A Very Jim Christmas

I don’t think I’ve ever done a true Christmas blog post so I’m doing one now.  I’ve made some Christmas top five lists and a bottom five list.  I tried to make this short, but it turned out to be longer than I was planning. Anyway, let’s get to it.

I’ll start with half-hour TV shows/specials:

5.  South Park Season 4- There are good South Park Christmas episodes.  The season 4 episode has the kids making the animated film and Mr. Hankey’s family so I would rank that one ahead of the Christmas in Canada episode and the Woodland Critter Christmas episode.

4.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas- It’s a Christmas classic.  The Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge always get remembered for what they’re like at the beginning of the story.  People should remember how they changed.

3.  The Office Season 2- If we’re looking at Christmas episodes of the Office, I think it has to be between season 2 and season 3, I would go with the season 2 episode, but season 3 is also excellent).  It’s a shame there was no season 4 Christmas episode (because of the writers strike) because it would have been awesome (the first half of season 4 is fantastic).  If I was ranking the Office Christmas episodes, it would go 2, 3, 6, 7, 5, 9, 8.  Season 8 and 9 are obviously the worst because there’s no Michael.  Season 8 is the worst because there’s no Michael, but there is Robert California.  Season 9 is Dwight Christmas, which is pretty good for a season 9 episode.

2.  Seinfeld Festivus- Seinfeld episodes are harder for me to differentiate from episodes of the Office because you get a lot more stand-alone stories rather than the long story arcs that the Office is built on.  I know there are other Seinfeld Christmas episodes that are good.  Mickey and Kramer working at a department store as an elf and a communist Santa is good.  But Festivus is an all time classic.  It has endured as much as anything from Seinfeld two and a half decades later.

1. Charlie Brown Christmas.  It gets the number 1 spot because it’s good and it actually deals with the true meaning of Christmas.  When Linus recites Luke’s Gospel and he gets to the part where the angel says, “Fear not,” he drops his blanket.  You might not have noticed this detail before, but if you know the character Linus, the significance of this is clear.

I’ll get to some bad stuff before going back to good stuff. There are a lot of good Christmas songs, but I’m going to do the five worst:

5.  Band Aid- Do They Know It’s Christmas?  This is definitely not a good song, but I can tolerate it because it’s unintentionally funny.  The line “Well tonight thank God it’s them in stead of you” is very strange.  What does that mean?  I should thank God that there are poor people in Africa?  What?

4.  Baby It’s Cold Outside- It doesn’t matter which version it is.  This is not a good song.

3.  Wham Last Christmas- As Fr. Mike Schmitz has pointed out, the only thing that makes this a Christmas song is that the first two words of the song are Last Christmas.

2.  John Lennon Happy Xmas- We’ve gotten to the songs that I absolutely refuse to listen to.  I don’t need to hear protest music for Christmas.

1. Paul McCartney Wonderful Christmas Time- I can’t stand this song. It’s horrendous.

Let’s get back to stuff that is good.  Here are my top five Saturday Night Live Christmas skits:

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

I’ll finish up with my top five Christmas movies:

5.  Scrooged- It’s Bill Murray in the most 1980s Christmas movie imaginable.  If Scrooged didn’t exist and you asked AI to write a script for a 1980s Christmas comedy, it would write Scrooged.

4.  Elf- Elf reminds me of Wedding Crashers.  It starts off so good, but the end leaves something to be desired.  Once they leave the island in Wedding Crashers, the rest of the movie stinks.  Elf is fantastic for most of the movie, but it’s not great after the fight with Myles Finch.  Santa has a feud with the Central Park Rangers?  Why?  They could have come up with something better for the end.

3.  The Muppet Christmas Carol- It’s Michael Caine and Muppets.  And it’s everything you want Michael Caine and Muppets to be.

