Is It Spring Yet?

Seriously. I’m ready. Winter had its chance. By my own standards, which should be mandated and followed, snow should be allowed from Thanksgiving until January 15th. During that time, Mother Nature has free reign to produce as much snow as possible. Why? Because that’s when it’s pretty and fluffy and fun. That’s when it looks like something out of a Thomas Kinkade painting and doesn’t make you depressed because it’s like ‘effin’ Winter man. Then after January 15th, it needs to stop snowing and begin to warm up into Spring, so that by March it’s like 40 degrees in the middle of the afternoon.

Around here, it can be 70 ‘effin’ degrees on a Monday in January and then minus a gagillion (make that number real, damnit!) by Friday with three feet of snow on top of a foot of ice with small children trapped in it like a Jello mold.

Then it just gets dark and dreary and windy and icy and your fingers crack and break off in door handles. Then you have people walking around with blue stumps for digits. You drive around with enough salt caked on your car to give the Jolly Green Giant high blood pressure. The ash from the trucks sticks to everything and it looks like Pepperland after the Blue Meanies rolled through. That shit gets old, real quick.

Then in February, when we start to think about Spring and cabin fever sets in, Mother Nature starts ragging it and gets all pissed off at us and decides to dump three feet on us, closing schools for a week. Parents who just got their sanity back from Christmas break start reaching for a bottle and a razor blade because the kids can’t go outside. I mean how can they, the door is blocked by three feet of snow and the windows can’t open.

This past weekend is a perfect example. Thursday and Friday were cold and the rain became a wintry mix with coated our cars with a shell of ice, topped by snow on Saturday. Then, Sunday, temperatures climbed out of the cellar and everything started to melt. Now, it’s raining and somewhere around 40 degrees and the forecast has the high at 52 degrees, although it comes with the chance of thunderstorms. What the hell?

Can we at least have some consistency? How about 34 degrees, cloudy, and a chance of rain, on some days, for another month?

Avoiding the Plague Like... The Plague

Last week, my four year old had a double ear infection and the stomach flu, which tells me one thing.  It must be January.   At least this year, we have insurance, so she's on the mend.  This is good because you never want to see your kid so sick that she has fallen asleep with her hand on her arm dangling over the toilet sleep.  She was so sick throughout that night.

This weekend my wife also started to complain of her ear hurting and then, boom, stomach flu.  So, if she should wonder why I spent most of the weekend in the man cave, finishing up Dead Island, which coincidentally is about a resort that gets hit with an infectious disease that makes everyone become zombies, there's your answer.  I don't want the stomach flu.

I had it a few years back over Valentine's Day.   This year's bout was over my wife's birthday and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  See, we don't do well with holidays.   I was determined to not get it.   At least, I was hoping that if I did, in fact, get it, it would be before having to go back to work.   So far, so good, but my ear started hurting yesterday.  I've had an insatiable appetite, though.   I guess that's great because I'd rather have a full stomach than be dry heaving.  Let's hope I'm not coming down with any cravings for raw meat...


Brraaiinns!

How Hot Is It?

It’s apparently so hot in the Pittsburgh and the surrounding regions, known as Pennsyltucky, that people’s brains have melted. Yes, their memory receptors have begun malfunctioning because they are complaining. That’s right, complaining. Lest we forget that six months ago a lot of us had no power, three feet of snow, and little hope of being able to get the kids out of the house and back into school before we went crazy. It must be scorching out there.

I remember sitting in the darkened and frozen cave that was Chez Mongo, wearing full snow gear, exhausted after trying to dig out my car. My wife had put a pot of boiling water on the stove, which was luckily gas powered, in order to raise the temperature to a balmy 46 degrees, so that out cats didn’t rise up and attack us for letting their comfy 70 degree home get chilly. We had been forced to take up temporary residence at my in-laws, which involved packing up a week’s worth of gear for us and our two and a half year old. I remember getting completely unpacked, futon mattress on the floor, with linens on it and clothes out of the suitcase before having the hunch to call our house to see if the answering machine would pick up. One of my cats answered instead informing me that “You better get over here. The house is possessed. One minute darkness, next minute every light and appliance is on full blast. I has a scared.”

