Another long-ass entry. Sorry again.
So, party at Cory's Saturday evening, and I managed to mis-set my alarm clock. One of the mis-sets that cause me to miss evening classes on occasion; forgetting that the little LED on the clock is "on" for PM, off for "AM" and not the other way 'round. So I managed to sleep through until a bit after midnight and miss the chance to drive up there.
Apologies to Cory, Kali, and SGIndy. I suck, and should be destroyed.
Talking with Firecracker the other day about weird Christmas memories, I mentioned that I missed the Bozo Christmas specials, especially the odd animated short that they showed every year, Suzy Snowflake. In a couple of minutes she replied with a URL to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, a Chicago museum that happened to have a DVD of Suzy Snowflake in addition to other cartoons notorious in the Chicago area... $30 plus a hefty UPS shipping fee? No problem! I ordered immediately, and actually got the thing last night.
My love for Suzy Snowflake isn't borne of childhood nostalgia for 50s Chicago television broadcasting; it's borne of a morbid fascination with the creepy, anachronistic cartoons that WGN insisted on playing every year on the Bozo Show. I didn't have the Chicago-specific knowledge that the cartoon was a classic, shown annually since 1951... all I knew was that the thing was a stop-motion animation that looked like film noir, gave me the creeps, and fascinated me endlessly. For the last 15 years or so, all I had was a vague recollection of lyrics like "Here comes / Suzy Snowflake / Dressed in her snow-white gown / Tap tap tapping on every windowpane..." I'd completely blocked out the memory of its companion, The Three Little Dwarves, with hideously grotesque Santa-helper elves, a hideously grotesque Santa, and the same heavily-shadowed film-noir look. There's some other stuff on the DVD, including a color Kukla, Fran and Ollie Christmas special from 1979 (!) which features a disco fantasy scene (!!).
Anyway, some poor UPS guy was out at 9:30 PM last night, still making deliveries, and that was one of the deliveries he made. Suzy Snowflake. Hell, yeah. The triumvirate is complete, I now have every important part of the Christmases of my youth; A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story, and Suzy Snowflake.
I tried to contact my mom a few times last week with no success, and came home yesterday morning to a few messages from her on my answering machine. Once again, she's not doing well physically; her insurance company is severely restricting the doctors she can see, and she's having a difficult time finding one that can "fit her in." Her host of medical problems are all directed towards her heart, unfortunately, and things recently have come to the point where she needs help. Now. Her nervous system is not transmitting signals to keep the heart beating in a rhythm (myaesthenia gravis and heart arrhythmia), the nerves around the heart itself are sending back pain signals at random (angina pectoris), her blood pressure's gone incredibly high, and cholesterol's proven virtually uncontrollable, and her arteries are in need of clearing or angioplasty. Basically, we're pretty much counting down the days to a heart attack (or whenever a chunk of plaque comes loose and migrates to her brain, causing a stroke.) Because of the myaesthenia gravis, she's been unable to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time, so getting hold of her has been difficult.
I got hold of her this morning. When she answered, I played Suzy Snowflake over the phone to her. It wasn't just me that had the morbid fascination with that cartoon; my mom had the same reaction years ago, and the cartoon had essentially entered family lore- something we discussed, looked forward to each year. It was one of "our" things. A private in-joke between ourselves. She wasn't doing well beforehand, but hearing the eerie scratchy-78 sound of that song cheered her up immensely, and she was able to stay up for another half hour as we talked. $30 + a hefty UPS shipping fee for Suzy Snowflake? Not only was it not a problem, but it was a privilege- I made my mom's day, when it's not clear how many chances I'll have left to do just that.
Not sure if I'll see her this holiday season. Maybe a bit after. Hopefully. None of the "you should see your family!" guilt-trips, though... we're a bunch of introverts, and this is normal for us.
Things are going awry with the school computers right now, and I can't seem to keep a class registration in the system. Short of going and threatening school officials in person, I may end up missing out on the spring semester.
