Christmas 2019 – Complete With Asian Stereo Type

“Merry Christmas, Argyle.” – Die Hard

So, true story – Pugsley came home from school, handed me this painting.  “What do you think?”  My response:  “Looks like Frosty is coming to kill me.”  Pugsley:  “Yup, that’s it.”  That’s my boy!

STATELY WILDER MANOR, Christmas Eve, 2019

Yesterday was a quiet Christmas Eve.  About the time I was ten years old, my brother (also named John Wilder*) and I got the ultimate concession a kid could get:  we convinced Ma and Pa Wilder that we should open our presents not on Christmas morning, but instead on Christmas Eve.  At a certain point, this becomes an easy sell.  Get up at 5:30 AM and groggily watch children ripping wrapping paper through the gauze of pain and regret of a Christmas Eve hangover, or have a nice, calm Christmas morning that involves sleeping somewhere beyond dawn?

Yeah, that’s easier than selling life insurance to people connected to Hillary Clinton.

After leaving the Department of State, Hillary Clinton’s Secret Service code name was “Video.”  Since he was connected to so many high ranking political figures, Jeff Epstein’s code name was “Radio Star.”

Since I’m not a hypocrite, we Wilder’s have done the same on my watch as soon as my kids figure out that Santa Claus and functional socialism aren’t real.  It makes sense.  Christmas has a charm that, like an open jar of mayonnaise left on the counter for a week, evolves.  As you age, the very essence of Christmas changes.

It’s easy to surprise and delight a five-year-old at Christmas.  When they open a present they didn’t even know existed, getting to amazement is easy.  Walkie-talkies in 2019?  What sort of sorcery is this?  I have seen a five year old that regularly uses an iPad® that can access thousands of movies look amazed when confronted with a simple walkie-talkie.  When young, Christmas was a wonder – it was like the rules were suspended for a day.  Ma Wilder even let me out of the cage under the stairs.

But when you have older children, say, teenagers, they have a list.  A long list.  And they know your limits – they know exactly how much you’re going to spend on them at Christmas and they pick their presents to maximize cash consumption.  This year The Boy asked for video game thing.  Since he claims he got a 4.0 at Big State U, we indulged him.  What Pugsley asked for was surprising to me:  he wanted a record player turntable and a stereo amplifier.

Pugsley’s amplifier was on sale – it was missing a volume knob – I couldn’t turn it down.

When I was near Pugsley’s age, this was exactly the gift I wanted.  I bought him the stereo and turntable he was looking for – honestly, in this day and age I was surprised they even made either of those devices anymore except in backwards stone-age places like Cairo, Calcutta, or Chicago.  Between cell phones and computers being able to instantly access tens of millions of songs and then flawlessly play an endless string of them, why would someone want to own a device that plays a maximum of 22 minutes before you physically have to get up to flip the record over?  Hell, I’m so lazy that if I won an award for being lazy I’d have The Mrs. go pick it up for me.

But Pugsley was certain that was what he wanted.

Pugsley opened up the box with the turntable and then I realized he had no idea what he was doing – no idea at all.  I’m pretty sure he’d never even seen a record played before in real life.  Nevertheless, he set it up the turntable.  Then he pulled out an old album – Queen’s A Night At The Opera.  I hadn’t seen this album in years, not since it had been packed up before Pugsley was born when The Mrs., The Boy and I moved to Alaska.  The Mrs. never even looked in the box – she had asked me when we were dating if I had a police record.

“No, just one by Sting.”

I’ll admit it wasn’t fair.  But he got even:  one time got me a Cisformer® for my birthday – it’s a car that starts out as a car and stays a car.

My brother had originally bought A Night At The Opera, and in a fit of religiosity had abandoned it along with several other records (Rolling Stones®, Thin Lizzy©, and Sweet™ come to mind) when he moved out to make his way in the big world.  Or maybe I stole them liberated them.  Little brothers do that, you know.  Regardless, I have a dozen or so albums that originated from him.  Or, to make that statement more accurate, Pugsley has the albums now.  As I reflect, I realize even the word “album” is as antiquated as Nancy Pelosi’s virginity.  Heck, it even predates her senility.

Regardless, I realized that Pugsley had no understanding of how to even hold a record.  I stopped him as he began to pull A Night At The Opera out of the sleeve.  After all, an original 1975 pressing of that album might cost all of $8.00, plus shipping and handling off of VinylDan69’s store on Ebay®.

“Stop!  Here, you hold it like this, by the edges.  And then,” putting my thumb on one edge while putting my fingers on the label to stabilize the album, “you slide it into the sleeve like this.  Don’t let it drop – it will cut through the paper sleeve.”  I then showed him how I put the album and sleeve back into the cover – with the opening to the sleeve pointed up so the album didn’t slide out.

