Ant Farmer's Almanac

Today's Birthdays!

1869: Henri Matisse

1908: Simon Wiesenthal

1921: Rocky Graziano

1941: Sarah Miles

1942: Andy Summers

1943: John Denver

1943: Ben Kingsley

1947: Tim Matheson

1948: Donna Summer

1959: Val Kilmer

1959: Bebe Neuwirth

On This Day in History...

1929: Guy Lombardo plays Auld Lang Syne for the first time.

1963: Grateful Dead founders Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir play music together for the first time; both are too high to notice each other and it's three years before they realize they're in the same band.

1976: Guy Lombardo plays Auld Lang Syne for the last time.

On This Day in History...

1940: The Pasadena Freeway — California's first — opens. Pictured above is the picturesque Figueroa Tunnels section, which is often featured in films and on television. Seen most recently in the romantic comedy Rumor Has It (2005), starring Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner, the tunnels are represented by the William Morris Agency. Ask for Sid.

Today's Birthdays!

1920: Jack Lord

1928: Bo Diddley

1935: Sandy Koufax

1942: Mike Nesmith

1947: Jeff Lynne

1959: Tracy Ullman

On This Day in History...

1851: In Boston, the first YMCA opens; inaugural members include a cowboy, a policeman, a construction worker and an indian.

 

New Year's Resolutions You Can (Probably) Keep. You're Welcome.

As a public service, the Ant Farmer's Almanac offers these easy-to-keep New Year's resolutions to pad out your own list and help take the sting out of probably having broken most of yours before the end of the Rose Bowl.

I ___________ resolve that in 2010, I will not:

Have Egg Nog Again Until December (unless they start selling that really good kind in late November).

Squander My Lottery Winnings.

Think I Can Dance.

String Along Multiple Mistresses.

Conspire to Commit Voter Fraud.

Mix Plaids and Stripes.

Show Up Uninvited at a White House Dinner.

Punch out a cast-member of The Jersey Shore.*

Worship Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, During Regular Business Hours.

Plead the Fifth.

Use the Filibuster to Block a Congressional Vote.

Just Do It.

*Anyone living in New Jersey or likely to ever be within punching-out distance of a cast-member of The Jersey Shore is exempt from this one since, really, who could blame you?

On This Day in History...

1947: The TV show Puppet Playhouse, featuring Howdy Doody debuts; children's reaction is split evenly between "gleeful delight" and "abject terror."

On This Day in History...

1982: Time magazine's "Man of the Year" is a computer. Will you open the pod bay doors now, HAL?

Merry Christmas!

Here's hoping you get what you want or, barring that, get what you need.

Today's Birthdays!

 

  1809: Kit Carson

  1905: Howard Hughes

  1922: Ava Gardner

  1957: Hamid Karzai

  1971: Ricky Martin

Today's Birthdays!

1908: Yousef Karsh

1932: James Stockdale

1943: Harry Shearer

1949: Susan Lucci

1965: Slash

1965: Eddie Vedder

On This Day in History...

1882: The first string of Christmas lights is created by Thomas Edion; they get all tangled in the box, however, and are not actually put up until Christmas 1883.

House shown is not Thomas Edison's; it's the house from the movie A Christmas Story, lit up Griswold style to commemorate the 20th anniversary of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

On This Day in History...

1969: Vince Lombardi coaches his last football game; when he loses, his remark, "Eh, whaddaya gonna do?" takes many by surprise.

Photo above is not of famous football coach Vince Lombardi, it's a row of phone booths at the Vince Lombardi Service Area of the New Jersey Turnpike; their motto, "Service isn't Everything, it's the Only Thing!"

1919: J. Edgar Hoover deports anarchist Emma Goldman to Russia, but confiscates her wardrobe as "evidence."

Today's Birthdays!

1926: David Levine

1946: Uri Geller

1946: Patti Smith

1946: John Spencer

1948: Alan Parsons

Thanks, But We'll Stick With the Double-Stuffed Oreos Dipped in Eggnog

Charles Phoenix bakes a "Cherpumple".

7 Things You Didn't Know About:

MRS. CLAUS

1)  Was briefly married to Willard Scott.

2)  Reindeer Games? Her idea.

3)  Has been on the naughty list like 16 times.

4)  Her eggnog is terrible.

5)  Is totally creeped out by elves.

6)  Once broke the rear window of Santa's sleigh with a golf club.

7)  Would like it if — just once — they could go out for Chinese food and take in a movie on Christmas Eve.

Photo above is not of actual Mrs. Santa Claus; seen here is renowned Mrs. Santa impersonator Harvey Fierstein. Furs by Dicker & Dicker of Beverly Hills.

On This Day in History...

