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Sales of Crappy Christmas Gifts Reach Record HighIf it's lame and cheap, you're getting it for Christmas December 23, 2002 |
Actually, the Grandpa shirt is starting to look pretty good in comparison.
Lousy Christmas gifts, a sub-industry all its own, is notorious for maintaining steady sales from year to year, apparently never suffering from the effects of recession. However, 2003 marks the first year, if early indicators are correct, that crappy Christmas gifts will actually be on the uprise.
"The old adage about the recession," said some hobo who claimed to have a background in economics as we fed him a can of cre...
collective Charlie Brown-style "Auuuuugh!" sounded around the world upon the release of the newest economy figures Friday. In addition to the disappointing early returns for the Christmas season, and spending figures falling below already-low projections, initial reports suggest that one industry not suffering this year is lousy Christmas gifts.
Lousy Christmas gifts, a sub-industry all its own, is notorious for maintaining steady sales from year to year, apparently never suffering from the effects of recession. However, 2003 marks the first year, if early indicators are correct, that crappy Christmas gifts will actually be on the uprise.
"The old adage about the recession," said some hobo who claimed to have a background in economics as we fed him a can of creamed corn, "is that the fluff industries are all the first hit. Luxuries, things like that. But there are rock-like reliables in all areas of the economy, and Christmas gifts are no exception. When the country hits on hard times in the yuletide season, cool gifts are the first things to go. No one's going to shell out for costly electronics when cheap, affordable, crappy gifts are available. Most Americans are tightening the belt—which, ironically enough, is one of the first crappy gifts to see a boost in sales."
Most holiday shoppers bear those theories out.
"I would have liked to bought my son that MP3 player he's been talking up all year," said Syracuse, New York-area housewife Mabel Donner. "But with things looking so bad for the economy it doesn't look like a good time to buy some new-fangled radio. So I'm getting him that book of inspirational sayings I saw in the mall."
Books of contrived sentimentality are not the only Christmas gifts with a sharp rise in sales this year. Also seeing an increase are socks, underwear, courderoy slacks, snow pants, gay sweaters, suspenders, and T-shirts and hats certifying they were purchased by grandparents.
Outside of clothing, food is also seeing a sales boost, especially cheese and sausage gift packs and giant tins of caramel-covered popcorn. Sales of advent calendars featuring dried, nasty chocolate alone have provided a much-appreciated lift to the German economy. In addition, minor sales increases have occurred in virtually every area of the economy for crappy gifts; even crappy video games like Pokémon Pro-Skater and Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen Virtua Fighter are seeing a sales spike.
Most kids have yet to experience the nightmarish reality of Christmas morning, 2002 as of yet; but some, like Craig Sharmet of Ledervehn, Pennsylvania, have already seen early warning signs.
"Grandma gave everybody their Christmas gifts yesterday," said Sharmet. "I got a Jesus calendar. It's a calendar. And it has pictures of Jesus on it. For every day of the year. All next year. Jesus."
Alice Keeler of Tumasca, Arizona, can sympathize.
"Aunt Sandy showed up Wednesday with presents for everybody and said we could open them, and we were all flipping out 'cause we were so happy. Then we opened them. I got a glitter puff T-shirt with the American Idol logo on it. I'm not sure what's worse—that people would think I like American Idol the TV show enough to wear a T-shirt of it or that people who don't know the TV show think I'm saying I'm an American idol or something. The possibilities are terrifying. And I had to thank her for it."
On the brighter side of the story, all forecasts indicate that shopping traffic will increase significantly just after Christmas, when the stores fill with the countless consumers attempting to return Shania Twain CDs and subscriptions to Teen People. the commune news will hold onto its rare Star Trek collectible plates it received in 1995 until they show some increase in value, even microscopic. Disaster-prone Ivan Nacutchacokov is usually our foreign correspondent, but seemed perfect for this yuletide catastrophe—the lack of life-threatening danger is our gift to him.
 | Red Bagel: You the Man of the Yearcommune Editor receives not-at-all-staged award for fourth time December 23, 2002 |
New York City, New York Bagel's Mom It's a shame he's never been photographed more than once.
"It's a great honor, and a welcome surprise that I receive this award," said Bagel, in a speech possibly plagiarized from one of this three previous speeches. "As the creator of the Yitmotty, I understand what it truly means to everyone, especially me. And that makes it mean all the more to receive this for the fourth time."
The YTMOTY (or "Yitmotty," as has never caught on with anyone but Bagel) ceremony doubled as a going-away party for departing Editor Bagel, who goes on to do whatever a sick person with delusions of grandeur does on his sabbatical, taking possible mummy Sampson L. Hartwig...
n a tearful ceremony held in his apartment, Red Bagel accepted his fourth consecutive "You the Man of the Year" Award for all of his efforts in whatever it is that he does.
