Teeny Manolo

I have something to confess.

I live with a Christmas Grinch. Uh, one whose heart never grew two more sizes, that is.

For reasons lost in the ether many moons ago, my husband has grown up to have a healthy dislike of all things Christmas. It could be that as a middle child, he was always ignored and never got what he wanted. Or maybe it was the time his oldest brother, completely inebriated, one year mistook the living room Christmas tree for a green, pine-scented urinal. Whatever the reason, the holiday season is one of his least favorites.

And you know, fine, I get that. Not everyone can have holiday cheer oozing from every pore, candy cane in pocket to hand out to every child they see. Still, living with a Christmas Grinch can be hard work when you are trying to spread some joy, dammit!

But as I told him when our son was around two, you have to try to fake it for the sake of the kids. The children do not understand utterances under one’s breath about how insincere and fake it all is, and how if one hears Jingle Bells one more time, one might be forced to embark on a long eggnog binge.

To ensure everyone’s sanity, my husband has only four simple duties at Christmas.

1. He must get the tree. Now, he may not actually pick out the tree, but he is responsible for hauling it into the house.

2. He must string the lights on the tree, since his six inch height advantage on me means he does not have to get on a step ladder.

3. He must put up the lights around the outside of the house. This, I’m told, is a manly thing to do as it involves both cursing and ladders.

4. Lastly, he must assemble all large and annoying toys that need assembling.

After that, I inform him that he can simply fade into the background if he so desires. I don’t expect him to care about where I hang the garlands or what kind of candy I should put into the Advent calendar.

Some years he has gotten more into it than others, but I suspect this year won’t be one of them.

Hey, as long as he doesn’t snitch on who actually ate the cookies for Santa, it’s OK with me.

A great classic of the late 20th Century, presented live at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Sure, you’ve probably seen some version of it before, but this is one tradition I’m never gonna give up.

Passed along by Nancy Zimmerman

Well, we’re a day late, but better a day late than never. Right? Right?

Sigh. Why is it that my family likes to become sick whenever the holidays are just around the corner?

Last week, Tryone Power barely won over Laurence Olivier, and I have to admit, the choice was tough. I do have to say that I sort of loved Laurence’s hair. It seems like they all had such wonderful hair back then. Baldies need not apply for old Hollywood stardom. A Patrick Stewart would have been unimaginable at that time. Heh, their loss…

This week, you may not recognize him without his iconic moustache, but I am not a lover of the moustache in general, so I chose not to feature a picture with it. Besides, he’s a bit younger here than when he hit the jackpot with some little movie about some plantation that caught on fire and a chick that made a dress out of curtains. There may have been some sort of cussing involved. What was the name of that movie again?

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Last week’s poll found Laurence Olivier delivering quite the beat down to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Although perhaps Douglas’ only crime was being “disturbingly pretty” as quoted from dgm.

Today we have yet another challenger, one Tyrone Power, who made many hearts aflutter in the 1930’s and 40’s. I can totally see why.

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At first I thought, well, this is completely unnecessary. And then I thought, but wait, there are some really, really dumb people in this world. But then I thought, well, how many of them can read anyway?

And then I realized that journalists are paid by the word, not by the nugget of eternal wisdom, and it all made sense.

An article on how to read to your child. To be fair, it does come from Florida.

For what it’s worth, and for those who can’t be bothered to mouth their ways through the entire article, here is a quick summary:

1. Use funny voices. Hey, it made Peter Sellers a star, how hard can it be?
2. Read more than one book [editorial TeenyManolo note: this requires having more than one book in the first place]
3. Make a game of it. Presumably because straight-up reading books is hard, yo.
4. Read picture books to young children, and books with big words or maybe only black-and-white pictures to older children, who presumably are too brainwashed to fight back.

[editorial license may or may not have been taken in the above summary. Your mileage may vary. Use at own risk. TeenyManolo will not be responsible for literacy ensuing from use of the above tips]

Do you miss the feeling of that umbilical cord?

Would you like to be able to control your teen, even when they are miles and miles away?

Does the thought of annoying them to no end fill you with a perverse sense of pleasure?

Then the new Ford MyKey might just be for you. You see, MyKey is short for “I used to be a teenager myself, I know exactly what you are doing in that car!” Well, the press release didn’t say that exactly, but here at the Manolosphere, we are granted some poetic license. And trust me, teenagers are going to want a poetic license more than a driver’s license when they find out what MyKey does. Or more specifically, what MyKey doesn’t allow them to do.

Does your teen enjoy thumping around the neighborhood, shaking everyone’s windows to the bass line of the new Rihanna tune? Sorry, MyKey only allows the stereo to go up to 44% of its volume.

Does your teen hate buckling those pesky seat belts? No stereo for you!

Do they love to feel the wind in their hair as they drive around town? Well, they had better find a maximum of 80mph’s worth of wind enjoyable, or they’re out of luck.

Just think, by the time the Munchkin is ready to drive in about ten years, technology will have advanced to the point where I can beam a hologram of myself into the car and boom over the speakers, “Stop it this instant, young man!”

I’m interrupting our regularly scheduled CDF to bring you a special Halloween Edition.

