DAY 16: JUST RELAX, IT'LL ALL BE OVER SOON.

Every once in a while I like to throw convention to the wind and just do things a little different and last night was no exception. What, I'm gonna just sit around watching a Hallmark Christmas movie on a Friday night? What am I, an old woman? Hell no! In the prime of my life baby, gotta live a little so I headed on over to FX Channel to watch their holiday movie for the evening. Still with my fat ass glued to the couch though, so really no difference there I guess. Not really that much of a change after all. Still just a grown man parked on a couch watching Christmas movies alone on a Friday night.

My life is sad.

But hey, it provides you with reason to pity me and believe yourself to be all superior and therefore feel better about your life. So I guess I have a purpose here on this planet. All about the finding the silver linings, people.

Well like I said, didn't do the Hallmark Channel thing this time, FX had Christmas with the Kranks staring Tim Allen and Jaimie Lee Curtis as a couple of empty-nesters who decide to skip Christmas one year in favor of saving the money and going on a holiday cruise. The neighborhood folk don't respond well to this news as there are certain holiday traditions the Kranks would be ignoring, one being that theirs would be the only dark house on the block and noticeably missing a giant lighted snowman (Frosty as they're known) on the roof like everyone else. This leads to a campaign of terror against the Kranks in an attempt to force them to "Free Frosty" among other such traditions.

I'm thinking that the past two weeks of exposure to schlock and my subsequent lowered expectations for what Christmas movies should be like these days helped me out a little with this one, the bar's been set pretty low. Even still, I find it quite surprising that this film got more than a few laughs out of me. They pulled off some decent physical comedy and a few good sight gags. Really, when is a frozen cat not funny? Unless you're a cat lover, which I'm not, so that shit's hilarious. There's also a scene with Allen's character Luther Krank trying to eat a fruit cup after having his face paralyzed by Botox that really got me as well. And I gotta give Jamie Lee props for putting it all out there (literally) in the name of comedy. At 45 years-old (back in '04 when this was done), she still had the moxie to appear in a bikini for the camera, light years away from her glory days doing nude scenes in flicks like Trading Places. (Because you can never mention that woman without talking about that. It's the law!) And she wore it well I might add, old girl's still got the goods, nice to see. (Thanks Activia™.) Then Allen had to go and ruin it by walking into the shot in a banana hammock. I ran out of the room at that point, didn't return for almost ten minutes just to be sure it was over. Why? Why would he do that to America? Damn you Tim Allen, damn you to hell!

Had no idea that this movie was based on a novel called Skipping Christmas by John Grisham of all people. Didn't know that dude could write anything that didn't involve a gavel and a guy in a suit running franticly for his life from a legal system full of corruption and blood. That's why I never went to law school, wouldn't have made a good lawyer… not much of a runner, more of a sitter. It's why I'm doing this instead, no cardio needed in order to blog.

Anywho, the ending of this one kinda got to me as it showed a community coming together to help a couple of their fellow neighbors in need. The message was administered in a pretty heavy-handed dose but it still had the desired effect on me and I felt pretty good after this one.

What? Quit looking at me like that. I'm not a robot, I have feelings. Just don't really have need to use them that much. Nice to know they still work though.