"It's a great honor, and a welcome surprise that I receive this award," said Bagel, in a speech possibly plagiarized from one of this three previous speeches. "As the creator of the Yitmotty, I understand what it truly means to everyone, especially me. And that makes it mean all the more to receive this for the fourth time."
The YTMOTY (or "Yitmotty," as has never caught on with anyone but Bagel) ceremony doubled as a going-away party for departing Editor Bagel, who goes on to do whatever a sick person with delusions of grandeur does on his sabbatical, taking possible mummy Sampson L. Hartwig with him.
Despite having done little for the advancement of anything except paranoia during 2002, Red Bagel was unanimously chosen by a distinct panel consisting of Bagel himself, to no one's surprise. In addition to publishing the commune and acting as its editor, Bagel spends too much time in bars and court, frequently drunk in both. 2002 was Bagel's biggest yet, as he introduced a semi-monthly column where he proposed such ludicrous conspiracy theories as puppets being reincarnated dead people and a character from the movie Tron kidnapping his personnel.
As a new part of the ceremony this year, commune Editor Red Bagel had everyone from the staff give a short speech explaining why they voted for their choice for Man of the Year, i.e. Bagel himself. "Because if I don't you'll fire me" was disallowed as being a part of any speech, as this reporter found out during his presentation.
Highlights of the ceremony included Lil Duncan's pregnancy test results (sparking a relieved sigh from the entire room), Rok Finger's diatribe against wheat pennies, Boner Cunningham's lively re-enactment of the famous Flashdance sequence, and Omar Bricks' surprise fireworks display that sent three to the hospital, though at least one was most likely faking just to get out of the party early.
After the procession of obligatory praise, and after he himself had downed two bottles of Makers' Mark, Red Bagel took the stage for his long-awaited speech, which considering he's had three chances now to do it should have been better.
"Some men are followers and some men are leaders," said Bagel, earning a laugh when the slurred "followers" came out sounding like "flowers." "It's clear by now that I am the leader. I have tried to do something new and different with the commune, and new and different is what I've done." This reporter stressed the word "good" was appropriately absent from that description and was forced to finish listening to the speech bound and gagged.
"This year was a banner year for the commune. We've kept the quality of the commune news and reporting consistent from January to December," continued Bagel, once again distinctly avoiding the word "good." "From its humble beginnings the commune has crawled out of the mud with you parasites on its back, and we're headed to the top. We're no longer publishing on the back of previously-published pamphlets; that was getting a little expensive anyway. The internet has allowed us to move unreigned, unchecked, and I'm announcing here and now that 2004 will be the best year for the commune yet."
Bagel then conveniently passed out and broke his Hawaiian tiki coffee table, leaving us to wonder whether he meant to suggest the correct year of 2003 or if we're suffering through another lame year like 2002 until 2004 rolls around. the commune news realizes it's politically incorrect to have a "man of the year" award, but if you're going to get on our back for gender insensitivity, there's plenty of better places to start. Raoul Dunkin is the prodigal son of the commune, mostly since he plays his Prodigy CDs too loud in the newsroom.
| Study finds low I.Q. causes lead paint eating, not other way around |
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 December 23, 2002 Farewell My Concubinesthe commune's Stu Umbrage… uh, okay, search us. We don't know what this is all about. Well, I've officially drank enough eggnog to kill a goat, resulting last night in a terrifying vision of Christmas Future. Either that or I was at a U2 concert. Any way you slice it, I'm running out after work to buy the biggest chicken I can find and give it to some Cuban refugee children to use as a boat, or something.
It's clear as fish's piss that the time has come for Stu Umbrage to change his ways, I've been wind sprinting down the wrong path for far too long. I don't know if it's going to entail doing some charity work, or maybe just dating a girl named Charity, frankly if that second option counts I'm tending to lean that way. Not that I've got any problem with wiping barf off the chins of little alcoholic kids or whatever you're supposed to do to get in good with the ...
º Last Column: One Household Please, and Hold the Kids
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Well, I've officially drank enough eggnog to kill a goat, resulting last night in a terrifying vision of Christmas Future. Either that or I was at a U2 concert. Any way you slice it, I'm running out after work to buy the biggest chicken I can find and give it to some Cuban refugee children to use as a boat, or something.
It's clear as fish's piss that the time has come for Stu Umbrage to change his ways, I've been wind sprinting down the wrong path for far too long. I don't know if it's going to entail doing some charity work, or maybe just dating a girl named Charity, frankly if that second option counts I'm tending to lean that way. Not that I've got any problem with wiping barf off the chins of little alcoholic kids or whatever you're supposed to do to get in good with the lord or other assorted deities these days. But if I can earn some equivalency points by hot-tubbing with some aerobics instructor who had hippie parents, well, sorry little lushes. I don't know if I could live with myself if I took the "high road" on that one. Also known as "Sucker Street".
