The day after Thanksgiving has gained the name "Black Friday" from the belief that the annual day-after-Thanksgiving sales frenzy will be enough to push retailers into the black for the year.

I guess it doesn't always live up to expectations, and this year was one of those years that disappointed.

So *then* they whipped up a new traditional shopping frenzy day, "Cyber Monday," which apparently was simply made up only a few weeks beforehand in the hopes that if people thought jumping online and maxing out their credit cards that day was a tradition (or at least traditional enough to have a name), then they'd do it.

That, apparently, didn't live up to expectations either. So this year, more so than I recall from years past, some retail outlets were really pushing their day-after-Christmas (also known as 'Boxing Day') sales, complete with "doorbuster specials" offered to consumers who were so enthusiastic (or crazy) that they'd be willing to go stand in line for the doors to open at 6:00AM.

I don't think I know any people that enthusiastic (or crazy), especially on the day after Christmas, which is normally a day associated with sleeping in, relaxing, and eating leftovers.

Except...um...me.

The worst part is, I don't need anything. I just had other people's wish lists. You know, the sort of people who were at home sleeping in, relaxing, and looking forward to eating leftovers.

To be fair, it's no big deal for me: being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 4:00AM and ready for sixteen hours of filming is all part of a day's work...as is standing around in the cold, often enough.

To make a long and boring story short and boring, my early morning adventures bore plenty of fruit and I got the stuff on the list. I credit my success less to luck than to the fact that there weren't many people at all who were crazy (or enthusiastic) enough to be out shopping in the pre-dawn hours the day after Christmas. Good for me; not so good for the retailers. I think that what they need is an official color for the day after Christmas. Personally, I think "Black and Blue" would be appropriate for Boxing Day, but black's already been taken by the day after Thanksgiving. So, how about blue? The more I think about it, the more sense that makes: you've got the blue color of me and the other three shoppers standing around in the cold waiting for the doors to open, you've got the bright blue screens on the new TVs and monitors while people are trying to figure out how to get them hooked up and working with the rest of their newly unwrapped home theater gear, and you've got the fact that practically every single place I went to on that day there was somebody standing next to me who constantly coughed, hacked, and blue into a hankie, kleenex, or just out into space.

Mercifully, I've remained symptom-free myself, and I've gotten all of my fine purchases of the day delivered and set up where they belong, so *I* don't have to worry about finding a place to put them. Whew!

Sometimes it's a lot more relaxing *not* to have leftovers.

I still don't know about this whole "down the chimney" idea. Most of 'em are dirty and more than a few of them are fake these days, what with the popularity of gas fireplaces and wood-burning bans.

Not that fake fireplaces are anything new; it used to be you could get away with a plastic "log" that covered an electric light bulb. If you wanted to spring for the deluxe version, you could get one that moved a piece of dirty plastic over the bulb to make it look like it was flickering.

At least the new "Naughty or Nice" software has some good new features. I particularly like the fact that "Naughty or Nice XP" includes actual videos of the naughtiness. I'm not sure why they thought I needed an animated dog to sit there, drool, and try to scratch itself most of the time, occasionally asking whether I'd like it to search through my pictures, rearrange all the icons on my desktop, or run around in circles for no reason. That dog always seems to pop up whenever Paris Hilton is on the monitor, which is pretty often. There's got to be a "piss off!" option; I just have to find it, but as Christmas gets nearer, I get too busy to go poking around through the menus or go find what I did with the manual. I guess the NSA has some new upgrades in the version they have, and I bet they know how to use all the options. Maybe I'll tune them in and watch over their shoulders; no shortage of naughtiness going on there. ... um, after Paris gets done. I have to be sure of the *exact* naughtiness level in special cases like this. Okay...what was the "instant replay" hotkey in this version?

Honestly, with the way energy costs have skyrocketed in the past few years, I think a lot of people are doing it deliberately just for the coal. I may have to rethink this whole concept; that, or get those elves down in the mines working a little harder. Honestly, those guys would just sit around and drink beer all day if they could, but at least they're non-union. I can always threaten to make the slowpokes work at Wal-Mart instead next season; that seems to motivate them.

Oh, yeah, and that "milk and cookies" thing? Who came up with that? These chimneys are tight enough already and the last thing I need to do is load up on a mess of sugar and fat before trying to scramble back up. I shouldn't complain; I appreciate the thought and, to be fair, there are some special people who come up with much better treats to have waiting by the fireplace.

It's a lot of work, but it's rewarding, too. Every year I think that maybe I should just do it all over the net next time, but then I think that would lose some of that personal touch. There's something to be said for tradition, even if those new fake fireplaces are a pain to open from the inside.

Oh, dear--look at the time! Gotta run, gotta go check out some stockings. Catch ya later!

It's only a few short days before Christmas--today having been the shortest of all--which means it's time for procrastinators the world over to start thinking about decorating.

