Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  We go back inside the house for one final lap and notice something strange near the fireplace. That sad man, probably in his early thirties, wearing a paperboy hat and looking perpetually bored, is shaking someone’s hand and giving an autograph.

  “What’s going on here?” I ask the guide.

  “Why that’s Ian Petrella, he played Randy, Ralphie’s kid brother who couldn’t put his arms down in the snowsuit.”

  “Why is he here?”

  “He lives in California, but comes back periodically to the house. He’ll sign an autograph and tell you anything you want about the movie.”

  My mind can’t crank out a single decent question, so we don’t speak, Ian and I. It is all too much.

  I’m equally fascinated by all the hubbub and visitors one nearly-forgotten movie creates and also kind of depressed. We later learn that other bit players, like the grade school teacher and fur-hatted bully, Skut Farcas, come back for holiday celebrations and (I’m not even making this up) A Christmas Story conventions.

  All of these events and appearances and home renovations smell of money to be made. Money that Ted Turner, in his grinchiest Grinch costume, is counting from that barbed-wire and alligator-moated castle in Atlanta. I just didn’t see it until the gift shop.

  We decide to hit the gift shop because, well, it’s here…we’re here…what are we going to do, look at the smokestack some more? A neighboring home has been converted into a gift shop and I think it’ll be a good time-waster. Probably a postcard of the famous house, a few copies of the movie, hey, maybe even a Red Rider B.B. gun!

  Jeez Louise, was I wrong. This small bungalow is stuffed tight like a rich kid’s stocking, but with A Christmas Story ephemera instead of Rolexes and gold bars (or whatever rich kids get for Christmas). The place is floor-to-ceiling with junk that must have kept Chinese factories running for months on end. We’re talking adult and child-sized pink bunny suits, t-shirts with famous slogans

  (The aforementioned eye-shooting, “Oh, fudge”; “The pink nightmare”; “I triple-dog dare you”), blankets emblazoned with a cast photo, a Monopoly set, a checkers set, a Yahtzee! set, wrapping paper, paper cups, action figures, beer cozies, leg-lamp-shaped cookie molds, a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring and, I kid you not, bars of Lifebuoy Soap. The gift shop offers everything short of pre-frozen flag poles.

  This isn’t even counting the lamps. Leg lamps in four different sizes and wattages. From the genuine fragilè-sized from the movie to a desk lamp gam to sex-up your cubicle. You can even buy a replica of the famous wooden shipping crate the lamp came in.

  At this point I need to clean my glasses and take a step back. “How the heck did all this get made? I thought I was the only one who watched A Christmas Story?” I think. But clearly, though I don’t currently see anyone purchasing these goods, someone saw ft to produce this stuff. People must buy it, right?

  It hits me that during those 24-hour marathons TBS runs every year, I’m probably not the only one watching. Okay, that makes sense. But still, it was an important part of my childhood, is it possible everyone else’s too? Then my friends and I begin talking, the more we think about it, A Christmas Story wasn’t part of our childhoods, we’d never heard of it until about 1998, about the time those all day force-feedings of the movie were crammed down our mouths like pink bars of soap.

  I finally realize one man was doing the shoving. Right here, amongst a marketing blitz I haven’t seen since the 1980s heyday of Star Wars, I piece everything together. The back of my ticket claims, in cataract-inducing print, that A Christmas Story’s copyright is held by the Turner Broadcasting Company. Ted Turner’s pride and joy.

  For those uninitiated in their Georgia-Broadcasting-Mogul-History, Turner owns Turner Classic Movies, CNN, TNT and…of course…TBS: Home of the day-long celebration of all things Ralphie.

  There it is, but like the mom in the movie and that lamp, I don’t want to look at it. If I ignore the facts, maybe my happy memories will eventually crawl back home. I don’t want to see that my nostalgia and the special feeling of being the only person on Earth who loves A Christmas Story has been somehow orchestrated.

