TV – The Big DumpTruck

Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?

Posted on December 23, 2021December 23, 2021 by Jody

I’ve decided to finally wade into the whole “is die hard to Christmas movie” thing. I had never seen the entire movie, so friends and family arranged for a viewing party. I can now have an opinion on this topic.

Before getting to my hot take, let me state I understand these things can be subjective. Your experiences shape your perception, and a huge number of people consider it a “Christmas movie” based on those experiences. To me, the key is differentiating between a “Christmas movie” and a “Christmas tradition.”

A Christmas movie should be about Christmas. The primary plot or plot-drivers are Christmas-based, whether it’s about the traditional nativity story, Santa, celebrating the holiday(s) or the more difficult to pin down “Spirit of Christmas”.

Leonard Maltin said cannot just be set at Christmas, it has to be about the Spirit of Christmas. Others say they should be movies the whole family can watch together, which clearly this one isn’t, but we’ll leave that aside for this discussion.

Die Hard is a movie set on Christmas Eve, with all the holiday decor and music. There is a big holiday office party (which would never ever ever happen on Christmas Eve but that’s for another essay) but it’s not about Christmas. They could have set it in June and you would only need to change the reason for the office party and why John was traveling to CA. There are all kinds of Christmas visuals and references, such as the name Hans Gruber being painfully close to the name of Silent Night composer Franz Gruber. They are great, but don’t make the move about Christmas. It’s about robbery, violent killings and the need to NEVER TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!

Now, everything I just said does not negate the fact that the movie is a beloved Christmas tradition for tens of thousands of Americans. And those folks insist it is a Christmas movie. However, just because something is one of your holiday traditions doesn’t make it a Christmas movie. Countless Americans watched The Sound of Music with their families every December, thanks to the network that owned the rights. Plenty of folks still consider it a Christmas movie because of that, but obviously it’s not.

I watch Little Women every Christmas season. Because of that I think of it as a Christmas movie, but really it’s not. While a few scenes are set at Christmas, the primary plot isn’t Christmas-specific.

When we were young, my sister considered Neil Diamond’s 12 Greatest Hits a Christmas record because we would pull it out and listen to it in December. That timing imprinted on her, and one time she referred to it as a Christmas album. Clearly it’s not, but decades later we refer to it as a Christmas album to tease her. (She’ll be pleased I included this anecdote, but it’s important to illustrate my point.) While you can call anything a Christmas [thing] if that’s how you think of it, it doesn’t make it objectively true.

In conclusion, Die Hard is a Christmas tradition, but it isn’t a Christmas Movie. If it’s yours, by all means seek it out and watch it every December. Keep (or make) your holiday traditions as best you can, and watch anything that makes you happy, whenever and wherever you’d like.

Yippee-ki-yay to all, and to all a good night!

TV, video

Merry December 25th

Posted on December 25, 2018December 25, 2018 by Jody

It’s been a full year, eh? If you still have a burning need to keep watching Christmas programs and you have Prime, I suggest two of the shows I watched today.

Tudor Monastery Farm at Christmas – I love documentaries, especially those explaining what normal life was like for our ancestors. Or other people’s ancestors. The part of the show that makes this a more atypical holiday show is the amount of time spent covering butchering a pig and cleaning and pickling the head.
Winter Wonderland Train Ride – The “story” is that your train has to deliver ham, wine, bread and toys to some location, maybe on a mountain? In a snowy place. This is a 4 hour video (!) of the view from the point of view of the engineer. Nondescript Christmas carols play along for the full, nearly-endless 4 hours of endless video following track wending through the snow-covered countryside.

I could lie and say we watched all four hours of the train video, but fast-forwarding was our friend, and the 15-20 we did watch was just enough. Also, we’re entirely unsure why they needed the ham/wine/bread/toys backstory as not once did you ever “drop it off”. We did pick up passengers with suitcases. Unsure if the suitcases contained hams.

