Wednesday, December 17, 2008

On the Seventeenth Day of Christmas

Daily Photo: The grand-daddy of NYC trees -Rockefeller Center

I do love me some Christmas movies. Don't you? With the exception of "It's a Wonderful Life" (for which I have an inexplicable aversion), I could sit and watch holiday flicks over & over during this time of year.

Some of my favorites include:

"Christmas Eve on Sesame Street" (Old school style - before the untimely passing of Mr. Hooper and long before Elmo started mucking things up.)

"John Denver and the Muppets: Christmas Together" (That Ms. Piggy! What a ham!)

"White Christmas" (I never get tired of this one. It's even better than buttermilk and liverwurst!)

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" (So sweet, and whaddya know - keeps Christ in Christmas!)

"Elf" ("I just like to smile, smiling's my favorite!")

Of course, the perennial favorite is "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." The opening scene, as you may remember, involves the Griswold family trekking out to the middle-of-nowhere to find a tree (nearly as large as that one pictured above) to kick-off their good old-fashioned family Christmas celebration. With the bar set absurdly high, expectations aren't met, wacky hijinks ensue, and the threshold of lunacy is crossed one fateful Christmas Eve.

I typically watch N.L.C.V. each Christmas morning. And though I have the dialogue pretty well memorized, the jokes and gags no longer new, you better believe I still find this movie to be gosh-darn down-right *hilarious.* In fact, as I was reading through some movie quotes online just now, I was having trouble supressing my laughter. Laughter-to-the-point-of-tears is a rarity here amongst my beige cubicle walls (normally I just skip right to the tears). So I'm recognizing N.L.C.V. as my 'good thing' for today. Here are some quotes for you to laugh-til-you-cry at:

Ellen Griswold: “I don't know what to say, except it's Christmas and we're all in misery.”

Clark Griswold: “Can I refill your eggnog for you? Get you something to eat? Drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you for dead?”

Cousin Eddie: "Yeah, I got the daughter in the clinic, getting cured off the Wild Turkey. And, the older boy, bless his soul, is preparing for his career."
Clark: "College?"
Eddie: "Carnival."
Clark: "You got to be proud."
Eddie: "Oh, yeah. Yeah, last season he was a pixie-dust spreader on the Tilt-O-Whirl. He thinks that maybe next year, he'll be guessing people's weight or barking for the Yak woman. You ever see her?"
Clark: "No."
Eddie: "She's got these big horns growing right out above her ears. Yeah, she's ugly as sin, but a sweet gal. And, a hell of a good cook."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I (for shame) have never seen the flick, but the quotes DID make me laugh out loud. "A hell of a good cook..." Ta ha. -mab