I mean, with all the fabulous men who have played vampires on the big and small screens, how could I resist?

Now, enough yapping and on to your special Halloween treat, a quadruple threat with the vampires of Buffy duking it out against Anne Rice characters!

Happy Halloween!

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For some, the best thing about Halloween is the wonderful excuse it provides to go out and get your scared on and scream your face off. This is why amusement parks open on Halloween, even though the weather’s always lousy. They don’t even need to dress the carnies up! Just tell them to come straight from the meeting with the parole officer, as-is.

But some, it seems, have taken it too far. From the not-so-very-distant Nanny State comes news that this year 54% of parents are too frightened of the risks of Trick-or-Treating and will keep their children home instead.

54% of parents will ban their children from taking part in the age-old tradition, with 45% citing road safety issues and 43% highlighting antisocial behaviour as a concern. And of those who will let their children out, 89% will be accompanied by an adult with 72% saying they will only allow their children to visit friends and neighbours they know.

But, despite the fears, the same survey revealed only 3% of children have actually been involved in an accident or crime while trick or treating.

John McNamee, chief executive of CSEF, said: “It’s encouraging to see that the vast majority of children who are going trick or treating will be doing so under supervision.

“This really is key to ensuring a successful and fun Hallowe’en for children, parents and residents alike.”

While any accident is an unfortunate thing, simply having an adult along will lower the risk. I for one would never let my children Trick-or-Treat alone and besides, isn’t this one of those “golden moments of childhood” things that you’ll look back on in years to come and fondly say, “ah, remember the time you had eighteen bags of candy corn and puked in Mrs. Smith’s rhododendron bush?”

I can see that you are all thinking, Glinda, you are teh crazy.  Why are you taking me back to the 1920’s, rating men I may or may not have heard of before in my life?

Trust me, my friends.  There is a method to my madness.

Now, last week we voted on some silent fim stars, and poor John Gilbert got the boot from Ronald Colman.  I feel badly for Mr. Gilbert, as he was never able to transform his success in silent film to “talkies.”  And he could not beat Mr. Coleman, which is almost as it happened in real life.  I shed a tiny tear for him.  Sniff.  Was it the fact that they looked practically like twins?  We’ll never really know…

So as is our tradition, the dark-haired Ronald moves up to the next round to face the next opponent, who happens to be a hot blonde.  And that opponent would be one of the most famous actors of his generation, and whose house was almost as famous as he was.  Look, it even has its own Wikipedia entry! And bonus, it’s for sale!

Ahem, moving on…

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It is with sadness that I recall a time when I was not yet a blogger full-grown, but was a blogger in larval form, cocooned in skidoo suits and footie pjs against that great day still in the future when the industry I was fated to dominate (work with me here, okay?) would be born. Sad those days were, indeed, not so much because of the lack of blogs (but kinda) but rather because of the presence of vast herds of easily-influenced, lowbrow trend sheep: back then, we called them white trash.

Remember those divine triple avatars of conflicted feminism, the Angels of Charlie? (ZOMG, I am channeling the Olo of the Man!) Somewhere towards the death throes of that show, perhaps the definitive television program of adolescent 70’s femininity (Mary Tyler Moore was just too damn chipper, and she didn’t get to toss her hair and yell “Freeze!” like wicked-cool Kate Jackson or, come to think of it, Angie Dickinson) they leapt the ferocious, fanged fish as badly as Fonzie. Verily, they pulled a Cousin Oliver! They started subbing in any old wannabe and trying to pass them off as Angels.

Remember “Tiffany?” The year after she appeared on the show (”replacing” Kate Jackson, oh please, as if anyone could!) Tiffany was the most popular girl’s name in the United States. Whatever the merits of the no-doubt-charming-and-intelligent little girls in question, it’s hard to go through life with a name that forever marks your parents as appallingly tacky, unoriginal people who get their best ideas off dying sexploitation tv.

I had hoped that this trend would vanish along with dashikis for white guys and nylon bodysuits for girls (the 70’s Chastity Belt). I was wrong.

They are with us even now.

Jayden, my friends, is a sweet-looking, apparently quiet and happy little boy. Britney’s youngest child, he and his brother have been photographed relentlessly since birth, as if they were some kind of miracle pandas: sometimes demonstrating gravity to Mommy and the ‘razzi, sometimes enjoying fine dining en famille, sometimes roving free within the confines of the moving convertible, sometimes playing with Mommy’s lighter and Marlboros. Oh, life is a carnival for the Federtots, constantly in the spotlight.

I wish to make it clear that I have nothing whatsoever against Jayden personally. I’m sure he’s a fine young man. I even have nothing against Britney, who is, after all, called Britney, and who could hardly be expected to name her offspring after the more popular 4th Century BC philosophers. I wish only to complain about the tens of thousands of people who have named their sons Jayden, after someone they have never met, who was saddled with a hickster name at birth he’ll probably hate his whole life (still better than Kal-El I guess) and who hadn’t even mastered bowel control when this sad-sack immortality by proxy was foisted upon him.

Last year, Jayden became the 18th most popular baby name in the United States of America. #2 in New York (which tells you something about New Yorkers that I did not know).