Alesha, Astrid and Éire

I just heard the 9:08 train to Cardiff Central roll past. For some reason, that made it official for me that Christmas is over.

For those of you playing along at home, trains and buses don't run in Britain on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Everything stops -- only the godless Spar stays open. Now that Christmas is passed, we'll slip into a half-speed routine for the next week, with everything again coming to a standstill on New Year's Day.

It was a good Christmas, starting with Alesha Dixon winning "Strictly Come Dancing." I voted for her twice, which is a clear sign that I am coming unglued; I am phone voting for celebrities on camp television. I try telling myself that doing this is simply an extension of my love for all things British -- obsessing over reality television is a national pastime here -- but I am still slightly embarrassed.

Probably not as embarrassed, though, as Jenny and Chris think I should be. At Thanksgiving they were wearing looks of serious concern and discomfort when I was talking about my love for the show. Theirs was the same look you might give someone going on and on about the innocent eroticism of child pornography: "OK, it's a given we're never going to speak to this man again. Do we just get up and walk out now, or leave it, hope he shuts up, and bolt at the earliest opportunity?"

But how can you not love the British Beyonce? That's Bruce Forsyth's estimation of Alesha Dixon, at least -- indicating more Bruce's total lack of awareness of Beyonce Knowles than anything else. He told Alesha this after she won the "Strictly Come Dancing" trophy.

"You can sing and dance. You've got quite an act," Bruce told her.

A little song, a little dance -- that's all you need to make it big. Apparently, vaudeville is not dead in Brucie's world.

Nonetheless, I was so enamoured by the show that once again I got out the video camera and forced the child bride to dance with me. Our making an ass of ourselves is becoming a Christmas tradition. That dance is the third take, with the other two showing an even more shocking lack of physical rhythm on my part. Originally, I had wanted to walk into shot moving my arms and hands in that exaggerated way you see in Salsa dances. But I did it so poorly that it was neither camp nor suave nor funny. I was spastic; I looked like a meth addict trying to swat away imaginary mosquitoes. Looking at myself jerk around in semi-epileptic fashion, I was suddenly taken back 15 years to when I was in Santo Domingo, hearing Merengue music for the first time.

Groups of people would gather on roadsides, throw open the doors of their cars, crank the radios and dance in the street. In a hotel, I heard the music blaring again and tried to mimic the dance I had seen. Then I looked around and noticed that two men in the bar had fallen off their stools, laughing at me.

The Amazing Astrid rolled into Cardiff on Christmas Eve for a short stay at the palatial Cope estate, which pretty much made the holiday for me.

I think having an extra person in the house encouraged the child bride and me to make more of an effort in celebrating. Had we been on our own, we probably would have sat around for two days, listlessly staring at the television. We still did a lot of that in Astrid's presence (I don't think I will ever again be able to go visit family in the U.S. over Christmas, for fear of missing the "Doctor Who" Christmas episode) but there were also good meals, sitting around talking, playing games and occasionally getting out of the house.

"Getting out of the house" is a phrase which for me is most often synonymous with "going to the pub." So we took Astrid to the Blue Anchor, which Rachel always bills as the oldest pub in Wales. I don't actually know that to be true. The Blue Anchor was established in 1380 and has been operating steadily as a pub ever since. Having 627 years under its belt certainly makes the Blue Anchor old, but I'm not sure there aren't others out there as old or older. It is, at least, the oldest pub in Wales that I have been to.

My immune system apparently can't handle two days of Hot Astrid Action and I am now ill, stumbling around the house in that sort of idiot haze that so often comes with cold symptoms. This wouldn't bother me so much if the child bride and I weren't Dublin-bound. On Saturday we're going over to stare at things for a few days and then spend New Year's Eve and New Year's Day with a friend who grew up in Dublin's northern suburbs. I will be leaving out the suburbs element when retelling the story to American friends.

New Year's in Dublin just sounds cool. New Year's in Skerries -- not so much. From what our friend Claire tells us, it will be an evening of imbibing with middle-aged people. Rock. If I were a single man, I would now be practising how to undo the clasp on a Marks & Spencer bra.

Christmas Without Robots

If you haven't had enough Christmas spirit, my latest column is out.

Merry Christmas

Music by Billy May Orchestra.

A time to sip an eggnog martini

This is Paul Simon and Steve Martin performing a sort of Christmas monologue. Reportedly the track comes from a "Saturday Night Live" rehearsal, but never made it to air for some reason.

