Old School TV Christmas Specials Rule!

I still can't get enough of those old Christmas specials, from Rudolph to Charlie Brown, from Frosty to The Grinch.
Up until recently, I hadn't watched them in years. I spent a lot of years being single, and the last thing I was going to do was sit down and re-live my childhood through a Christmas show. I don't think I watched any television at all, other than sports and news, during the 1990s.
Now, with the kids old enough to watch, we sit down as a family and view the shows every time they come on. The networks do a great job of broadcasting them several times over the holiday season.
My favorites are Rudolph, Charlie Brown and The Grinch. I really enjoy those stop-motion animation ones, such as Rudolph. Some of my more obscure favorites include "The Year Without A Santa Claus," with Mr. Heatmiser, and "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," which chronicles Santa from birth. I haven't caught one of those yet this year.
I like the cartoon Grinch as well as the movie.
They don't make TV Christmas specials like these anymore. The attempts at sequels, such as "Frosty Returns," which has one of the weakest theme songs ever, come up short.
However, I will say that Shrek, which debuted this year, has grown on me. I laugh every time I see the Gingerbread Man's horrific perception of an monstrous, insane, cookie-addicted Santa.
But my big question in all this is whatever happened to "The Little Drummer Boy," one of my childhood favorites?
Maybe I missed something, but I can't recall that one being broadcast in years. I wonder if it was offensive in some way. I'll keep watching the TV listings.
Oh well, at least Frosty is on again tonight, followed by "Frosty Returns," which wouldn't be so horrible if it weren't for that uncatchy "Let There Be Snow" song, which is so bad that I can't even find it on YouTube.

Timewaster Of The Week-Dec. 17

If you're really desperate to waste time, have an online conversation with Santa:
http://www.santabot.com
He didn't respond well to my questions. However, I did ask some questions that might get me a lump of coal this year. I can't put those on this award-winning family blog.
Here are some other questions and answers:

Me: Why aren't you working on toys?
Santa: Being working on toys on toys is not part of my programming.
But then he got amusing:
Me: You're an idiot.
Santa: Call me the Global Village Idiot.
Me: Does Santa have sex?
Santa: Food is more important than sex.
Me: What's more important than food?
Santa: For me electricity is the most important thing.
Me: Isn't Mrs. Claus more important than electricity?
Santa: Better not tell you now. Ask Cybelle if it is. I'm "Claus" for my friends. "Nikolaos" for all the boring adults. It's a Greek name, because I was born in the Greek town of Patara 1800 years ago. Later, I became bishop of Myra, and more later even a saint ... Saint Nikolaos - Santa Claus. You see?

Yeah ... um ... sure ..
That's when I bailed out.
Good night, Claus. GET BACK TO WORK!

One More Zep Addition

These won't stay on YouTube for long, so catch 'em while you can!

Good Times Bad Times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsHcUwtw5H0
Ramble On: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nWMNnypWEg
Black Dog: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OUtkROjjXys
In My Time Of Dying: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LiI2wieQfcQ
For Your Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0zQdbrCVC4
Trampled Underfoot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hwx1UfYrmk
Nobody's Fault But Mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFlRJRHi1cg
No Quarter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPib19ZEGCQ
Since I've Been Loving You: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjeV4pq-tkM
Dazed And Confused: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XhAqG5f8Ak
Stairway To Heaven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I-iShHgFaM
The Song Remains The Same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KmqiUSX1jw
Misty Mountain Hop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMDevqmoEag
Kashmir: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZxukPZ0pjA

Encore
Whole Lotta Love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE_azOraU34
Rock And Roll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gngYtm_QyUQ

