So THIS is Christmas?

Holy crap, what happened to 2010?

Last I remember we were riding the F train home at 2am on January 1st watching an outstanding young gentleman who looked like Danny from New Kids On The Block. Danny was soused beyond belief and had his arm around his equally soused underage girlfriend. They were slouched sideways in their subway seat. If you were to trace a shape in the air around them you'd get a pretty decent parallelogram. They had both obviously boarded the train at the Times Square station and were decorated with crooked party hats, noisemakers, and residual confetti. Danny was spending those first few minutes of 2010 pointing at one of his friends also on the train slurring "Loogit this fuggin guy, loogit this fuggin guy!" He wasn't trying to pick a fight, he was just a drunk happy dude who found something amusing about That Fuggin' Guy. I was happy for every second that Danny was focused on That Fuggin' Guy, because that was one less second we were at risk of having to watch him make out with his girlfriend any more than we already did.

And... POOF! There went the year - full speed ahead. Here we are at the end of December already. Christmas has come and gone. It always used to pretty much be my favorite most ass-kickingest holiday of the year, but it was a bit of a toughy this year being away from our families and homies. Sure as heck don't miss the Minnesota weather, that's fer damned sher, but the peeps are another story. It's too bad that whoever invented the vacuum tube Habitrail thingies at drive thru bank stations that you send thermoses through couldn't also invent a people sized one. I figure with one of those we could hop in, be in Minnesota in about an hour, and then just hop back in the capsule and zip back to Brooklyn on the same night. Missing family sucks. Especially at this time of year. I have tons of cool Christmas memories that I always look back on quite fondly when I'm in Miss-Mode like this. And when I do so, my brain does this:

I'm sorry. What I MEANT to say is my brain does this:

*******insert Wayne and Garth's "diddlyooop... diddlyooop..." wavy hand gesture here representing being transported to another time*******

My Pyraminx was just like this!

THUD! I've landed in 1982. It's Christmas Day at Grandma Gert & Grampa Claire's. To this day whenever I smell turkey and/or hear Johnny Mathis, I am instantly transported to their home on Palace Ave. in St. Paul. Someone gave me a sweet Tron tee shirt at this particular get-together. I believe it may have been my Aunt Dolly. I hadn't seen Tron yet but was a big Star Wars fan and the Tron dude looked Star Wars-y enough, so that deemed the shirt worthy of wearing. A nearby candle tipped over on the table I'd set the shirt on after unwrapping and some wax ended up splattering on it. I was quite devastated by this until someone suggested we put it in the freezer and the wax would freeze and break off. Worked like a charm. Also on this evening my Aunt Jeannie gave me a Pyraminx which I became completely enamored with and was eventually able to solve every time. Couldn't do the Rubik's Cube back then, still can't. But Pyraminx? I had that shit covered. My sister received a kid's activity book from someone that night (I think?) called GOOD TIMES that completely blew my fucking mind. I was able to score my own copy on Ebay about 10 years ago for $10 and it's still just as fun to thumb through. It's a treasure trove of cool facts and activities that deserves a journal entry of its own, so maybe I'll just shut up about that for now.             

Diddelyoop... diddelyoop... diddelyoop...

1983: Walk, Man. On this Christmas Day my sister and I each unwrapped our very own Sony Walkman AM/FM radios - complete with headphones with the bitchin' orange foam covering. Portable music has always been a pretty intense addiction of mine and this is where it started. To be able to put on headphones and listen to music.. and walk around without worrying about cords coming unplugged from a stereo receiver? The sense of freedom was almost too much for me to fathom. It was like floating. I remember on the way to Gert and Claire's that afternoon Lisa and I were cranking our new portable music headphone devices in the back of the station wagon. We were both tuned in to WLOL and Stray Cat Strut was on. Yes please. There's a scene in National Lampoon's Vacation when Russ and Audrey are in the back of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster rocking out with their headphones on. That toadilly always reminds me of that Christmas Day with my sis.  

The night before, my Aunt Lucy gave me an issue of the heavy metal magazine KERRANG! with KISS in it. This magazine contained the first pictures of them I'd ever seen playing live without makeup. It came with a bonus yellow flexi-disc with a live version of Quiet Riot's "Slick Black Cadillac" on it. I still have that mag and it's awesome to skim through it every now and again. I smell the new electronics smell of the new TV we got around that time as well as new brown living room carpet we had installed that Febrooary whenever I read that magazine. Weird how memories trigger different things like that.

Diddelyoop... diddelyoop... diddelyoop...

The year: 1984. By far my favorite Christmas vacation in my entire 13 year school district 833 prison tenure.

