11 Things I Loved About 2017.
2017 was meme-level ridiculous, but I’d rather remember the good parts than the bad parts. Even if those good parts mostly involved sushi and Zima.
Below are eleven things I loved about this year. I hope you can find at least as many things that you loved about it, too. Give it a shot, and post your lists in the comments.
#1: Star Wars: The Last Jedi!
Plenty of peeps weren’t into The Last Jedi, and that’s fine. It was a different kind of Star Wars movie, and it wasn’t going to work for everyone. It did work for me, though. Like holy shit, it REALLY worked for me. I left that theater feeling like I’d just pounded five Red Bulls.
Every time I expected the movie to zig, it zagged. Some fans took that as a slap, but I saw it as a jolt. Within minutes of the opening crawl, I realized that I had no idea what the film was going to say, do or be. As someone who considers Star Wars his only real area of expertise, that was exhilarating.
One of the more divisive aspects of the film was the “presentation” of Luke Skywalker, with some feeling that Luke wasn’t very Lukeish. I didn’t see it that way. I loved his jokey, brooding cynicism, and I triple-loved how Luke got to conquer his demons — especially because I only expected Luke to watch other characters conquer theirs.
I’m very glad that The Last Jedi is part of the Star Wars universe, even if I still don’t know how to pronounce “Praetorian.”
#2: Conveyor Belt Sushi!
At a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, endless plates of fishy things glide past you on a — duh — conveyor belt. Pick whichever ones you want, and at the end of the meal, your waiter just counts up the tiny plates to see how much you owe.
I’d spent almost fifteen years reading about these places and salivating over their combined convenience and novelty. They’re not easy to find in the States, but last February, I finally got to experience tuna on a treadmill.
Mr. and Ms. Sexy Armpit took us out for my birthday, and hiding in West Nyack’s cavernous Palisades Mall, there it was: An honest-to-goodness conveyor belt sushi restaurant! It was glorious. I felt like Lucy in the candy factory, and I was even wearing a similar hat. Read More…
Christmas Memories in Crayon.
I drew pictures representing five Christmas memories, and then wrote about them. I’m super good at never going viral.
Just to get this out of the way: Yes I draw like I’m five and no it’s not for effect.
Underneath the Christmas Tree!
I used to love laying under the Christmas tree. I mean directly under it, looking straight up at the lights and ornaments. It was another world down there.
Sometimes I’d bring a pillow, and twist my neck so I could watch cartoons. Linus’s speech was much more resonant when I was covered in needles. I was like the squirrel from Christmas Vacation, or more accurately Chip and Dale from Pluto’s Christmas Tree — the old Disney short that inspired me to do this in the first place.
But the best times I had under the tree were with my action figures. The tree essentially became a super-sized Castle Grayskull, supporting four inch monsters with its thousand branches. They’d weaponize ornaments and fight over candy canes, while I grew drunk off of the pine scent. It was so good. Read More…
Classic Christmas Commercials, Volume 11!
I wanted to sneak one last edition of Classic Christmas Commercials onto Dino Drac before THE BIG DAY, which is now approaching so rapidly that it might actually be January by the time I finish this paragraph.
Below: Five more Christmas commercials from 1987, featuring ALF, Garfield and Santa Claus.
ALF’s Special Christmas! (1987)
Here’s a promo for ALF’s Special Christmas. If you’ve never seen it, just know that there are reasons why the one-hour special has become so internet-infamous.
The episode dealt with some very heavy subjects, from suicide to terminal illness. The script handled them well enough, but at the end of the day, it was still ALF — a show about a wisecracking alien Muppet who loved cat meat.
Depressing, sure, but I’d stop short of calling it “bad.” They probably should’ve been more suggestive than literal with some aspects, but if anyone was gonna introduce ‘80s kids to the darker facets of life, I guess ALF was an okay choice. He cushioned the blows with jokes and fur. Read More…
Ancient Holiday Appetizers, Part 5!
Well, it’s that time again. Time to make the weird old appetizers.
I grew up surrounded by recipe books that were published many years before I was born. They fascinated me as a kid, and they still do now. Not every dish is appetizing, but there was such a colorfully crude artistry to it all.
These days, one of my big Christmas traditions is to prepare a bunch of dishes from those books. If you’ve been reading Dino Drac from the start, you’ve seen me broil grapefruit, thread carrots through olives and even smear black fish eggs on burnt toast. To me, that is Christmas.
Tonight, the saga continues! Below are five more holiday appetizers, as pitched by very old cookbooks. (This time, most of the recipes are from the late ‘70s.)
I followed the directions as closely as possible, substituting nothing even when I knew that I should’ve. What’s the point of doing this if you’re not gonna go all-in?
Mix a small tub of sour cream with a teaspoon of lemon juice and a container of cheap red caviar. (Even if you’ve never noticed them, trust me, your supermarket does have containers of cheap red caviar. They’re usually stocked near the sardines.)
Stuff small blobs of that mixture into two-inch pieces of celery, and you are DONE. I’m sure some of you are revolted by what you’re seeing, but I love the way it looks. I would seriously frame and hang a 36” version of that first photo.
If you’ve never had this sort of cheap caviar, it’s so heavily salted that stores don’t even keep it refrigerated. It doesn’t taste so much like “salty fish” as it does “fishy salt,” and I consider no Christmas season complete until I use a jar of it in something.
Hot tip: Your mixture isn’t guaranteed to come out quite this pink, so if you’re into that, you may wanna add a drop of red food dye.
SCORE: 7 out of 10. If I had to do it again, I’d add minced onions and maybe some chives. Sour cream is pretty goopy even when chilled, and I think these would work better with a thickened filling. Read More…