My Sunday Feeling

Christmas Comes But Once Again. Thank God. - Yesterday’s game plan was to finish up Christmas shopping once and for all. Yesterday seemed to be the perfect opportunity for it since I only had a few more items and it was too cold to do anything useful. Like play golf.
As you may have deduced by now, Christmas is not exactly my favorite time of year. In fact, I pretty much hate it. The only reason I tolerate the damn thing is that I enjoy getting stuff for my nephews and my friends. And I enjoy going to church on Christmas Eve. But that’s about the extent of it.
Earlier this year, I had thought seriously about going to New Orleans by myself in order to ride the holidays out under a table at the Napoleon House. Maybe go play golf at Audubon Park. But Katrina changed all of that. Although I am reliably informed that the French Quarter is pretty much back to normal, the notion of spending Christmas surrounded by so much misery and devastation was crushingly depressing. Much more so than being here even. A friend of mine says about his marriage, “As long as they keep making whisky I can handle anything.” That’s the way I view Christmas.
One of the things I don’t understand is people who actually enjoy Christmas shopping. I know any of a number of folks-mostly women-who love to get out there and get shoulder to shoulder with their fellow man. Not me, I hate it. But while I realize that the easiest thing in the world would be do it all online, I feel this obligation to support local merchants as much as I can. I mean, I live here, not in Seattle where Amazon’s corporate headquarter is located. Which results in my getting out there and fighting the rest of the proletariat for parking places and stuff on shelves as bad as I hate it.
The phone rang as I was preparing to head out. It was my brother John. He was en route to Jonesboro to join his wife’s family for early Christmas. When he asked me what I was up to, I told him that I was going shopping and that, as per usual, I was looking forward to the day’s activities as much as I am looking forward to my colonoscopy later this month.
“Tell you what, “he said. “I’ll trade ya. I’ll go do your shopping. You go to Jonesboro.” Good point.
Which only proves once again that you don’t have to look too awful far to find someone whose troubles are worse than your own.
Anyway, he wanted me to find “a little red dump truck” for him to give to Max, our youngest nephew since I was free to move about on that day while he was sentenced to endure Craighead County. Hey, no prob. How hard could that be?
Famous last words.
I went first to a local toy store in the neighborhood. They had trucks, all right: Trucks and front-end loaders and earthmovers all made by some German toy company I had never heard of. Not a one of ‘em was priced below 50 bucks. This is a hell of a lot of money to spend on something a three year old will leave out in the rain.
So I headed west to Toys-R-Us. A buddy of mine in Los Angeles called while I was tooling down the Interstate. He said he once got asked to leave the Toys-R-Us over by him one Christmas. Seems the one he went to back when the girls were little stayed open all night. So he would go around one in the morning so as to avoid the crowd. The problem was that he would invariably go after consuming much Holiday cheer. Usually, this only resulted in him buying too much stuff. But what got him thrown out was the night he puckishly asked a clerk where he could find the sex toys at Toys-R-Us.
It is Yuletide memories such as these that will sustain us in our golden years. Unfortunately, I was sober yesterday and in no mood to be creating any such memories.
Once inside the goddamn place, and much to my pleasant surprise, I quickly found a miniature football that was on my list. I then went in search of a “little red truck.” Again, all that was offered there as well were reproductions of large earth moving type heavy equipment and all of them sporting hefty price tags. So, I thought I would just buy my little football and look for the “little red truck” elsewhere.
That was until I saw the check out line which snaked from the checkout stands all the way to the back of the store. No lie; there must have been 80-90 people in line to buy shit. This gave rise to another Christmas memory.
I had never darkened the door at Toys-R-Us until I got myself involved with the mother of two small children a couple of years ago. My job was to drop her off and to park the car. Next I would go inside, push the cart and reach the stuff on the top shelves. Then I would carry the stuff out. We would do this at least a couple of weekends each Christmas. I endured this not just out of love and devotion but because it made her happy and resulted in her bragging on me to her mother and to her girlfriends. That and she let me sleep with her.
But you know? She is no longer in the picture. And it occurred to me, as I stood there in that interminable queue of humanity, every other one of them yammering on a cell phone, that with her exodus also went any compelling justification for my putting up with this indignity just to buy little Max a football.
And so, I tossed the ball into a bin with a fey, offhand flick of my wrist and I blew Toys-R-Us, hopefully never to return.
Last night, I found a little red dump truck on Amazon for 15 bucks. It will arrive at John’s house, gift-wrapped and everything by next Wednesday.
I tried to shop locally. It’s just not worth it.
I betcha I could get sex toys on Amazon as well. But I haven’t looked.

Yippie-Yi-Oh-Kiyay Department- I don’t think that gay folks can seriously claim that they are underrepresented in the media given the recent glut of films featuring gay subject matter. There is “Capote” about which need I say more? There is “Family Stone, this year’s Christmas tearjerker that has a family member who, not only is gay, but is deaf to boot. As if this were not enough, the writers have him bringing home his black partner with whom he intends to adopt a child. There is a movie coming out-you should pardon the expression-about a man whose plans to become transgendered are momentarily put on hold when his long lost son reemerges just prior to surgery. No lie.
But the one generating the most buzz is the so called “gay cowboy” film “Brokeback Mountain.” While this film has received much critical acclaim as a work of cinematic art, I also wonder what Mel Brooks would have done with this material. I could see the likes of Nathan Lane in chaps yodeling to songs by Cher, Brooks would have him fussing neurotically over the placement of objects in the bunkhouse and referring to the ole Rio Grande as the Rio Fabulous . And so on.
I probably won’t see it. Not because I am a homophobe or anything. I just refuse to take seriously the premise of two rough hewn guys like the two in Brokeback Mountain who are tragically forced to accept their lot in life which happens to include being stuck with a couple of hot women.
I tell you a movie I will see though. I will go see “The Producers” which is the musical version of the old Mel Brooks movie that starred Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. The new movie has Nathan Lane in it. Nathan Lane could make “Death of a Salesman” funny.
I may go see the movie about the transsexual though. That one sounds even more fucked up than the notion of gay cowboys.

The Mitch Mustain Watch- If boy wonder Mitch Mustain does decide to go somewhere other than the U of A-and even Wally (who touted him as a Heisman candidate last summer) is starting to sound like it’s a foregone conclusion at this point. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth and all that-then I have the following question: Who was the genius up there on the Hill that decided it was a good idea to fire the coach that recruited the kid?
And that’s all for this Sunday. I have to go to the Mall. Pray for me.