The gifts and re-gifts have been returned, and I think that may have something to do with the fact the postal guy for the US service has been out and about early, in a rarity before noon. Naughty not nice, you are, if you didn’t get that special someone their gift via the mail until the 26th! Overtaxing the Postal truck driver/deliverer. Need the warrior strength of several Amazons. But the spirit of Xmas remains, so don’t go postal, even as we all approach New Year’s, and will 2025 be different than 2024? The carols have been sung (quite badly and maybe just hummed if you don’t know all the words), but you might want to extend it with karaoke (worse but there is a lyrics sheet on the prompter). So here is a mashup of All That Remains of the holiday, as we are on day six of the 12 that make up Christmas, rolling forward with NYE to 2025 at the same time as looking back. All the way to 2016?
So we are now in the sixth of the 12 days of Christmas, we made it halfway through, so I offer another hodge-podged half of bits of advice, celebration, humor and events.
At midnight on the 31st at the Wild Badger in New Richmond, there will be a silver-ball-and-moreso-balloon-dropping, maybe like in Pinball Wizard, or disco, as from the higher-than-usual second story ceiling, much like the ones they did at the old Pudge’s north wall, back as far west as you could go, a decade or two ago, to bring in customer traffic from the various venues that was about. The 2024-2025 event is kept at a similar length of descent, as it’s this time a balloon drop, and will be done indoors.
— Unlike the above, this venue has been raising a stink? The City Brewery’s “process,” and Lord knows I don’t want to know what that is, had been evoking a rotten eggs smell across LaCrosse, where it has a plant, to the point that fines had been adding up. I wonder as I wonder, or wander, do they also have that problem where they make LaCrosse, or is it LeCrosse, autos of the sort that had been driving in front of me, or are they becoming obsolete? All this from my old pal and employer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in their statewide roundup, identified by corner region as in directional, where they made exception for my end of Wisconsin and simply called it Driftless. How is that? And indeed, why mention this here? Read down for further “spoils” of the year. —
A few blocks up the sidewalk, on the Friday before Christmas, the barber closed early, after high traffic the day before — the seating inside was full and having the others sit as a pair of couples just outside the door in the hallway — so that left Saturday as a no-show, and maybe even Monday as an outie. I wondered what will happen right before New Year’s?
I saw my very friendly, old friend Ricky for the first time in almost a year at a store on the other end of the downtown, where he used to work. The obvious joke, as he plinked away trying to make his new phone work to talk to others, momentarily distracted, was that old Steely Dan Song, “Ricky don’t lose my number …” And Ricky is now in his own band.
And, if you get the bug (in a good way) … The Hudson Bowling Center is again offering a rarity, as part of an ongoing tradition of theirs, special since it falls on a Tuesday, NYE karaoke. INXS? One wonders who will be singing as the ball drops.
The time leading up to New Year’s was marked by weekend football, and a need for munchies. It had come, my trek into one of the new Circle K’s in Hudson, in the downtown — as they move from Minnesota into Wisconsin — where I encountered a man wearing a Viking jersey No. 4.
He tried to redeem a lottery winning ticket, but was told that it originated from the Gopher State, so he could not do so over here in Badgerland. So we talked about the, changed subject, wonders of being a short man, unlike Randy Moss, and rather like my 6-foot-8 nephew trying to fit into his six-foot bunk over at UW-Madison. The jerseyed man was ambling next-door to Ziggy’s Bar, another Hudson transplant from Minnesota, to take in the game between his sometimes beloved Vikes and the Packers.
Come the afternoon, guests would include past Viking pro-bowlers and hall-of-famers Randall McDaniel and Tommy Kramer. And the omnipresent man of both states, Dave Dahl, as emcee.
