Annoying Christmas Newsletter, 2008

Ooooh, here comes Santa

Ooooh, here comes Santa
Ooooh, Santa’s drunk again

Santa Came Home Drunk - Clyde Lasley & the Cadillac Baby Specials
(From “Bummed Out Christmas” – Rhino Records)

And really, who can blame him? I mean, if you have a 401K or are depending on investments for your retirement, you’re probably drinking the holidays away this year too. Actually, rumor has it Santa may be taking a CEO golden parachute package, forcing the reindeer into early retirement (that or the glue factory, depending on who you talk to), and laying off the elves with little more severance than a plate of cookies and milk. Next year they’ll be outsourcing the whole outfit to Bangalore, ("Hello, this is North Pole, my name is Sanjay Claus. How can we be helping you this joyous American holiday?"), but you didn’t hear it from me.

Despite the economic downturn and what has been for many of our nearest and dearest, quite frankly, a very sucky year, our household has emerged from 2008 relatively unscathed, a state for which we are immensely grateful, and, were we so inclined, we would likely be suffering a severe case of “survivors guilt" about now. Fortunately that’s not our style. In stressful times our usual response is to drink and drive, though not necessarily in that order.

The year began auspiciously enough with a New Year’s trip to Yosemite, which, as always, is really swell in winter. (Half-dome looks particularly fetching in the snow.)
Yes, we drove, guided by the Garmin Nuvi Santa brought us, affectionately dubbed Sister Carla, after Tommy’s fifth grade Irish nun teacher. (Because that’s the only kind of woman he feels comfortable taking orders from.) Problem was Sister Carla totally lost it (and us ) in the Sierras, (either that or she was deliberately trying to get us killed), telling us to turn left into snow banks, right off of cliffs, and to go straight into walls of towering Sequoias. I say, screw Sister Carla. I personally want a GPS that has a sassy black woman’s voice, you know one of those slap you into shape, “I done told you to turn left fool, and I ain’t telling you again,” no nonsense types. We all know what we need.

In March we took a whirlwind trip to New Zealand’s North Island, where we sipped our way through as many of Hawkes Bay’s finest wineries as we could in a week, (finally a place where you can drink and drive on the "wrong" side of the road and still be half legal), toured a kiwi fruit farm in a big kiwi shaped train pod,
and took a side tour of hell on earth, aka, New Zealand's Geothermal Wonderland. (For a full set of our year's travel photos visit my photo website at http://saucyredhead.smugmug.com/)
And, yes, our rented GPS device down under did speak with a Kiwi accent, in case you care. (“Turn leeft, enter roundabout, take the seecond turnout, go straight to heell.”)
Later we celebrated Tommy’s acquisition of a Beemer, (which has a built-in GPS that sounds like a female version of Hal the “2001 A Space Odyssey” computer – and you know what happens if you listen to Hal), with a tour of California’s Big Sur and Monterey Bay, with a little side trip to the Central Coast wine country to drink more wine. (Are you still with me, Santa?)
You probably think with all this talk of drinking and driving we’ve had a desultory and debauched sort of year, but, no, in fact we’ve both been working out little butts off, Tommy in CBS’ Program Practices Department, still making the network airwaves a kinder, gentler place to park your peepers, and me turning video clips of car crashes, natural disasters, and other scenes of personal tragedy into eye candy for the culturally depraved. My latest project is a series of “RAMPAGE” specials for The Discovery Channel, and it is truly a labor of love. Seriously, I get all warm and fuzzy when I think of a bunch of middle- aged white guys sitting around the big screen in NASCAR t-shirts, drinking beer, eating pork rinds, scratching their balls, and shouting “hell, yeah,” when a stolen SUV full of drunken teenagers hits a median and explodes into flames. Just call me sentimental, I guess.

