'Bred Crumbs

10:47 PM The holiday in review:

Most delightfully unexpected, unusual, and educational gift (among the many great things I received): Barron's contribution of a plush-toy Cthulhu. Having never read Lovecraft, I didn't know what this was. Now I do, and I love that it's available Beanie Baby-style. I had it on top of my TV for a while, but I've moved it to a shelf now, in a place of honor next to my Farscape tapes. Much as I greatly enjoy the toy, I decided that maybe I shouldn't have a representation of pure evil as the centerpiece of my livingroom.

Fun fact that I stumbled upon after spending Christmas Eve with friends riffing Willow: Gavan O'Herlihy, the Nordicly handsome man who played Val Kilmer's ally Airk in Ron Howard's LotR-wannabe, very briefly portrayed Chuck Cunningham, the initial older brother on Happy Days, who one day went up to his room and was never heard from again.

Most refreshingly routine sight: It always cheers me to see people doing distinctly non-Christmas things on Christmas Day, like on my first Christmas in San Francisco, where I was pleased to see people jogging along Ocean Beach. This year: people playing tennis in Dolores Park.

Most disturbing sidewalk encounter with a stranger in the days before Christmas: Over the weekend, my route from feeding Dana's cats to home meant I couldn't avoid a clearly drunk, drugged, or insane man wandering aimlessly. When I got to him, he spoke to me. The quality of his speech was lucid, but the content was not. He cursed that he had electric shocks running up and down his body, and he asked me to see whether there were any animals or bugs on his back or neck. I looked. There weren't. He didn't believe me. And as I walked away from him steadily but carefully, I think he was getting angry at me for not telling him he had critters crawling all over him. Eegh.

Most pleasant sidewalk encounter with a stranger in the days before Christmas: Christmas Eve, I returned from a futile trip to Safeway (Safeway closes for Christmas? Who knew?). As I neared home, footsteps approached from behind. I am not paranoid about walking in the neighborhood at night; however, it pays to be alert, so I braced and readied my peripheral vision. Eventually, a good-looking young blond man caught up to me. The quality and content of his speech both betrayed considerable drunkenness. He said he was tired from shopping and getting ready for Christmas all day, but he was still jovial, and talked and talked and talked, almost not realizing I was parting from him and turning the corner for home. "Hey, you live in my backyard?" We compared locations and no, not quite. This seemed to make him a little sad, but he recovered and wished me a Merry Christmas. And I him.

Moment when Christmas most felt like Christmas: When I was sprawled on the couch at the Hozmans', with the dinner and family chaos past, relaxed and happy, playing the PS2. Uncoordinated and often flummoxed by the modern generation of video games as I am, this isn't something that has really happened before. Plus, I backed away from video games after 1980, my Summer of Galaxian. But this Christmas night, I became quite addicted to SSX Tricky. And, because I'm a freak, I also became very attached to my chosen character, strapping surfer dude Brodi, who spouts Reader's Digest Buddhism and wears his tight shirts like halter tops. (And before anyone jumps my case about finding a cartoon character kind of hot, please ask your straight male PS friends about their feelings for Lara Croft. Geez, some of them even went to see the movie, which featured another cartoon character, Angelina Jolie.) Hulking but fast and a Cal State-Monterey grad, laid-back Brodi is a bundle of contradictions, and I made him more so by turning every race of his into a succession of well-performed tricks followed immediately by idiotic but spectacular wipeouts. (Like I said, I'm not good at the ol' multi-controller.) Stranger still, I found myself thinking that I could make my life better if, like my Brod, I started uttering fortune-cookie mantras ("To suffer is to grow") whenever I get battered by the towering pines, sheer rock walls, and harsh metal jump ramps of life. But driving an actual car after a couple hours of mock snowboarding felt a little strange, and I was reminded that the PS2 is not life. Or is it?

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07:15 PM
(Note: The First Law has been in place for at least a decade; Rules 2 through 4 have held true for at least the past four years.)

1. No matter when he starts, Tim will finish his Christmas shopping on Dec. 23 -- no earlier, no later.
2. Tim's shopping will take him at least once into the heart of the commercial Christmas beast, the Union Square area of San Francisco. (On the other hand, it probably will not take him to a mall.)
3. When Rule 2 takes effect, Tim will at first find the hustle and bustle charming, festive, and invigorating.
4. The effects of Rule 3 will last no more than 15 minutes.

And so it was this year. The trip downtown wasn't too bad, though; only three stores were entered, two on very fast hit-and-discover-what-you-need-isn't-really-here missions, followed by a multipurpose tour of Macy's, which would have gone better except that people don't seem to understand how shopping works:

1. You select one or more things you need to buy.
2. You take them to a service counter and buy them.

Instead, I was delayed in one department by a group of about eight country-mice-in-the-big-city, who were all shopping the same section together. A couple of couples were in line in front of me; as they got to the register, some of their cohorts, winding throughout the department in acquisitive patterns like the ghosts in Pac-Man, would come to the register and add something to the pile -- or worse yet, substitute -- while the clerk was already ringing up the order.

But that minor misery was offset by a new holiday treat, on the streetcar headed downtown -- a high-pressure peacock-feather salesman. He tried obsequiously to impress part of his giant, aisle-blocking bundle of bird leftovers onto a group of girls next to me at a buck each, but they didn't bite. He gave up and sat down a few seats away. Subsequent eavesdropping revealed that he was selling the feathers not because he needed the money, but because he had invested unsuccessfully a few years ago in a peacock farm and now has thousands of the exotic plumes gathering dust in his home. So he tries to sell them to the holiday throngs ever year. Hey, need that special gift for your boss or mother-in-law? How 'bout a big scary eye!

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We now have our winner for Journalism Chickenshit of the Year: Time magazine, which has suddenly redefined its Person of the Year designation, previously given to the person who most influenced the events of the world in the given year, to apply this year to the person who most influenced the events of the world but won't piss off middle America if he's on the cover with "Person of the Year" written over his head. Thus, the time-honored Time title for 2001 is tagged not to the terrorist who set into motion a vile, disastrous attack that shook a great nation out of its complacency and changed the perceptions of hundreds of millions of people in less than an hour; instead, it goes to event-reactor Rudolph Giuliani, "for his surprisingly subtle touch, for his very real tears and for reluctantly taking center stage." Yes, Giuliani was impressive, but, editors, if you're suddenly changing Person of the Year to an honor instead of an analysis, just say so and quit rationalizing it. Clearly, you just didn't have the guts to stick to your own rules.

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