast. Obviously, acknowledging other people’s beliefs always means destroying your own.

Think about it. East Berlin would have been no kind of city at all without a big fence to keep everybody in. I like to think of Christmas the same way. A little East Berlin walled off from other cultures with fantastic green and red bows  garlanding the barbed concertina wire.

But you must remember, as a Christian, that as a newly persecuted individual, you are actually in your element. I dug into the library the other night and did a bit of research. There I found a little-known movie called “The Passion of the Christ.” Evidently, Jesus did quite a bit of suffering himself. In fact, there is a long history of people whipping, flagellating, scourging and wearing hairshirts to show their thanks and understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice.

The best way for you to preserve Christmas in the face of this onslaught is to buy a big tree that you can hang lights on. I like to call it a “Defiance Tree.” You can also buy red and green wrapping paper and wrap within them “Defiance Gifts.” Put brightly colored sequencing lights around your house as a signal to everybody that you are angry about the way Christmas has been demonized. Nobody else is likely doing this. Put a nativity scene in front of your house. Nobody is doing that either. Go to Christmas parties and drink lots of eggnog spiked with rum and yell very loudly that the party is likely going to be outlawed soon. And most important, you should watch Fox News at all times, because only this channel is keeping the guttering flame of Christmas alive. That and maybe the fourth hour of the Today show.

Remember: There’s no “Happy holidays” mealy mouthing here! Make an East Berlin of your heart and fight back against the attack on Christmas whenever you can. When we have won back our holiday and our culture, Christmas will go back to being about what it’s always been about in the past:

Fighting with your family.

*Lie!

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New Year’s Resolutions Throughout History

Posted in history, Holidays, tagged on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

What New Year’s Resolutions have people been making throughout history?

–*20,000 B.C.: I must move to a new cave.

–*3000 B.C.: I will kill my friend Mordred and have his woman.

–*2800 B.C.: I think it’s time to have a baby.

–*2500 B.C.: I think I could make a killing with this bronze stuff.

–*2400 B.C. This town really could use a new megalith, and I’m just the cruel bastard who can get it done.

–*2300 B.C. It’s time to stop dicking around finally finish my plan to invade Mesopotamia.

–*35 B.C.: I shall make myself some new sandals.

–*33 A.D. Must betray Jesus, buy new farm with the money.

–*55 A.D.: I shall cut open a bull to exalt the mighty goddess Diana so that by her divine intervention I may reap more grain.

–*70 A.D. Time to do something about those Jews.

–*345 A.D.: I vow to stop persecuting the Christians and shall in fact make Christianity the official religion of my great Roman Empire. Also, I’ll try to randomly kill people less often.

–*582 A.D.: I shall give up this foolish hobby of writing epigrammatic poetry, finally listen to my friends and return to law school in Alexandria.

–*1182: No more crusades for me. What a freakin’ dry heave that was!

–*1209: Time to do something about those Cathars.

–*1524: My dad always beats me in the after dinner belching contest. This year I’m going to kick his ass.

–*1555 A.D. I shall honor my vow of celibacy and only bugger other men.

–*1556 A.D. I shall flosseth more.

–*1688 A.D.: I’m sure to sire a boy this time as long as I follow the instruction of the most advanced books on the matter and tie a wrenching knot around my left testicle with sisal rope.

–*1787: I will stop cleaning sewers, take the idea of madras fibers to the West Indies, and along with my man-servant Doro, will reign as king.

–*1889: I will smoke more, as my doctor says it’s good for my bronchial tubes.

–*1912: I shall go south to Spain for another rest-cure, getting away from my husband so that I shall not cause him more distress with my hysterical neurotic collapses and screaming fits.

–*1928: I’m going to make a boatload of money in this thing my brother told me about called the stock market.

–*1935: I will eat rat and like it.

–*1955: I will try to do my best to root out communists in my midst at all times, even if they are my neighbors, my kinsmen, or my wife.

–*2003: Time to do something about those Iraqis.

–*2009: Time to pay the tax bill for my war against the Iraqis. Hmmm…I wonder if I can get out of it by throwing a temper tantrum.

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What Gifts Do We Want The Most for Christmas?

Posted in Holidays, tagged , , on December 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

–*A Nintendo Wii

–*A Nintendo Wii and child support

–*A big glass of eggnog and primary custody of the child

–*An amicus brief from the American Civil Liberties Union, sent by Fed Ex to Alabama

–*A Pleo robotic dinosaur and a public health option

–*A Jedi concentration console, which allows you to levitate an orb with your brainwaves, and a recall of obstructionist Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, which would allow you to pass decent health care legislation with your brainwaves.

–*Malibu rum, for your feelings.

–*EyeClops Night Vision Goggles, to teach your children stalking skills early in life.

–*Transformer movie action toys make a great gift, say bloggers compromised by advertising money

–*A Ronald Reagan doll with invisible stealth government, large paper deficits and extra wealth disparity.

–*A job.

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Buy My Friends For Christmas

Posted in Holidays, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

If you need great gift ideas for Christmas (or extremely late ideas for Hanukkah), look no further. I have a raft of suggestions for you to help spread the holiday cheer and heighten the eggnog buzz.

As I’ve mentioned before, Stephanie and I have a whole lot of talented friends working in the film and publishing industries, and this year, three of them have had their work hit the shelves. A fourth friend has had a poetry anthology out for a couple of years. How close am I to these people? Well, I’ve been to the weddings of three, and served as best man to one of them.

Whether you’re looking for fun kid films, thoughtful young adult books, poetry anthologies or a bracing look at America’s past and future credit crises, my friends will have something for that finicky and hard-to-please family member.

First I submit to you “The Day-Glo Brothers,” penned by my friend Chris Barton and illustrated by Tony Persiani. The book recounts the invention of day-glo paint by the brothers Joe and Bob Switzer, who invented and perfected fluorescent colors in the pursuit of a more exciting magic show and overcame some hardship in the process. The book depicts the different sensibilities of the sober-sided Bob and the more devil-may-care Joe as they worked together to change the color of our world. The book’s been named one of the best children’s books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly.

If you’ve got a relative who’s more interested in the world of American business and finance, an old colleague of mine at Thomson Financial, Josh Kosman, offers a bracing look at the private equity industry in his book “The Buyout of America.” Here, Josh explains how the captains of the PE world have swooped down on healthy companies, compromising their long-term stability and their balance sheets to suck them dry for big profits. These problems could likely lead to the next big credit crisis, Josh writes. The book is already stirring some controversy in the powerful PE world, whose biggest players have cozy relationships with Washington. You can get a copy at Amazon.com.

Maybe that special person on your gift list needs more poetry in his or her life. If so, you can check out “Best Poems of the English Language,” a work that came out in 2007 and was edited by my friend Alissa Heyman.  This anthology features some 200 poets working from the 7th century to the 20th, which covers a lot of styles and a lot of the fantastic breadth of expression in our relatively young language. It includes all the greats: Shakespeare, Yeats, Shelley, William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Lee Masters, etc. Because it’s an anthology, it will not only satisfy people who love poetry but also those who want to look like they do and need an accoutrement to their cultivated image of refinement!

If you’re dealing with someone less interested in books, then why not order a copy of “Shorts,” a film for both kids and adults by Robert Rodriquez with material supplied by my close friend Alvaro Rodriguez. The film follows the expolits of a bunch of kids whose wishes are granted by a magical wishing rock and whose troubles with their wishes are played out in a number of funny vignettes, some of which are touching and others are funny and maybe even a bit gross.

Certainly, one of these items will satisfy that special friend and loved one. If not, then let’s not kid ourselves: You’re probably just going to get them a fruit cake.

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