So, party at Cory's Saturday evening, and I managed to mis-set my alarm clock. One of the mis-sets that cause me to miss evening classes on occasion; forgetting that the little LED on the clock is "on" for PM, off for "AM" and not the other way 'round. So I managed to sleep through until a bit after midnight and miss the chance to drive up there.
Apologies to Cory, Kali, and SGIndy. I suck, and should be destroyed.
Talking with Firecracker the other day about weird Christmas memories, I mentioned that I missed the Bozo Christmas specials, especially the odd animated short that they showed every year, Suzy Snowflake. In a couple of minutes she replied with a URL to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, a Chicago museum that happened to have a DVD of Suzy Snowflake in addition to other cartoons notorious in the Chicago area... $30 plus a hefty UPS shipping fee? No problem! I ordered immediately, and actually got the thing last night.
My love for Suzy Snowflake isn't borne of childhood nostalgia for 50s Chicago television broadcasting; it's borne of a morbid fascination with the creepy, anachronistic cartoons that WGN insisted on playing every year on the Bozo Show. I didn't have the Chicago-specific knowledge that the cartoon was a classic, shown annually since 1951... all I knew was that the thing was a stop-motion animation that looked like film noir, gave me the creeps, and fascinated me endlessly. For the last 15 years or so, all I had was a vague recollection of lyrics like "Here comes / Suzy Snowflake / Dressed in her snow-white gown / Tap tap tapping on every windowpane..." I'd completely blocked out the memory of its companion, The Three Little Dwarves, with hideously grotesque Santa-helper elves, a hideously grotesque Santa, and the same heavily-shadowed film-noir look. There's some other stuff on the DVD, including a color Kukla, Fran and Ollie Christmas special from 1979 (!) which features a disco fantasy scene (!!).
Anyway, some poor UPS guy was out at 9:30 PM last night, still making deliveries, and that was one of the deliveries he made. Suzy Snowflake. Hell, yeah. The triumvirate is complete, I now have every important part of the Christmases of my youth; A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story, and Suzy Snowflake.
I tried to contact my mom a few times last week with no success, and came home yesterday morning to a few messages from her on my answering machine. Once again, she's not doing well physically; her insurance company is severely restricting the doctors she can see, and she's having a difficult time finding one that can "fit her in." Her host of medical problems are all directed towards her heart, unfortunately, and things recently have come to the point where she needs help. Now. Her nervous system is not transmitting signals to keep the heart beating in a rhythm (myaesthenia gravis and heart arrhythmia), the nerves around the heart itself are sending back pain signals at random (angina pectoris), her blood pressure's gone incredibly high, and cholesterol's proven virtually uncontrollable, and her arteries are in need of clearing or angioplasty. Basically, we're pretty much counting down the days to a heart attack (or whenever a chunk of plaque comes loose and migrates to her brain, causing a stroke.) Because of the myaesthenia gravis, she's been unable to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time, so getting hold of her has been difficult.
I got hold of her this morning. When she answered, I played Suzy Snowflake over the phone to her. It wasn't just me that had the morbid fascination with that cartoon; my mom had the same reaction years ago, and the cartoon had essentially entered family lore- something we discussed, looked forward to each year. It was one of "our" things. A private in-joke between ourselves. She wasn't doing well beforehand, but hearing the eerie scratchy-78 sound of that song cheered her up immensely, and she was able to stay up for another half hour as we talked. $30 + a hefty UPS shipping fee for Suzy Snowflake? Not only was it not a problem, but it was a privilege- I made my mom's day, when it's not clear how many chances I'll have left to do just that.
Not sure if I'll see her this holiday season. Maybe a bit after. Hopefully. None of the "you should see your family!" guilt-trips, though... we're a bunch of introverts, and this is normal for us.
Things are going awry with the school computers right now, and I can't seem to keep a class registration in the system. Short of going and threatening school officials in person, I may end up missing out on the spring semester.
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