I'm completely choking on sweetness and sugar right now. No I'm not talking about cookies or pie--mom insisted on watching the last hour and a half of Pollyanna today, and I now truly understand one more English adjective. Scariest part of the movie: Except when you get a good schnozz closeup, Karl Malden is the absolute spitting image of Brian Billick.

Part of today's X-Mas festivities (more on that later this week) involved watching VH1 Classic's day of Christmas videos, about which I can only say that they are no more or less screwed up than music videos in general, which makes them alternately highly appropriate or highly inappropriate for holiday family viewing. Some highlights--the early video era Squeeze's "Christmas Day", which was both one of the most religious songs and also the most mammo-centric video; seeing "Christmas at Ground Zero" twice, as only Weird Al could do a song simultaneously about Christmas, love and nuclear holocaust; Hall and Oates looking especially gay on "Jingle Bell Rock" in sweater-vests; and the always awkward Bing-Bowie collaboration on "Little Drummer Boy", a good song and nice version, but the dialogue on the video was more forced than Abner Louima's confession. I just couldn't get the image out of my mind, either, of Bowie taking Bing to Studio 54 afterward so they could get coked up and get oral sex from Mick and Bianca Jagger alternately.

I know, I have issues.

Three commercials that have been driving me insane in recent months/days:
1. ALF and Emmitt Smith. Not all of them, just the one where Emmitt says, "We both give a lot back to the community." HUH?!?! What kind of charity work has ALF THE FREAKIN' PUPPET been doing lately? Acting as a chew toy for homeless dogs? Being a warm winter coat for poor kids?

2. Matthew Lesko, superpatriot. Matthew Lesko, the free government money guy, was extremely annoying by himself. Now we should buy his book not just to help ourselves and Mr. Lesko, but to help out our country by developing our talents to the fullest. Troubling.

3. Dammit, I forgot the third one. Hopefully I'll remember for the next entry, which will hopefully also feature one or two more book commentaries, and a little (true) holiday story I've been working on.