"Music and cookies and liquor and trees, that's what Christmas is for"

I know that three days is SO LATE in the internet game, but sorry internet, I have a life and right now it is CRAZY and it's been all I can do to maintain my sanity, much less write blog posts. But I took notes so that I could write something once things died down a little. SO.........

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas review starts now! Well, a few paragraphs from now.

Let me begin by explaining a little about my family and our Christmas celebrations and my relationship to Christmas pop culture. My dad does not like Christmas, a fact that made known to me once he deemed me old enough, which was around my 10th birthday. My sister and mom were a little indifferent to the whole thing, and then there was me. I LOVE Christmas - well, I love MY version of Christmas. I love picking out the perfect gifts and hanging stockings and cooking with my family and singing carols and unwrapping presents and the rainy weather and lights and the smell of the tree and pretty much anything Christmas that doesn't have to do with Jesus. My sister celebrates Chanukah and my grandfather celebrates the solstice; this year, due to a fortuitous typo, we've decided to refer to our December 25th holiday celebration as Xams, so as to remove it as far from Christ as possible. Because my family are atheists and agnostics and one converted Jew, we tend to avoid stuff about angels and pageants and miracles and the weirdness of worshiping a baby, and focus on the good stuff: eating and giving. Carols were always one of my favorites because I love to sing, but they drove my dad crazy and I've had to find good, non-annoying versions of my favorite Christmas songs to fill up my awesome winter playlist.

But this meant that I didn't watch a lot of Christmas movies/specials when I was a kid, partly by choice and partly because my dad would not give the TV up for that stuff. Rudolph and The Nightmare Before Christmas creeped me out, Charlie Brown didn't really captivate me, Miracle On 34th St. was boring, and I still, to this day, have never seen It's A Wonderful Life. Oh, sure, I watched The Grinch and Home Alone, but the holiday movie I probably saw the most was the animated version of The Snowman (quiet and nondenominational and thus inoffensive to my dad). As I got a little older, I started watching Friends and their holiday episodes became some of my favorites - and some of the best, with moments I can still instantly recall. Friends handled the holidays awesomely by either making a classic bottle episode, or by putting the Friends into stressful, emotional, and/or drunk situations. Always pitch-perfect. As I got even older, I started making my own traditions and found my trio of current all-time favorite holiday movies: Die Hard. Lord Of The Rings. Elf.

"What're you lookin' at, Jessup?"

Psych does a Twin Peaks episode!

In the most recent episode of Psych, "Dual Spires", they do a playful and quirky take on the David Lynch show Twin Peaks. Gus and Shawn travel to a town so small it's labelled on the map in parentheses for a cinnamon festival they received an anonymous tip about. Once there, things seem weird ("Are you Frederick Douglass?" a little girl asks Gus), and get weirder once the body of a local teenage girl is found drowned and wrapped in plastic on the edge of the lake...the story goes from there.

Adding to the awesomeness of this homage is the cast - most of the people from the town are played by actors from Twin Peaks (and IMDB just made me realize that Sherilyn Fenn and Dana Ashbrook both played Pacey antagonizers on the same season of Dawson's Creek - crazy!). I wonder if they even shot some of it where Twin Peaks was shot since both shows are/were filmed in Vancouver and that lake vista looks eerily familiar. The show does a great job of capturing what can only be called the Lynchiness of the original series without losing the humorous edge that Psych balances so well. I'll admit that I'm not as familiar with Twin Peaks as I'd like, but I've seen enough to know that this take-off was done skillfully - going so far as to change the theme song to a high-pitched plinky piano cover of what is usually a boisterous interlude. Oh, and stick around for the last scene and the credits - true Lynch fans will definitely appreciate how completely Psych commits to their concept.

Just a few fun notes & quotes:

"You know I'm a sympathetic crier, Shawn. Just leave me be." And then he makes this face...!

"I'll get Deputy Frost to take you back in the rickshaw."

"The earth is soft and moist."

"My partner plus too much monkey bread equals tummy shame"

"Because I'm a grown-up!"

Today is my 25th birthday. In honor of being a quarter-century old, below is one of my favorite birthday-centered episodes, "The One Where They All Turn Thirty". It does such an awesome and hilarious job of capturing the different ways birthday anxiety can manifest, from "Why, god, why?!?" to "Help me get my top off". I love birthdays and birthday episodes because they're usually bottle episodes - on TV and IRL, like tonight when I'm having a karaoke party and a lot of the important players in my life, from my boss to my childhood camp friend, will be there. Although I'm not as concerned with growing older as any of the characters, well...give it five years, and I'll probably be freaking out then. In the meantime, enjoy drunk Phoebe!