Didn't See That Coming

After an enjoyable trip to the Great White…err…Mid-Atlantic, we’re back and settled in our new home. Granted, there is still plenty to accomplish, as the list to get the place ready for living seems to grow longer by the day.

Case in point: have you ever tried to install a baby gate? No, I’m not talking about the old wooden ones that your parents put between you and the Super Fun Washing Machine when you were a kid. Baby Gates of the Future (read: Now) have advanced with such technologies so that we adults can thwart the determined minds of infants for years to come. The one that I just put near our main landing screws into the wall in six places, requires two NSA-grade keys and a special launch code just to open. Did I mention the motion sensors? Yeah, there are motion sensors. It took me three hours to install.

Like I said, you rush to get all these things done, even though you have eons of time to get them done. We’re signed up (technically) for 30 years. That’s a procrastinator’s dream! Of course, if I’m living in this house and I’m 57, something went horribly wrong. You know, like I sold the place but couldn’t leave.

Stupid baby gate.

No, you rush to get the place into a fine working order because you’re PROUD of what you’ve just done. This is a place you can call your own, and you want your friends to come over and be proud of what you’ve just done. And if friends are going to come over, you want things to look nice. Get those boxes unpacked, furniture put together, cobwebs de-cluttered, and throw open the door. Visitors are welcome.

Human visitors, that is.

Because of the holidays, we didn’t anticipate having anyone stay with us until we got back from New Jersacuse. There was just too much going on in those final days of Advent to provide room at the Inn. With all the painting and moving out, we didn’t even have much time to celebrate Christmas. Figuring that there would be plenty of merriment and decoration up I-95, we decided to forgo putting up a tree. There are two reasons for this. 1.) Clara won’t remember it anyway. 2.) Bright blue edging tape makes for terrible garland strands.

But a wreath? A wreath we can do.

So while running some errands a few weekends before the Big Day, we bought a wreath. It’s a Target wreath, and it looks nice on our door. There. Now our neighbors know that we are here to stay and we anxiously await the coming of the Christ Child. That’s multi-tasking people.

One of the topics I will get to later this week comes into play here. Even though we now own a townhouse with a two-car garage, the garage part has been lightly used. Because the previous owner failed to turn in garage door openers, most of our daily parking takes place in the driveway. Therefore, our point of entry is all-too-often the front door, as opposed to the one in the garage. Yeah, there are stairs, but I can deal. Plus, I get to look at our new Target wreath with each trip home. ‘Tis the season, indeed.

In fact, I remember one evening’s entrance in particular. It was December 22nd, and we were returning home from two Christmas parties. As Katie worked to get a sleeping Clara out of her car seat, I played the role of Anticipatory Father and bounded up the stairs to unlock the door. After all, the quicker we get Clara in the house, the less of a chance she wakes up and insists on catching Letterman. As I fumbled with the lock, I remember thinking that it would have been a damn good idea to have left the external light on. That would have made getting in smoothly so much easier. As ten seconds pass and I’m still trying to get the key to work. I hear a slight rustling to my near right. Geez, I thought. Katie sure was fast freeing the baby from the car-

Just then, a small black bird ROCKETS out of the Target wreath, nearly killing me of shock whilst clipping my ear.

Like I said, human visitors are welcome.

A Boy and His Blog

Mom and Dad, I have a confession to make.

Over the course of my childhood, you were incredibly generous with me. Christmas was never a time of “Look, Santa brought you a stack of magazines from the coffee table” and my birthday gift was never “Enjoy these grass clippings from out back!” Maybe you were so nice to me because you know that I would use your example as to how to be generous to my once and future children, I can’t be sure. But as I look back at all the neat stuff I got as a kid, I’m eternally grateful.

Hell, I had a Nintendo when I was 6. 6!

And over the tenure of my NES days, I must have amassed upwards of 30 different games to play. And since this was the late 80’s, the idea behind each of these titles was fairly archaic and basic; Nintendo did not intend games to become Super until the 90’s. Some were sports games that kept me occupied before anyone had even invented season mode. Take “Baseball,” for example. I just played the real Phillies schedule, and actually kept the score book on a piece of paper sitting on the table in front of the television. I would conduct an entire March Madness bracket in Double Dribble by electing to be one team in each match up, and “advancing” the winner on the bracket before me. In 10-Yard Fight, I’d play against my father and beat him with a complex playbook of run to the left, run to the right, pass to the guy.” Worked every time.

To be fair, my dad didn’t stand a chance. He was a Tetris addict.

As a simultaneous form of conquest and gratitude, I did my best to win at video games. Several of them I could hang on a wall, plaque style, as I actually beat the final bad guy to achieve what every video gaming hero wanted to achieve in 1988: watch the credits of a bunch of Japanese guys roll by. Super Mario 2? Toast. Ghosts ‘n Goblins? Finished. R.C. Pro-Am? VICTORIED!

Some games even made learning fun!

