In "A Christmas Story", quite possibly the best holiday movie ever, Ralphie wanted an official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.
When I was 7, I had desires of my own like that (didn't we all?) Three of them, to be exact. And Santa, ol' buddy ol' pal, delivered the goods: Paul, Ace, and Peter to complete my KISS solo album collection. For those of you not cool enough to know the KISS member names (hee hee), that means the purple, blue and green guys.
I received Gene Simmons, aka the red one, for my birthday 5 months prior (thanks again for that, Cookie!) It was the very first LP I ever owned - what a way to break a 7 year old kid in! It was also the very reason I ended up picking up a guitar. As I like to tell people, had it not been for those "4 happy-go-lucky guys wearing makeup" as Gene Simmons once put it, I'd probably never have thought 2wice about playing any sort of instrument. I'd also probably have some dull dead-end decent paying office job.
I also scored Spiderman and Star Trek stories on vinyl that Christmas. Salivating with delight, I took my pile of records up to my dirty white shag-carpeted room and spent the majority of that day listening to my new stash and drawing pictures. Every so often I'd take a break to look at my new KISS View Master reels, also courtesy of Santa, which I still have to this day (along with all of those records, which are now in frames and on my wall.)
Records were the best... people that have never had the experience of peeling the cellophane off of a new record and taking that giant, clean disc out of its sleeve for the first time don't know what they're missing. KISS records were especially fun, because they came with cool inserts and giant posters... and some had fancy gatefold covers. CDs are great, but there was a lot more charm to the listening experience back in the days of vinyl... you could fit a lot more eye candy on an album cover than you can on CD covers. Krikey - I'm starting to sound like an old fart with all of this "things were better when I was a kid" yammering.
Next Christmas memory brings me back to my grandpa's house - the Pinto Grandpa. I was probably 5 or 6, methinks, sitting atop a black swirly chair in his tiny, cluttered, dark kitchen drinking eggnog out of a small plastic blue cup. I was looking at the little red ceramic airplane hanging from his kitchen light and wondering why his house had such a peculiar aroma. As I got older and became more observant, I discovered the recipe of that aroma the more I visited his house: moth balls, dust, and dog fur. Yummy!
The only other one that stands out is my 7th grade Christmas Eve. My brother and mom were puking their guts out with a flu bug... aaah, good times. My parents gave me a light up globe, a telescope, and a kickass Radio Shack electronics lab kit. I was convinced I was going to build some sort of nuclear weapon out of the thing, but never got around to it. That was also the year I received yet another historical piece of vinyl that changed my life: Leo Kottke's "The Best".
It's finally the 24th. 1 more day of listening to horrendous holiday music on the local oldie station which started playing it non-stop sometime shortly after July 4th. Time to head out to Lunds and fight the masses for a tiny container of cream of tartar please kill me now. Then: off to Mom and Dad's for what is going to be a very entertaining evening of gift giving. Homemade gifts are the theme this year, and my siblings are in for something very... interesting. Something that if I gave to a stranger, it wouldn't take too much convincing to make them think it came from somebody in a mental asylum. I'm not the crazy one; it's everybody else that's crazy.
In a feeble attempt to not offend or leave out anyone of a non-Christmas celebrating descent: Happy Everything from yours truly.
