This Is Santa's Big Scene

Happy Solstice, Yule, or whatever you want to call it! We've had our Christmas tree up for a while now, and I posted pictures of it elsewhere online, but not here. It's smaller than last year's, but I see that as a good thing. Much easier to carry in and out of the building. I always feel kind of bad that there's no point in putting ornaments on the back of the tree, because it just seems so uneven. The orange pterodactyl is new for this year.

They had several kinds of colorful dinosaurs like that at Target. (And yes, I know a pterosaur is not really a dinosaur.) Whenever we get a tree, Wally likes to sit underneath it, while Reagan ignores it.


I suppose the first pre-Christmas activity I should mention is seeing the Nutcracker ballet at Lincoln Center on the last day of November. We were off to the side in the back of the third circle, and had an obstructed view, but it was still enjoyable. I'm really not familiar enough with ballet to give details, but I usually appreciate the mice and the kids coming out from Mother Ginger's skirt.

The Thursday after that, we saw the Kevin Geeks Out Christmas Special at Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park. There's always a list of the performers on the website after the show, but I always forget who did what. I know Camila Jones discussed Christmas movies, and how any film with a scene taking place on or around Christmas could technically count in that category. She also questioned a line from White Christmas about mixing fairy tales with buttermilk and liverwurst, and was confused as to what it actually means. There was a bit about the animated New Kids on the Block Christmas special, which involves Donny befriending a kid who turns out to be dead. Someone else did a multimedia bit about her mother rather passive-aggressively showing her the decorations at her house. There were also talks on Furbys and It's a Wonderful Life. And there was an updated video presentation of Santa Doesn't Need Your Help. Kevin hosted two games, the Santa suit one and Ott or Not, the goal of the latter being to guess whether a film was rated better or worse than a very early movie of a guy named James Ott sneezing. I actually won the Santa suit one a few years ago, and every other time was eliminated very quickly. It's mostly all luck, even if you have a photographic memory for celebrities in Santa suits, as there are always some pretty obscure choices.


Last Thursday, we went to Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We were there last year, but I think they expanded it a bit this time. Sadly for us, it was cold and rainy that day, and the way the lights were positioned in the dark in some places made it hard to see. I liked the flowers and birds made of lights.

The next day was a concert by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, with a good mix of holiday classics. And yesterday, we saw the tree in Rockefeller Center, and stopped at the nearby Nintendo store.

Make more than one trip, Luigi!
It was really crowded, and they didn't have anything that particularly interested me. I noticed a lot of sticker books, and the Pikachus in wedding dresses were cute. Bowser Jr. was apparently trying to blend in with them.

Even though I've lived in New York City for almost eight years, I still kind of feel like a tourist in that area.