For our friends in the Home Nations, "Saturday Night Live" (or simply "SNL") is a long-running television programme that has served as the starting point for most of America's comedy catchphrases. Americans always struggle with the fact that SNL doesn't exist in Britain. We'll say something like, "It was better than 'Cats,'" and you will just sit there and stare at us in that way you always do.

One thing I find interesting is that I can hear my own comedic timing in this. That's not surprising, I guess -- when I was a boy, I listened to Steve Martin records over and over and over (perhaps a questionable decision on my parents' part, but there you go).

My favourite part comes at 03:20.

Too cool for Yule

This picture both amuses and pains me. It is me, Sara, and Sara's best friend Michelle back in 1995.
Damn it we were cool.
So, so cool.
Really cool.
Maybe if I keep saying it to myself that will make it true.
Great googly moogly, we were cool.

Did I mention how cool we were?

I am a magpie. I am that bloke off 'Final Fight'

It feels like winter in Yr Hen Ddinas, which means that it is wet and windy and miserable. It's not all that cold, admittedly; by Minnesota standards it is spring-like. But the conditions make you want to stay inside, wrapped in a blanket and refusing to move, unless to shuffle to the kitchen for more port. This is Christmas in Cardiff.

We are supposed to get 80 mph wind gusts overnight, but already the tree in our garden is dancing a strange sort of solitary mosh in the wind. On top of the house across the garden, there is a magpie clinging to a TV aerial (FTYPAH: "antenna"). He looks absolutely miserable and it strikes me as a particularly odd place for him to attempt to station himself. Surely birds instinctively understand things like wind and know better than to position themselves in less blatantly exposed locations.

I feel a bit like that magpie at the moment -- hanging on desperately, and almost certainly failing to identify simple steps that could be taken to make things less stressful. I am hoping that things will improve from next Thursday, when my Christmas breaks starts.

I have several things to do over the break, but at least the work won't keep piling on. I have so much trouble keeping up in my courses not because I'm not interested or not doing the work, but because they keep happening. Week after week. I could probably keep up if I had a week of lectures followed by a week to debrief. But as is, I find myself pushing to the end of the semester feeling as if I am playing one of those arcade fighting games, and I'm looking at that little meter that tells you how much strength you've got left and I'm thinking: "Fuck, there's no way I'm getting past this level."

In an effort to push time forward I am listening to Christmas music almost nonstop these days. Strangely, that hasn't driven me mad yet. Or, maybe it has and I'm not aware of it. Either way, I am doing my best to get into the spirit of the season.

For those of you playing along at home, getting into the spirit of things is a lot easier on this side of the world. It's the booze, you see. Christmas + Britain = Booze. On Friday I was in Marks & Spencer and they had three different areas in the store where people were giving away generously-sized free samples of port and mulled wine.

Free booze for shoppers. Yes! That sort of thing would be against the law in Minnesota. And it's a damn shame in economic terms, because a wee tipple has a certain way of loosening the wallet. Once, after spending an afternoon drinking with my brother, I went with the child bride to Target, where I wandered off with the cart ("trolley" for our friends in the Home Nations) while she looked at clothes. When she finally caught up with me, the cart was loaded with myriad items that I insisted we buy for her.

I wasn't quite in that state on Friday, but in a good mood and eager to run about city centre. When I finally got on the train home I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment, a feeling that is rare in these days of always playing catch-up in academics. Nothing is ever done in university, I simply run out of time to focus on it any longer and turn in whatever shit I've come up with so far.

"Look at me," I thought. "Look at all the stuff I got. I have actually done something"

When I wrapped it all up and put it under the tree, it looked far less impressive, but I am still excited. Especially so because Astrid will be here celebrating with us. I don't know what kind of horrible things must have happened in her life that she has fallen so far down she is now stuck spending Christmas with the Copes, but there you go. If I gain from others' misfortune, who am I to complain?

I am especially excited because there will be another alcohol drinker in the house. The child bride is a teetotaller, which would normally leave only me to consume all the booze-laden Christmas goodies. Unfortunately, I prefer these things in quantities too small to validate their purchase.

Indeed, on the whole, I refuse to drink anything stronger than beer. Higher-octane stuff has a bad habit of sneaking up on me. One minute I'm having a witty conversation, the next minute I'm not wearing a shirt and demanding to go on a road trip and weeping.

But it's Christmas, see. And I am really eager to enjoy all these brandy-infused things and port and mulled wine and so on. And with Astrid coming, I now feel that it won't be a waste to buy all this stuff. So, my Christmas plans involve getting a Dutch girl drunk and stuffing her full of mince pies. That sounds like the sort of thing you'd pay premium rates to see on the internet, but you get what I mean.