Whatever it is, I've got to do something quick, though. The last thing I want is to wake up one morning with one of those gigantic Mardi Gras heads. Don't ask, it was a dream I had. At first I was wanting to write it off as some bad clams ate after dark, like "That shit doesn't happen," but then I started to think about it, and what if it does? What if some poor sucker has the dream, ignores it and then wakes up with his gourd taking up the whole bed? There could be hundreds of guys like that out there, you'd never know because it's not like they'd ever leave the house looking like that. Christ, you'd get laughed out of the hat store. Nobody needs that.
It's not like I've been a terrible guy, but I won't argue that my life hasn't been misspent thus far. Hell, my pocket money is misspent, why should my life be any different? I still have craploads of Furbies left over from when those things were popular. I'm not kidding, I have a whole closet full of them. You open the door and it sounds like end of the world. My neighbors called the cops once because they thought I was smuggling illegal immigrants into the country, but then the cops wouldn't come in because they were afraid my apartment was possessed by Satan. I tried to explain, but it's hard to present a lucid narrative when you're constantly being interrupted by "Oooooh! Dark! Brrrrrum-ruum-ruum!"
Those little Mogwai fuckers have cost me more than one girlfriend, believe me.
For that reason and a laundry-list of others, it's time to make some changes. Not quite head-shaving, pimp-shooting changes, but serious nonetheless. First, it's time to admit that my five-year plan to become Bjork has been a dismal failure. I blame neither myself nor the lack of support from Bjork's family, it's clear this whole thing was just not meant to happen. It's time to move on.
Second, it's becoming painfully, ass-numbingly obvious that the move to New York was a mistake. For some reason I thought it would be the land of milk and honey, I'm not sure what I was thinking. It should have been obvious, Wisconsin is where milk comes from. I don't know about honey. But New York is the land of shit and money, which is close but not the same thing. Between the commune's base pay of "good friends, good times and some magic beans" and the rising price of pay toilets in the city, something's going to go Chernobyl in the near future.
Which is why it's high time for Stu Umbrage to get back to his roots. No, not Wisconsin. Jesus. Those roots can stay there. I'm thinking more the open road, the wind in my hair, and the desert stretching out before me. I'm thinking cheap rent and an alcoholic workforce that puts me at the top of headhunting lists just for showing up. I'm thinking New Mexico. I'm in the mood for a place where you can buy Peyote at the supermarket. That's the kind of state where a man can get some soul-searching done, and crap for free. Sign me up.
So, although I've had a good run here at the commune in the last ten months, I think it's time to ramble on. Don't tell Bagel though, I plan on leaving a mannequin in my chair and am paying Rok Finger to turn in one column from my backlog every couple weeks just in case nobody notices I'm gone and they keep paying me. After all, beans can come in handy on a road trip, and all it'll cost me is a couple bottles of Old Spice. I told Finger they stopped making the stuff but that I had the last few bottles stashed away, I'm not sure if he believed me but he didn't want to risk it.
Wish me luck, commune readers. If and when I get to a state of Zen I'll send you a postcard, though I warn you now that it'll probably have no words and just a pear on it or something. You know how that Zen shit is. º Last Column: One Household Please, and Hold the Kidsº more columns | 
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Milestones1983: Red Bagel is thrown out of a casino for counting cards. He is not cheating, merely trying to settle a bet with a friend on how many decks the casino uses.Now HiringJames Bondian Action Hero. Must be proficient in fire arms and small mechanical gadgets with ridiculous capabilities. Responsibilities include killing unnamed lackeys and doing battle with bizarre supervillians of non-distinct European origin. Good benefits, adventure, and pussy galore. Best Sellers| 1. | The Bridges of Macon County, Georgia
Bobby Ray Poker | | 2. | The Lord of the Tacky Pimp Rings
J.Z.Z.Z. Toolking | | 3. | Mary Contrary, Are You on the Rag Today?