Yep, the entire Eastern seaboard was pummeled with snow in February. So much snow, that civil services shut down the government, paramedics told injured people to walk up the road, plow trucks were in short supply and nearly every roof in the tri-state area collapsed. And we all bitched about the cold and the snow and the power outages and the lack of communication and ability to harvest crops and kill rival mafia members. Civilization was crumbling around us as we were forced to *gasp* talk to each other in person.

But that’s all ancient history, now. No one cares about the three of snow that sat on top of their cars. No one bats an eyelash at the thought that if the Sun were to say, “Oh ‘eff it!” and shut off tomorrow we’d be plunged back into cold temperatures. As long as the mercury doesn’t stay on the north end of the thermometer for more than a week we’ll be happy. I mean we could be faced with the prospect of seeing Justin Bieber burst into flames and Lady Gaga might have to stop wearing elaborate costumes and that would be bad. Please, President Obama, invoke sanctions against the Sun and order it to stop being so hot. You are magical and can solve all the world’s problems. You are not some mere mortal in an executive office that has protocol and procedures to adhere to, right? Make the Sun stop. It’s too hot.

Dear God, I have to walk outside, across the grass filled yards, in the bright warm Sun, wearing shorts and stare up at a blue sky that isn’t filled with clouds and a million snowflakes laughing at me with my puny snow shovel. HOW CAN YOU BE SO CRUEL? I have to drive on the open roads, using all lanes, with the windows down, or AC on, listening to reports about beaches and pools and barbecues and concerts and fireworks and baseball games. MAKE IT STOP! I have to see scantily clad ladies laying out and sunning themselves. OH MY RETINAS! (just kidding honey *smooches*) I have to hear the sound of my kid laughing as she splashes around in the pool and gets all tuckered out that she naps for three hours. THE HORROR!

The only thing that gives me solace is that six months from now I’ll be back to breathing heavily as I shovel out the car, frostbitten, flush faced and snotty nosed. That will make it all better. Sigh. Yeah blizzards. Hooray for States of Emergency.

‘Eff you, Sun.

Let the Games Begin, Eh

The 2010 Winter Games are here. Regardless of how people feel about the Olympics or your general distrust of a governing body like the IOC, you have to admit that it’s just a cool sight to behold. The U.S. definitely got caught up in the 2008 Summer Games in Bejing with the Michael Phelps whirlwind in and out of the pool and I personally loved seeing Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh snap up the gold in Beach Volleyball. But for all the fanfare and bravura that the Summer Games hold, I still find something more magical about the Winter Games.  And I also feel the slowly rolling eyeballs of my wife shifting around as I get geeked over this.

For any of us that grew up in the early to mid 80s we are all pretty much familiar with the EPYX line of Olympic Games titles like Summer Games, Summer Games II, and of course Winter Games. I can remember being in grade school and playing Summer Games on a Commodore 64. The state of the art graphics *sarcasm* that was the C-64 made us drool at the prospect of competing in events like diving and the pole vault. I actually found a glitch that let me keep going until the height of the bar in the pole vault was way above the screen. But even then, the Winter Games edition was so much more fun and to this day I don’t think I ever successfully completed a bobsled run.

Maybe it’s the snow and the winter themes that make me want to watch the Winter Games more. If I were still in high school or college I could probably get away with vegging out in front of the television to watch all the events, but sadly, adulthood has robbed me of that luxury. In fact, I remember sitting in my homeroom in 1992 watching the U.S. Hockey team play a few rounds. Unfortunately, we took fourth place that year, far removed from my all time childhood geek moment in 1980 of seeing the Miracle On Ice. At the age of five I thought it was Pittsburgh that one because I hadn’t quite separated the Pittsburgh Steelers from the rest of the sporting world. So a win for the U.S. in my mind was a win for Pittsburgh. It wouldn’t be true for another 11 years when The Penguins won their first Stanley Cup.

