I love most episodes of The Twilight Zone (both the original and the “new” one from 1985-ish… we don’t talk much about that 2002-ish version, better to pretend there were only one or two episodes of that).

There’s one particular episode, though, that I really try to watch around Christmas. The Night of the Meek is high on my list of favorite TZ episodes for a number of reasons, not the last of which is the great performance by Art Carney.

It’s just one of those stories that helps to remind me that good is something that can happen, sometimes unexpectedly, in the most unusual ways… no matter what history and experience have to say about it.

In today’s vlog, I talk about it a bit.

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There are few characters more easily recognizable than Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. One of the reasons for that is how prominently they’ve been featured in various media forms over the years.

For those of us in Generation X, there’s a really good chance that when you think of those (and so many other) characters, you think of the animated (either stop-motion or classic style) versions put out on TV by Rankin-Bass from the mid-60s through 2001.

Here’s a quick list of all the Christmas-related specials they did in that time:

• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)
• Cricket on the Hearth (1967)
• The Little Drummer Boy (1968)
• Frosty the Snowman (1969)
• Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970)
• ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974)
• The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
• The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow (1975)
• Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (1976)
• Rudolph’s Shiny New Year (1976)
• The Little Drummer Boy, Book II (1976)
• Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977)
• The Stingiest Man in Town (1978)
• Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979) (summer)
• Jack Frost (1979)
• Pinocchio’s Christmas (1980)
• The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold (1981)
• The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985)
• Santa Baby! (2001)

That’s… a lot of shows piling up in subsequent years (like all through the 80s). Honestly, I don’t even remember all of these, so we can safely say that some were much better than others.

Tell me which one is your favorite.

And watch me go on about these in today’s vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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There are a handful of movies that pretty much became instant Christmas Classics in my life.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is one of those movies.

It’s got a high-talent cast working with a script from one of the 80s best comedy writers (John Hughes) and touches on something a whole lot of people can related to: all the craziness that just staying home for the holidays can lead to.

More important, it’s got heart. That one scene when Clark’s stuck up in the attic watching old home movies? Utterly fantastic.

This is one of those yearly “must watch” movies for me. Same goes for a lot of people I know.

Watch me go on a bit out it in today’s vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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Yet another delivery from a Kickstarter project I backed.

This time, it’s the Ghostbusters Board Game that Cryptozoic ran a campaign for. It was a solid campaign, not a flawless one, but they’ve handled problems pretty well.

What’s really neat about this one is that it’s one of the few board games that’s got a single player mode. Of course I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, but the option is there and I think that’s awesome.

The ghosts and Ghostbuster minis with the game look pretty cool. Definitely different plastic than some other stuff I’ve gotten. I’m getting quite the education in the various qualities and properties of minis lately. Maybe some day, I’ll even get around to trying to paint things…

Anyway, check out the vlog where you get a look inside the box.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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I never really go into a sequel expecting much. Especially if the first movie is pretty awesome.

With Stir of Echoes 2: The Homecoming, that was a very, very good idea.

As I said the other day, I really love the original. It makes the most of what it has to work with and does so fantastically.

The second one? Not so much.

There was one little surprise, but it kind of made the film even worse. One of the secondary character–who gets nowhere near enough screen time or development as she should have for the part she ends up playing in the overall plot–is Tatiana Maslany. If you don’t recognize the name, you’re not watching Orphan Black (and you should be). On that show she plays multiple character. Characters who often interact with one another. And she is utterly amazing. In Stir of Echoes 2, she’s completely wasted.

Oh, and the tie-in to the original film? Showing us the young son from the original who’s not considerably older than he should be unless this movie is really set in the future? And having him be mutilated and bitter? That kind of goes against more than a couple of things put forward in the first film. And it does so for no real reason.

I won’t drone on here about the various missteps that film makes, you’re going to have to watch today’s vlog to get all of that.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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