Okay, I thought about it. Now's your turn. Done? Okay.

However, if you're the type who's not satisfied by merely thinking about it for a trice and you actually want to do it, there's still time.

Sure, you could run out to the store and load up on some off-the-shelf lights and glass thingies, but it can be more personal (not to mention cheaper) to make your own tree trimmings from the stuff you have lying around the house.

Some years I've relied mostly on computer parts: colorful ribbon cables, flashy hard drive bits, and many, many AOL CDs, either placed in their original, virgin form right on the tree branches, melted and folded into "angels," or diced and sliced with a Dremel tool into snowflakes. as you can see to the right. ... or you would be able to see if I'd done a better job of photographing those shiny little blobs that are, really and truly, the computer-part-and-AOL-CD creations I described above in actual use. Honest. There are some regular Christmas lights on this particular tree, too, but the rest is computer stuff. Nowadays, I wouldn't even have to rely on dedicated Christmas lights, what with all the light-up USB cables and accessories available. Give it a few more years, and I'm sure the trees themselves will come with built-in USB hubs to supply power to all your computer part based decorations, and you'll wonder why you'd ever done it any other way.

I've also used little "matchbox" space toys and models, some of which even come in glow-in-the-dark versions, something that ordinary glass ornaments don't, but should.

I've heard tales of people using food-based decorations: strings of popcorn or cranberries, even cookies and hard candies of various types. Right now I'm thinking that's not a great idea, though I'm sure that many strict traditionalists and practically all rodents would disagree. But, I've enjoyed a nicely mouse-free 2005, and I'd just as soon carry that trend into the future, so any popcorn around here is going to remain unstrung.

Fans across the pond of the creepy and the bizarre will be glad to know that the UK release of Hannah House is been scheduled for early next year--February 28th, to be exact. There's now an official UK Website for Hannah House set up by the distributor where you can pre-order it with a £5 discount. If you haven't seen it, it's a compelling ghost story/horror film made in the style of a turn-of-the-century (the twentieth century, not the twenty-first) silent film, complete with old-style white-on-black words that fill the screen following the movement of their lips.

Think "weirder than Nosferatu, more plot than An Andalusian Dog, and the benefit of several decades of advancement in the art of cinematic special effects."

Hannah House isn't out on DVD in the US yet, though it's done its share of film festivals. Stay tuned and with luck it'll be out on the shelves for fans on this side of the Atlantic before long. In the meantime, you can play or download (right click here and select "save target") the trailer (5MB -Windows Media). Cool stuff.

It takes a special kind of person to look at a bit of wrapping paper or a generic corporate holiday card and see a vast, organized conspiracy dedicated to destroying our culture, the traditional family unit, and the purity of our bodily fluids.

Maybe there just aren't enough windmills to go around these days. If you gotta declare war on something, at least picking a fictional foe is a lot safer than going after a real problem.

But the Christmas holiday and how people observe it isn't any one culture or belief system's private creation. My guess is that every culture does *something* around the time of the Solstice. At least in the northern hemisphere, the time when the sun starts coming back and the days grow longer again is pretty significant. Everything from the date itself to plenty of the "traditional" symbols we use (the christmas tree, as an obvious example) has roots in other cultures and beliefs.

Still, there's not as much in the way of holiday trappings that's survived unchanged from the time of the elder gods. The only one that leaps to my mind at the moment is Egg'nog which nowadays bears little resemblance to the original soul-wrenching concoction of oozing greenish slime. And, I guess, there's the tradition of putting colorful ribbons and decorations on things that have green branches, tendrils, or tentacles. (e.g., trees, wreaths, wraiths, or as illustrated in Hello Cthulhu at right.)

Looks like I'm not going to be in another horror film this January after all. The awful truth is that this is in large part my doing--going over the script, the shots, thinking about all the effects and set-ups involved, I was really concerned that it would be doable in the time scheduled for it, especially with only a couple of weeks left of pre-production.

During an earlier meeting I'd suggested that Mark Grove came onto the project, he might be able to pull it off, being a master of fitting a lot of shots into some tight spaces (both time and budget-wise) but his plate is awfully full right now in between two other movies. He was kind enough to skim through the script anyway and then today he and I went to breakfast with the producer to express these concerns.

As much as I have mixed feelings about this--yes, I really want to be doing another movie--I'm sure that postponing this project was the right thing to do. At least I still have one scheduled for February. It won't be easy, but I'll try to hold out until then. In that one I'm slated to be a tenth-century Viking (who somehow ends up in the land of the red sun; it's complicated). Playing a Viking is always a fine thing--but this time since everybody involved keeps saying, "that sword looks like a toy in your hands," I think we're just going to have bigger weapons custom-made for me. As much as they like to say, "size doesn't matter," it's not true. Having audiences say, "your sword is just too small," would be heartbreaking. We can't risk that.

