10 more movies for those who hate Christmas!

He's packing a piece too

Back in December 2008 I published a post dear to my heart on this blog: "For those who hate Christmas"--a list of movies for those who are not entertained by the holiday nonsense. Now let's get something clear. I'm not against the idea of Christmas so much as I'm against the attendant stress, the traffic, the long lines, the obligation to spend spend spend--and the utterly revolting Christmas movies that turn up year after year. (No, I wasn't scarred as a child and I didn't scar mine. We had lots of fun for the season.) 

So, on with the list. There are some oldies, and some newbies, some gooduns and some baduns. I've linked to the trailers on YouTube. Enjoy!

1. "A Bad Mom's Christmas" (2017). This tops my wish list this year: three overburdened moms rebel against the Christmas madness...and their own moms! Mother-daughter angst will get me every time. This movie is exactly what the doctor ordered! 

2. "Fatman" (2020). What an insane concept: Mel Gibson is an armed-to-the-teeth Santa who's in a foul mood: he's had it with today's entitled brats. Throw in an assassin, a most unconventional Mrs. Claus and a raindeer that's likely to tear off your package at the drop of an icicle and damn, you've got me, despite the panning by the critics who say everything you need to see is in the trailer. I'm stocking up on popcorn anyway.

3. "Carol" (2015). In counterpoint to the absurdist "Fatman", "Carol" is a drama about a married woman who risks all when she pursues romance with a much younger department store worker. Christmas is the backdrop to this "achingly beautiful" film. Plus, Cate Blanchett. I've seen this and it's time for a rewatch.

4. "Home Alone" (1990). This classic children's movie stars Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, a small child whose parents accidentally leave him at home over Christmas. (I know, but stay with it.) When two criminals decide to break into their house, the fun starts. Little Kevin must become his own home security system, and those bad men are in for some hurtin!

5. "Iron Man 3" (2013). If you wrote off this third instalment, now's the time to watch it. If you're one of those poor deluded humans trying to be a martyr at Christmas, just stop and watch this smart, funny story about the trauma of filling a superhero role. Plus, there's what's his name with the bedroom eyes. Superplus: a great performance by Ben Kingsley.

6. "Die Hard" (1988). This is the only movie from the last list to be repeated here, but I give you a bonus to make up for it. One office Christmas party goes downhill fast when terrorists arrive and take over a skyscraper. Bruce Willis gets a chance to kick butt and show off: "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho." I'm not an action film fanatic but Bruce jumping off an exploding rooftop is everything. Not a single drop of saccharine seasonal cheer in sight.

7. "The best Christmas Pageant Ever" (1983). This is not your typical parade of adorable scrubbed kids boring everyone, even their doting parents, to death in the 12 trillionth amateur performance of the Christmas story. Oh no. These are six cussing, cigar smoking, hitting and stealing welfare kids who give new meaning to the expression enfant terrible. You'll never look at the story of these two timeworn refugees (Mary and Joseph) the same again. (The link is to the full YouTube video of this TV movie.)

8. "Batman Returns" (1992). If you've had it up to here with soppy Christmas nonsense, try this subversive antidote for size. Dark and sly, garish and kinky, it's my kind of holiday feast. Starring Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito and Michelle Pffeifer. 

9. “Morvern Callar” (2002). What could be further from vacuous holiday cheer than a film where the title character wakes up on Christmas morning to discover that her boyfriend has killed himself and left her a note, the manuscript for his novel and a mix tape? What follows is ghastly and transgressive.

10. "The Ref" (1994). If you can stand to look at Kevin Spacey nowadays, watch this excellent film about an unhappily married couple and the burglar who takes them hostage on Christmas Eve then ends up playing marriage counselor in an effort to mend their relationship. Deliciously dark and cynical comedy with not an ounce of soggy sentimentality. 

...and the bonus...

11. "Krampus" (2015). Krampus, from the German word krampen which means claw, is the anti-Santa--a horned monster from Bavarian folklore who beats bad children, stuffs them in a sack then drags them off to his lair. Need I say more? A comedic horror movie to send those jolly fake Santas slipping and falling on their own gore!  

Damn, I'm actually looking forward to Christmas now.

So, you're a writer? Let me annoy you for a bit...

Back in April Dayton Ward wrote this post about the things people say to writers, which gave me the idea to do my own version. Every question/remark below has been said to me--by relatives, friends, or total strangers. As you can tell from the responses I wish I had made, this sort of thing brings out the very best in me. I deserve gifts of chocolate for not strangling anyone--yet.

