November 28, 2018 There is only one Christmas movie...

November 28, 2018

There is only one Christmas movie.

Scrooge

A Christmas Carol

With Alastair Sim

I revel when people call me Scrooge. [Let me digress. For 6 years – absent the 12 days of Christmas spent in London in 1985 – one of my delights was a raree performed on the mezzanine in the North Tower of the World Trade Center I did all the great lines of “A Christmas Carol” – “Are there no prisons?”, “I wish to be left alone,”, “You’d feel yourself ill-used if I were to stop you half a crown”, “Humbug!” – and yes, alcohol was involved. I did it one year with a 5-foot Teddy bear alongside me. The bear didn’t seem to mind.

In the movie, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” accompanies the opening credits. The most important line, the line that transcends and glorifies, is “God and sinner reconciled”. And that leads us to this morning’s History and Culture lesson. 1300 years after the appearance of Christ, Dante wrote a poem with the great opening line of “Halfway through my journey I found myself in the dark wood of error”.1300 years after the appearance of Mohammed, and because we are entering the holy season of Advent I will not call him a goat-humping paedophile, we still wait for a Muslim Dante. I suppose that just after he appears we will see and hear an Islamic Mozart or an unDervished Shakespeare. Yeah. Don’t forget that Tiny Tim turned out OK so all things are possible.

I never got to say, “It was said he could keep Christmas well, if any man alive knew how”. It is the greatest line of all. Sin, misery, hope, redemption. Dare I say it’s what Christmas is all about or is the cultural rot too deeply affixed to our souls, to our psyches?

No one does it better than Alastair Sim. You can make egg nog in May.

This morning I checked the Irish sports pages of the Jersey Journal. If you’re not from Bayonne you may know them better as the obituary pages. Not recognizing any of the names I nevertheless offered a Christian Kaddish for the happy repose of the souls about to begin the journey to the undiscovered country. It’s what old people do.

I then read of a complaint filed by a Black Hudson County employee against his supervisor. The supervisor allegedly said that his hair was “nappy”. I e-Mailed the author, one Xmcdonald with some questions. Alas, since I am technologically challenged it was returned. Enclosed is the text of the messages.

“Is truth an absolute defense against libel?” What if his hair is “nappy”? Exactly what is “hate speech”? Have you read Dick Gregory’s autobiography? Don’t ask for it by name. This was sent at 7:31 AM to tmcdonald@journal.com.

The next one was sent at 7:59 AM. It too was returned.

“Maybe you can help me. Governor-elect Ron DeSantis used the word “monkey” as a verb and was immediately branded with “R” as in Racist, today’s Scarlet Letter. Perhaps not as racist as Woodrow Wilson or Sam Ervin or Al Gore or Al Sharpton but definitely brandable using the single drop theory made familiar by “Show Boat” and codified by the Margaret Sanger inspired Nuremberg Race Laws of 1934. As a working journalist, could you send me a list of verboten words, almost verboten words, and used to be verboten words. As a disabled senior citizen, it would be most appreciated. Plus, what should I do about my “monkey” wrench?”

Anyone care to help me?

PS – To all Bayonne ex-pats. The Jersey Journal is now based in Secaucus. Speaking of Secaucus, I called a local pizza place for a late night pick up order. He told me he was shutting down but then he asked if, in fact, I was the Kevin Smith. I told him that indeed I was. In due course I went to pick up the pie, he told me that I wasn’t the real Kevin Smith. I showed him my non-racially motivated photo ID, a Florida license, and then I told him, in the best Bayonne tradition to shove the pie up his ass.

I bought a 12 pack of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, still the best non-craft beer in America. It was $3 less for the case then it would have been for 2 six packs. Act accordingly.

  Speaking of Margaret Sanger, I am going to yield to the pressure of my reading public and bring back my 3 prestigious awards. They are

HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK

POMPOUS FART OF THE MONTH

&

SAMRMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR

I will start with 3 previous winners of the annual award.

MARGARET SANGER

RACHEL CARSON

MARGARET MEAD

Even though they are still dead – Deo Gratias! – their perfidy, treachery, intellectual dishonesty, and murder live on. Attention should be paid to them. As long as I draw breath their scandalous behavior will be highlighted. Armed guards, with bayonets pointed in, should be posted at their graves lest they escape and work their evil on the body politick.

Be aware that their proselytizing acolytes are everywhere. And they knavishly set traps for fools. Be advised.

Let me honor the first winner of the SMARMY BASTARD award. New Jersey Superior Court Judge Carole Ferentz was a meaner than cat shit, fat-assed Hecate who took great delight in humiliating lawyers and pro se defendants. If she were on fire I wouldn’t piss on her to put it out. And if you don’t believe me, strike a match. When I returned to her court room with a stay signed by a New York Appellate Court Judge she pfumpered a bit. I then explained, slowly and deliberately, very slowly and very deliberatively, that Article 4, Section 1 of the Constitution, the one written by James Madison, gave her no choice but to accept my petition and grant me the relief sought. She actually began to dribble and drool when I read the exact language. Wonder of wonders! 

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I have long argued that if pre-existing conditions don’t count when applying for health insurance they shouldn’t count for auto – So what if you have DUIs – and homeowner’s – What’s a little arson? – but I missed the big one. Why should it count when trying to get life insurance? Let the race begin for franchises at hospices. As a concession to the insurance companies nothing less than a quarterly premium is acceptable. Age? No problem. In fact, why not a universal premium that averages all ages? Why should young folk get a better deal than old folk? Aren’t actuarial tables, like the Constitution, a living, breathing document? It should be, shouldn’t it? Another thing for Bernie the Bolshie and Chiquita Octavio-Cortez to work on, right?

President Obama, and how can I miss him if he won’t go away, claimed credit for America’s boom in oil and gas production. Next, he’ll be claiming credit for Chicago’s booming murder rate. Then he’ll claim credit for the burgeoning student loan default rate. The man has no shame. I don’t know whether it is genetic, racial, cultural, or ideological. I do know, and it is owed to the ledger to point it out, that production on Federal oil and gas leases was down in his 8 years. All of the increase came from privately owned lands and said increase is almost entirely due to fracking. Let the record further show I fracked my first well in Duval County, Texas. In addition to that famous fact, Duval County is where Honest Abe Fortas found the votes necessary for “Landslide Lyndon” to get to the US Senate and to begin the journey that ended with the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. That’s the wall with 58,515 names on it, with the names being limited to Americans killed in combat there.

I enjoy being the highly literate curmudgeon who points out that the number of horses’ asses should always, always equal the number of horses’ heads. Alas, it doesn’t. 

Take settled science, for instance. Ptolemy was numero uno for 15 centuries. That’s a millennium and a half. Along came Copernicus and Galileo and the only time anyone remembers him because the United States Navy named its PT boats after him. Ditto for Fred Hoyle. Has anyone ever heard of a sitcom called the Steady State Theory?

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – Modern American Liberals regard pacts and accords, particularly on subjects dear to their hearts, as Holy Writ. Thus, when Trump blew up the Paris Climate shakedown, their knickers knotted. Flash, you nit-wits. Global Warming ended the last Ice Age. The Little Medieval Ice Age gave us cellos by Stradivarius. Look it up, you boobs