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Our original plan for this weekend was to visit Beth's parents in New Jersey, but when we were on our way down, Beth found out that the result of our last COVID test was positive. Mine was negative, for what it's worth, but we still thought it would be best to go back home. On Saturday, she called a hotline, and they said she likely wasn't contagious, so we could have gone anyway. How were we to know that, though? There were several virtual events scheduled for Saturday, though, so I had a pretty busy day regardless.
The first was the Puppini Sisters' Christmas concert. I've never seen them live before; I'm not totally sure they perform outside of Europe, even in non-pandemic times. But this was a lot of fun, and they looked like they were having a good time. It was just the three of them plus two guys on piano and upright bass. Marcella played the accordion on a few songs, all three had ukuleles for "Mele Kalikimaka," and two numbers were accompanied by a tap dancer. As in videos I've seen of them, they wore matching outfits, different ones on either side of the intermission. For the second, each one had some kind of animal in her hair. They did a lot of stuff from their Christmas album, plus some non-holiday numbers, a version of "Mr. Sandman" with changed lyrics to be "Mr. Santa" instead, and a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" to the tune of "Silent Night." There was some amusing banter as well, and during the intermission there were videos of Kate Mullins making eggnog, Marcella baking cookies, and Emma Smith singing "Cheek to Cheek."
The next event was Kevin Geeks Out About the Dogs of Christmas, which is pretty much just what the title says. I wasn't able to stay for the whole thing because of the third event I had, and I was hoping I could watch what I missed today, but it looks like YouTube removed the video over a copyright issue. Oh, well. What I did see was entertaining. Suzen Tekla Krulnksa did lists of the top ten and bottom five dogs in Christmas media, and explained that Snoopy didn't get the top spot because he's kind of a jerk in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Joe Dator discussed movies that are basically Home Alone but with dogs instead of a kid. There was some talk on how a lot of Christmas dog films often have the same directors as exploitation and softcore porn, which makes a certain amount of sense as they're used to working on a tight budget and time constraints.
This picture isn't directly related to the show, but it seemed appropriate. It's from our neighborhood.
Finally, there was an OzCon International event. Raymond Wohl, who did his one-man show on L. Frank Baum at the last in-person convention, performed one as Santa Claus. It was a retelling of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, using much of the original text, but told in first person with some interpolations. It was mostly the parts of the book pertaining directly to Santa's life, hence no Awgwas. It came up during the discussion how L. Frank Baum reused the names Blinkie and Mayrie, although the latter is spelled differently for Trot. I assume they're both variants on the much more common "Mary," a name obviously associated with Christmas. After the presentation, there was a Zoom chat with Ray in character as Santa.
We have our Christmas tree up now, but we haven't gotten around to decorating it yet. It's quite a bit bigger than the one we had last year, but it's hard to tell when you're outside in the evening. I still need to shop for presents, and try to find the Christmas cards we bought before and misplaced. (To be fair, I was probably the one who misplaced them.)
The first was the Puppini Sisters' Christmas concert. I've never seen them live before; I'm not totally sure they perform outside of Europe, even in non-pandemic times. But this was a lot of fun, and they looked like they were having a good time. It was just the three of them plus two guys on piano and upright bass. Marcella played the accordion on a few songs, all three had ukuleles for "Mele Kalikimaka," and two numbers were accompanied by a tap dancer. As in videos I've seen of them, they wore matching outfits, different ones on either side of the intermission. For the second, each one had some kind of animal in her hair. They did a lot of stuff from their Christmas album, plus some non-holiday numbers, a version of "Mr. Sandman" with changed lyrics to be "Mr. Santa" instead, and a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" to the tune of "Silent Night." There was some amusing banter as well, and during the intermission there were videos of Kate Mullins making eggnog, Marcella baking cookies, and Emma Smith singing "Cheek to Cheek."
The next event was Kevin Geeks Out About the Dogs of Christmas, which is pretty much just what the title says. I wasn't able to stay for the whole thing because of the third event I had, and I was hoping I could watch what I missed today, but it looks like YouTube removed the video over a copyright issue. Oh, well. What I did see was entertaining. Suzen Tekla Krulnksa did lists of the top ten and bottom five dogs in Christmas media, and explained that Snoopy didn't get the top spot because he's kind of a jerk in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Joe Dator discussed movies that are basically Home Alone but with dogs instead of a kid. There was some talk on how a lot of Christmas dog films often have the same directors as exploitation and softcore porn, which makes a certain amount of sense as they're used to working on a tight budget and time constraints.
This picture isn't directly related to the show, but it seemed appropriate. It's from our neighborhood.
Finally, there was an OzCon International event. Raymond Wohl, who did his one-man show on L. Frank Baum at the last in-person convention, performed one as Santa Claus. It was a retelling of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, using much of the original text, but told in first person with some interpolations. It was mostly the parts of the book pertaining directly to Santa's life, hence no Awgwas. It came up during the discussion how L. Frank Baum reused the names Blinkie and Mayrie, although the latter is spelled differently for Trot. I assume they're both variants on the much more common "Mary," a name obviously associated with Christmas. After the presentation, there was a Zoom chat with Ray in character as Santa.
We have our Christmas tree up now, but we haven't gotten around to decorating it yet. It's quite a bit bigger than the one we had last year, but it's hard to tell when you're outside in the evening. I still need to shop for presents, and try to find the Christmas cards we bought before and misplaced. (To be fair, I was probably the one who misplaced them.)
