Near feet of snow? Check. Santa outfits? Check. Holiday prices? Same old, and it’s getting old, with some buys to be found. Not like of old, for any of the three questions.
To start this Christmas Is Coming spree, we talk about snow, mostly in somewhat firm pellets that came down several times this last week or two and was whipped by wind, (not enough to call it an actual blizzard), but also not strong enough to create drifts. Add in some actual flurries today, again in a.m., then quit. The total accumulation of the groupings was not far away from a foot, I would say in centimeters “46 and 2,” (they got much more down in my holiday home of Milwaukee, bogging down my mom’s bird feeder with snow twice as high as its ceiling), those being the numbers of measures used in composing a well-known Tool song. Another half-foot, depending on where in Minnesconsin, is due Tuesday night, with winds almost as brutal as before, with gusts up to 35 mph.
There are some, however, in other places like New Richmond on that end of St. Croix County — to flip the north/south pattern — who say the first winter storm warning proved to be a bust. They’ll be Riding The Storm Out, or wait it out until actual sunshine returns.
— Haven’t hit up the hits at The Empourium for a while, and they are not Some Shitty Cover Band as they by that name are not on until Jan. 10, even though I have known a trio of guys for years who run the circuit, so to speak, with different ways to negotiate the route including a freeway, between there and Ziggy’s Hudson, which is undergoing a transformation. But over eastward in the township, there are two bands with interesting names coming right on up. The Express Band plays this Saturday, (back again), frankly a vacuous name, but check them out to see if they can energize you. Burning Daylight is on next Saturday, and with a handle like that, there have got to be hot licks. The venue has announced a slate of bands through early May, unlike many who are hesitant to do so because of possible band cancellations. There main advertising outside of word of mouth and onsite has been slim and none. —
All this has made shopping difficult, and I’m sure the local dollars spent were down, but not in spades or fists full of dollars. However, it was cold and icy enough that if you dropped that turkey before you got to the car, it would bounce and slide like a bowling ball.
Why, do you need to ask, do so many vary their routines these days when out partying, or also out while working? (Not while working out, as is obvious from the new Claus of that getting even fatter man in his weight-loss-performance contract with fitness coach Rudolph — but still seen out on the town in Hudson in small groups, such as the seven Santas crowded around a single table in the front room of Dick’s Bar on Saturday night, and then closing it down. These men and women were wearing the St. Nick hats that drop across the ear and attract fashion magazines, but may sport the color of not red but …
Orange, of Halloween and all its (Dopey) creature characters, (like that shown for weeks on the scrim in back of the deejay spinning records in New Richmond for diverse karaoke), or the harvest along with its brown, or green, the season of spring, and importantly of renewal? Reminder, gotta revise the incentives in that contract before New Years!
(All in a holiday season where one bar and grill is open on New Year’s Day and late on the eve, but was closed all Thanksgiving, countering usual trends, and another is shelved in an a.m. that was usually a prominent though holiday morn. To wit, regarding Thanksgiving not Christmas decor, until recently, there were yellow gold and red flowers to be seen, alive along with green leaves and stems, on flowers on my building’s patio and around the downtown. My even-though-southernly Milwaukee mother did not have such luck, as in staying power, in her garden even just a bit after the yellow orange of, again, Halloween.)
OK, there also were white Santa headgear, shaded tassel-tops all around while slamming toddies, and sometimes on the trim too. Thick fabric. Thus stocking hats on heads, rather than chimneys with stockings. We won’t get into the fashion etiquette of Santa’s beard, also making it hard for him to drink his beer, since the icy sickles attached didn’t create any shrinkage of its length.
Or, this could be the Grinch. I would bet if I was a betting man, he thus is dancing and prancing around. Maybe at the poker table. Heard Donner and Blitzen play a mean game, betting all the elves could scrounge, thank you Don Henley, on a single one-in-a-million desperate blackjack shot, so they could note save, not prevent, Christmas.
But then Rudolph showed up, with his bright red-light nose, and couldn’t keep a poker face, despite its flush that was straight.
So no word on whether they have succeeded, as what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Or Turtle Lake. Maybe not.
But you can still play slots at the local pub. Call it Dick’s.
Witnessed while there, to quote the Dire Straits (hereafter referred to as DS) song, as this is going that long a way, when writing, for a gag …
(And not the one in mouth that keeps a rogue reindeer from biting a little kid who ventured onto the roof on Christmas Eve, the teeth bit that kept the child from being leg bit …)
Anyways, here’s some more BS, ripped off from “Industrial Disease” and forged into the jukebox, of the DS band, adapted …
Seven men say their Santa,
Six of them must be wrong.