  Did Turner simply wave his basic cable magic wand and create a cult film? I’m starting to think that’s exactly what Ted’s team of marketers/scientists/Chinese factory workers and astronauts (Oh, Turner has astronauts, don’t kid yourself) have done. A little bit of research shows that Turner took over the rights to the movie after purchasing MGM pictures and that the 24-hour marathon quietly made its debut in 1997. Right around the time these nostalgic memories began popping up.

  Does this make the movie somehow tainted? Of course not. A Christmas Story is still fun. I will be quoting that baby until I die (Personal fav: “Whoopee, a zeppelin!”). In fact, the movie’s message is perfect for this entire Turner-ized fasco. The heart of A Christmas Story is about disappointment and coping with that disappointment, no matter how brutal.

  A Christmas Story basically tells us: Hey, your parents don’t want you to have a B.B. gun? Teacher doesn’t want you to have it? Hell, Santa doesn’t even want you to be armed? Bullies punching your lights out? Dogs ate your Christmas dinner? You actually did shoot your eye out? The movie basically says: Oh, well, keep plugging along, good things’ll happen.

  And that helps my holiday glee return, if only a little more ragged than I remember.

  It just makes you wonder, if Turner’s brainwashing succeeds, what next? Will we soon see attractions that let you take a ride in Bill Murray’s limo from Scrooged, visit the Ernest Saves Christmas house, see Sinbad’s mailman costume from Jingle All the Way?

  Let’s just say I’ll spot you A Christmas Story, Ted Turner. But the minute I start seeing the 48-hour Fred Claus marathon, it’ll take an army of Red Rider B.B. guns to keep me from storming your Atlanta castle.

  Jack Ketchum

  JACK KETCHUM’S CHRISTMAS MEMORY

  THE YEAR WAS 1969. My mother had gone to bed early, leaving a friend and me to handle decorating the tree—and we were profoundly stoned. For what it's worth, I wrote a poem about it.

  CHRISTMAS DAY, 1969

  Finally Christmas was all right

  and I think it was because of the tree

  which was all plastic needles

  and coiled wire limbs with

  just the very tips painted different colors

  so you knew where to stick them

  and it was something on the whole

  with Band-Aids dangling from white threads

  and a bottle of downs potato chips chesspawns

  a chew-stick and hash pipe all hanging from back loops and red

  connecting tree to

  watermelon rind cookie

  decongestant toothbrush

  fork and Day-Glo fangs

  pantyhose clothespins Nytol

  and in the center

  up top

  to the left of one ugly duckling dangling limb misplaced

  (electric blue tip notwithstanding)

  a photo of me in beard and glasses

  looking up and tired but up

  telling somebody or other I wasn't having any

  my mother gasped and said what

  and the rest was pure joy.

  Ron Goulart

  THE HELLHOUND PROJECT

  I.

  THE MECHANICAL COP came roving through the ninth floor of the Plaza Hotel, swinging his electric nightstick. "Time's up there," he said as he jabbed at the inhabitant of one plastic cot and then another.

  Dawn light was beginning to show dimly at the barred windows. Heavy rain continued to fall.

  A lean scraggly man sat up, massaged his face with scabby hands. "I still got an hour, you dumb tin can." He pointed at the ticking meter beside his cot.

  The robot flophouse cop rolled on, poking his stick into sleepers whose meter time had run out. "Time's up there. Rise and shine." He stopped beside another flopcot. "Off your ox, buddy." He repeated this twice before holstering h
is shock stick to grab at the fat man sprawled on the raveled thermal blanket.

  From the next bed a black man in a tattered jumpsuit said, "You got yourself one for the Cadaver Service, cop."

  "Time's up there," the mechanical cop told the fat man as he shook him by the shoulders. "Rise and shine."

  The black man, yawning and lowering his feet to the floor, said, "Cardiac thing, I'd guess."

  Two cots to the left of the dead man, Thad McIntosh awoke. He shook his head from side to side, gulped in the thick musky air of the flophouse. Thad was twenty-eight, long and lanky. Right now he was about fifteen pounds underweight, had a three-day beard and a scabby scar on his forehead. He was dressed in a pair of thin track slacks and a surplus coat from the Brazilian war of 2018. Rubbing his crusty eyes, he told the mechanical rouster, "The guy's dead, leave him alone."