Dr. Soobst | | 4. | Oprah's Book Club Can Eat Me
Jonathan Franzen | | 5. | I Sure Miss the Cold War
Tom Clancy | |
|   Records Indicate Strom Thurmond Died in 1982 BY roland mcshyster 12/9/2002 Hello, Young America! Time to saddle up and get on the Entertainment Train one more time, and this time we're going to ride it all the way to Not Wasting Your Money City. I hope you brought plenty of trail mix and travel Yahtzee and stuff, because… have you ever ridden on a train before? Talk about slow. I mean the director's cut of a DOGME film slow. You'd think in this day and age they could kick it in the ass with some rocket boosters or wings or likewise for the trains, but train people are like some weird branch of the Amish or something—totally resistant to change. So you can thank your lucky ass we're not actually getting on a real train and I'm just being colorful in my language. Let's get on to the movies:
In Theaters
Hello, Young America! Time to saddle up and get on the Entertainment Train one more time, and this time we're going to ride it all the way to Not Wasting Your Money City. I hope you brought plenty of trail mix and travel Yahtzee and stuff, because… have you ever ridden on a train before? Talk about slow. I mean the director's cut of a DOGME film slow. You'd think in this day and age they could kick it in the ass with some rocket boosters or wings or likewise for the trains, but train people are like some weird branch of the Amish or something—totally resistant to change. So you can thank your lucky ass we're not actually getting on a real train and I'm just being colorful in my language. Let's get on to the movies:
In Theaters
About Shit
It's long been a growing trend to have trailers for films that tell you jack about what's actually in the movie. We probably should have seen it coming that movie titles would eventually follow suit, as evidenced by Jack Nicholson's latest dance with the devil. The title tells you nothing, of course, and the trailer is just one long shot of Jack standing there, scratching his nuts. Though this is probably an effective tactic for drawing in viewers whose nuts itch, I'm not sure it's going to attract the throngs of teenage girls who make movies successful. The film itself was fine, with Jack walking around and being all old, and it'll probably win him plenty of awards since, after all, he is only like 25 in real life.
Cannibalize That
Turns out the American public just can't get enough of that face-eating crybaby Robert DeNiro. I thought the first movie was a cute idea, having DeNiro running around and gobbling up stockbrokers and whoever, then running to his shrink and crying about how he can't sleep at night and gets all emotional watching cooking shows and all that. But do we really need to go on that ride again? I may still go, just in case there are any surprise Mohawk freak-outs in this one, but if he doesn't eat Billy Crystal at the end I'm definitely going to demand my money back.
The Hot Chick
My first thought upon hearing about this one? If this ends up being about a cute little pig, somebody's gonna get their ass killed. Thankfully for that somebody, they didn't make the Babe mistake twice, but they did pull off something almost as awful by switching out the hot chick from the title for Rob Schneider half-way through the movie, like we weren't going to notice. Call it artsy if you want, but people have been shot for less than that. And I know it's hard to find hot babes who are funny, or comedians who are also hot babes, but when you use a movie title like that you're making a pact with the audience that you break the second you let some washed-up former SNL boob ooze his way onto the screen. If the audience wanted that, they would have paid to see Rob Schneider and Some Tits That Talk, and I didn't hear anybody asking for that at the ticket window.
Maid in Manhattan
Jennifer Lopez was born to wear one of those little French maid outfits, though I hear they had to take some of the poof out of the back end so that she could fit in the elevator. This is yet another installment in the fine tradition of maid-themed pun movies, a lineage that includes Maid to Order, Maid in the U.S.A., the worst TV movie ever The Devil Maid Me Do It!, the Innerspace rip-off Maid Up My Mind, the cross-dressing mafia farce Maid Men, the Korean love story I Was Maid for You, and Kirstie Alley's terribly misguided Maid for TV. This one's about par for the course, and though at first I was pissed to see that J-Lo had made another movie, I quickly realized the upside is that making it probably kept her too busy to burp up any more songs to torture my radio this year. With any luck she'll land a sitcom soon on a channel I don't get.
Star Trek: Eminemisis
Faced with lagging interest in a series that has become increasingly irrelevant in the face of flashier and less embarrassing fantasy films, the producers of Star Trek decided to beam up a hot new commodity as their latest villain: offensively white rapper Eminemineminemi… emin… Slim Shady. Though the results definitely kicked some new life up the ass of this tired franchise, the question remains as to whether the pasty faithful are ready for the film's coarse language, which is enough to make a Klingon blush. The film's theme song alone should be enough to weed out any theatergoers who thought they were going to get some Muppets talking in French: "Eminem steppin' in again/to save the whole goddamned world and give it a spin/I got Gene Roddenberry's head in a pickle jar/rolling around like Tom & Jerry in the trunk of my car/you damn right bitch, you better beam me up/watch me bitch-slap the computer till she shuts the hell up/I don't need no rubber mask to act like some space retard/But my jumpsuit's all scarred because Picard makes my dick hard-Ahh!"
That's all we're going to squeeze out of the turnip this week, folks. In the mean time, I'll be keeping an ear open for more rumors about the all-naked remake of Flashdance that's in the works, and you'll know some time after I know. Unless someone out there has been going through Joe Eszterhas' garbage, in which case you should probably give me the word. Because you know Roland McShyster's one to make it worth your while with a free Entertainment Police tee-shirt and other fabulous shwag. Not that we actually have tee shirts printed up or anything, but I could hook you up with something from my private stash, no problem. Something I don't wear anymore, and chances are I probably wore it some time when I was writing the column or at the movies or something. Right now I'm thinking the Budweiser frogs shirt, It's starting to look like that joke's probably run its course. Though if it ever becomes some kind of kitsch collector's item and you sell it, I want half.   |
