Get Your Bells Jingled (Cigar Smoke 12-20-07)

Well, it’s that time of year again. I was walking in the Santa Anita Mall the other day and I smiled my holiday smile of charming cheer and goodwill and said to someone I thought was a nice lady, “Merry Christmas.” She did not answer me. What she did was cover her kid’s ears.

So I said, “Uh, Happy Holidays?” Nothing. So I said, “Sure hope you have some traditional tidings. I hear those are pretty nice.” Still nothing. So I pulled the kid’s hands off his ears and I said, “Your mommy is really your daddy.”

No, none of that actually happened. It was all in my psychotic paranoid fantasy world.

What really happened is some guy said, “Hi, how you doing?” and I said, “So’s your old man, buddy!”

After that friendly exchange, I walked over to the store that I associate with Christmas: Sharper Image. Every December I say to myself, “Jim, you wish-monger, where do you think you can find really incredibly cheap crap that has no recognizable use and is way, way overpriced?” and then I go to Sharper Image.

And sometimes when I go to Sharper Image and can’t find anything really laughably dumb and expensive, I amble up the way to Brookstone. I’ve never been disappointed there. Like, this year, some lucky person on my Christmas list will be receiving his own personal “Remote Control Barbecue Grill Temperature Gauge.” You probably think I’m making this up as an attempt at humor. Well, if you read my column regularly, (Then congratulations, you’re the one!) you know I don’t believe in humor.
I swear on a stack of Christmas coupons that this is a real item. It is dumb. It is useless. It is overpriced. It is real, dammit. I guess there is a real need for this item. How many times have you been barbecuing and you go into the house and sit down to watch a football game and say, “Man, I sure wish I had a remote control temperature gauge so I wouldn’t have to stand up and go all the way back out to the patio which is 18 feet away to check on how hot my meat is.”

But, before I buy it, I decide to go back to Sharper Image and do some comparison-shopping. I say to the Sharper Image clerk, “You got anything more stupid than this here remote control bullshit?”

He looks at me, pauses, rubs his chin, and says, “We sure do. Come over here. We just got these in. Don’t forget your wallet, sir.” And he shows me this “Projection Video iPod Attachment Console Double Amp Speaker Alarm Clock.” He tells me it will project the time on the ceiling in two-foot high letters. I am not overwhelmed. I am just whelmed. So, he adds, “It lets you hook up your iPod directly to the console base, and then you can wake up to Mötley Crüe yelling in the morning and see giant letters on your ceiling spelling out 6:30.” And he said, “It’s only $125.” I said, “I already did that back in the ‘60s for free, without a clock, and my giant letters had hair on them and were on fire.”

Well, before the guy could show me the “Elvis Gorilla Robotic Keyboard” for only $299, I thought I should eat lunch. So I go over to one of my favorite places, Johnny Rockets. I love the simplicity of that place: just a short menu, great hamburgers, good prices, the checkerboard floors and tables and shorts. And onion rings you can squeeze the oil out of and use for your car. I love that place.

So I order my Original Hamburger with everything on it and some fries and my Diet Coke (I don’t know who that Diet Coke fools anymore). And I’m feeling kind of Christmassed out. I’m just sitting there waiting for both my food and for the other shopping foot to drop, and this young guy brings me my burger and then he puts down the fries and bless his big ol’ pea-picking heart, he takes a paper plate and he takes a squeeze-bottle of ketchup and he squeeze-draws a little happy-face Santa with the ketchup on my plate. It was very moving. Really. I actually waited until I had eaten more than half of my hamburger before I destroyed his artwork with my first French fry.

Well, since I was feeling so good — yes, maybe even jolly — with my new happy face mood, I decided I would not spoil it by doing any more shopping. So I went out into the parking lot to cuss out some fellow sorry excuses-for-parkers. By the way, to keep in the holiday spirit, I did cuss them out to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”

Then I went home. And I told Marge about my happy face Santa ketchup moment, and she lovingly said, “Hmm? I didn’t think you were gay.” And then I told her about the Brookstone and Sharper Image episodes, and I couldn’t believe what she said next. My sometimes-loving wife was about to Charlie Brown my Christmas butt.

She said, “I hope you didn’t buy that Remote Control Thermometer thing.”

I said, “Yes, I bought it. I humiliated myself. I have it. Right here!”

And she said, “Well, Honey Pumpkin Poo Poo, I didn’t think you would really get it, so I bought one, too.”

I could not believe it. She had pulled a Lucy on me. Just when I was kicking that barbecued football remote, she pulled it back. She told me to go buy it. I bought it. Then she buys it herself. And I’m left holding the thermometer. Charlie and I are going to go get loaded.

Well, Merry Christmas everybody! I would just like to leave you with my new favorite Christmas hymn. I can hear it now. The soft female chorus voices. The haunting organ music in the background. “Give a, give a, give a, give a, give a Garmin. Garmin dot com. Garmin dot com.”