Month: December 2009

Time to Vote for Best Worst Christmas Story!


Ok, I’ve picked the Top 8. You’ll be voting for the best of these. They are all posted below. Again, you are voting for the worst opening to a potential Christmas novel. 

#1 Hunter: Tiny shards of Santa filled a half dozen evidence bags, piled neatly on the mantle with obvious care. “It was a deadly combination”, began Inspector Spilkus. “Flatulence– touched off by a burning ember. Milk and cookies? Egg nog? Unfortunately for Mr. Kringle, his lactose intolerance did NOT make this the happiest time of the year.” 

So, initially, at least, like the trapdoor on Santa’s scorched Long Johns, the case appeared to be open and shut.

#2 Yeem: Rude Elf maundered through the Christmas crowd at Walmart in search of discount ground beef for that night’s supper. Hamburg stew: water, salt, ground beef (80/20), and celery. He had been experimenting with Depression-Era recipes for quite some time now and though the sodium made his fingers swell, he could hardly think of eating anything hardier. His weak constitution wouldn’t tolerate it anyhow. Charla was coming over for dinner tonight. God, she had great cans…

#3 Dating Survival: The sirens closed in on the St. Nicholas estate. Inside, Santa hadn’t eaten in days. Candycane colored gun in hand, watching tv from his desk with a red velvet bullet proof vest on, he watched as five children’s hospitals burned to the ground in some kind of a coincidental terrorist act. The recession had really hit home this year, and Santa had to make his cuts too.

#4 Chip Chantry: Santa, drunk off the power, and high from the “snowball” he just snorted off of Sarah Palin’s OF AGE daughter’s stomach, leapt into the sleigh, before the glacier was too small to take off. The glacier was melting because those c#nts in Washington refuse to deal with climate change the way it should be- just ask @guardianuk. 

Anyway, as the coked-up beast vaulted his massive, sweaty framed onto his vehicle, he aggressively slurred, “On Dasher! On Dancer! On Prancer! On– AH, what the F@CK??!! GET THE F@CK OFF THE BACK OF MY SLEIGH, CHRIS HENRY! GET OFF THE GODDAMN SLEIGH!”

#5 Lefty Smutface: Santa had too much egg nog at some nightclub on Locust Street, he left his reindeer floating 50 feet above the dive bar shitting on transsexuals who squealed in terror as their B 52 singers hairdo’s were squashed by falling s***. 
” Jeeze Louise! I spent 130 dollars at my hair dressers and that flying elk ruined it!” a patron screamed.
A worker for Philadelphia Animal Control approached Santa and said ” Sir, there’s something you gotta do about those reindeer s***ting on the Lady Gaga’s”
Santa took off his red suit jacket, revealing a red wife beater and a bicep tattoo of a pitbull with a dead pitbull in it’s mouth. Santa grinned and said ” Son, I hope you bought a lot of body bags…”

#6 AW Santa glanced from the List as Mrs. Claus entered, ensconced in an aura of steaming cinnamon-sugar cookies. Their eyes locked. After so many millenia, the ache still crept up his core whenever he spied her dowdy silver ‘do, her horn-rimmed bifocals, and the plump, fleshy rolls bursting from her frumpy gingham jumper. He stood and slid his fuzzy gloves seductively along her ample midriff …

#7 Steve-O: The wrestlers arrived at the recording studio, one by one. Koko B Ware brought hot cocoa. Big John Studd dressed like Santa. Hillibilly Jim even brought his Irish Setter dressed as a reindeer. Some of the biggest names in WWF history were going to record “Jingle Bell Rock” and donate the proceeds to charity. However, George “the Animal” Steele had different plans. VERY different plans. 

#8 Chris Morganti: “Snow tires don’t sing when you put chains on them!” Santa Claus drunkenly exclaimed. “Ees good,” Hugo Chavez chuckled. “Ees good joke.”

“Enough!” Barack Obama yelled, his fist slamming angrily on the table. “Now is not the time for racist jokes! Now is the time for us to use Santa’s gift-giving operation as a front to corner the world narcotics market.”

In the corner, Adam Lambert sat silently, listening. “The fools,” he thought.

Christmas in the Big City Ideas?

philly_christmas_treeMy parents are coming into town tomorrow to get the “Christmas in the Big City Experience”. They live at the end of a long dirt lane on a farm, so pretty much just being in the city at Christmastime will be plenty cool. But in true Griswold fashion, I am working on my itinerary. Here’s what I have so far:

Light show and Dickens Village at Macy’s.

Reading Terminal Market.

Comcast Christmas Show in 3-D.

Christmas Village at City Hall.