Big kudos to Tommy for his three-year appointment as an at large delegate to the Association of Yale Alumni Delegate Assembly. Ask him what it means and he'll tell you. All I can tell you is at least it sounds important, and it entails a trip to New Haven once a year to hang out with the guys and act 21 again. Next year count me in.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving (and it was a fast-forward kind of year) we hosted cousin Mint and her partner Lanier, all the war from Gordon, Georgia, (see lead photo), for the holiday, had a splendid time, and ate all too well. I cooked for five days straight, and then turned around and cooked for the three weeks straight to get it together for our Christmas party. (I don’t know about you, but I think there should be a law that there is at least four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Of course, if, like me, your husband has a birthday in between you’re screwed anyway. Note to world: I'm DONE with cooking for this year!) The party was the glittering, elegant, must-have invite of the season it always is, and Tommy and fellow musicians once again entertained us with Christmas carols and holiday dirges, and, once again, he wore that cute little elf hat on the promise of bizarre sexual favors, which, as in years past, will never materialize. (Kind of like Charlie Brown and Lucy and that football, hope springs eternal and they fall for it every year.)
Stepson Matt continues to boycott the famillae Bourgeois. We heard a rumor a few months back that he was working at a Marie Callender’s in the Valley ( as in, "I'm Matt and I'll be your waiter this evening"), but didn’t feel inclined to go check it out and chance having our food poisoned. Did a Yuletide drive-by of the exes' homestead this week just to see if they still live there, and it would appear they do because I can’t imagine anyone else would adopt her unique style of holiday décor, with the mangy light-up deer and deflated blow-up God-only-knows-what, but then you never know.
(No, this isn't her house -- I don't want to get sued -- but it could be.) All in all the step-parenting experience has been totally affirming of my decision to have cats rather than kids. They’ll never need braces on their teeth, I don’t have to save up for their college educations, and they’ll be dead long before they’re old enough to cause any real problems. Besides they make much cuter Christmas cards.
If it's Christmas, that means the Santa Sluts, (aka, The Top Hats, a slice of Holiday Americana), are back at the Grove, and they are a particularly motley crew this year. Rhythmically challenged Rockettes rejects though they may be, they more than make up for it in Christmas spirit. Their beauty and grace truly epitomize the Christmas season for me.

My Christmas list this year is short, and I only hope to find one precious gift under the tree, this special and reverent frog nativity scene, a work of art clearly designed with me in mind. Yes, the spirit of Christmas is alive and well, and I can’t imagine a more suitable way to express and experience the magic of the season.
Well actually I can. We’re leaving for London on Christmas Day, (just because we want to), and, personally, I can’t wait to get on the plane for a glorious 10 ½ hours with my iPod, 1st run movies, a stack of books and magazines, and keep those little bottles of airline booze and bubbly coming, please!

So, as they say in Merry Olde, HAPPY CHRISTMAS! May your days, (and the coming year), be merry and bright! I love you all and wish you peace and chocolate.

Now, here’s that ultimate chocolate cake recipe I promised you if Obama got elected (YES, he did)! A great treat for the holidays or anytime at all!



BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE AND ALMOND CAKE

12 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted
3 tablespoons cake flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 eggs
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat over to 325 degrees. Butter 9-inch spring form pan (I just spray it with Baker's Secret). Stir chocolate and butter in top of double boiler set over low heat until melted and smooth. Cool chocolate mixture to lukewarm.

Grind almonds, in food processor with flour and salt. Using electric mixer, beat eggs, sugar and vanilla in large bowl until thick, about 2 minutes. Fold in almond mixture then chocolate mixture. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake until tester inserted into center comes out with just moist crumbs, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Cook in pan (cake center will fall). Press edges down with fork to level top. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Cut around cake, remove pan sides. Garnish with additional toasted almonds and/or powdered sugar if desired. Serve with fresh whipped cream or creme fraiche.

Quick, deceptively easy to make, and SO good!

Annoying Christmas Newsletter, Vol. III

"The elves are dressed in leather

And the angels are in chains.
The sugar plums are rancid
And the stockings are in flames."
Christmas With the Devil - Spinal Tap

