THE CHRISTMAS TREE IS THE MISTLETOE!!!: GHOST CANDLES

 

Jen R: picture it: your Christmas stocking hung on the mantle above the fireplace. wood-burning stove.

me: a real log, real fire, real black smoke.

Jen: an iron Charles Dickens bellows in your hand. 

me: wait, which type of stocking? the red fuzzy Santa foot or the LONG LIME-GREEN TUBESOCK.

Jen: the Grinch sock is for red and green Starburst. the Santa foot, and just PEEKING out of the white head of fluff of the red stocking, on a diagonal, is the NIN symbol. that was Christmas magic.

Trent Reznor: for a while there all my new Nine Inch Nails releases came out during Christmas. not deliberate, i like December, i like cold places, not hot places...

Jen: trimming the tree, for the longest i thought that meant CUTTING the tree with a lot saw. but it's trim as in trimmings.

me: turkey trimmings. gravy. i don't ever want to eat either of those two again.

Jen: those 1980s balls of thread of every color, everyone had those as Christmas tree ornaments. 80 balls of 80 colors. Christmas balls. 

Ewoks: tree balls.

Jen: and the rusty fish-hook hooks that came with those Christmas balls which gave you tetanus.

me: and tinnitus, i couldn't hear after hanging.

Jen: the streamers must be popcorn streamers. POPCORN BALLS!!! and don't forget the CANDY CANES!!! everyone forgets the candy canes, man. hang candy canes on your tree, they don't require hooks!!!

me: but do you leave the clear wrapper on the candy-cane ornaments?

cats: no...

me: wait, presents?

Jen: no room for gifts, under the tree is where the railroad track goes. 

me: Lionel train?

Jen: with real white smoke. or black smoke, it doesn't matter.

me: i wish it were green smoke.

Jen: you know what, can the train. too noisy. too blinky with the lights. that clears a path for SPACE. space under the tree with the pine needles. there was always THIS CD under the tree when you woke up.

me: the new Gin Blossoms album.

Jen: sometimes the OLD Gin Blossoms album...

Bea Arthur: quit yer crying, kid, this is Harold and Maude.

Bud Cort, crying profusely: aren't you gonna tell me that i have to go outside and live life and try to find someone to love? even if it's painful?

Bea: learn to bellyache like me. stiffen your diaphragm in the morning before eating your cornflakes. look, we can't keep meeting at this church, we're not the same denomination.

Jeff Baena looks around the inside of a Big 5 Sporting Goods in Ventura and is aghast.

Jeff Baena: get me away from this gun section!!! that is WAY too depressing. why are the guns under glass like they're Pokemon cards? point me in the direction of the fishing section, i want a LONG THICK BAMBOO POLE the height of a totem. tallness. i let the fish go as soon as i catch them, i use gummi fish as bait. you know i never realized the BRIGHT blue of the carpet in here...

Brother Peewit: all college quads were once monastery courtyards.

Zack Morris: why did they make Saved by the Bell: The College Years? why?

Brother Peewit: what i'm saying is, there's pizza in the quad!!!

Zack: is there a phone in the monastery? a brick phone? i gotta call Lisa Turtle and warn her to take hold of her life before it's too late. and that i spilled grape juice all over her prom dress.

Abbot Butt: pizza is not allowed in the monastery. all monks, like Captain Jean-Luc Picard, have never eaten pizza. never tasted a pepperoni.

Brother Peewit: instead of going to church to celebrate Mass on Sundays, all of us monks at the monastery have a pizza party in the abbot's bedroom, who's gonna know?...

Chopin: you make the list, i do the shopping.

Liszt: no i make the list, you do the shopping.

Mrs. Talbot scooping up individually-wrapped strawberry candies by reaching her blue hand into the slots at Safeway: Chopin is hard, it's not Chopsticks, the way piano should be. i had my first orgasm at a Liszt concert. orgasms are perfectly natural for old ladies, not manic.

Liza: not Lizst. grocery stores close during atmospheric rivers. we only let Philip Rivers in. at Safeway you can't get hot pizza anymore...

Santa: don't watch a random episode of the '70s sitcom Alice during the holidays, it's too melancholic for you to bear.

Philip Rivers: not Mormon, just a quarterback...

6-7: it was the "so-so" hand gesture in the '80s.

Patrick Lavender: all my Trump stuff is a front, it's my lavender marriage...

Patrick Lavender: i'm actually a rather soft person. i have a squishy core. my core is not solid, it's poo. i got bravado and pluots up my yingyang. only my mom who wears ripped pink Jane Fonda leotards torn at the leggings and butt, not my stupid dad, and my best friend from St. Cyril's also named Patrick, knows this. knows this about me. i was in your 7th and 8th Grade class, you just never noticed me, you had forgotten about me, you had moved on to Lucio...

Alice: remember in the late '70s when after work at the diner your only concern was where you were gonna have a nice dinner at a nice seafood restaurant with your nice boyfriend?

Barrie Youngfellow: high-end waitress in white, low-end waitress in pink...

Jack Tripper: the innocence of the nude male model.

Mel: i coulda been a nude male model. but Hulk Hogan together with the devil stole my body...

Flo: plenty of fish in the sea. that's what i keep telling myself. i don't think in a Southern accent, i think in a Mid-Atlantic accent. Southern suicide is so Bayou Gothic. when i trace nude male models, can i use a No. 88 pencil?

Jen R: i learned drawing on my OWN sketchbook out on the sidewalk people-watching as i squatted on top of a fire hydrant. not everybody had MS Paint...

me: wait we forgot the lights!!!

Jen R: no time, we gotta sleep now. if we don't sleep, we go crazy. i'm too tired to move to the bedroom, let's cuddle under our tree for the night.

me: it is FREEZING.

that night, ghost candles perch in all the branches of the Christmas tree, warming the two bodies below. LIT ghost candles.

morning breaks some time after.

Jen: just woke up. and my face is flush, that never happens. this is Trent's work.

Trent Reznor: yeah. i'm the real Ghost of Christmas Past. remember back in the day, back in the 1880s, when Christmas trees were lit by lit candles? real lit candles!!! they were ballers back then. they were hardcore back then. they did it the Nutcracker way.

Jen: a hug is your body's way of giving a warm kiss.