In the latter days of Original Nintendo, I got “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?” as a Christmas present. Surely, you’re familiar with the premise of the Sandiego series. (If not, let Rock-a-pella explain.) Anyway, they ran our places for Carmen to hide (Where in Your Kitchen is Carmen Sandiego didn’t test well), so they allowed her to run from the fuzz via time travel. And as much fun as learning about the Renaissance is, the heavy almanac that came with that game served a better purpose as a trench ledge on which to steady the barrel of my Duck Hunt gun. Screw you, Laughing Dog.

But as for the aforementioned confession? It concerns not Carmen or the Dog. But rather, another video game hero and his gelatinous friend.

A Boy and His Blob.

I’m sure at some point I must have asked for this particular cartridge, because it doesn’t seem to be the type of game one of you would have seen on the shelf and been drawn to. I’d like to borrow the premise of the game from Wikipedia:

“A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia is a side-scrolling platformer in which the character and his friend Blob (full name Blobert) travel together on earth and on Blobert's home planet Blobolonia in a quest to defeat the evil emperor. Blobert can change into several different items when he is fed jelly beans. A licorice jelly bean, for instance, will change Blobert into a ladder, while a honey jelly bean will turn him into a hummingbird. Most of these transformations can be remembered mnemonically due to a correlation between the flavor of the jelly bean and the item that results.”

The truth is: I never figured out how to get past the opening screen. Seriously. For all the hours I tried to crack the blobular code, I got nowhere. I'm sure that had I figured how the game, I don't know, begins, it was probably challenging and perhaps educational. However, my gameplay was limited to winging candy at a glorified albino Hershey Kiss.

So thanks for the game, parents. But I've failed you.

I never got my passport stamped on Blobolonia.

The Story of the Secret Magi

As everybody knows, the Holy Gospel that foretells the birth of Jesus Christ comes to us courtesy of four ancient writers - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In addition to their universal roles as Biblical historians, the four have effectively served as our New Testament media outlets, reporting on the breaking news that occurred in Bethlehem that magical evening. Had the arrival of Christ occurred in modern-day times, we would no doubt expect to find the Gospel authors sitting at the network news desks of NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox. (It is also widely expected that the Fox Network would have hired Mark; a man of such literary brevity would have no problem working in promos for a very exciting episode of Prison Break to immediately follow the broadcast.)

With such news to break, it's likely that the Big 4 networks would probably have little time to cover the human interest stories surrounding the Nativity. (Katie Couric would have been sold to the TLC Channel for thirty pieces of silver.) And with that, this is THE story, that would be featured by TLC's newest anchorwoman on this Christmas Day.

(Turns out the ancient Greek for "Cable" is "Apocrypha.")

In the time that was known as B.C. (but prior to the time that anyone actually knew what the "C" meant), with the holiday season fast approaching, it was time for the annual inter-kingdom Secret Sant- er, um, Secret Magi. In a annual giving tradition orchestrated by the One called "I Am," it was a custom in which each king was given a the name of another king on a tiny slip of parchment, and it became his goal to find a gift for that king. This not only embodied the spirit of the season, but a good gift would also foster positive trade relationships during the next harvest.

With only the three participants, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, there was not much variety in the gifts, nor was there much surprise. After all, if Caspar read his slip of parchment to be "Melchior," he then knew that Balthasar must have drawn his name; for if two of the kings drew each other's names, one would be stuck purchasing a gift for himself. This is why Jacob had twelve sons - to make Secret Magi a surprise every year.

So when Caspar opened his slip this year to not read one of his two fellow rulers, but rather the name "Emmanuel," there was a little confusion. For ages, there had only been the three of them (Herod was expelled after 9 consecutive years of giving the gift of fruitcake), and now a new name had popped in the mix. Who was this Emmanuel? What does he rule over? Does he remember to include gift receipts?

The same confusion befell Melchior, who opened his slip to read "Wonderful Counselor." This must have been a pseudonym of another entrant - after all, the Divine Organizer that puts together this whole shindig probably didn't extend the circle to therapists. (In ancient times, therapists were somewhere on the salvation chain between Pharisees and tax collectors.) Nevertheless, Melchior figured he'd go with his old standby: Frankincense.

And thirdly, there was Balthasar. Upon opening his parchment to see the name "Prince of Peace," he had an initial hesitation. A Prince?? Now we're just letting any level of royalty into this gift exchange? Eh, I guess it doesn't really matter. Maybe Caspar will have him, and give him the gift of Gold. (Which Balthasar will then have his smiths smelt into a beautiful amulet to give to the Queen - he always hated the Marketplace with the crowds and not being able to find a place to park his camel anywhere.) Having sent all of the spare chalices and ornaments to the teachers of his children, he searched through his majestic pantry to settle on a gift for the prince - a designer embalming fluid called "Myrrh."

Gift exchanges usually happened by post - as respective rulers, no one could leave for too long - there were kingdoms to manage. But this year, with new entrants to the fray, there was special instructions to meet in a town known as Bethlehem. And since no one had yet invented Mapquest, the three had to rely on their rudimentary astronomy skills and follow a light in the sky. No one asked questions, and well, the rest was history.

And at his heavenly desk, amidst scraps of parchment and ink, God smiled down upon the gathering of kings (only 4, not 6 as the Original Kings of Holiday had thought) that was about to commence in a barn just outside the Inn.

Merry Christmas, YAB Nation.