A Charlie Brown Christmas

My DirecTV has been on the fritz lately. In the summer I usually lose my local channels when my neighbor's decorative maple greens (actually reds) up but I watch so little TV in the summer it doesn't bother me. It bugs my wife for a while, but that's another story...

So this fall I was surprised I did not get my locals back as I raked away the remainder of the leaves that fell. It wasn't until last week I finally tracked the problem to a faulty multiswitch and swapped it out. My locals were back, but alas it was too late to catch any showings of my favorite Christmas special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.



I popped over to Netflix and moved it to the top of my queue but it wasn't going to get here in time. Feeling a bit down my better half tried to cheer me up by pointing out we made a VHS copy some time back. She departs for the basement and reemerges with a never-been-played-back before (gotta love how we record them then forget them) home made VHS copy.

I forgot how long ago we recorded it by after viewing the noisy recording we soon discover it was taped back in 1998. Dave Thomas is still alive and smiling and hawking Wendy's burgers, old TV news personalities come back, and stores like Ames and Hills are back in business and selling us stuff for Christmas. (I used to enjoy the Hills Christmas-time jingle "Hills is where the toys are.")

Grainy and aged, the Peanuts characters popped to life as best they could on a low resolution recording device. Not that the original was much better with its low production value and zany editing. It wouldn't matter. The message that Charlie Brown's special resonates would come thru no matter what the medium and production value. In some way the low video quality lives up to the story line itself.

Apparently in 1998 right after CB aired CBS then ran A Garfield Christmas. Amazingly enough that feline also figures out the true meaning of Christmas.

For some reason, maybe it is the weather, maybe the calendar, maybe not catching all the specials on TV, this Christmas I felt rushed, pushed, achy, and tired. Despite my children's enthusiasm and anxiousness, somehow I lost the feeling of Christmas, the feeling of something special in the air. Even copious amounts of TSO failed to revive the spirit.

Two low budget productions, recorded on an even lower budget storage device, shoved into a storage box, forgotten and trapped in a basement dungeon for over 10 years, having been recorded in another time and era when I felt so much younger, somehow have restored my feeling of Christmas, the feeling of what makes it special.

Merry Christmas one and all. Merry Christmas.

Happy Birthday, Dad

While cleaning up the house my brother came across a collection of my dad's old 35mm slides. He had them burned to DVD and over Thanksgiving we had a real treat looking at the old photos on TV.

From Dad's Slides

This photo is a snap of my dad as a young man, from a time I can barely remember. I'm guessing this was taken about 1965, which would have made him 40. The old man would have been 83 today.

Happy birthday, Dad. We miss you.