Why don't you try to get your book on Oprah? 
Do you have any idea what I write? Do you have any idea what sort of book Oprah promotes? Do you have any idea how...  Sigh. Never mind.

I need some quick money to cover my bills while I wait for my severance payment to come through, so I'm going to write a book.
ROFL. ROFLMAO. Bwahahahaa! That's a good one... Oh--you're serious?

I'm not much of a reader but I'm writing a book. I'll send you the first draft and you can fix it up and get it out there for me as you know about this stuff.
Sure I will, you lazy SOB. That's what friends do. Because instead of writing my own books, I'd like to spend a couple years polishing your first draft, researching markets, submitting to agents and editors, following up, promoting, etc etc etc. Yeah, that's what I do because, you know, I took about 15 years to learn this stuff so I could do all your work for you.

So--you're writing the great West Indian novel?
No, I'm writing the great Nahuatl erotic sci-fi lesbian vampire novella. I'll let you know when it's out.

Can you get your agent or editor to read my manuscript? [Asked by total strangers]
Of course. Because that is what my agent and editor do--read manuscripts by people their clients do not know, recommended by said clients who have no idea what or how you write. This is the way we build trust in the author-editor-agent relationship.

So how much do you make? Give me a ballpark. [Said with a condescending smile.]
Frankly, it's bad manners to ask people probing questions about their earnings. Even if you know them. Even if you're family. What possible use can this information be to you? Until such time as I ask you for a handout [read: never] what I earn is none of your [expletive] business. Upside: You've given me a great opportunity to practise concealing my anger behind my mild-mannered facade while fantasizing about planting my foot up your smug rear end.

Are you getting a private jet?
I'll let that pass because you're technically still a child. A money-obsessed pest of a child, but a child nonetheless. I doubt I'll ever be into ostentatious status mega-symbols so if I ever strike it rich you'd never know it--unless you sneak into my shoe closet, maybe. Now get out of here before I whup your precocious butt.

Dress code for writers

Johnny Depp in Secret Window

Try to picture a writer at work and what comes to mind? I'm willing to bet it's something like Johnny Depp's character in Secret Window—wearing a garment so ancient and ratty he could push his fist through the holes and still have room to spare.

I'm here to tell you that writers do not dress like that for work: we discard the robes when the holes are big enough for us to poke two fingers through.

Not long ago, the issue of attire came up among Novel Spaces members. Several of the females confessed that we—cough—they pretty much lived in jeans and sandals and avoided events and places that required anything more complicated. Certain male members, on the other hand, appeared to think that 'formal' and 'business casual' meant they had to wear pants. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn was that male writers, um, hang around pant-less much of the time.

Ratty bathrobes, no pants, jeans, sandals, and event avoidance? We decided an intervention was needed. After much intelligent discussion we arrived at a sensible dress code for writers. Since there is no way to enforce any kind of code in the privacy of people's homes, we stuck to public appearances—the ones we can't come up with creative reasons to weasel out of.

The Novel Spaces sartorial code

• No sequins and fisherman's sandals worn together (both sexes)
• No bare shoulders (both sexes)
• No cleavage (anyone who has)
• No mini anything (women)
• No Armani dinner jackets over Speedos (men)
• No jeans and sandals—no sandals! (both sexes)
• No topless ensembles (both sexes)
• Kilts, to replace the dreaded pants (men)

The code was proposed, ratified and adopted by all. Writers, be guided accordingly.


—Liane Spicer

In the nude

I live on an island located within spitting distance of the equator and the setting on the regional thermostat is stuck at HOT. I don't thrive in heat; it makes me want to do nothing more strenuous than lie around and pant while fantasizing about diving headfirst into a pool filled with chilled watermelon cubes, or having a clutch of buff, dedicated young men in togas take turns at sliding ice cubes all over my skin. Focusing on anything that takes actual effort, such as writing, is really asking too much.

The first thing I do on entering the house is strip; once I'm in the privacy of my home I wear little or nothing. I've written roughly half a million words of fiction, most of them in the buff (or close), late at night when the air has cooled enough to render me capable of coherent thought.

My relatives and friends who know of my aversion to clothing are unanimous in their verdict: "Girl, you're CRA-ZY!" I was therefore delighted to stumble across an article this week that proved I was not alone in my strange (to others, utterly natural to me) predilection for writing au naturel. These famous authors did not live in the tropics, to my knowledge, so heat and humidity could not have been that much of a problem for them, but they're kindred naturist spirits.

