Well I took a few weeks off because of the busy holidays, but I'm back now. I'll have some totals of everything I watched X-Mas related soon.

Trying to get back to posting over at Infinite Hollywood as well.

Didn't win Poe Ghostal's Santa Spud contest, but I did win his regular Odds & Ends contest and am now the proud owner of a new Iron Man figure. GOOD TIMES!

How the Grinch Stole Christmas: I watched this last night and it never gets old. The cartoon is so perfect, it's explanation of Christmas is magical and not overly about Santa. It's about the SPIRIT of Christmas and yet doesn't mention a single religious thing. That's what makes the Grinch so special. That and the awesome work of Mr. Boris Karloff, who was a HUGE Christmas lover. Something I learned on Paul Harvey many years back.

Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa: This was amusing for a few reasons. It had the typical Muppets charm, but Pepe the King Prawn REALLY shined as he tends to do as ell as the big Bear. Not sure if the Bear has a name, but he totally stole the show in Muppets in Space and he darn near stole the show here too. Uma Thurman made a guest appearance and looks remarkable.

Food Network Christmas Party: Another thing my GF made me watch. Alton Brown and Giada Delaurentis were WAY too flirty. Somethings going on between those two. They were all over each other. You heard it here first.

I have more shows I plan on watching this weekend so I'll update this then.

In other Christmas related news, we were supposed to get 12 inches of snow... We didn't get any. I dunno how the weatherman can be THAT wrong. We did get a little freezing rain and maybe some more snow is on the horizon. We'll see. I want a white Christmas.

My other blog, http://infinitehollywood.blogspot.com/, went from getting around the same number of hits as this site to becoming the #1 response on Google for TMNT Brawl. All because I was able to get the scoop on the new TMNT video game + action figures.

All the hits haven't translated to posts, but hopefully they will translate into regular readers. I'm proud of the work I've been doing on these two blogs. I hope that I can continue to get readers and increase some sort of a fanbase here.

We shall see.

Christmas season is upon us again and I've been busy watching Christmas TV shows. Obviously this is a tradition that I'm not alone in, but I thought I'd share with you what I've watched so far. So I can have a list for next year of what I watched and if I plan on watching it each year. (There are certain shows/movies I try to watch every year...)

Scooby Doo's Christmas - This was made just a couple of years ago, but actually followed the Scooby Doo formula well. Some of the later Scooby shows have had "real" monsters and I was pleased to see that this one didn't. Wasn't hugely Christmas(y) or entertaining, but it wasn't bad either. A fun 30 minutes.

Muppet's Christmas Carol - Despite being a HUGE Muppet fan and a huge Christmas Carol fan, I'd never actually watched this all the way through. I'd seen over 90% in assorted sections, but finally sat down and watched it all this year. I really enjoyed it, particularly Michael Caine's turn as Scrooge.

Assorted Iron Chef America Christmas Battles - I loved the original Japanese Iron Chef, but seeing as how we don't get new episodes, I settle for the American version. These were alright, but not great.

Xtreme Christmas Cake Challenge - My GF likes cooking shows, so sue me! I didn't care too much for any of the cakes quite honestly. As per the norm with this show, the guy's cake who didn't fall apart pretty much won by default.

30 Rock Christmas Special - Pretty funny. 30 Rock is a great show. Not the best episode though.

Robot Chicken Christmas Specials 1 & 2 - Both were pretty hilarious. I'd seen the one with Composite Santa before, but I didn't recall the other. I loved the Misery take on Charlie Brown's Christmas. "Val Kilm-d-er is dead"

2 Christmas Episodes of That 70's Show - One was better than the other. Don't remember the names or themes, but the one where Red has to work late and Eric and Kelso chop down a state park tree is the better of the two.

King of the Hill Christmas - Underrated show. "Peppermint schnapps makes me sloppy."

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Star-Studded Christmas Spectacular - Nowhere near as funny as "Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future" and wasn't really Christmas themed at all. Just clips from the movie, that didn't make the movie. Funny stuff though, but didn't jingle my bells any.

