City kids suck

It’s been a crazy couple of days, I saw the new MoMA, went to an incredibly extravagant premiere party for the ideologically unsound “Christmas with the Kranks,” wandered in on a HEEB release party that left me entirely unbalanced, and spotted a Hasidic Jew having a cocktail. Not at the Heeb party. Pondering the inner-life of Hasidic Jews and their feelings about the dominant culture takes up the plurality of my subway thoughts, so he sent me into a tailspin.
MoMA was gorgeous and they gave me a free bag.
Later that night I went to see “The Kranks” (for work, obvs) at Radio City. The Rockettes opened the show in reindeer antlers, which was kind of fun except they weren’t 100% in sync. The difference between high-school dance performances and professional dance performances has been explained to me as being the difference between having to accept the poor state of sync and the right to expect a better one, plus, Hello, you’re the Rockettes, move your feet at the same time.
There were little party favors on the seats which included popcorn, two bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies (sponser) and a copy of the book “Skipping Christmas” written by John Grisham. Yes, that John Grisham. This party bag was the best ploy to rack up beverage sales ever and trying to fight the thirst I consumed seven Gingerbread cookies, which are truly, truly outstanding.
As for the movie, well I’m not shocking anyone when I say it’s crap. But it’s kind of interesting anyway, because the emotions the film evokes are entirely unintentional. Basically, Tim Allen decides he wants to skip Christmas this year and go on a cruise. But instead of being normal about it, he decides to get militantly anti-Christmas (no tree, no carolers, no donations), so his neighbors turn weirdly fascist on him and insist he participate through totally inappropriate and intimidating means. All of a sudden, Tim Allen’s daughter announces she’s coming home for the holidays, and wham, bam, the neighbors were right all along, they pitch in to pull off a great holiday and Tim Allen was such a Scrooge for wanting to go to the Caribbean. But, wait, why can’t he have Christmas Eve and go on the cruise? What’s wrong with a cruise? The message of the film is basically, NEVER EVER FORSAKE CHRISTMAS, THE ULTIMATE HOLIDAY, OR YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.
I felt very Jewish.
After the movie there were shuttle buses to the after party in Central Park, which was the most obscene use of money I’ve ever witnessed. After walking past snow machines into two huge tents, you were confronted by enormous tables of Christmas food, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, Waldorf Salad, jello molds, baked beans, carving stations of turkey, ham, salmon and roast beef, mini-hamburgers, hotdogs, mac and cheese, tables of desserts like chocolate covered strawberries, figgy pudding, crème brule, ice cream, pumpkin pudding, rum cake, two huge open bars with top shelf liquor and tables of apple martinis, egg nogg, hot cocoa, a Santa Claus taking requests, carolers decked out in costume, caterers dressed as elves, a DJ elf, two go-go Santa’s helper dancers, stilt walkers, a decorate your own gingerbread man station, and sno-cones. Also, the floor of the second tent was a white rug about ’70 by ‘100 feet that was all One Piece.
I dragged Amy along and as we sat down to decorate gingerbread men at the same table as this little girl in braces, we said something like, “This is fucking crazy.” Amy looks over at the girl and her mom and says, “Ooh, sorry.” The girl says, “It’s okay, I’m in the eighth grade.