• Agatha Christie liked to write in the bathtub. (Sounds lovely, but I'm a shower gal.)
• Benjamin Franklin liked to take 'air baths' where he sat around naked in a cold room for a couple hours while he wrote. (Air baths rock!)
• D.H. Lawrence, author of the controversial erotic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (one of my favourites), liked to climb mulberry trees in the nude before coming down to write. (Um, no. No splinters in delicate crannies, thank you.)
• Ernest Hemingway, author of A Farewell to Arms and other classics, wrote nude, standing up, with his typewriter about waist level. (His cousin Edward Hemingway opened Britain’s oldest nudist colony, a nine-bedroom chateau called Metherell Towers, back in the 1930s. Cool!)
• Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, overcame writer's block by having his servant take all of his clothes away for the day leaving him nude with only pen and paper so he’d have nothing to do but sit down and write. (Wasn't life simple before they invented the Internet...)

I'm in such great company. I can't help wondering, though: Are there other closet naturist writers out there - or am I the last survivor of an almost extinct species?

Thursday Thirteen: To-Do List # 94,309

1. Get laid. Lay out my work clothes the night before to save on morning stress.

2. Acquire a toyboy. Reward myself by buying something I love every time I get paid.

3. Flirt with strange men. Be less guarded with people I don't know well.

4. Show more cleavage. Wear only clothes that make me feel great.

5. Show more leg. Stop dressing up to go to the mall. If I can wear shorts to the grocery I can wear them to the store.

6. Shack up with a hottie. Not.

7. Torture an old flame. Bury grudges forever and delete memories of men I got over a long time ago.

8. Torture a current flame. Ditch plans to start a blog along the lines of My Boyfriend is a Twat. :D

9. Pray for a Lotto win. Give thanks for my blessings every day.

10. Acquire a Greek god look-alike to wake me on mornings. Get a really savage alarm. My Tinkerbell cell phone just doesn't do the job.

11. In between romps with Greek god, think about what I should write next. Complete and submit two novels (or a novel and the memoir) to my agent this year.

12. Indulge in romantic fantasies. Get off my dreaming ass and turn those fantasies into stories.

13. Buy lots of fabulous underwear. Save your money, chica.

In the news today: World leaders choose romance novel

Click here to read the article. Thanks for the heads-up, Karen!

Monster frogs and fridges in match-to-the-death

My mother has a weird habit of trying to converse with me while I'm obviously fast asleep. Hello! The room is dark, I'm bundled in covers, my eyes are shut and my mouth is probably agape and drooling all over the pillow or something, so even a casual observer might deduce that I'm asleep and go away. Not my mother, who has just seen something on TV that she must, MUST share with me IMMEDIATELY! Yes, the same mother whom nothing enrages so much as being disturbed while she's - ah-ha, good guess - asleep. Go figure.

It's 'fo-day morning on Easter Sunday which in Trinidadian means before daybreak, in this instance somewhere around five, and I'm fast asleep. I had an eventful day on Saturday, went to bed long after midnight, so as you might imagine I was under, and deep. I have a vague recollection of my bedroom door bursting open, light striking me in the face, and my mother's excited voice going on about "something behind the fridge". I struggle to the surface, partially, and with my usual scintillating morning wit ask: "Huh?"

"There's something in the kitchen making a funny noise. A LOUD funny noise. Listen!"

I try to listen, but my fan is roaring away on high (no, not in heaven, although it's headed there soon; I mean the 'high' setting). I hear a faint sound that I don't even try to identify. It doesn't sound threatening enough to send me running for the cutlass, like that time she woke me because there was a "big snake" in the bricks under the water tank, of the genus "bad", according to her expert identification. (That monster turned out to be a black plastic garbage bag blown by the wind, and I made short thrift of it: Avaunt! Ho! Begone!) I begin to sink into sleep again but she comes back, even more alarmed: "It sounds like some big frog or toad or something!"

Now, we've had our share of wildlife encounters in this house so that's not outside the realm of what's possible around here, but if I have to go and engage in a duel with some froggy hideousness I'd need a bit more sleep first. After all, the last samurai-ninja-attack-frog I'd had a battle of wits with in this house spoke to me, and what it said is unrepeatable. Not that it spoke English, mind you, but I had obviously been cursed out in the worst way possible in froginese. Being cussed out by a frog shakes you up. Leaves a mark.