  The Negro grinned at Thad. "I'm glad you agree with my diagnosis of the stiff. Did you used to be a doctor?"

  "Nope." Thad untied his all-season boots, which he'd fastened around his neck for the night.

  "I was. It's an interesting story how I fell from grace."

  "It always is." Thad put on his boots, yawned.

  "No, I didn't always live on Manhattan."

  "This man is deceased," announced the mechanical cop.

  Thad ran a hand through his dark tangled hair, wincing whenever he came to a lump or a bruised spot.

  The lean scraggly man was sitting up again. "Jesus, I don't like to be around when people die," he complained as Thad passed him.

  "You came to the wrong island," said Thad.

  "Who had a choice?"

  The Plaza elevators still weren't working. Thad used the stairs. After three flights he found he was wheezing and panting. He halted on a landing, taking slow, careful breaths. Feeling absently into his jacket pocket he discovered a twenty-dollar silver piece. Enough for breakfast anyway. He had no recollection of why he had the money. It was his impression he'd stuck his last ten bucks into the bed meter.

  The night doormen were going off duty, turning their stun rifles over to the three men on the morning shift. Campfires were smoldering all over Central Park, their smoke mingling with the gray rain and the thin light of this November daybreak.

  "Maybe I should have slept in the park last night," Thad said to himself. "Then I'd have thirty this morning instead of twenty."

  A Cadaver Service doublegator ship came hovering down through the heavy rain to land at one of the entrances to the park. It retracted its wings, went wheeling through raw fields and bare trees to gather up the men who'd died there last night.

  "On second thought," said Thad, "I guess I'm glad I didn't."

  The faxprint robot who sold the Manhattan Times near the ruined fountain across from the Plaza was lying on its back, cashbox ripped open, alarm bell still faintly tinkling. Thad stopped long enough to make sure the looter hadn't missed any change, then moved on. Another CS doublegator was flying low overhead. It drifted on, landing on Fifth Avenue where there'd been a nightgang skirmish.

  The rain kept on falling, cold and hard. When Thad passed Alfie's Pub in the Fifties the battered old chef robot out front said, "All you can eat, 'bo. Only fifteen smackers."

  Thad slowed. The pub food wasn't that bad and fifteen dollars wasn't a bad price for breakfast, even though "all you can eat" probably meant a second slice of soytoast and an extra glass of near-juice. Thad went inside.

  The familiar smell of old wood and urine. One of the stained-glass pub windows was still intact and it threw watery kaleidoscope patterns on the bare noryl plastic tabletops. About a half dozen rundown men were seated around the place. The scent of maple syrup was being piped out of the scent-valves under the beamed ceiling.

  Thad walked on back to the serving counter. A huge headless robot with six silver arms presided over the food. "Hotcakes, sausage and hash browns," ordered Thad.

  "Let's see the color of your money," said a voice from the speaker grid in the huge robot's stomach.

  "Here." Thad held up his silver piece, gripping it tight between thumb and forefinger.

  A silver palm came reaching out to Thad. "Put 'er there." A slot in the center of the hand glowed.

  "Breakfast is only fifteen dollars, isn't it? I get five bucks change."

  "You'll get it, buddy. Fork over."

  Thad stuck the money in the slot, the hand was withdrawn. He waited a few seconds before asking, "Where's my five dollars?"

  "You ordered hotcakes, sausage and hashbrowns," said the voice box. "You want those made out of soy or kelp?"

  "I want my five bucks."

  "Myself, I'd recommend soy."

  "Damn it." Thad put his hands on the edge of the metal counter which separated him from the big serving mechanism. "Give me my damn change and . . . ow!" An electric charge came sizzling through the counter. It made Thad fling his hands up, bite down hard with his teeth. He felt a little dizzy, his left leg didn't seem quite in control.

  While he was still swaying in front of the big robot, two human hands grabbed his arms. "We don't like troublemakers here, bud. Manhattan may be ninety-nine percent crooks and deadbeats, but Alfie's Pub strives to maintain its tone."