But three years earlier, something out of the ordinary happened at the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary.  What seemed like a joke became a phenomenon as the Jamaican Bobsled team blazed onto the games, no pun intended.  While they didn't even finish, due to crashing their sled, they gained notoriety for showing what many consider the spirit of the games by picking up their sled and walking to the finish line.  They simply made it look fun.  They managed to qualify in 1992 and 1994 but did not win any medals.  However, they did reach 14th place which put them ahead of the U.S., Russia, Italian, and French teams.  Sadly, they did not qualify in 2006 nor did they qualify this year.  It's a shame, really, because they did win the gold at thr 2000 World Push Bobsled Championships.  Maybe next time, mon.

Also, us 30-somethings can remember that prior to 1994, the games ran in parallel with the Summer Games. Then skipping only two years, the Winter Games went opposite the Summer Games letting me bask in my dorkiness every couple of years.  That brings me back to the 1994 games.

It was a snowy Friday in February and I was a freshman in college. A high school buddy of mine had just transferred to the Oakland campus but still had friends at the UPJ location, where he spent his Freshman year. He invited me to trek up to see them for the night, which happened to be the night that Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya Harding, and Oksana Baiul competed for the medal in figure skating. The whole Kerrigan-Harding scandal was all the rage at the games and now it was time to see just how good everyone really was.

Johnstown is only around 90 minutes away from our hometown, but it's in what we call the snow belt. Being a recent transfer student myself, I was going from the mild climate of Myrtle Beach to the freezing concrete jungle of Pittsburgh so this trip took me full circle at seeing a winter wonderland. UPJ’s campus is/was like a ski resort. Nestled into the woods and with the new fallen snow, the campus buildings resemble the ski atmosphere of Aspen or the Poconos. This was a great setting in which to enjoy the Winter Games and to hold our own.

Between the main dorms, the frats and apartments, there lies a road that goes down a huge hill. The snow had packed into a slope of sorts and had become slick. We all took turns running from the top and diving onto our stomachs as we careened down the hill. I’m sure I was doing irreparable damage to my body, but at that age and with alcohol, anything was possible. We spent the rest of the evening watching the carnage of Tonya Harding breaking a shoe lace and ultimately Oksana Baiul taking the gold. It wasn’t exactly a very manly sight to see us critiquing the performances but again, with alcohol, anything is possible.

I spent the night curled up under a blanket on the cold tile floor of a dorm room and the next morning, my friend Scott and I made our way back down to civilization. The snow had continued to fall another couple of feet that night. I was totally unprepared for the weather, opting for a leather jacket, IIRC (mandatory Internet slang quota for this post reached). But I was really unprepared to see the snow up over the back bumper of Scott’s AMC Eagle. This did not phase Scott in the least.

You have to understand Scott to truly appreciate his insanity. This is the kid in high school that knew how to make bombs. He has a civil engineering degree and now works for the DOT. Go figure. In any case, while he was a freshman, the year before, we experienced The Storm of the Century. Being at UPJ, Scott was kind of like Dennis Quaid trekking to New York City in The Day After Tomorrow. He went out for a walk one day to the local Giant Eagle Supermarket. As he walked, he kicked something hard with his foot. He bent down and cleared around it and found a car that was buried in the snow. Again, I saw insane because he decided it would be a good idea to just go out for a walk in the snow that had buried a car.

But back to the Eagle. If I ever move to a region that ends up with a ton of snowfall, I would highly consider getting one of these classics. It’s like a tank. Scott had outfitted his with a hood ornament that was an actual Eagle from one of his childhood trophies. As I was lamenting the chore of having to dig out the car before we could leave, he simply said, “Get in.” I did and he fired up the beast. Threw it in reverse and simply backed out over the snow. As we drove away, I looked back at our parking space which now resembled the bottom portion of a Styrofoam packing insert. We drove out onto the highway which was completely devoid of cars, buried or otherwise.

