The Year Without A Santa Claus

It occurred to me last night as I was being grumpy to LA-B (for no apparent reason) that this is the first year without Santa Claus. "What?" you may say if you read this blahg or know me personally. I had a little baby this year, so why would there be no Santa Claus?

Santa had a booming voice that would echo through the house as he chuckled "ho ho ho...bah humbug." He rarely if ever did his own shopping. He would eat oyster stew at midnight and sometimes even get in a hand or two of Euchre. He made sure that there were sparkling lights from roof to lawn. He made the best rum raisin ice cream in the world.

He was a man of few words on the phone, but catch him sitting at a table and he would tell you tales of truck driving, race cars, and growing up on a farm. He had a crooked nose, a crooked arm and a lead foot. But above all else, he had a heart of gold.

I miss him.

It's a Christmas Miracle

I have to give a BIG shout out to Dave Lowe who made my day with his post about the restoration of Rudolph and Santa. I encourage you to visit the actual post because Dave is a super talented guy and you will surely get a bowl full of jelly laugh from some of his fantastic sketches, cartoons, comics - what is the proper term?

But, for now, I hope he won't mind if I "reprint" his post here along with the link to a really cool article.

Rudolph Restored!

From my stuff that I think is cool files...

Like many, I grew up watching, no worshipping the original 1964 Rankin Bass special- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Many influences in my work today I can trace back to it.

All of the original stop motion puppets were thought lost to the ages until 2005 when Rudolph and Santa were discovered being used as ordinary christmas decorations.

Here is a recent story on the restoration being done on these old friends. I personally hope they end up in the Smithsonian one day. Click on ...

Rankin Bass puppet restoration.

posted by -Dave at Friday, December 22, 2006

Mystery Suit

So, a while back I was sitting on the couch holding Tenacious G and a knock came on the door. Now, we live in a complex with a security gate so people generally can't just walk up to our door and knock. They have to call from outside the gate and we buzz them in. There are 2 exceptions to this - fellow residents and the Fed Ex guy. When it's the Fed-Ex guy he drops the box on the step, knocks on the door and walks off. I know it's him because by the time I get to the door to look through the peep hole, there is no one there. That was the case on this particular day and it took me off guard because this was long before I started ordering all of my Christmas presents online and well after the initial onslaught of baby gifts.

Anyway, I open the door and there sits this box. I bring it in, look at the return address and see that it is from a Paul Morse / The Wee Shop in Woonsocket, RI. OK, definitely a baby gift. I tear open the box and find a knitted suit - a sort of dress top and pants - all white with little green shamrocks on the breast of the dress. Very cute. Very old school looking. I went back to the box to get the card to see who sent us this lovely outfit and came up empty. There was nothing. No card, no invoice, no NOTHING.

Curious.

No worries, this has happened before and I just called the store and asked whom I could thank for the gift. Of course, that store was Babies R Us and I knew there 1-800 number. Getting the digits to the Wee Shop has proven impossible. It doesn't seem to exist. No website, no yellow page listing in Woonstruck, RI, nothing. Also no listing for a Paul Morse.

So now we have this pretty little thing and I don't know who to thank. It's very strange - the situation, not the little suit.

Anyway, there you go. Just thought I'd write about the little mystery suit.