This being not only Thanksgiving but the last week in November to boot, it’s high time for me to get cracking on the annual Yuletide visitation from dear old Scrooge Picard, methinks. If things go a bit wonky for ya here and there, Dear Readers, now you know the reason for it. No, Ye Aulde Blogge Hoste is NOT drunk, stoned, or stark raving mad, I take my oath. Not anymoreso than usual, at any rate.
Update! Well, that certainly went much quicker and easier than it usually does. The Donorbox header-bg and button color I ain’t gonna fiddle with, clash violently with our holiday color scheme though that innocuous middlin’ blue admittedly does. To be perfectly honest, I’ve been considering just dumping the DB subscription contraption altogether anyhoo; the entire time it’s been up only one (1) person has ever made use of it, and after the poor schlub’s first payment processed without incident the follow-on monthly installments all kicked back as NFS. Finally, DB sent me an email advising me that fuck it, they were giving the annoying goat-rope up as a bad job. All in all, it seems to me the big, clunky thing is basically just taking up sidebar space which I require for other purposes, as Bertie Wooster used to say.
As regards the annual CF Christmas makeover, hopefully I didn’t forget something, leave something out, overlook something, break something inadvertently, etc etc. We shall see, I suppose.
Updated update! Overbearing Donorbox doohickey now duly dumped, as threatened. Tidies all that superfluous sidebar clutter up very handsomely, if I do say so myself. Which, y’know, I do. Establishes a nice, relaxing holiday mood around this h’yar dump, too. Festive, but not raucous, rowdy. or loud; friendly, without being overly insistent or aggressive. Soothing but never dull; laid back but never complacent; casual but never sloppy or slovenly. We could all use a little more of that sort of thing, I figger.
- Entries
I found that the Patrick Stewart Christmas Carol is truest to the language of Dickens. The book is quoted throughout, That makes it a pleasure to watch. I’m waiting for December before my annual reading of the story. One stave a day, though I often combine the last two.
I saw what turned out to be Stewart’s final Manhattan solo performance of ACC, tickets courtesy of my then-gf’s parents as our Christmas gift that year. I still have my Playbill and ticket stub from that show, they’re among my most prized possessions. It was simply amazing, I never in my life saw anything remotely like it.
Afterwards, we stood out in the cold, wind, and falling snow for almost three hours at the backstage door hoping to get an autograph with a big crowd of other theatergoers doing likewise.
To no avail, alas; one of Stewart’s minions opened the door to announce that the gifted thespian was kicking it with his wife and various other friends and/or family in his dressing room, the traditional closing-night party was in full swing just then. The hardier souls among us were welcome to keep waiting, the guy said; Picard would definitely be coming out to do the grip ‘n’ grin, meet ‘n’ greet, autograph-signing thing later on.
Me and my poor, uncomplaining Jen being half-frozen, wet, and utterly miserable by then, we hiked a few blocks crosstown to the Little Pie Company for coffee and a shared slice of their justly renowned apple with cheddar crust pie.
After lingering a good-ish while to enjoy a spot of people-watching out the front window by a roaring fire—real wood, that would be, mind—we grabbed a cab (a Checker, natch, nothing less would do; I stood in the slushy street with one numb-fingered hand aloft for quite a spell waiting for our rara avis ride to come along) for the jaunt back downtown to our toasty warm, cozy 3rd floor walkup at good ol’ 241 East Broadway, betwixt Clinton and Montgomery—the lights of the Williamsburg Bridge visible through the mist and fog looking uptown, the grand old Brooklyn Bridge ditto towards downtown.
Good times, good times. The BEST of times, really. As exorbitantly expensive, grungy-grimy, and just flat-out dangerous as my beloved NYC has become since then, back in the early-mid 90s under Rudy Giuliana’s benevolent, wise tenure there was truly no place on Earth I’d rather live. I was happiest when I was there; whenever I had to leave town for a few days, a week, or even longer, I couldn’t wait to get my ass back home again.
It’s been painful, almost physically so, for me to watch a dismal parade of Red-in-tooth-and-claw mayors drag the ol’ girl down to her present dreadful state of decay, decrepitude, and near-unlivable despair, the pus-nut bastiges. I miss the place still..and I wouldn’t go back there now if some fool paid me by the hour for it, no way. Well, excepting maybe in handcuffs, leg irons, and a straitjacket—and even at that, I’d put up one HELL of a good fight the whole trip.