yuletide blues
Ah, the holidays. They sneak up on us -- I think it's the way they play Christmas music in stores before Halloween nowadays. It's a subtle thing, to put us off our guard, and then WHAM! Suddenly it's just a few days before the Big Eve and I'm still waiting on eBay and Amazon.com purchases to arrive.
Luckily, my shows are on holiday hiatus, so I've got lots more time to buy and wrap, right? Er, not quite. We can't forget all the seasonal goodies that must be consumed before they've spoiled -- and I mean the viewables, not the edibles.
One of these is "Miracle on 34th Street." It's a classic. Used to be on 'round-the-clock this time of year when I was a kid. At least, that's how I remember it. But I've never seen it all the way through. It would always be 15 minutes in, or 45, or else it would be 20 minutes from the ending. Snips and snaps, here and there. A holiday sampler.
But not this year. At 30, I'm finally going to see "Miracle on 34th Street" in its entirety. And if I can't find a time when it's on and I'm at home -- this is, after all, a busy season -- well, it happens to be a recent addition to our holiday DVD collection.
Tonight, though, NBC is airing "an encore presentation" of last week's Christmas-party episode of "The Office." Normally I would consider this cheating -- two weeks in a row, come on -- but it's my second-favorite show, and this installment was yet another example of how much better this great little program could be if given a 60-minute time slot every week. The festivities begin (again) at 9 p.m.