Brain Dump, humor, lists, Real Life, stuff, TV

Only Farmers, You Wealthy Urban Scoundrel

Posted on August 31, 2018August 31, 2018 by Jody

I get hooked on random things I see on television because of the endless amusement and riff-ability they bring to me. I become obsessed with them the way my nephew Peter was obsessed with videos of train wrecks. And this was back in the day when you had to search out and buy videotapes.

To bring everyone up to speed, in the last 4 year’s or so I’ve gone through obsessively (2 to sometimes 4 episodes a day) binge watching or rewatching the following for riffing and ironic amusement:

The Love Boat
Newhart
Petticoat Junction (through the first two Billy-Jos)
tiny house shows
Anything on the ID channel
Family Affair
shows about buying super expensive RVs

My current TV obsession is Buying Yachts on a new channel I found: AWE. That’s supposed to stand for “A Wealth of Entertainment” but really, the only word you need to focus on is wealth. This is a network for rich people, featuring people I would assume applied for Real Housewives but didn’t make the cut. Ignore the fact that most of the shows are at least 4 years old, if not older. Who doesn’t want to watch “Buying Mega Mansions” for decorating ideas from a 30,000sf house selling for 72 million? And look at how easily you can create a “Selling Yachts” drinking game!

He’s 20 years older than his wife
She insists they buy the most expensive one
Someone says ‘happy wife, happy life'” or
They talk about how they can use it for chartering
Jody yells ‘Nobody needs that!’ at the tv

I also am obsessed, to an amazing degree, with the farmersonlydotcom commercials. There is so so so so so much for me to mock or comment on, I keep wondering if the whole thing is an elaborate hoax.

Are the commercials to get guys to sign up, or women to sign up? I have to assume there’s a shortage of males on the service, because nothing in the commercials is geared to entice women to sign up.
All the single girls wear shorts or short skirts with cowboy boots
It is implied that only rural girls enjoy “country” things like fishing. City girls are vapid and are from the same casting pool as the wives on Selling Yachts. They are evil and shallow and to be avoided. (Smells a lot like the red state “real Americans” vs blue state “coastal elite” bullshit.)
I don’t know what the “Only” in the name means: is it for farmers to meet other farmers? Are there enough single female farmers to balance supply and demand?
They do have 3 commercials featuring couples who met on the service. God bless those healthy-sized imperfect yet perfectly lovely gals who represent they women who are REALLY signing up versus the models they portray as the available pool of single gals
They introduced a buck-wild creep wizard to the ads, and I cannot figure out who thought this was a good idea. Probably the same guy who introduced talking horses.

Please, Satan’s minion, do you have any dating advice?

As a special bonus today, here is a list of all the questions I ask every time I see the commercials. I have seen it a lot. Poor Tom. The commercial is the one with the bitchy girl who interrupts two farmers talking by suddenly appearing with a large chainsaw on her shoulder. She noisily kisses her boyfriend and continues out of the shot.

The commercial makes it seem like the two guys were all alone out on the back 40 talking about how one of them can’t meet girls (they stress “out here” and show a whole lot of empty land) when she just appears and blows through the scene.

Where did she come from? They seem far afield, so wouldn’t she have had to take a truck or something to get there?
Single guy seem a little startled to see her. Did he not see or hear her coming? Did she just materialize in front of them?
Why did single guy act like he had no idea his buddy had a girlfriend? If they are so close, shouldn’t he have had an inkling?
If she is a new girlfriend, why is she doing lord know what by herself on his farm? When I start dating a guy, I hardly ever show up at his place of work and just start doing shit with no direction from him.
After the kiss, where did she go? We saw a view of the direction she was walking and there were NO trees. Or anything.
Why does she sound so exasperated when she (off camera, mind you) answers the “where did you meet *her*?” question.
Is she dressed appropriately to use that thing she’s carrying? You can’t always look hot and safely fell trees at the same time.

If anyone is thinking of posting “well-actually” corrections and clarifications, please resist the urge. I don’t really want them because I’m only here to amuse myself and others. You go write a rebuttal on your web page and post the link. Because if you ruin the only enjoyment I get out of commercials I am forced to watch a hundred times, I will send the lady from the Liberator Medical commercials to beat you with catheters.