While I was keen to catch what I could of the Olympic Games that year, I felt that I deserved a Gold Medal for using downhill body sledding and Scott deserved one for snow driving. Unfortunately, these events are not a part of the games, yet. The skeleton needs to just get rid of the sled and we’d have it. That may seem highly dangerous, but I’ll say it again…with alcohol….you get the picture.

 
 
 
 

Snowmageddon 2010

In 1993, the South Western PA area had one of its biggest storms to date. It was deemed the Storm of the Century. It was fitting as how there was less than 10 years left in that century. Not that bold of a statement considering. Of course, at that time, you had to see a plow truck on its roof in a ditch to cancel in my hometown. The following year, during which I was a freshman at Pitt, we had one of the coldest winters on record. To know the campus in Oakland, you are aware of the wind whipping in between buildings. As you turn a corner onto Forbes or Fifth Avenue, the protection of the tall structures are gone and you are enveloped by gust of icy daggers, ripping into your skin. Still, classes went on as the temperatures dipped into the sub zero range.

It wasn’t until, then Governor, Bob Casey was in town for a routine check up on his heart that the issue of cancelling classes was addressed. The Governor put the city into a state of emergency and classes were immediately cancelled. Of course, that effectively closed all student services and I was left to eating cold cereal or Ramen Noodles for sustenance. Still we dealt with it.

Now, to compare the events of this past weekend to those of the Tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or the earthquake in either China in 2009 or the one in Haiti this past January is stretching it a bit. Fact of the matter is that we’ve been spoiled for far too long. Me included. We all sit around and wax nostalgic about having three feet of snow, no school for a week, and a snowman bigger than that damn statue on LOST. And in that same breath we bitch about how we never see that kind of weather anymore. My wife is a snow junkie and wants to see it up to the window. Me, I’d rather have snow on the ground for most of December, including Christmas, and then be done after January 15th.

So, when my wife got all excited that we were going to get “some” snow to the tune of four to eight inches, as was originally predicted by the local meteorologists, she got into this nesting mood and decided that we needed to go out and buy lots of food to hold us over until Monday. “Oh, it will be nice. We’ll make warm dinners and sit and watch the snow in our nice warm home.” Then, as the hours rolled on into Friday afternoon, and the snow started to fall, the tune changed. “Get your ass home, we’re getting a foot of snow!” This was the call I got at work on Friday around 3:00. As we continued to watch the news the totals jumped every hour until we were expecting up to 18 inches. The lights began to flicker in and out as the heavy wet snow began to cake up on the trees and power lines.

Well, we were ready for the snow. We went to bed in awe of the thick fluffy blanket that descended onto our house and trees and cars. What we weren’t ready for was the power outage.

I woke up around 7:00 and called to cancel an appointment I was supposed to have at 10:00. That was because I had a “Dude, where’s my car?” moment when I looked out in the driveway. I went back to sleep for a couple of hours and figured I wake up and enjoy some time in my chair watching the snow and drinking some coffee. Around 9:30, I woke up and we had no power. By 11:00. The temperature was down to 68 in the house and falling. We had no wireless signal due to the outage and our basement, was slowly falling below 56. We made the decision to tough it out at my in-laws until the power came back on later. I spent a good two hours shoveling the driveway and the cars out of the snow. Our road was completely bare because all of the snow was now in our driveway. While the shoveling went smoothly up near the house, the treated snow that was on the road had melted and packed down in my driveway after being plowed. It was harder than hell to get rid of it.

As the temperature inside the house reached the low 50s, we packed out enough for an overnight trip and left. Our cats, which I hated to leave had enough fur to keep them warm, and they could always tunnel underneath our bed covers to stay warm. We were heading for civilization. While our road was sufficiently plowed, the surrounding main roads were hardly touched. We barely made it to my in-laws who were nice enough to carve out a space in their driveway that was big enough for our van.

Every couple of hours, I called the house to see if our answering machine picked up, letting me know the ordeal was over. No change. I called the power company who told me that the best prediction for all customers to have power restored was Friday. This was a week after the storm. I feared we were going to have to pack up our cats and bring them over to the house, putting us at eight in one house, which is only three cats shy of crazy cat lady status. That evening we went back to check on the cats and became excited. As we drove through our neighborhood we saw signs of power on along our road. However, once we reached the top of our hill we noticed a block or so section that was still in the dark. Our hearts sank as we feared that our hopes of dodging that deadline of Friday was too good to be true.