Pancho Claus reads this blog

Richard Reyes (aka Pancho Claus) has commented on a post I wrote about him some time ago.

With all due respect to any other famous people reading my blog, having Pancho Claus drop by is easily this blog's greatest moment (even better than when I encouraged Huw to drink a gallon of milk in an hour).

Some day when I get time, I will take it upon myself to write the Wikipedia entry that Pancho Claus so rightfully deserves.

Point Dan

Some time ago, my friend Anthony confided in me that he and another friend, Dan, had developed a sort of points-based system for mentions received on this blog. I recently found myself thinking about this running competition when I finally switched over to the new version of Blogger.

For me, of course, the biggest difference in the two versions has been the end of my bullet-point system, and my attempting to use labels. I get the sense that I'm not using them to their full potential. But, how much potential could possibly exist in a label? Nevertheless, whatever-the-hell else labels are good for, they can at least keep track of who's winning Dan and Anthony's blog-mention battle.

"Awesome," I thought, "from this point forward, 'Anthony' and 'Dan' will be labels. My only problem is that I haven't heard from either of them in a coon's age, so I don't really have anything Dan- or Anthony-related to blog about."

Thankfully, everything Dan owns was reduced to ashes on Christmas Day. That's a talking point.

I only learned about this today. While Dan was enjoying Christmas with his family, everything in his apartment -- where the joy of the beer float was uncovered -- was being reduced to cinders. The picture above is of his entertainment centre, or what is left of it. The picture below is of his office.

"I think karma is punishing me for being Republican," Dan told me. "By the way, if you don't have renter's insurance, I suggest getting it."

That last bit of advice came a bit late for Dan, who was left with just a few clothes and a story that should hold up well against every other bloke's my-worst-girlfriend story: "Wow, that sounds like a pretty harsh relationship. I guess getting over her might have been like, oh, I don't know, having to put your life together after all your worldly possessions were lost in a fire..."

You thought your New Year was off to a rough start. But there are positives to all this. First, Dan gets to live that "getting rid of all your old shit and starting life anew" fantasy that we've all had -- whether he wanted to or not.

"I'm trying to take the, 'this is very liberating,' route," he said.

Second, and most importantly, Dan takes the first point with ease.

Wikipedia drops the ball

Am I the only white person in the world who remembers Pancho Claus? He was a Mexican lowrider-Santa-Claus-fella in Houston who showed up everywhere when I was a kid. When my family moved to Minnesota, I was shocked and appalled that people there had never heard of him.

There was at least one TV special featuring Pancho Claus bringing toys to all the cool girls and boys. His elves were a mix of Pachucos and cholos and at some point there was a mariachi band*. Most of Pancho Claus' actions involved standing at an angle and flipping a silver dollar. I remember, also, that at some point a kid laments that he will not see Pancho Claus because his family's house doesn't have a chimney.

"I don't use chimneys," says Pancho Claus. "I'm not getting this suit dirty."

Apparently he's still around, but I couldn't find anything about him on Wikipedia. Every minor Star Trek character to get 15 seconds of screen time is documented, but Pancho Claus gets nothing. There's something inherently wrong about that.

*Not really related to this, but not worth putting into a post of its own, my all-time favourite use of a mariachi band came when Michael Moore's short-lived "TV Nation" sent one to drown out a KKK rally.

I've got a fever; and the only prescription is more sleigh bell.

Merry Christmas
Nadolig Llawen
Feliz Navidad
Happy Hanukkah
Happy Sol Invictus
Happy Quaid-e-Azaim's Day
Happy Constitution Day
And on and on and on...

Christmas cards

We got Christmas cards today from the Phins, and the Johnsons. I mention that just so they will know that the cards have been received and are muchly appreciated. We're putting all our cards on the modern hearth -- the television -- and are now running out of space, so we don't feel too lonely this Christmas.

For our part, we've been ridiculously slow in sending out cards. We got out all the ones to family last week, but I was still sending a few to friends today.

-30-

Booze!

Christmas in Britain kicks the ass of Christmas in the U.S. because of the number of booze-laden products available: mulled wine, mince pies with brandy in them, Christmas pudding with cognac in it, rum sauce to put on my brandy mince pies and cognac Christmas puddings! Woot! If anyone needs me, I'll be lying on the floor.

Christmas message

Sound is a little poor, feel free to turn it up.