My Favorite Things This Week #98

The Friday High 5: Going Home for the Holidays

My brother and I showing up at Thanksgivng with a PlayStation. Photo: Paramount Pictures

Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High 5. 🙏🏻

¹Thanksgiving forced my hand.

My life philosophy generally is “Why do today what I can put off until tomorrow?” In practice, that means this Friday column is often written on Friday.

We’re heading out of town tonight (Wednesday) for Thanksgiving. Thus, I had to write about my week before it was complete, and therefore made some assumptions:

• I have fun playing a multiplayer Xbox game I've never heard of with my brother-in-law and son.

• The turkey was awesome and not at all like the bird in Christmas Vacation.

• My brother’s new dog didn’t try to Mississippi leg hound me; my brother was a different story.²

• For once, the Detroit Lions are not an embarrassment on national TV (I’m not gonna tempt fate by predicting a win, but I really want to).

• My will is insufficient against the bounty of food; I eat even though I’m not hungry.

• The holiday goes by way too fast.

To prime myself for the festivities, I rewatched Trains, Planes & Automobiles. It’s self-evidently the best Thanksgiving movie, but that’s like calling Jabba the best Hutt. What other options are there?³

I once pitched Den of Geek a story about how Trains was the best holiday movie. Not just Thanksgiving, but of all the holidays. They called my bluff, which meant I had to write the thing. It came out pretty good, but even I’m skeptical of the premise.

The movie is just as good as you remember. It’s a classic for a reason. This time I was struck by two moments that seem innocuous but are rather profound.

The first: Del (John Candy) sits in the burnt out husk of their rental car, lamenting his own clumsy stupidity. He’s talking aloud, channeling his wife, and says, “When am I ever gonna wake up?” It’s a sobering statement once you fully realize the nightmare this guy has been living for 8 years. The truth behind his jolly demeanor and easy smiles. Just devastating.

The second comes shortly after the first. Near the end of their adventure, Neal (Steve Martin) and Del sit around a hotel room, a bit punch-drunk from several days of misadventures. They’ve gotten into mini bottles of booze and are laughing at the highlights of the trip. Neal says, "Why do I feel like I'm at summer camp?"

I instantly knew what he meant. The sort of reckless humor that arises when you’re briefly away from home in the company of friends and loved ones. A temporary departure from the usual rhythms of your life.

Anyway, great movie. Gets me in the feels every time.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Whether you observe the holiday or not, happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. And if you partake in the more commercial aspect, I've got you covered there too.

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Other things I enjoyed this week:

Virtual Fireplaces

As I shared roughly a year ago, one of the new-to-me delights was throwing a virtual fireplace on the living room TV while the Christmas lights are aglow. We’re back on our bullshit. (Yes, we decorated already. Yes, they’ve been up for weeks..)

We actually own a real, gas-lit fireplace with a brick facade and a chimney, the whole nine. But lighting it requires sticking one’s hand in the place where the flames live, and I’m not the most excited about that. Besides, the fireplace is in the family room, which is our name for the second living room nobody uses.

That makes it sound like we’re super wealthy. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We don’t even have a servant’s quarters; the household staff come right in the front door, as though they’re guests. Can you imagine?⁴

We spend most of our time in the first living room, the one with the big TV.

Netflix has a handful of virtual fireplaces, but most of them time out after an hour and kick you back to the menu. YouTube is a better alternative. I found some that “burn” for 12 hours. Even better, many include Christmas music and interactive backgrounds, like this one of a snowy mountainside, our current fav.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

I’ve reached the stage of my life where I no longer have the hand-eye reflexes I once did. The mind is willing, the flesh is “yeah, okay lol.”

That’s partly why I had no intention of buying the newest Black Ops game. An equally compelling reason to shun the game: Playing a multiplayer game by yourself is not the best. Sometimes I open my friends list and mourn all the long-inactive accounts. The days of playing any given night have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow.