Christmas came early to the Bourgeois/Toler neighborhood this year, whether we were ready for it or not. Yep, the day after Halloween, the 100 foot, tallest Christmas tree east of the Mississippi, arrived via flatbed truck at The Grove shopping center, a mere block and a half from our home. Denuded as it was of most of its’ branches, the behemoth was hoisted into place by a crane and then painstakingly reassembled over the next couple of weeks by a crack team of Lesbian elves. Since by the time it’s all of a piece the tree is thoroughly and irrevocably dead, not to mention as brown, well, as a dead tree, they spray paint it green. (The “elves” insist it’s just fire retardant, but I saw the cans; fire retardant, maybe, green paint, definitely.) Finally the finishing touches, big bowling ball sized plastic globes in red and gold and silver, are added just in time for the star-studded, spectacular tree lighting ceremony the Sunday BEFORE Thanksgiving. This year’s extravaganza featured Patti LaBelle, the Cheetah Girls, a bevy of other b-listers, and, always a big crowd pleaser, a gaggle of critically ill kids from the local “Make-a-Wish Foundation.” (Just call me sentimental, but am I the only one who thinks using sick children to lure shoppers into a hedonistic orgy of commercial self-indulgence is wrong, wrong, wrong?)



Of course there’s the usual Santa’s Village workshop photo stop,(Tuesdays and Thursdays are pet nights), and “real” snow every evening at 7 and 8 PM.



Back by popular demand this year, (after their unfortunate replacement last season by the all girl “Brass Belles” marching band), the Santa Sluts, dancing the North Pole hoochie coochie twice nightly in front of the Cineplex. Guess a troupe of mini-skirted female Santas prancing around like so many reindeer in heat does reflect the true meaning of Christmas best after all.


The entire extravaganza is brought to you by one Rick Caruso, mega mall mogul and my personal year end, front running nominee for The Beast (that would be the Big One, old 666 himself – see my blog entry "Where Every Day Is Halloween). I feel quite sure Spinal Tap had him in mind when they penned that quintessential feel good carol, Christmas With the Devil, an enduring holiday favorite at my house, and I’m sure at yours. (Actually the Judith Owen version is quite fetching.) Anyway, I’m over there almost every day. One afternoon I got caught up in a march of striking Santas (actually striking WGA writers out looking for a little love), and another evening I broke out in hives (no joke). But let’s not make more of that than necessary.

Try as Mr. Caruso may, however, the real star of Christmas in our hood is the Hancock Park home of erstwhile record producer, sometime rap promoter and all round bon vivant Norwood Young, who each year transforms his house and yard into a winter wonderland of twinkling lights, Soul Santas, festively adorned naked male statues, and a brace of metallic orange, high-end automobiles. And, by the way, the 17 human scale, anatomically correct, replicas of Michelangelo’s David are year round fixtures, without the Santa hats, of course. The whole sordid thing just goes to show you what can happen when “they” move into the community.



But enough of the Christmas spirit. I know the question big on your minds is “what’s been happening with Annie and Tommy this year?” Well, truth is, not a damn thing. 2007 was pretty much of a snore, and as it happens that’s not necessarily a bad thing. (You know the old adage. No news is good news.)

Tommy is still at CBS Program Practices where he continues to create that all important buffer zone between the Parent's Television Council and you, and to make it safe for you to watch television with your parents, children, grandchildren, and heck, with the dog and the cat too. So the next time you think you hear the “F” word on CSI Miami or believe you glimpsed a sliver of a forbidden female body part when Jennifer Love Hewitt bends over on Ghost Whisperer some Friday night, think hard about it before you file that complaint with the FCC. That’s an eight figure fine, folks. Heads might roll, jobs might have to be cut, and Karl Rove, who I hear is looking for work, might just get the position. Then you’d really be in trouble. (Can anyone say “all Disney all the time?”)

As for myself, after spending most of the year gainfully unemployed, (which I actually began to like), save for some tedious and pathetically unremonstrative freelance jobs, I finally fell into some full time work just in time to seriously compromise our holiday travel plans.

The show is called Shockwave, (History Channel, Fridays 9 PM PST, sometime around then wherever you live. You should probably watch it so it’ll get picked up and I’ll have a job, ‘cause if people don’t watch, it won’t, and I won’t, and you won’t want to have that on your conscience.), and it’s the kind of work I swore I’d never do again. (No, it’s not strip club cinema verite.) We acquire clips of freak accidents, natural disasters, train wrecks, massive explosions, (Hell, yeah!), parachutes that don’t open, boats that crash, silos that fall on men riding John Deere tractors, and really fool stunts that were bound to go wrong from the get go. Then my job is the find the people involved, call them on the phone and talk them into going on television and telling us how, “I thought I was gonna die,” for a relatively small amount of cash. And it’s really nice if we can get them to cry on camera, although we don’t pay extra for that.