Realizing that I was not leaping to defense of home and hearth as was my wont, my mom disappeared. And returned. Again. "You awake?" Hell, I am now! "I think it's the phone. I left it charging on top of the fridge and it's making a funny noise."

Yup, folks. Apparently the naughty niece and nefarious nephew were hanging around here yesterday and playing with the granny's phone was part of the scheduled entertainment. One of the standard Nokia ringtones is a frog sound, but my mother doesn't know that because, despite being of average intelligence and having owned about three mobiles to date, she is hopelessly cellphone challenged. She set the thing to alarm at some ungodly hour, and boy, did it succeed. In alarming, that is.

And now for the score... Cellphone and grandchildren: game, set and match. My mom: humiliating and shame-faced defeat.

The best part? I couldn't go back to sleep. I tried, but the moment was gone. Yay. Happy Easter.

Kicking myself

So there I was standing in the Chinese food place, waiting for my chunky vegs and shrimp and gazing out the plate glass windows.

A blue car pulled in to the car park. It's an unusual model, and the only one I know in that colour belongs to my sister-in-law who was obviously returning home after picking up the nefarious nephew and naughty niece from school. I could barely see her through the tinted windows of the car but I smiled and waved, and she waved back. I returned to the counter, waited about five minutes, wondering why she was taking so long to get out, and figured she must be talking on the phone. I sauntered back to the glass and waved again, smiling like an idiot. I could see her returning my wave.

My food arrived and I picked up my bags and walked out. The car was parked right in front of the door and the first thing I realized as I exited into the bright sunight was that there were no children in the back seat. My eyes dropped to the number plate and I almost stumbled: it was a strange number.

The driver, a man, was indeed talking on a cell phone. He waved at me again. I gave a half-hearted wave, barely glancing at him, and walked past.

The next day I told my sister-in-law the embarrassing story. "Oh, I know the guy who drives a car like mine!" she exclaimed. "That's..." And she called a name from my past.

See that pool of ooze on the floor? That's me. This was a man who tried pursuing me years ago, a man who thought he was a real hotshot - lots of ego, sharp suits, fancy cars, and, I gathered, very few scruples. I wasn't impressed then, and I'm not now. The closest I ever came to slamming a door in someone's face was when he appeared on my doorstep uninvited and proceeded to hug me against my will!

Now he probably thinks I'm all into him. Or something. All that waving and smiling!

Kick, kick, kick. That'll teach me to go around waving at people I can't see.

The lighter side of serious business

Those of us of a certain age will remember Robert Palmer's Simply Irresistible. Well, this is 2008, the US is counting down to a critical general election, two charismatic candidates are in a life-and-death, no holds barred battle for the Democratic Party nomination and there's - Barack Obama-sistible!

Pudenda quotes from Shakespeare

Stole the Shakespeare quote generator meme from PJ over at The Urban Recluse. I love it! I put in the most scandalous words I could think of and kept reloading it for new quotes. The results were so hilarious I couldn't stop! Ah, Shakespeare is such fun!

I know, I know, I have a sick sense of humour. In all fairness to PJ, I should confess that the example on her post is quite innocent. This raunchy take is all mine.

Look like the innocent flower, but be the pudenda under't.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

For more fun with The Bard, also courtesy PJ, go to The Shakespearean Insulter. My favourite so far: "Your virginity, your old virginity is like one of our French wither'd pears: it looks ill, it eats drily." [All's Well That Ends Well.]

Stop me if you've heard this one...

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell. She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.
“Oh my,” said the writer. “Let me see heaven now.”
A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.
“Wait a minute,” said the writer. “This is just as bad as hell!”
“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice. “Here, your work gets published.”

A visitor to a certain college paused to admire the new Hemingway Hall that had been built on campus."It's a pleasure to see a building named for Ernest Hemingway," he said.

"Actually," said his guide, "it's named for Joshua Hemingway. No relation."

The visitor was astonished. "Was Joshua Hemingway a writer, also?"

"Yes, indeed," said his guide. "He wrote a check."

A screenwriter comes home to a burned down house. His sobbing and slightly-singed wife is standing outside. “What happened, honey?” the man asks.
“Oh, John, it was terrible,” she weeps. “I was cooking, the phone rang. It was your agent. Because I was on the phone, I didn’t notice the stove was on fire. It went up in second. Everything is gone. I nearly didn’t make it out of the house. Poor Fluffy is--”
“Wait, wait. Back up a minute,” The man says. “My agent called?”

