Although Heat Miser and Snow Miser have proven to be quite popular, there were a few other Miser brothers considered for the original “Year Without a Santa Claus” Christmas special way back when.
In fact, the first suggestion was to play off of the Rudolph legend and have Santa encounter Fog Miser.
I’m Mister Gray Christmas
I’m Mister Haze
I’m Mister Thirty-Car-Pile-Up-On-The-Interstate
I’m Mister Airport Delays
They call me Fog Miser
Everything that I touch
Disappears in my clutch
I’m too much
The bosses had just a slight problem with the song lyrics for that one. Next up for consideration was Department Store Riot Miser.
<sound of phonograph needle scratching abruptly across vinyl record>
If the lyricist had been quicker with the rhyme we might have gotten a complete verse for Rioty.
Part of the problem was that the idea session was held concurrent with the office Christmas party, so Rankin and Bass ended up having to wade through proposals like Attention-Deficit Miser:
If you want to know why the public is against the automaker bailout, here’s a hint from a previous bailout:
There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money - not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that’s happening and there are no consequences for banks who don’t comply.
“It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry,“ said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout.
But, at least for now, there’s no way for taxpayers to find that out.
I chose the title for this post because that’s been the news media’s theme all year. “Don’t question what ‘change’ means—just vote for 0bama!“ “Don’t question where the bank bailout money’s going to go—we have to save the economy from instantaneous collapse!“
I’d include “Don’t wait for convincing evidence of global warming—the polar bears are drowning!“—but that one’s been going for years now. In fact, its success (apparently until this year) is probably what convinced them they could get their way with more panic-mongering on other issues.
And of course, only after politicians and the public have already run headlong over the cliff, do we learn that maybe their solution is just making things worse. “So sorry, but don’t distrust us or anything—we’re the most important institution for the preservation of democracy!“
This is why I would rather have a Superfund site adjacent to my property, than learn that there is a “journalist” living in my neighborhood. We have sex-offender registries, why not one for “journalists?“
I actually kind of enjoy writing the beginnings of a big, long blog post about nothing, and then just deleting it all because even I’m not that interested.
Updated: Sat 20 Dec 2008 20:44
On a completely different subject, I will reiterate—seemingly apropos of nothing at all—that I think it is retarded to let oneself be offended merely by what other people think. Take offense at actions, at behavior—but have the decency to leave people the same privacy of their thoughts that you count on while thinking your own.
The first time I got into an argument over whether mere opinion is worthy of taking offense, it was an avowed—and somewhat obnoxious—atheist on the other side of the question, taking offense at the fact other people believe in God. Tonight I am moved to reiterate my views on this because a believer has taken unprovoked offense at the atheism of a friend of mine.
People who act like jackasses offend me regardless of their opinions.
Chris (after looking through catalogs for hours): “That’s a nice smoking jacket, but he doesn’t smoke. And that other one had a hunting jacket I bet he’d like, but he doesn’t hunt.“
Me (from the other room): “Honey, have you seen my windbreaker?“
Those of you who know how I feel about mayonnaise might understand my irritation at learning (via my referral logs) they actually have a foundation—until I realized it’s associated with a clinic.
I knew mayonnaise dependency was a widespread problem, but the way people use it as a beverage here in Coweta County I would have expected the clinic to be based here, not in Minnesota.
I got my Christmas cards written and sent, and even added a little yesterday to the novella (started out as a short story, but I have a way of making short stories long—and of making readers long for shorter stories…). But somehow the last week and a half before Christmas has snuck up on me, and certain people have asked me, twice, for a Christmas want list.
Of course I want a winning Powerball or Mega Millions ticket, but for some reason when I say that everyone just laughs.
Maybe I should address that request to President Jesus.
Watched that new “Miser Brothers” Christmas special last night. It wasn’t bad—it certainly washed away the nightmares I got trying to watch the live-action remake of “The Year Without a Santa Claus” a couple of years back—but I’m not sure it’s up to becoming a new Christmas TV tradition. And it lacked the unmistakable Rankin-Bass charm.
Their performances in the original remain the best.
Updated: Wed 17 Dec 2008 17:37
I just checked out clips from the 2008 special again via YouTube. <glurg> Compared to the original, both Misers in the new one are way too cutesy-cuddly. Where’s Heat Miser’s perpetual scowl? Where’s Snowy’s chronic mischievous smirk? The technology behind this production may have been vastly better than in 1974, but Rankin and Bass made so much more with what they had to work with, that the Warner Brothers crew just doesn’t measure up.
Okay, I’m going to have to force myself to stop now. I think I’ve gotten the site’s restructuring set up as I like it.
Fiction content is now on a separate track, but in order to ensure that readers can switch easily between them I’ve got those gray summary bars showing varying numbers of posts on either track. I will probably remove the “Current Content” list (formerly “Recent Posts”) from the white sidebar since it’s now redundant, but I won’t do it right this effing minute.
One thing the new summary bars will do is increase even further the workload in putting up a new post; if I don’t add a summary the bar will instead draw from the body of the post and it’ll look funky.
This means I might be less likely to post frivolous crap like, “I just made toast,“ but that’s the kind of content that would fit perfectly in the summary as is. So, no guarantees.
A lethal encounter in the desert. With a bullet in his back, Caleb fights for his life against the elements, a determined killer, and his own fading strength.
In this, the first of the exercises mentioned here, the challenge is to write a 600-word story from the first-person point of view, but severely limiting the use of the first-person pronoun. The “I” nevertheless has to be important to the story.
Having recently seen I, Robot, I’ve been inspired to write something based on what I see as a more likely evolution of existing technology—one in which robots as conceived by Asimov don’t quite exist.
An attempt to write about my Clearwater characters closer to the present day than in “Play Rough, Fight Dirty.“ Much of Wiley’s backstory from this effort translates into “PRFD,“ but some is a little different, and I’m not sure whether I want to finish this story.
Prior to the release of Serenity, the studio-hosted Browncoats website hosted a number of contests, including one calling for fans’ versions of the vows said by Zoë and Wash when they were married. I couldn’t settle for merely writing vows—I had to write the whole scene.