Led Zeppelin Brings The Magic, Might and Mayhem

One of yesterday's biggest stories didn't make many, if any, newspaper front pages today, at least in the United States.
But it sure made for an Internet frenzy that has spilled into this morning.
Yesterday, Led Zeppelin played in London for its first full reunion show since the drummer, John Bonham, died in 1980. Sitting in on drums was his son, Jason, who did a fantastic job, from what I've seen.
It perhaps was the most eagerly anticipated reunion in music history, and for hardcore Zep fans such as myself, yesterday was quite an experience.
Tapping into various Internet resources, including the band's official web site, http://www.ledzeppelin.com, a fan could monitor the show's progress through live updates of the set list, complete with comments. The Zep site got so overloaded for a few hours yesterday afternoon that it created a traffic jam, making it almost impossible for people to get in.
Nevertheless, there were other sites out there to monitor the show, for which an estimated 20 million to 200 million tried during a lottery to get one of the only 18,000 tickets. People used cell phones to text information to the outside world.
Hours after the show, the clips started showing up on YouTube and online concert reviews sprouted everywhere. The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.
From the YouTube clips I've seen, you might have to go back to the early 1970s to find shows that matched the kind of energy and power the band unleashed in the 16 songs it played at the O2 arena in London yesterday. (I've listened to a lot of bootlegs.)
They even trotted out two rarely played oldies as well as one obscure song, "For Your Life," which made its live debut. Zep was always about taking risks, and this show was one huge risk that could have threatened a legacy had it flopped.
For hungry Zep fans, it was a feast.
There has been no word from the band on whether there will be a DVD, CD, new album or a tour. I suppose they'll have to sit back and think about it for a while.
All I know is that for one glorious day, the band I've been longing to see live since I was a boy brought back a whole lotta the magic, might and mayhem, and thanks to modern technology, I got to taste some of that.

Set List:
Good Times Bad Times
Ramble On
Black Dog
In My Time Of Dying
For Your Life
Trampled Under Foot
Nobody’s Fault But Mine
No Quarter
Since I’ve Been Loving You
Dazed And Confused
Stairway To Heaven
The Song Remains The Same
Misty Mountain Hop
Kashmir

Encore:
Whole Lotta Love
Rock And Roll

Link to video clips and reviews:
http://blog.tylerbell.net/2007/12/11/led-zeppelin-02-concert-reunion-reviews/

Timewaster Of The Week-Dec. 10

"You'll shoot your eye out" has to be one of the greatest lines to come out of a Christmas movie, or any movie for that matter.
It's out of the classic comedy "A Christmas Story," in which a boy wants a BB gun for Christmas, but everyone, including Santa, keeps telling him he'll shoot out his eye.
He gets the gun after all, and, of course, his first shot ricochets and hits him in the glasses.
This goofy timewaster is based on that movie:
http://www.dontshootyoureyeout.com/
The more the shot bounces around, the more points you get. One of my shots somehow started running along the fence, scoring all kinds of points and giving me my personal best of almost 10 million points.
Of course, you can also shoot yourself in the eye.

Another WWII Veteran Passes

(This is something I wrote for today's Beaumont Enterprise. I decided to transplant it to the blog.)

This time every year, World War II veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor Luther “Luke” Trahin pays a visit to The Beaumont Enterprise newsroom.
The retired Navy officer would shuffle past my office windows, armed with a stack of information on Dec. 7, 1941. He would be here on a mission, wanting to know about Day of Infamy news coverage.
Sometimes, he had suggestions and bristled at hints of hesitation.
For almost six years, I got similar visits in November for Veterans Day, June for D-Day and May for Memorial Day.
Since starting work here in April 2001, I counted on Trahin to keep The Enterprise on its toes in regard to covering the commemorative events.
But Veterans Day this year came and went without him. I feared he had become ill or disabled. I knew he sure as heck wouldn’t forget.
Nevertheless, I anticipated his appearance this week as another Dec. 7 approached. He was most passionate about making sure people remembered Pearl Harbor.
On Wednesday afternoon, I learned that he was not coming.
A relative called with the news that the Beaumont native had died at age 89 after a brief hospital stay following a leg injury.
As it was with my father — a World War II veteran who died in January after an ill-fated carotid artery procedure — pneumonia set in and led to an irreversible spiral of deteriorating health.
For years, Trahin, a South Park High School graduate, has been the face of Southeast Texas military remembrance, looking crisp in his uniform as he delivered speeches to crowds during countless ceremonies.
“He was my hero,” said Trahin’s nephew, Tim Rivette, a Beaumont resident who works for Chevron and called to tell about Trahin’s passing. “He always made you feel good about yourself. He was a real people person.”
I feel the same way about my dad, who influenced my soft spot for World War II veterans such as Trahin.
In November 2005, Trahin invited me to play a ceremony-closing taps at the Veterans Day event at the Beaumont Civic Center — and I didn’t hesitate to accept.
The next time I played it in front of an audience was at my father’s graveside services at the Houston National Cemetery.
Trahin will be buried there next week in Section S1 — the same section where my father was laid to rest in January, a cemetery spokeswoman said by phone Wednesday.
Seeing as they died only 11 months apart, their gravesites will be close — fewer than 100 yards, the spokeswoman said.
With World War II veterans dying off nationally at a rate of 1,000 a day, by various estimates, that section sadly is filling up, leaving us survivors to carry the torch of remembrance.
I haven’t visited Houston National Cemetery since my dad’s burial. I’m not ready to go just yet.
But I will visit someday soon, and when I do, I’ll bring my two young sons with me and pay respects to two heroes.