Also, there’s this: I have no memory of any Black Ops games since the second, and this is somehow the sixth iteration. I am the most casual of fans. But thanks to my Game Pass subscription, I was able to play the game without buying it. And the experience felt like this:

I’ve since played 5 or 6 rounds. My net k/d ratio (kills to deaths) hovers around 1. Which means that, statistically, I’d be just as effective hiding and waiting for the game to end.

Hot Frosty

Netflix

Stephen King once told me the most important thing in writing is to tell the truth.⁵

Here’s my truth: My wife didn’t pick this movie. I did.

Yes, the premise is three shades of stupid—magic scarf brings hunky snowman to life; hijinks and love happens—but the Christmas movie genre is the one time I completely turn off my internal critic and also my own good sense. In fact, I actively search out objectively bad movies and am surprised when I don’t hate them. That’s the spirit of Christmas at work.

Which is how Hot Frosty happened.

I could explain the premise further but what’s the point. You know what you’re getting any time you see Lacey Chabert headlining. Hot Frosty is a Hallmark movie with a Netflix budget, which is how they cast Craig Robinson as a small-town sheriff with a big-time boner for justice. I especially appreciated Robinson’s takes directly to camera.⁶

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

New Line Cinema

Last week I revisited The Fellowship of the Ring. This week, The Two Towers.

Here’s what I didn’t share before—I decided to do the unthinkable and rewatch the theatrical versions. No question, the extended editions are superior. But there’s something to be said for the leaner and meaner cut. The only problem: I’m so used to the longer versions, the theatrical edition feels wrong somehow. Discordant. Like a song played just slightly out of tune.

Every time I see The Two Towers, I’m reminded of the time I visited my brother at his first apartment after college. He was working his first real job, and thus, had real money. He invested in a big screen TV and surround sound, and we christened that baby by watching all 40-some minutes of the battle of Helm’s Deep. Was awesome. Is still awesome. Some things just are.⁷

Other things that can’t be denied: Bernard Hill kills it as Théoden, King of Rohan and is secretly the trilogy’s best character.

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Your Turn!

Okay, enough about me already. I’d love to know about you!

• How many living rooms does your house have?

• Is there an activity you love but feel super old doing?

• If a snowperson came to life and looked at you longingly, would you offer them your sofa? Or just go right to the bed? Does it matter if they have a pronounced six pack and an indifference to clothing?

• Who’s your favorite Lord of the Rings character? If it’s not Théoden, explain this line: “Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?”

1. This footnote applies to the image caption, which apparently you can't footnote directly. Fight the power!

Anyway: The joke about bringing a PlayStation to Thanksgiving is real life, and an ongoing tradition. Typically when we go home, my brother or myself will bring a gaming device of some kind. This past summer we relived our childhoods by playing Super Tecmo Bowl. One of my favorite Christmas memories is the year we brought a Xbox 360 and 2 guitars, which my parents used to shred on Guitar Hero.

Sometimes we don't even play, but the presence of a gaming system is a comfort. I think the need to have one, just in case, stems from the summer neither of us thought ahead. We ended up forking over $20 to rent a Xbox for 3 days. One of my high school friends managed the Family Video. Thought we might get a discount or free game. Nope.

Never again.

2. This is a joke, but also not.

3. There are obviously other Hutts but even I, a lifelong fan, can only think of one besides Jabba. (Gardulla, for my fellow nerds.)

4. For all the jokes I made about the size of our house: It is a big house, but I live in Michigan, so it was affordable. There actually is a super swank mansion in our town that has a servant’s entrance; I imagine it leads directly to a decontamination shower.

5. Stephen King relayed this information via On Writing, his book on the craft. I also own the audiobook and have heard the words spoken directly to me, if that counts for anything.

6. I assume “I get to play the keyboard” is permanently in Craig Robinson’s rider.

7. Helm’s Deep is also the source of one of my favorite references, which I drop into D&D games every chance I get: When the old man loses his grip on the bowstring and kills an Uruk Hai before the battle begins. Just hilarious.