The only other possibility is to change the script a little so that I vanquish my on-camera foes by strangling them with a Slinky.

This may not be entirely historically accurate, but at least I won't feel so bad when they say, "it looks like a toy in your hands"...because it would be.

...and the sound effects during the fight scenes could be really interesting....

In the meantime, just to be different, I thought I'd do workouts with a hundred reps per set (or as close as I can get to a hundred) for a couple of weeks. It's not easy to keep going sometimes, but that's kind of the point. That, and it's a different kind of stress to put on my joints while keeping them moving for a longer time.

Doing squats like that did make my legs feel a lot like Slinkies yesterday. I'm sure the experience will come in handy if the director decides to go that route on the February/March shoot. Guess we'll see.

I think I'll walk down stairs . . . for another workout.

I had a "table reading" of the script of an upcoming movie over the weekend. That's where the actors all get together and read the script through out loud. It varies quite a bit how much different people get into it: I like to hit the ground running and be in character (at least how I see the character) from the first word (or noise, as the case may be). Most people will warm up to it soon enough and we'll have a whole room full of people who have gotten into their characters without leaving their seats. That's always a learning experience because the voice they have for their character and the meaning they bring to the lines may not be at all what you had in your head from reading it solo.

But I do prefer to indulge in a solo read-through beforehand if I can rather than doing it cold. The voice that my character has by the end isn't generally the same as it was when I'd first opened the script, and I'd rather do my gear-switching silently in the privacy of my own head instead of out loud in a room full of other actors.

It's more fun that way anyway, at least for me. Intead of trying to figure out how the character feels or what his inner dialog is saying while you're reading, you just feel.

At the end, one of the actors said, "hey, we should have been taping this." Hmmmm...I think not. It's exciting enough when you're in the middle of it, but actually watching it--especially for anyone else--would be breathtakingly dull. I think we're all much happier people left with the enthusiastic memory of the experience intact and un-dispelled by any objective record of what it really was like.

Getting back to out 2005 holiday guide, you're almost out of time to order a Charlie Brown Pathetic Tree and have it delivered in time for Christmas. I love this product idea so much I'm almost tempted to get one. Almost. Just not $24.00 (plus shipping and handling) worth of tempted. I am, however, amazed at the entrepreneurial spirit behind it: it's a fake stick, one glass ornament, and two scraps of plywood. To add to the amazement and admiration, it's a fake stick, one glass ornament, and two scraps of plywood that the customer has to assemble themselves. You throw eighteen cents worth of parts in a box and the buyer pays twenty-four bucks (plus shipping and handling) to put it together. Now that's the spririt of Christmas present.

So far (today, at least) the only "some assembly required" holiday product idea I've come up with that has a chance of topping that one is my idea of selling "snowman kits" by mail order. You ship someone a box of snow, some bits of coal, and a suitable small root vegetable of your choice, and they do the rest. Shipping the snow intact would present the biggest challenge, but thanks to the synergistic wonders of styrofoam, dry ice, and Federal Express, I'm confident that it can be done.

If I had any sense at all, I'd be selling those on ebay right this minute.

...but I don't.

Oh, well. Maybe I'll click better with the spirit of Christmas future.

I don't usually follow video game news or have any idea what titles are likely to be hot for the holiday season, but here's one that's definitely worth a spot under your Christmas tree:

Cold days out here, not least of which because I've been on a shoot in an unheated warehouse the last few days. Movie wardrobes are no respecter of climate; you dress for the script, not for what the thermometer *really* says, and this was no exception.

Being cold is usually better than being hot: it's harder to disguise sweat (though I could try rolling a deodorant stick across my forehead sometime to see if that helps) and the effects of the heat wreak more destruction on the makeup and hairdo.

Vroom Vroom

Now that we're getting into the home stretch of the holiday buying frenzy, I'm sure you're looking for some exciting gift ideas for those hard-to-buy-for people on your list. Today's fabulous idea is the amazing VroomBox, now available for a mere $159: VroomBox utilizes a powerful microprocessor to digitally recreate the sound of 15 different cars and fantasy vehicles, and play them through speakers under the car. It even includes special effects such as screeching tires and turbo blow-off valves that trigger automatically. And you can download more cars and effects from the web. If you're sick and tired of the lack of roaring and screeching coming from your car, this could be the perfect thing for you. True, it is more expensive than a bad muffler and some bald tires, but it does have a lot more options. Simulated vehicles include Shelby Cobra, Nissan 350Z, Camaro SS, Barracuda, Pontiac GTO, Harley Davidson, Lambhorghini V12, Shelby Mustang, Stingray, and Vespa Scooter. Personally, I think they're missing the boat by not including "diesel locomotive," "Queen Mary," "Alien UFO," "metal-on-metal worn out brakes," and "running on just three cylinders,"

I haven't figured out my own gift list yet this year, but "heat" is kind of nice, so I'm already enjoying some of that without waiting for the holiday.