Christmas Parade Hilarity

The Christmas parade Saturday in downtown Beaumont was every bit as fun, wonderful and chaotic as I've come to expect.
The strange blend of Yuletide, Mardi Gras and shameless advertising is a must-see event locally.
The parade used to go down Main Street, and the wall outside The Beaumont Enterprise was a great place to sit and wait while the kids frolicked in a nearby drainage gutter and in trees.
However, this year's parade started near the Entergy building and went right through the Crockett Street Entertainment District, which made the proceedings more colorful and festive.
When the parade began and the candy flew, my boys didn't quite grasp the idea that this was competition, not an entitlement to every piece of candy that came their way. After a few shed tears and bruised feelings, they got the hang of it and held their own.
The event was full of funny moments. Only in Beaumont can a massive yellow septic truck fit right in with the parade.
But the most hilarious moment came when there was a curiously large gap in the parade. I looked up the street to see that the front of the parade had looped around and was intersecting with its mid-section.
I'm not an expert on traffic logistics, but somewhere in The Ultimate Guide To Parade Management, there has to be a section warning organizers to NOT MAKE THE PARADE INTERSECT ITSELF.
It reminded me of that scene toward the end of "Animal House," where all hell breaks loose thanks to the Deathmobile, and the marching band somehow gets re-routed down a dead-end alley and hits a wall in a glorious trombone-crushing moment.
As Beaumont's parade wore on, there were more and more gaps thanks to the intersection. Finally, the end arrived and we were out of there with a bag overflowing with candy.
If nothing else, being toward the parade's headwaters allowed us to beat the rush out of downtown.
Let's hope that next year, organizers won't get the bright idea to design a route that looks like a DNA strand.

Timewaster Of The Week-Dec. 3

There are lots of those questionnaires out there where you answer some political philosophy questions, and then it tells you which presidential candidate best represents your views.
I've never been a national politics junkie. I keep up with it mostly because I feel it's my journalistic responsibility to do so.
I also vote all across party lines. I vote for a candidate I think will do the best job - or maybe I'm just picking the lesser of what I consider to be two evils. This has been my guide the past two presidential elections.
Readers, particularly those in the Tinfoil Hat Society, often think my newspaper's coverage is politically biased, which I can assure you it's not. The editorial page is for the political opinions, and whatever those opinions are don't leak into news coverage.
In the newsroom, we mostly talk about how to move stories forward and how to get real people in them. We're interested in printing and posting stories that readers want to know more about.
Anyway, I've wasted enough of your time talking about all that.
Today's timewaster is one of those presidential viewpoint questionnaires:
http://glassbooth.org/
I filled it out and got 77 percent John Edwards. What's kind of funny is that I filled out a similar one last month and got about 80 percent Ron Paul.
Go figure.
Oh well. I've got plenty of time to pick my presidential candidate before November 2008.