My wife and I slept in her old bed which was uncomfortably small. If this was going to be an extended stay we needed to make better arrangements. We decided to go back Sunday morning and retrieve the mattress from our old futon as well as enough clothes and food to help out her parents throughout the week. We both travelled back to our house along the bad roads and found that the temperature in the house was now 48. The refrigerator was defrosting and the tray underneath was full. We had taken the biggest items that required cold and put them in a cooler on our back porch, which was down near 30 degrees as the outside temperature dipped down towards zero. I built a fire in the basement to being the temp back up over 50 and we gathered up the rest of our stuff needed for the week. We fed the cats and made a plan to bring them back over if the temperature dropped below freezing. We also turned the faucets onto a drip after running hot water through the pipes.

After coming back to my in-laws I learned that some electric company trucks were in the area and hopefully we’d be back in business soon. That estimate of Friday made me still cringe because I realized that the power company was going to hit the biggest areas first to restore the most power to the most residents. Then they would move on down the line picking up the few spots that still needed it. That meant that our area would probably be last as we were only a couple of blocks among thousands of residents without power.

We unpacked all our belongings, stocked their fridge and made preparations to be there for awhile. Just about time for Super Bowl kickoff, I felt the urge to try calling the house one last time. A few of my Facebook friends who lived in the area were without power and had updated their status to say they were back up and running. The previous attempts to dial were met with no ringing and that familiar shrilling tone and voice that stated it was sorry that it could not complete my call. This time was different. One ring. I was slightly excited. Two rings. I was getting more excited. Three rings. Oh, boy! Four rings. Hot damn. “H, you’ve reached…” My answering machine picked up the call. Our power was restored. And probably within a half hour of us leaving with most of our worldly possessions. “Son of a bitch” I yelled. Just to be sure, I called again and as the fourth ring passed, I held the phone up to my wife’s ear. “Yeah!”

I took a car load back and shut off most of the faucets. I made sure everything was still running and the temp was already up to 64 degrees. Yep, it had come back on shortly after we left. As we settled back in to our home, got warm showers and slept in our nice soft, BIG bed we realized that we don’t appreciate what people go without on a regular basis. We take for granted the simplest of luxuries that we think of as just standard, everyday rights. You walk through a darkened house and immediately try the same light switches fourteen times because you just assume that they work and don’t even realize that you still don’t have power. It’s habit, not instinct. Instinct would be making yourself more prepared for such an outage. Having enough warm blankets for the duration of the outage or at least enough flashlights to see where you are going.

But, in all, we bitched and moaned about not having power for a total of 24 to 30 hours. The storm rated fourth on the list of total inches of snowfall in our area, behind that storm from 1993. We lost power but didn’t end up any worse than being put out of a weekend. For all the fear of freezing pipes and kitties, the temperature never went below 40 degrees in our house. It just goes to show that if you want to get your power back on in a storm, don’t call and complain to the power company. Don’t twitter or bitch on Facebook or hope to use other social networking sites to shame your provider into working faster. All you have to do is pack up all your stuff and plan to be out of your home for a week. Then, the power will magically be restored once you unpack at your temporary shelter.

Oh, and don’t buy a hell of a lot of food that needs to be refrigerated. That’s a sure fire way to get your power to go off in the first place. Take care to all those still in the dark and stuck in the snow.

 
 
 
 

In My Day...

There’s an old group of sayings, usually coined by our parents or other baby boomers about what it was like “in their day.” “In my day, we didn’t have 300 hundred channels. We had three.” We’ve all heard it at one time or another. And if Al Gore needed any ego stroking he could just saddle up next to a senior citizen and ask them about snow. “In my day, we had snow three feet deep and had no school for a week.”