Q. What's the difference between publishers and terrorists?

A. You can negotiate with terrorists.

The Best Medicine - 7 things that made me laugh out loud this week

1. "My name is Pussy. Pussy Galore." - a character in the Goldfinger movie I just watched for the first time.

2. Matt's post on Santa Claus' existential crisis.

3. Lane brainstorming for words that describe her and coming up with 'incontinent'.

4. Kevin's comment (on my Coast to Coast post) re keeping my son and his daughters far away from each other.

5. Local TV presenter Paolo Kernahan's suggestion that women could use a guillotine-like device in their underwear to deter rapists. The device, he claims, would provide them with evidence that will stand up in court.

6. Kevin's description of an encounter with a snake inside his car while he was driving: "Much merriment ensued."

7. My sister's suggestion that certain DVDs (like No Country for Old Men) should come with a warning sticker something like the one above to let women know that we view them at our peril. What a horrible movie. And they killed Woody Harrelson in it. Hello, you movie people out there. You don't kill off Woody! What you ought to do is show some shower scenes of the guy, like the ones of nekkid women that you force down our throats at every opportunity. When are the PTBs in Hollywood going to figure out that women like to see sexy guys in the buff too?

Oops. #7 became a bit of a rant there, didn't it... Thanks for the humour, everyone.

I should be in bed, really...

I can't believe I'm doing this at 3.13 in the morning with my eyelids falling down on me and my eyes glassy from too many hours staring at this screen, but I just checked Kevin's blog and clicked on, of all things, a tarot card quiz.

I'm the moon, it seems. I know nothing about tarot, and I don't like the aspersions about my mental health, (hello!) but some of it seems to fit, and other parts I like to believe. I'd rate it 7/10. Here are my results, if anyone wants to kill some time. If you really want to kill it dead, click here and do your own quiz.

Pass the bottle

I'm sitting here spooning this cough medicine into my face when my eyes alight on these words on the bottle, right up there in front, in big red letters: Alcohol free. I do a double take and almost spill the sticky stuff. No alcohol? What kind of sick, sadistic sod would take the alcohol out of cough medicine?

I don't need this. When I'm feeling like I've been run over several times by a truck, I need to see stuff like: "50% more alcohol than the other leading brand!" and "More alcohol added!" Given the choice between suffering with a little buzz on and suffering stone cold sober, I'd take the buzz any day. A hangover might actually be an improvement on the general state of things.

Pharmaceutical companies, don't make me start a campaign. Put the damned alcohol back in the cough medicine where it belongs, please. Put the fun back into having a cold, for the love of Mike, whoever he is.

Those camel couriers!

According to my admittedly iffy calculations, in a week or so I'll have an anniversary to celebrate. Yup, it'll be five months since the news that my novel sold, five months of waiting for the contract from the publisher, five months of living in no-man's-land. Feels more like five years. To understate it as best I can, I've been going totally nuts waiting. I spend the time constructively, imagining the following possible scenarios:

• The editor at Dorchester had a change of heart and will get around to letting me know this, oh, whenever she gets around to it. (Sorry, Monica. It's not you. It's me.)

• The editor just got a new job at a different publisher, and her pending deals have fallen by the wayside.

• My agent invented the whole story about getting an offer. (Sorry, Sue. I only imagine this in my most schizzed out/unhinged/lunatic moments. No, don't ask me about the frequency of these 'moments'.)

• I've been going through some sort of psychotic episode and will wake up and find that I'm actually still working at my teaching job, my son is still in high school, and I've never written anything, far less submitted a novel to anyone, anywhere.

• I'm being punished by the Almighty for my sins. Like that one where... Oh, never mind that.

• It's a conspiracy. Some evil entity is using all the players in this deal to carve out an individually-tailored version of hell for me. This is the trial run.

The problem is, basically, that I knew nothing about what is normal in this situation. Then Kevin came to my rescue in the comments section after I had been bitching about the contract yet again, and he explained the whole thing.

It's the camels! Yup, you read that correctly. Taking six months, seven, or even longer to get the contract out is normal in publishing. And it's all because of the camels. Jeez, why didn't I think of this? It makes so much sense now - more sense, in fact, than many other aspects of the business of publishing. Here's Kevin's exposé of a previously well-guarded secret:

"Only four months on the contract? A rule of publishing is contracts can only be transported on arthritic camels. No doubt with you being on an island this involves a lot of drowned dromedaries. My personal record is seven months, but I've heard longer."

Ya publishers out there, you've been outed. And I hope you don't try to hold me liable for all the camel corpses floating around the Caribbean Sea.