Now since we don’t have a Hurricane Katrina or even a trailer park tornado every day, some of these stories are seriously old, so old in fact that my first resource is often the Social Security Death Index. If they don’t show up there, I can usually find them by nosing around the web. It’s not stalking, but it’s close.

Oh, and I started a blog, but if you’re reading this you already know that.

Speaking of stalking, stepson Matt has been MIA this year. He doesn’t write. He doesn’t call, so I drive by their house every once in awhile to see if he and his mother still live there (they do). It’s been hard on Tommy, but I’m pretty sure this secures my spot in the wicked stepmother hall of fame and I’m down with that.

Hank and Maude still love me though, (at least they say they do, but they could be lying). Tommy nixed the idea of taking them over to The Grove for a pet night photo with Santa, and I couldn’t get them to pose wearing the little reindeer antlers he brought them last year. But I did manage to get a photo of them expressing their true feelings about the season (and just about everything else). Maude continues to work on her weight training and Hank is putting the finishing touches on his plot to take over the world. If they had thumbs we’d so be screwed.

We did manage a couple of outings this year. Went to New Orleans for Jazz Fest (go, spend money, help the city recover), and took a few jaunts up to wine country. And of course, we took the usual trek to Gordon, GA for Thanksgiving at my Cousin Mint’s, a true exercise in unbridled gluttony, and then a weekend visit with the “Toler” boys en famille. And may I say, Gordon really knows how to do Christmas! Check out the smokin' Rudolph on Main Street and toy soldiers down by the railroad tracks. You gotta love it.



Got back just in time to start planning our annual Christmas open house. Tommy entertained with fellow musicians Jon Detherage, Jim McGrath, Gwen Owens, and Julie Bergman, with everybody joining in on a few verses of “Santa’s Drunk Again,” and other favorite carols.

It was a tres festive gathering, marred only by some sticky fingered grinch (you know who you are and so does Santa) who lifted a few bills from the purse of another guest. Really bad Christmas karma. If I were you I’d be looking for a Salvation Army kettle to stuff that 40 bucks into pronto, or a lump of coal in your stocking could be the least of it.


Foodwise, I truly outdid myself this year. Check out my dessert table. I made it all myself, and need it tell you it took DAYS. (No, your eyes don't deceive. Some of the gingerbread men are indeed missing limbs. I call them my Gitmo protest cookies.)


Since I can’t share the goodies with you over the internet, I’m going to do the next best thing and give you Miss Vickie’s recipe for the Red Velvet cake. (Which I made into a “present.”) Miss Vickie is from Gordon. Those ladies really know how to cook, and it is, quite simply, the best red velvet cake I’ve ever tasted. (And it's probably not fattening either.)

We’re having a multi-cultural holiday for ourselves this year. I’m making tamales and jambalaya for Christmas dinner, which I think we’ll pair with a little Zinfandel, maybe a bottle of Napa Pinot Noir (or two), and then it’s off to Yosemite for New Year’s weekend. Pray for snow.
However and wherever you spend yours, may your day, and the coming year, be merry and bright. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Shalom. I love you all and wish you peace!

MISS VICKIE'S RED VELVET CAKE

2 1/2 cups cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1 1-ounce bottle red food coloring

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredient in a large bowl. Pour into four prepared, (I use Baker's Secret), 8-inch cake pans and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Cool in pans for 15 minutes then on cake racks until completely cool.

Frosting

6 cups powdered confectioner's sugar
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans

Spread between layers of cake. Make a second batch of the frosting to ice top and sides.

To make the "present" cake, bake in square 8-inch pans. Omit nuts from frosting for top and sides. Make "ribbon" from foot-long fruit roll-ups, slightly moistened and coated with sparkling sugar. Unroll roll-up, leaving the paper backing on. Lightly spray with water and sprinkle with sugar. Let sit for a few minutes until sugar sets. Peel off backing, lay long strips across cake and fashion bow from shorter pieces folded over and pressed into icing on top of cake. If you want to put gingerbread men on the side, purchased ones will do nicely. However, if you'd like my recipe for gingerbread men, (they are particularly delicious), just drop me an email.