Now, it comes to pass that my generation as adults and parents can start spinning their own nostalgic yarns about how we could build snowman five feet high that would last for weeks. And it’s true, at least for us here in Pennsyltuckey, we haven’t had a lot of snowfall since we were in high school. In fact, my senior year occurred during the all too well known and oft quoted, “Blizzard of 93.” I can count on both almost two hands how many times we were called off during my three years of high school. Since my district covered an extensive area that included, what we considered, “the mountains” we had a lot of times where it wasn’t that bad at my house yet school was cancelled anyway.

I remember once was during my Sophomore year when we had a cancellation I was really peeved because I was going to be out of class all day to help with the stage crew for a multi school choir concert. To brag to your friends that you got of class all day just to have them cancel everything for the day but the reason you were out of class was a bit of a downer.

From then it was a whole decade before I saw a record snowfall. That was in February of 2003 and I actually walked up the main street of my town and didn’t see a car. But that was it for almost seven years. During that time we barely saw enough snow to make a snow midget. If we did get a good snow it was in April and was only around for a week before it melted.

So, here we are kicking off 2010 with record snowfalls around the country. Temperatures, overall, are low in even the Southern regions. What really gets me is how much of a surprise this is to anyone. I mean should we be shocked that it’s January and snowing? Well, for the past few years we’ve been rather spoiled. I’ve been able to get by without using the snow blower, which doesn’t work, in my driveway. Now, I can’t keep up with the shoveling. But, still, this is after all, winter. It should be snowing. Yet, people are out there driving like they are from South Carolina. I swear I need to leave five minutes earlier in the morning to get to work, not because of road conditions but because people are so ridiculously ill equipped to drive in this weather. There’s cautious and then there is idiotic.

We usually see oddball weather, or more accurately, appropriate weather roughly every seven to ten years around here and how quickly people forget what it was like when it happened last. It makes me laugh because we are society of memory driven denizens that recall a simpler time without cutting edge innovations like smart phones and the Internet and yet for all our waxing nostalgic about walking to school, uphill, both ways through three feet of snow we panic and complain when it happens again.

Here’s a rule of thumb for all you people unsure of what to do in bad weather. If you turn on the news and you see a story about a salt truck that plunged over a 100 foot cliff because of road conditions, maybe you should stay home. Or at least leave extra, extra early so that you are out of my way by the time I get there. Another favorite picture of mine is the news stories of people with their cars stuck in the snow. Usually, you get a low shot of one of the tires as the reporter says the following. “When he left for work today, this is what happened.” Next thing you see is the person spinning their wheels in the show. Last time I checked, rule one for getting unstuck in the snow is to NOT jam on the gas pedal spinning your wheels at high RPMs.

The one thing I haven’t seen a lot of anymore is the mad dash for bread and milk at the store with just the slightest threat of snowfall. Usually as soon as the weatherman flips his coin and chooses snow as the prediction it’s like Black Friday out there with Cabbage Patch Dolls.

So, as we brace for more snow, and it will happen again this winter, just letting you know, realize that a level head is the one thing we all need to keep in our bag of tricks when we go out, or as we called it in my day, common sense.

How ABC Stole Christmas

As a holiday purist, I feel the need to be entertained by the classics this of year. Traditionally, I have found it comforting to engage in YuleTube type cheer. Every year I sit on the edge of my seat hoping that little star can make his way to the top of the Christmas Tree and I tear up as the tree lends a branch to help its celestial friend. I go a wassailing, humming my favorite carol, The "12 Days of Christmas," PA Lottery style. “Five Cash Five!” I sniff and get a warm fuzzy when Peter makes it home for Christmas and makes Folgers coffee for his family.

And as that purist I feel it necessary to indoctrinate my daughter in the ways of winter watching and sat down with her last night to watch my annual favorite, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Now, I own the classic on DVD, along with The Great Pumpkin, but there is something about watching it when it comes on television, complete with commercials. Even though I recorded it and watched it later that night, it’s still holds the same effect.