  "Give me my money."

  "We're on to that dodge, too," said the large gray-haired man who had hold of him. "Out with you now, and don't come panhandling around Alfie's again."

  "God-damn it, you're not going to screw me out of the whole twenty."

  "Out, out." The big man hustled Thad to the door, shoved him into the rain-filled morning.

  Thad went dancing sideways across the rutted pavement, stumbled at the curb, fell on one knee into the gutter. He grimaced, got up, his nostrils flaring. "That's my last twenty."

  A clean-shaven blond young man was standing in front of the pub entrance now. "Wait," he said.

  "You another damn bouncer?"

  "I have nothing whatsoever to do with this place," the blond young man assured him. "But perhaps I can help you." He put a hand against Thad's chest. "You're Thad McIntosh, aren't you?"

  Thad blinked, then nodded. "Yeah. I don't know you, though. Do I?"

  "I'm recruiting people for a—"

  "Nope," said Thad, shaking his head. "I don't want a job. I had one of those once, plus a wife and a house in Westchester. That was back in . . . back in 2027. Three long years ago, that was. I don't want any of that anymore."

  "This is only a part-time job," explained the young man. "A few hours of work at most. We'll pay you two hundred dollars."

  "Two hundred dollars?" Thad took a step back on the wet street. "To do what?"

  "A simple few hours of work, work in your own line."

  "I was an account man with Persuasion-Tronics. You're talking about some kind of ad work?"

  "More or less." The blond young man slid a hand into an inner pocket of his waterproof tunic. "Here's twenty dollars. That was what you lost, wasn't it?"

  Thad reached out for the silver piece. "Yeah."

  "Think of this as a bonus for an anticipated job well done." From the same inner pocket he took a blue fax card. "You know where the library ruin is?"

  "Forty-second and Fifth? I've slept there quite a bit."

  "There's a boarded-up soy-doughnut shop directly across. Take this card to Mr. Ferber there. He's doing our recruiting."

  Thad pocketed the card. "How do you know I won't simply take your twenty bucks and wander off?"

  "I know enough about you to think you won't," replied the young man. "Besides, I can always find you again."

  "How can you—"

  "Better get going. Mr. Ferber will be anxious to see you."

  "O.K.," said Thad. "O.K., and thanks." He started off in the rain toward Forty-second Street.

  II

  Rain was getting into the place. It dripped down through zigzag cracks in the low buff ceiling, sizzled around the dusty light-strip fixtures. The uneven thermal floor glistened with tiny pools of water. Shaking himself twice, Thad cross
ed the small room and stopped before the desk against the wall. There was no one behind the desk, but a dented, old-fashioned secbox rested on the edge of a plyoblotter.

  "Mr. Ferber, please," said Thad as he held out the blue fax card toward the machine.

  "Wait your turn," replied the square black secbox.

  There were four other men in the room, all older than Thad. There were three shaky-legged contour chairs. The fourth man sat on the wet floor, his legs forked straight out in front of him„

  Thad told the machine, "I thought Ferber was anxious to—"

  "Take a number and wait your turn."

  Thad noticed a numbered chit easing out of a slot in the secbox. He took it.

  The man on the floor mentioned, "You can get a cup of syncaf if you ask. While you wait."

  Thad turned again toward the machine. "Can I get a cup of . . ."

  A vinyl cup popped out of the back of the secbox and was filled from a chrome nozzle.

  "Compliments of the management."

  The syncaf was lukewarm, though one of its additives caused it to give off steam. Thad carried it carefully over to a boarded-up window, then sipped at it. "What kind ofjob is this exactly?" he asked the man on the floor.

  The man was forty-two, gray. He had two fresh gashes crossing his upper lip and the teeth he was wearing weren't his. "Not exactly sure," he said. "Supposed to require some brains. Had some once.

  May still. Used to be a home-book machine repairman and . . ."

  Thad squatted down beside the man and stopped listening. It was a knack he'd developed toward the end of his first year on Manhattan. He drank his tepid imitation coffee, let his eyes half close. After almost two hours his number was called.