That's it so far, I think... I have a ton of stuff Netflixed and Tivoed for the next few days of Holiday viewing. I also went and saw a play of "A Christmas Story" yesterday and enjoyed it quite a bit. Some minor changes from the movie and it was painfully long at 2 1/2 hours, but it was nicely down and entertaining all the same.

In a sign of the times (And because of the slumping industry as a whole) KB Toys is going out of business.

This makes me sad. I wasn't a huge KB Toys fan, but I always found neat stuff there. I bought some toys there not long ago actually. They were the place I found my Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer "Bumble" figure after years of searching.

So long KB, thanks for the memories.

Over at Poe Ghostal's Points of Articulation website, I've sabotaged his contest over his Holiday Odds and Ends picture in my quest to win a Santa Spud. I never win anything, I deserve this Poe!

Seriously though, I think it's nice that I got some people's retro memory going. I picked some fun things for my Odds & Ends picture. Can you guess them all?



I'm sure Poe knows everything in the picture. He's a bit of a toy expert. Then again, he hasn't responded yet. But maybe he doesn't want to be strong armed into giving up his Tater!

I got He-Man and Beastman in the mail today. These figures are so nice. I'm debating leaving them in the package. I rarely do that (Although more often now than before mostly due to space) but I definitely think these are items that deserve to be taken out and messed around with.

I actually fully believe that Mattel will eventually get these figures into stores for a much cheaper price, so I'm not too worried about opening them. Though, if and when they do end up being retail items, it could take a few years and the packages will likely be more mass retail friendly.

Still, it's cool to have them in hand.

I'll probably do a review over at Infinite Hollywood in the next few days.

I was over at X-Entertainment (Everything I aspire to be and more!) and Matt had a great topic about getting crappy gifts for people. It reminded me of these school Santa's workshops they used to have. Basically like through the month of November and December they would give you this little paper gingerbread house and you'd go around collecting coins and cash from relatives to spend at the schools "Santa's Workshop"... I think the whole thing was a thinly veiled school fundraiser.

The "Workshop" was comprised of some pretty lame gifts, stuff like pencils and coffee mugs. But as a kid it always felt great to be able to your parents and siblings some Christmas gifts that you'd actually bought with your own money. Even if they were goofy looking "World's Greatest Dad" ones. I remember my dad seemed to like one particularly one year.

I remember getting him and my brother some Cardinal and Wildcat team pencil holders. I think my dad used it to hold screws and stuff. Oh well, at least he used it. Right?

Strange how Christmas makes you think of those things. Seems like only yesterday. Now I don't even talk to my mother. I bought my dad a coat though for this year. I try to get him good gifts. I got him one of those Plug-N-Play Pacman's a few years ago, back before they were super cheap.

Mostly because my dad is like the Pacman king. Then a couple years later I got him a portable Golden Tee Golf game, because he loves that game in the bars. I've also gotten him tons of booze before. But I figure that's a mistake this year and went with something more, useful!

I don't really have anyone cool to buy for this year. I used to love buying for my GF, but we've been together so long now that I feel like there is nothing I can get her to surprise her. The first few years were great because I'd get her stuff she wouldn't expect. But I'm low on creativity anymore. Plus she has like no hobbies. Which is entirely my fault I assume.

I like to get my brother a cool gift every year, but he's so wishy-washy on when he has money and when he doesn't that I often end up getting him a gift and I never get anything in return. That's of course, not the way to be, but Xmas, Birthdays, I never get jack... So I eventually have to cut him off from freebie gifts. I'm hoping we can do an exchange this year, cause I got a cool idea, but it's kind of costly and my GF might put the smackdown on me and say no.

We'll see.

Today ALL the snow from the last couple of days melted, which sucked. But as I look outside, it's snowing again. So hopefully we can get it back up to a reasonable level. It's not Christmas without snow.