So, there we are, the happy family, all snuggled up on the blanket spread out on the floor this December 8th, 2009. The lights in the house are all off, except for the tree. As we sit there, we all share in a little bit of eggnog to make the season bright. The opening comes on and I am six years old again. I am the kind of person that will sit and watch, intently. My eyes rarely blink or leave focus from the set. It’s hard to hold a conversation with me during this event and don’t ask me to take out the trash. I am in the zone.

Unfortunately, with parenthood comes inevitable and constant distraction. I have learned to leave the zone to take care of business, should it arise. The cats wrestling under the tree interrupts you or the child spills a bit of eggnog on her pajamas. In any case, even though I have seen the show hundreds of times, I can tell you what will happen next. Even with my distracted state I picked up on something strange. “Hey, how come Charlie Brown didn’t press Violet about not getting a Christmas card?” "Why aren't they eating snowflakes?" “Where was Sally’s letter to Santa, ‘10s and 20s’?” “Did Shermy not get repeatedly cast as a shepherd in every play? And where was the scene where Schroeder bangs out Jingle Bells, on his toy piano, one note at a time to a unconvinced Lucy?”

My wife wondered the same thing, ultimately revealing that she does in fact pay attention and can recall the show even though she thinks I am a dork for continually watching it. I backed up the DVR and reviewed key moments of the show and indeed those scenes were missing. WTF?* (mandatory quota for txt speak reached)

I then checked the wire for news about this atrocity. As I scour the Internet for clues I question the reasons for this meatball surgical approach to a holiday institution. Usually, when something is aired on television you have make exceptions for editing. It’s unavoidable. This is not however acceptable in the case of say G4 airing a butchered version of The Goonies or this particular childhood classic. You do not mess with Charlie Brown. Although, my wife and I both admit that we are somewhat jaded because we cannot help but remember an SNL skit where the TV Funhouse animated shorts lampooned A Charlie Brown Christmas. It was hysterical but has destroyed one of my childhood innocent childhood moments. IMDB highlighted the same discourse I had with the network over the airing. Wikipedia even called out the scenes in question, confirming my assessment of the travesty. What I didn’t realize was that even the tracks were screwed up as Charlie Brown mouths the words, “That’s it!” during the therapy session before the audio cue comes up. One could toss this recognition away at the limited animation quality of the 1965, but us geeks know our shit and we are pissed!

I found out that the reason for this butchering of my childhood was to make room for Disney’s new special Prep and Landing…of course we all know that Disney owns ABC and this was purely a business decision and mockery of that which A Charlie Brown Christmas tries to satirize, commercialism at Christmas. One need look further than the commercials aired throughout the special enticing children to go see Disney’s new animated movie, The Princess and the Frog. Disney is in that pantheon of evil alongside Walmart and other corporate demons. If the sale of NBC goes through, Comcast will join that table of sin and soon the ruination of television will be all but complete.

I feel personally slighted by this attack on my nostalgic memories of days when you could come in from playing in the cold snow, warm up with a cup of hot chocolate, with extra marshmallows, and watch the special. I know that in the past there has been several aired versions of the special, including ones that also mocked the show’s message on commercialism with ad placement by Coca Cola and Dolly Madison along with removing references to commercialism altogether. But in the past few years, I had hoped that we have gained a sense of preservation and have gone back to showing the classic in its entirety. I guess not. I guess ABC will have to forgo my viewership so that I can watch the special as it was intended, on a shiny disc in digital format.

What’s next for ABC? We all know they air The Ten Commandments right before Easter. This usually pisses off my wife who looks forward to watching the 11:00 news at, um 11:00. I don’t know it just seems right to watch it at the same time as it’s called. So, how about airing an edited version in 2010, cutting it down a few hours. Perhaps we can get rid of the more banal commandments like this whole coveting business and calling out God as our Lord. I think it’s and understood relationship. We pretty much know who he is without a formal announcement. This of course will still preempt the news because of the piggybacking of Disney’s new special on ABC, immediately following and called, Jesus Colors An Egg.

Really ABC, was it worth it? Do you feel good about this move? Of course you do. That’s what Christmas is all about. For shame.