Get it? Know the reference? Google it.
By the way, the last man, excluded, is on fentanyl, per the jokester Smilin’ Moose doorman who had a smile like the hangman on his long face.
The seven were getting on a party bus, not a sleigh.
Yes, there were female not Mrs. Claus but actual Santas (is that gender bending allowed these days?) all around town, and at Dick’s they were doing a vigorous Santa dance, consisting mostly of hopping up and down like a bunny rabbit, not Rudoph, or a hyped up reindeer trying to rise toward the skies.
I observed them prancing on all sides of a table (OK most sides), women in red stretch leggings — made of fur from arctic lemmings? — to match their hats.
I then saw the first of the ugly Christmas sweaters, shaped like a Christmas Tree, and if you look at the human body, that shape of its branches is in reverse order.
We were not ready for the bigger than usual, but not unprecedented snows, with Minnesota getting an opposing thumbs down inside warm gloves over Wisconsin, having to deal with a fuel oil shortage. This is the most recent time of many, in politics or culture or sports culture, where one of those two states that when wound together comprise Minnesconsin went wayward and dissed the other. At least we didn’t rename the local hockey arena.
Sidewalks all over were snowbound with more than a few inches, as shovelers must have been snowblind, and on one concrete stretch you could see no snow moved but twin tire tracks rolling along. A cabbie with better wheels said he had seen a sweeper churning through, dusting no flakes. It was travelling between two mega-stores, as locally would qualify, full of large-cart-wielding shoppers, most of them unbelievably friendly though toward the end some seemed indifferent and rushed.
In Walmart’s holiday-feast-sponsored display of heavenly could-thus-order-online food delights with tunes too, shown going on at length and very pleasant to interrupt computer streaming of Christmas carols and the like, it focuses as much on decor as on what’s on the table, and there are more salads than Christmas cookies. Maybe a marketing move. The long reel is followed by a tongue-in-cheek late commercial filler that calls for at last silence, as he returns to Mt. Crumpet. Non-Grinchlike gag. Didn’t recall seeing any crumpets in the reel, but plenty of other decidedly attractive dishes, as the camera floats from one in the center to another.
Plucked turkey …
Back on Thanksgiving, as a marker, some prices were up and some down so again, these days you cannot afford to be product specific in your shopping. Foodies can’t be on food stamps.
But turkeys were said to be down a bit per pound in a Trump holiday, we don’t know about other forms of staple meat — although Arby’s had on sale roast beast — and he made the dubious claim that at Walmart, your feed (most) of the family pre-made meal was much lower than under Biden. We’ll have to fact check that one. Still, my organic big holiday turkey was $71 and change, and for the ready-made meals you can look at shelling out a $100 bill, and that’s at a bit under the benchmark price, which ranges up to $200, and features relatively cheaper kind of meat, weighing in on feeding 4 to 6. So close to $20 a person, with potatoes filling in that sort of gap.
Still, Trump again is random with how he applies things, and he has done some sorta good ones. He chopped a little bit off the fee on a Christmas Tree and cord of firewood, at one dollar apiece, to attempt to back up his claim of a more affordable Christmas, and has taken a handful of other such actions. Still, without rule of law guiding things, tariff considerations rule the day.
We remain wondering just what is the core constituency to which he is catering? He pardoned, God forbid, a Democrat down in Texas — not in Georgia but with a soul to steal — who granted other than alleged bribery did have a more Trump-favorable stance on some border policies, but a Dem?!?
So more …
Leave it to lily white Hudson, which literally also bleeds red that is darker (not brighter) than maroon, to go where not even Chicago and Washington D.C. will tread. (Insert rattlesnake logo.)
Why its rod and gun club, by a vote of the majority of its members, is seeking to fulfill a proposed contract to accept pay that would in turn grant ICE access few have — to their building and land north of town for purposes of being training grounds and a storage facility. The club would get top-dollar as in $4,000-plus rent per month from ICE for its maintenance. But wait, it’s not a done deal yet, there are details to be hammered out, we’re told. Well, if you have been covering local government for as long as I have, you know about how much stock to put in what’s said to be just pending. So ram the rod of your gun up an immigrant’s butt with your club, OK that is simply a metaphor. What is not was the protest outside the Democratic headquarters, to put local ICE on ice.
Meanwhile, KARE-11 is reporting that ICE is present and working in Minneapolis. Really? Hadn’t we all just assumed they already were … Get ’em to shovel snow. Heat-loving immigrants from Mexico might have hesitated.