And for a late-season change, they had a lot to play-by-play banter about, as the Vikings and big-day Sam Darnold held off a late charge from The Pack and won 27-25. (At the Stillwater lift bridge, there was a “Viking-Packer tug of war” over the river but hopefully not in it. I believe the Packers won this one. I cite all the Stillwater-area transplant venues, and also the Next Stop Bar in Houlton, a Badger berg even though small enough to be unincorporated aided the title. All the small things …)
The new convenience store string, a stalwart in Minnesota, toward the Twin Cities upper end, and across the St. Croix but not as far down to pass the Wisconsin River, leaves just one part of the trek behind. Way behind: North Dakota. Not even Iowa is this barren, as corn stalks score points. At least it has — and only has — Des Moines. Even the flatlands of Illinois can look east to Chicago.
But I bet it still has its trademark, word chosen for a reason, a college football bowl game. Corporately named with the bought and sold, old worn smelly jerseys, metal flecks of goalposts. And I bet it is (badly and get as many corporate buzz-type words in there as you can) dubbed the Amalgamated Crabgrass Abate Removal Technological Systems Bowl. Doesn’t this want you to see two feet and a cloud of dust? No Astroturf. With Joe Dirt performing at halftime?
Now, some humor pushing PG-13, if I can get away with such in this season:
Skipping cornfields, except for his corncob pipe, I enter into the streetscape my partially made-up character, Frosty The Ho-Man, and what is he, trans? Ho, ho, ho. And not necessarily holy, since as has been duly noted, the word Santa is not far akin from Satan. Ha, ha, ha. And put the ho in snow. But when getting past caricatures, life on the streets is no joke, even as Frosty “crosses” them at the corner.
So you better think twice, when going out for food when shopping.
Tis the season for not only killer snacks grub, setting on the table and virtually any flat surface, but food recalls of several brands. My niece still got sick for the holiday, followed by another niece … and my other niece? (Actually, I only have two, thank you Bob Newhart.) Two other members of families, and then more up near Appleton — none named Applegate — we know also got a grinchlike bug over Christmas, bad enough to decide not to attend services or holiday parties where you get gifts like, this year, Pepto Bismol. Even the bus driver got the bug, actually from a donut shop bad sandwich, but forged through with a long break stop or two.
But none had been to McDonalds since early fall or before, or any of those other places that in the last few weeks have got some bad fish or veggie, or both, or whatever. And on the sign of a marquee in Eau Claire on both sides when going to both Milwaukee and back, gave the invitation that the McRib is back being fried. But do you want it?
This invites where few would go, except Old School farmers. Cannibal sandwich anyone? Yes, the thawed but raw ground beef version placed on a bun and virtually smothered with black pepper and onions. Inconceivably, I’ve never known anyone to get sick on it.
Going back a bit, in this time of tinsel-like clothing and accessories, to also include old TV talent show placings, Clay Aiken in an interview truly sported the ugliest-in-glowing-green-too holiday shirt, along with too-short sprouting-out hair that is like a bad version of Bowie — but each had their own charm. As does his new corral of Christmas carols, on sale now.
Then downtown there was Henry, and his non-PC T-shirt that had flickered on it an indie rock band and the phrase “120 miles to Mexico!” And comedian-TV host Steve Harvey on the above screen piled on, with a head-to-foot blazing red suit reminiscent of Santa Claus!
So lIke Santa and sleigh, catching major attention were many drones over in the east, from whom? In weather that a TV national news anchor cited, majorily, that was in six-below wind chill, which really isn’t that bad, viewed from my perch as a Minnesconsinite.
So I’m not watching in a luxury box like Taylor Swift, but do you look like red-stocking-hat beau Travis Kelce? All those shirtless guys, that’s cool and so cold, who are very portly but still strutting for those cameras would fit in well at Lambeau Field.
There was that airplane stowaway suspect trying to stowaway again — wanna get away? — aboard of all things (like my travels) a Greyhound cross-country bus! She was caught states away in Buffalo. The TV news days later told the tale of yet another stowaway, back to again in the air, wreaking havoc.