I might have left my clothes on the floor, I might have used the same bath towel until it dried as stiff as concrete in the Hoover Dam, and my refrigerator might have resembled a biological weapon experiment prohibited by the Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953, but I always took care of my albums.  Nobody likes to hear “The boys are ba-The boys are ba-The boys are ba” for forty straight minutes.  No.  You want to hear that they’re back, and there’s gonna be trouble.  And you can forget about the old trick of taping two pennies to the tonearm, given inflation I’d have to put about $0.50 up there.

Pugsley caught on quickly, and put the record on the player.  He picked up the tonearm, and gently placed it on the record.  It started to slide immediately across the face of the record, quickly, towards the center.

“It’s skating!  Did you take the cover off of the needle?”  The answer, of course, was no.  Soon enough the needle cover was removed, and Pugsley had a fully functional stereo.

I even hear that the band Europe has a new record out – The Vinyl Countdown.

He took the turntable and amplifier into his room and connected them to a set of Sony® speakers old enough that the rubber around the speaker cones had cracked and deteriorated to a fine black powder.  As I rubbed powder grains between my fingers, I thought that if the powder was hydrated it might reanimate into my ex-wife’s soul, and nobody wants that.

But those Sony® speakers were old:  I think they once belonged to Pa Wilder.  He gave them to me sometime after Sinatra passed on.  It’s at Christmas that I reflect on what kind of a father Frank Sinatra was – if you were bad, no ice in your drink.

I followed Pugsley back and watched as he put an old 45rpm single of mine on the turntable.  He gently set the tonearm down on the edge of the record.  It hissed and popped – a sound I hadn’t heard in decades.  Then this mighty classic of Western Civilization started playing:

Yes, that’s Eddie Murphy singing the “Norton” parts.

Pugsley looked at me, puzzled, as if waiting for some explanation for the audible abomination emanating from his Christmas present.  Yes, A Night At The Opera was my brother’s record.  But this fine Joe Piscopo song?  Yeah.  I spent actual cash money to buy it.  I checked to see if maybe this was the B-side.  Nope.  On either side was the same song:  The Honeymooner’s Rap.  I had spent money, intentionally, to buy this song.

I was at a loss.  How do you explain to a middle school kid that the song was a 34 year old parody of a television show that was cancelled 64 years ago?  And, a television show (The Honeymooners) that I’d only seen one episode of, ever?

Nah, too much backstory.  Plus I’m trying to get him to be wise with his money.  I shut up.

Pugsley:  “Dad . . . this song is so,” he paused, and I imagined him looking for an adjective that wouldn’t be offensive to me on Christmas Eve.  “90’s,” he concluded.

John Wilder:  “80’s.”

Pugsley:  “Whatever.”

I left him to discover music written by obscure musicians who had long since developed careers in real estate or the food service industry.  Oh, Steven Tyler, who now plays a lesbian aunt on the Big Bang Theory®.  I think.

Well, at least Aerosmith® taught me how to cook Chinese food.  I can now wok this way.

Christmas 2020 is decidedly anti-frenetic.  Yes, Pugsley was attempting to get everyone into the room earlier in the day on Christmas Eve so we could open presents, but he was calm about it – not uncontrollably shaking like a Chihuahua on a chalupa.

The rule is that the youngest Wilder distribute the presents from under the tree.  Pugsley did so.  It’s also been the rule that the youngest Wilder gets to open presents first.  Not this year.  “Okay, Dad, you go first,” ordered Pugsley.

I did.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise when I opened a box filled with roasted coffee beans from Alaska that The Mrs. ordered from Alaska.  For whatever reason, my favorite coffee is still Musher’s Blend© from the North Pole Coffee Company™ in Fairbanks, Alaska (LINK).  I have two pounds, thanks to The Mrs.  I had, of course, known this before I asked The Boy to wrap the box.  Disclosure:  I get no money from them.  Just coffee.  And then just when I pay for it.  (Guys at North Pole Coffee:  I’m completely willing to take free coffee.  I have ethics, but, you know, this is coffee.)

So, no real surprises.

They did a brain scan of her:  “Coffee.  Coffee.  Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee.  Coffee.”

Christmas day will be calm, too.  We’ll have turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy.  I’m pretty sure that we don’t have any plans at all.  Not having little ones, we’ll get up when we get up, check the news, have some coffee, and turn the oven on to cook the turkey.  The Mrs. already made George Washington’s egg nog (Washington: Musk, Patton, and Jack Daniels all Rolled into . . . the ONE), so I don’t even have anything to complain about.

Where’s the Christmas wine?  I’m not getting up anytime soon.

Merry Christmas, one and all!

*Yes.  My brother and I have the same first name, for reals.  As we were born seven years apart, my parents had apparently forgotten they had another child when I arrived eleven years later, so I stole his name.  That’s okay.  I also managed to ruin several of his dates, end one of his relationships, wreck his car, and throw up on his school clothes one night.  So I guess that makes us even.