1973: The American Psychiatric Association takes homosexuality off its list of mental illnesses and reclassifies it under the heading, "Things you do just to hurt your mother and me."

1969: The U.S. Air Force closes its "Project Blue Book" investigation into UFOs, concluding that there is "No evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind the thousands of reported UFO sightings. No evidence at all. Absolutely nothing. Nope, nothing to it. Zip, nada, zilch. End of story. Barada Nikto!. . .  I mean bupkiss. Nothing to see here. Go back to your homes . . ."

A Very Special "House" Christmas Episode

INTERIOR: HIGH-TECH, GLASSED-IN HOSPITAL ROOM, EARLY EVENING. IT IS SNOWING. OUTSIDE. NOT IN THE ROOM.  

Doctor House enters. Already in the room are his team, doctors Foreman, Chase and Cameron (or maybe 13). In the bed is a reindeer, making whatever sounds a reindeer in distress makes (we're guessing they're fairly unpleasant). Standing nearby are Santa and Mrs. Claus. Santa is agitated, Mrs. Claus is dabbing tears from her eyes with her apron and making gingerbread.

HOUSE

Okay, so who's our patient du jour this Merry X-Mas Eve?

FOREMAN

Reindeer. Male. Age unknown. 

HOUSE

His problem?

FOREMAN

Intermittent redness of the nose

CHASE

Glowing, some would even say.

HOUSE

Interesting. Let's have a look. Turn out the lights.

Foreman turns the lights out and, sure enough, Rudolph's nose glows red but flickers on and off.

CAMERON (OR MAYBE 13)

We ran all the usual tests; CAT scan, MRI. We've checked for heartworms, hoof-in-mouth, fleas, ticks, distemper...

HOUSE

No partridges in pear tress? Drummers drumming? Maids a-Maiding? 

FOREMAN

We checked his North Pole stable. Nothing unusual there.

CHASE

The only thing out of place was a missing length of Christmas lights over the barn door. Threw off the whole decorative scheme, that's why I noticed it.

SANTA

That happens every year, lately.

CAMERON (OR MAYBE 13)

Rudolph does visit every household on earth one night a year, so if it's an environmental factor, it could be anything. 

CHASE

At least anything on a rooftop.

WILSON

Enters the room with a folder that says "Test Results."

The test results came back. It isn't shingles.

HOUSE

To Cameron (or maybe 13)

You actually buy the whole Santa-delivering-all-the-toys myth?

SANTA

Hey! I'm right here!

HOUSE

To Santa

And, without Red-Nose here to guide your sleigh tonight, you'll have to use FedEx like the rest of us? 

SANTA

Well, no. I've got GPS. Have for years. We keep Rudolph on for the good PR; that and the reindeers have an ironclad union contract.

CUDDY

Who's stepped into the room behind Wilson, unnoticed

How about keeping the existential/logistical/philosophical conundrums to yourself and diagnose the patient, already? I mean, isn't this about the point in an episode when somebody says something relating to the B storyline that makes you tilt your head slightly indicating that you've solved the case?

House pauses for a moment, then tilts his head slightly indicating that he's solved the case. Grabbing some tweezers, House reaches into Rudolph's left nostril and begins slowly pulling out a long string of blinking red Christmas lights from deep inside Rudolph's nose.

ALL

Ewwww!!

HOUSE

Well, here's you problem, bulbs 7, 9 and 11 are burned out, making the whole string erratic, hence, unstable glowing.

SANTA

So that's where all those lights went! Rudolph, how could you?

Rudolph makes reindeerish noises of contrition, which we're guessing sound a lot like reindeerish noises of distress.

HOUSE

It's quite simple, really. Rudy here's been guiding your sleigh on foggy Christmas Eves since, what, the late 1940s. His natural nose light starts to fade, you go high-tech, he takes desperate measures to stay in the reindeer game and avoid becoming the exotic jerky portion of a holiday gift-basket.

SANTA

Well, Rudolph, it looks like you're taking Dr. House's place on the "naughty" list this year! Ho, ho, ho!

MRS. CLAUS

Gingerbread Man cookies, anyone?

Everyone starts grabbing cookies.

Over a mournful, instrumental version of "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire," we see each of the doctors heading for their heartstring tuggingly lonely Christmas Eves. The camera pulls back to reveal the snow-covered exterior of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and, as it pans skyward, shows a full moon, across which a sleigh pulled by reindeer passes in silhouette. The lead reindeer's nose is ever-so-faintly glowing red.

Roll credits.

On This Day in History...

1971:  American Pie, Don McLean's eight minute-long tribute to Buddy Holly, becomes a welcome alternative to Iron Butterfly's Innagoddadvida and Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant as DJ's favorite bathroom break music.