Trading Places (1983) defines Christmas – Dan Aykroyd munching salmon through a Santa beard.
Tag Archives: Christmas
Bad Santa (2003) is the ONLY Christmas movie.
It’s beyond hilarious and it would not be made today; there would be riots in the streets. And the sad thing is that this ‘statement’ is true.
It’s a movie so funny, it knows it’s funny and takes the piss out of how funny it is.
Mandatory Gorgie Road Xmas morning snap.
No caption necessary.
The Edinburgh Christmas Market is back with a vengeance.
This Xmas market is an addiction. I don’t enjoy a single second meandering about its gruesome stalls, yet I continue to do so every year as it gets worse and worse in its lumbering pointlessness. The only parallel I can think of is watching Manchester United play football these days.
One day this is going to end. Best to savour it while it’s here.
Further reading:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-50446733
Edinburgh Christmas Market.
The Xmas Market is back, Edinburgh’s ‘winter wonderland’. Stalls selling tacky clobber, ‘German’ food and drink at Weimar Republic-level prices, and jingle bells noises.
Personally, I think it’s shite, but it lures in the tourists and scares away the junkies because they get too confused by bright lights and the smell of warm food.
Edinburgh’s Christmas Market.
It’s here once more (with feeling). The Christmas Market on Princes Street has been setting up shop every November for what must be the last two millennia. There’s not much to it but tat peddled from wooden shacks, and a sickly, premature jingle bells atmosphere. One can hit the mulled wine and warm ciders, though. Any excuse for a piss-up. There is also an imposing fuck-off ferris wheel if you fancy gobbing on someone from an advantageous peak.
Christmas Day in Oslo.
Christmas brings back the nostalgia, and I do most cherish those memories from the good ol’ days – stuffing my cheeks with selection boxes whilst wailing “Woof” at Buzz’s girlfriend. Xmas is a childhood signifier, the throwback event to an uncomplicated time when the most strenuous task was grabbing forty winks on Christmas Eve.
One recent Christmas Day stays with me, though. Alone in Oslo circa 2013, it was a day of, if not self-discovery, then a serene, surreal solitude (accidental alliteration).
I was reminded of that line in Heat (1995) when De Niro’s character ventures, “I am alone, I am not lonely.” That was Oslo for me: I simply walked the barely inhabited streets apropos of nothing, uttering not a word to anyone, feeling myself an invisible, pointless wanderer passing through the geography. I did nothing, and liberating it was. I’ve not had a jaunt like that since. I recommend Oslo – anonymous, pallid, flat – as the place for it. Maybe it’s livelier in the summer.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 