Any other suggestions? Anyone know of any good Christmas shows or anything going on? Please let me know in the comments.

Clermont Hotel Closed Down

clermontSome of you may remember an article I wrote a few months ago for the Metro about the strippers at the Clermont Lounge. (It was, incidentally, the last article I ever wrote for the Metro due to “creative differences” though those had more to do with grammar than content). Anyways, if I want to go to the Clermont Lounge again, I won’t be staying at the Clermont Hotel. You’re going to find this hard to believe, but it just got shut down by health inspectors. The good news is, the Lounge next door with its homely strippers will stay in business, at least for the time being. Of course, none of this will affect my plans to NEVER GO THERE AGAIN.

Advice From JGT: A Thrift Store Christmas

thriftIt’s not often that I offer advice, because, quite frankly, if you find yourself taking advice from a 34 year old quizmaster, you probably have some major issues. But I’m going to offer you advice this holiday season, and you’ll thank me for it later. Last Christmas, my family decided that we were tired of trying to find the “perfect gift” for everyone, fighting through huge crowds, dealing with the stress of making sure that the gift you gave was same price bracket as what they got you, etc. So instead we decided to make it a thrift store Christmas. It was so unbelievably awesome that I doubt we ever go back. The deal was this: You could either purchase your gifts at a thrift store or make a gift. Here is why is makes Christmas so much better:

There are no crowds. You want to do some relaxing shopping during the holiday season? Visit a thrift store. Everybody is so convinced that they need to get everyone something still in the plastic that nobody shops at thrift stores the week before Christmas. Instead of long lines and cranky cashiers who have been dealing with thousands of people all day, you have a bunch of people who are more than happy to help the few people in the store.

Good for the environment. You know the old motto, Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. When you shop at a thrift store, you’re doing all three. When you buy new gifts, you’re doing none. 

Usually spending money for a good cause. Most thrift stores donate a large portion of their proceeds toward charity. Wal-Mart donates their proceeds toward crushing the opposition. 

Save money. This one is a no-brainer. Second half stuff obviously costs a lot less. Oftentimes the gifts are still in the original package but was never used. That’s how I scored a brand new juicer for $8 last year. 

Better gifts. I’ll be honest, the gifts I got last year were the coolest and most fun gifts I’ve gotten since I was a kid. Books, board games, clothes, a juicer, and plenty of gag gifts. Much cooler than a gift card from Barnes and Noble. 

Less stress. You spent $30 on gifts and your sister-in-law spent $20. Who cares? And really, who knows? The price on things costs different things at different thrift stores, so it’s impossible to tell who spent more on who, leading to no embarrassment when you buy your sister in law a $400 LCD TV and she buys you a new tie. 

Since we were also allowed to make something, I made a few family videos out of old family photos. And don’t worry, my little niece still got plenty of new toys. It was just the big kids who exchanged slightly used merchandise. And had the best Christmas we’ve had in probably 20 years.

Former Owner of the Khyber is a Terrorist

khyberHere’s one I somehow missed a few weeks ago. Turns out that one of the terrorists involved in the attacks on India last year, David Headley, was the son of the former owner of the Khyber Pass, now known as the Khyber. This bit in the New York Times is about Headley’s mother: She arrived back in Philadelphia, friends said, in the early 1970s, taking different office jobs and dating wealthy suitors until one of them lent her money to buy an old bar. She turned it into the Khyber Pass, decorated with billowing Afghan wedding tents and stocked with exotic beers…Ms. Headley tried to help her son straighten out his life. In 1985, she put him in charge of the Khyber Pass, but he proved to be such a poor manager that they lost the bar a couple of years later, friends of the family said.

I suppose there is no better time than now to tell you about Chip and my Christmas Show, the Chip Chantry Attack on Christmas. It will be at the Khyber this Monday at 8:00 p.m., as numerous comedians will be performing Christmas skits and videos for their shot at fabulous prizes, and we’ll be having an ugliest Christmas sweater competition as well. Finally, a fun Christmas show in a former terrorist breeding ground!

Gimbel vs. Gimbel

gimbelsHere’s something I stumbled across a couple of days ago that I thought was pretty cool. It’s a 1935 piece about the Gimbel family in TIME magazine. 

President Bernard, most popular of the Gimbel clan, is friend to Gene Tunney and lesser celebrities, spends leisure hours entertaining richly on his Port Chester, N. Y. estate. Cousin Richard, no socialite, expresses himself by pride in his four children and by collecting the works of Edgar Allan Poe whose cottage on Brandywine Street he endowed and refurnished. Between Cousin Bernard and Cousin Richard bad feeling has long existed.