Yuletide redux.

* Spent Christmas Eve at Larry's condo, exchanging presents and watching SWEENEY TODD on DVD. We watched SWEENEY TODD instead of going out and watching PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, which I believe is going to be terrible. Still, I feel I must confess that I learned all the lyrics to the major songs of it when I was 13, and I saw it on Broadway when I was a senior in high school. But SWEENEY TODD is way better than PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. PHANTOM's about obsession and murder. So's SWEENEY. But it also involves haircuts, meat pies and cannibalism.



* Nana's caramel cake made it to the Christmas Eve lasagna feast at my dad's house, even though Nana didn't. At one point during dinner, I got into a conversation with my stepmother's mother about the cake, and she told me that the frosting didn't come out right because, while Nana was making it, she collapsed and had to be helped to her room. Beyond that, Nana now suffers from dementia. After my stepmother's mother told that story, I felt really rude asking for Nana's recipe, but that caramel cake is the best dessert ever. (Seriously, do the math. My STEPMOTHER'S grandmother's caramel cake is so good that my MOTHER is happy when we bring home leftovers of it from my FATHER'S house. Thus, that cake has bridged the generation gap and the divorce gap. It's powerful stuff.)
* I got into an argument with one of my dad's friends, who was in more of a blowhard tone-of-voice than usual, when he suggested that the "Confederacy" re-elected Bush and that the majority of Georgia voters "probably don't know how to read ... or don't read." I told him that, though I'm a Democrat, I wouldn't go so far as to calling everyone who voted Bush stupid. (Particularly when there were a number of educated people who invited him there who voted Bush.) We lost the election, y'all. It wasn't nearly as close as last time, when I felt like such complaints were more valid. The situation's bad, but it's done. If some friends invite you to their Christmas dinner, don't call them illiterate yokels out to intentionally destroy the world. Don't insult my dad and say he should be sent to Baghdad to die. Drink your wine. Talk about your imaginary, long-distance girlfriend that you've been mentioning for a decade. Talk about movies. Other than that, shut the hell up. It's Christmas.
* For Christmas, I got the third season of ALIAS and the second season of GILMORE GIRLS on DVD. It hurt to leave the house this morning.
* I will never, ever, ever again go to a gay bar on Christmas Eve. I mean, yikes. It was sad. People who didn't want to go home alone or go home to parents sober or, the worst, flight attendants stuck here on a long layover willing to throw money around while looking for a friend.
* Ash got out of the hospital on Christmas Day.
* Vic got back from Illinois after being stuck in traffic or a snowstorm for over 20 hours.
* Lupo's fresh off the boat, which he called "a hell worse than death" in a ship-to-shore e-mail last week.
* Saw THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU. Sucked. Saw THE AVIATOR. Very good.
* The annoying, bitchy seasonal employee at my bookstore probably only works there another week. I've hated her since she insulted a blind, deaf, 94-year-old customer in a walker in a tone-of-voice so soft that he couldn't hear her. And I've tried my best to get the bitch fired.
* I watched A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS and am as puzzled by it as I was when I was a kid. How do they get that Christmas tree to grow extra branches and a completely different shape? None of the Peanuts even has pruning shears.