boston commoner.

welcome home

1) A Miracle on 34th Street (Admittedly not my favorite, or even a holiday necessity, but I needed a 10th, and we have to start somewhere.)

2) Frosty the Snowman (“Happy… B-b-birth-day!”)

3) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (If only to make fun of the wool-and-clay animee.)

4) The Homecoming (A Walton Family Christmas…”G’night, John-Boy!”)

5) Scrooge (The Albert Finney version, of course.)

6) White Christmas (Because Bing Crosby looks like my Grampa.)

7) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (MUST be the old-school version, complete with songs and funky, 70’s-style, psychadelic color schemes.)

8) Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown (“Loo, loo, LOOOOO, loo, loo, LOO LOO loo (gasp) LOO LOO LOOOOOOO loo loo loo loooo…”)

9) It’s a Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart is my hero.)

10) And last but definitely not least… A Christmas Story (“You’ll shoot you’re eye out, kid!”… “Jinger Bears, Jinger Bears, Jinger Are da Raaaay!”…I could go on…and on and on…this is my all-time favorite Christmas Comedy Classic. It just isn’t Christmas with Ralphy.)

Well, for any of you who’ve recently visited Mels’ recent post on the subject (and many of you have), the title for this post makes perfect sense.

About 20 minutes into this morning’s commute, the first flakes fell. Well, they were more like fuzzy raindrops, but you could tell by the way they dispersed on the windshield that they were at least partly flake. Saturday’s forecast: Snow, snow, snow. Seems we’re getting an early start :o) (more…)

Some people are too talented for words. I’m not one of them, but Melita Matzko is. Here’s one of her recent cityscape photos.

Have a wonderful weekend, folks!

Well, I have to hand it to Kerry. He had the opportunity, under law, to drag this thing out for another 11 days, despite the fact that a win was, apparently, a mathematical impossibility by earlier this morning. But he spared us all this horrible fate, wrapping things up with a simple phone call. It’s kind of..fun? funny? horribly sad?…to hear what some of his disappointed supporters have to say about things now. And I don’t mean that to sound remotely vindictive. But, for example, one news clip just revealed a Boston woman’s deep thoughts and political analysis on the election outcome:

“I’m..I’m sad, because…because…I wanted Kerry to win, and I mean…well, I think we’re held hostage by conservative terrorists, in my opinion…”

Ummm… My guess is that she was one of the democratic supporters vehemently advocating that America set aside its electoral college system and elect by popular vote this time. She was probably sure that if we did so, Bush would lose (he would have in 2000, apparently, had overall popular vote been the standard for election). But Bush WON the popular vote this year. Indisputably. So my question is, who are these conservative terrorists??? It seems that the election was fair, and that President Bush won, either way, justly; while the election was very close, “democracy” has declared itself a winner. (more…)

Okay, just some quick alerts and apologies with which to start off the month:

1) ALERT: Her name is Sherry Dubois. Maybe you know her? She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, particularly gifted in the area of foreign languages, administrations in general, and making me crack up ALL THE TIME :o) In the side-splitting sense, of course. I know her as Olga des Waldes, ex-german-class buddy extraordinaire, but she wears many hats — ‘Blogger’ being the latest addition to her cap collection. Check out her thoughts here. I think you might need to register to post a comment, but it only takes a second; I promise you, Olga will NOT let you down! She doesn’t know the meaning of the word entaeuscht.

2)APOLOGY: I was offline all weekend and utterly appalled at the number of spam comments that wormed their way into my blog while I was gone. I updated my “spam words” list and hopefully that will take care of the immediate problem. I’m aware that any of you who posted previously probably received those ads in your inboxes, and I’m mortified. Thankfully, this particular spam wasn’t vulgar, just ittitating; in either case, I do want you to know that I’m working on making this blog as spam-proof as possible. I hope this episode doesn’t dicourage your commenting in the future!

That’s it for now! Enjoy your Erste November!