2.  It’s a Wonderful Life- I remember watching it for the first time when I was a junior in high school because my US history teacher did It’s a Wonderful Life trivia on the last day before Christmas vacation.  I think that was the only time I watched it until a couple of years ago.  It really is a wonderful movie.

1. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation- Unliked Scrooged, this is a timeless Christmas classic.  It came out only a year after Scrooged, but it feels like it could be from any year.  It’s the Festivus of the Vacation movies in that it has endured much more so than the other ones.  I’m not going to say it’s a better movie than It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s the most fun Christmas movie.

The Celtics beat the Lakers today. It was appropriate for NBA good to prevail over NBA evil on Christmas Day. But congratulations to the Lakers on winning a tournament that means absolutely nothing. Happy Birthday Jesus!  Merry Christmas!

Tournament of Meaninglessness

Congratulations to the NBA on brainwashing people into caring about the in season tournament, or as I like to call it, the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  It was entirely predictable that the media would eat up this tournament and make a big deal about it.  But the truth remains that it means nothing.  I refuse to be brainwashed by the NBA.  I’ve been against this tournament from the start.  It was inspired by European soccer and American sports definitely don’t need to be more like European soccer.  There were other people who seemed to be against it also, but now everybody seems to care for some reason.  People compared it to the play-in tournament, but there’s a huge difference.  There is a purpose to the play-in tournament.  You can advance to the playoffs by winning in the play-in tournament.  But winning this tournament means absolutely nothing.

It makes me angry that the NBA has tried to make this tournament into a big deal when it means absolutely nothing.

Let us not forget that the only reason this tournament matters is that the games count as regular season games.  I’ve wanted the Celtics to win their games because they count in the standings.  But once the Celtics lost a Tournament of Meaninglessness game, they were going to need to advance on the tiebreaker.  So in their last game of group play, they ran up the score to advance.  I would have been 100% fine if they won without running up the score and didn’t advance.  What would have happened if they didn’t advance?  Instead of playing two games that count in the regular season standings, they would have played two games that count in the regular season standings.  Now their reward for advancing is playing a road game for a chance to advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas.  So if they win tonight, they lose a regular season home game.  But tonight counts in the standings and the semifinal game counts in the standings.  So I hope they win their next two games.

If the Celtics win those next two games, they play in the Tournament of Meaninglessness championship game.  And that game would mean absolutely nothing.  It’s the only game of the tournament that doesn’t count in the standings.  They’re playing for rich basketball players to be slightly richer.  Why would any fan care?  If the Celtics make it, I will watch the game and the only thing I will be rooting for is for the Celtics to get through the game without any injuries.  If it was up to me, I would sit Tatum, Brown, Porzingas, Holiday, White, Horford, and Pritchard.  Let the players who haven’t gotten a good contract in their careers try to make some extra money and don’t take any chances of their best players getting hurt.  The only way I would care about whether or not the Celtics would win or lose would be if they were playing the Lakers.  And that would be entirely because I want the Lakers to lose every game they play and not because I care about the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  I would still sit all of the Celtics’ best players.  Kevin Durant is one of my least favorite athletes, but I would be totally fine with losing the last game to the Suns as long as no Celtics got hurt.  If the Celtics do win this tournament, I would be mad if they hang a banner for it.  They should just have a certificate in an office somewhere.

If the NBA wanted me to care about this tournament, it should have meant something.  I will preface this by saying that this is a stupid idea, but they could have made advancing in the tournament the first tiebreaker for the playoffs.  So the eight teams that advanced would have a tiebreaker over the other 22 teams.  The four teams that make it to the semifinals would have a tiebreaker over the other 26 teams and so on.  That would have been a stupid way to break ties, but it would have given me a reason to care about this tournament.  But as it is, the tournament is the Tournament of Meaninglessness.  So go Celtics.  Win the next two games that count in the regular season standings and then just don’t get hurt in the last game.

The best thing about this tournament ending is that nobody will care about it anymore and I won’t have to hear about it anymore.