It's the weekend after Christmas. I'm at Cottage Grove's go-to store for all of your heavy metal needs: In Concert. I'd just talked myself out of buying the Twisted Sister Velcro wallet and was staring at the cassette tape display case. I am deep in the throes of a major crisis. Do I want to spend $7.98 of my Christmas money on Helix's Walkin' The Razor's Edge or hold out for something better? Back before the internets, buying an album was a considerably difficult decision for me - there was no way to hear any of the songs unless I'd heard anything on MTV or the radio. If I forked over $8 and didn't like the album, tough titty - I was stuck with it. I usually had to go by how cool the album art and song titles were. I decided that Helix looked "metal" enough for my liking and ended up purchasing the tape. I raced home to throw it in the tape player... Brian Vollmer's first "GIMME AN 'R'!" kicked things off and I thought Man, I want to make heavy shit like this when I grow up. Whenever I take a trip down memory lane and listen to that record I realize that my definition of "heavy" has substantially changed for the better over the years.

Later that week I attended my first KISS concert at the St. Paul Civic Center with my Aunt Cookie. Some new band called Queensryche had just released an album entitled The Warning. I remember seeing it advertised in Circus magazine. I couldn't understand a word Geoff Tate was singing but still thought that they kicked ass, as did KISS. Being that this was my first arena concert I didn't know what it was going to be like. Were we going to meet KISS? Did they walk through the crowd and sweat on people while they were playing? Would some unruly drunken fan stab someone like I'd heard my sister said happened at an Aerosmith concert a year or two earlier? Would they surprise everyone and come out with makeup on?

Nothing like that happened. Cookie and I were given a good solid rock show, complete with confetti and pyro that blinded us - we could feel the heat on our faces even from our borderline nosebleed seats. Paul Stanley made fun of people who listened to Thompson Twins and did a bit with a Michael Jackson doll where he held it to the microphone and mimicked Michael. He played his cracked mirror guitar and occasionally one of the 8 million reflections from the spotlights hitting it would zoom across my face or shirt. I remember feeling as if I'd been baptized every time that happened and thinking Dude. The light reflecting off of Paul Stanley's guitar just hit me! It sounds funny now but that shit's pretty much the most rad thing ever when you're an 11 year old KISS fan. The clip I've pasted here is from that tour - same guitar. Cookie and I dined at the Taco Bell on Robert St. in West St. Paul prior to that concert. This was right around the time I'd developed a liking for hot sauce. I used 3 packets of HOT sauce per taco (there was no "Fire" sauce back then).

Hey, check out how awesome the internet is. I'm going to figure out the exact day of that show. Hold on a sec.

December 29th 1984. That was on a Saturday.

Way cool.

I received a little action figure that Christmas from Cookie called a STINKY. It was a little blue rubber elephant monster looking thing and its odor was "rotten eggs". That thing really smelled like ass. Needless to say it was an instant favorite.

Diddelyoo... diddelyoo... diddelyoo...

Christmas Break 1985 This was the year I started playing guitar. "Santa" left me a Leo Kottke greatest hits record. I also got a telescope and a Radio Shack electronics learning lab. Sadly there weren't any hot chicks on our block who disrobed in front of open windows like there are in the movies. It was too cold to go outside and stargaze, so I pointed it out our living room window and saw a murder happen in the neighbor's window.


Just kidding just kidding just kidding.

I was able to get a pretty good view of the oil refinery that was 5 or 6 miles away from our house. It wasn't my favorite constellation Orion, but it got the job done. For New Years I got to travel via Amtrak to my Aunt Sue's house in LaCrosse - all by myself! They shoot off fireworks from a bluff on New Years Eve in LaCrosse which I had to see to believe. Fireworks were only supposed to be a 4th of July warm weather thing from all I'd known at that point. Seeing them at 12:01am on January 1st 1986 from the inside of a car was pretty damned cool.

*******

Blimey, I could go on and on about other highlights of Christmas past. I haven't even touched on The Great KISS solo album Chirstmas of 1979. Maybe next year. It's nice to be able to play these little home movies back in my brain every December. The weird thing is I don't even have to play them - they play themselves automatically. I catch a whiff of Christmas tree and am suddenly back in 1984 with my brother Chuck dropping Christmas ornaments strategically in our tree to see how far they'd fall. I see a tray of cookies and think of my Great Aunt Chris. I smell wrapping paper and I remember gift tags that said To: Mike From: Santa in handwriting that I never really realized looked a lot like my Mom's. And it doesn't matter what time of the year it is if smell turkey in the oven (which usually happens at the grocery store): It's 1982 and I'm back at Gert and Claire's again.

Brains are weird.

I think I'd like to make my version of A Christmas Story out of that kick-ass 1984 Christmas some day. Instead of a Red Rider BB gun I'll be asking for a dual cassette boom box with EQ and detachable speakers. It would be difficult to cast who would play me. I'm going through a list of current celebs in that age group and it's tough with all of the great talent out there. Jaden Smith would probably be the best fit.

Happy Holidays, y'all. May your 2011 not suck at all!