Richard Pryor 1940 - 2005

'When I was in Africa, this voice came to me and said, "Richard, what do you see?" I said, "I see all types of people." The voice said, "But do you see any niggers?" I said, "No." It said, "Do you know why? 'Cause there aren't any."'

Zuzu's Petals

Well, there’s no point fighting it. Christmas is racing towards us like the Road Runner roaring down the rocky highways of a yellow and orange Warner Brothers desert, and I don’t even have an Acme rocket sled at my disposal to stop it.

So I may as well just resign myself to the inevitable, and make sure I’m prepared with plentiful entertainments to make the season suitably jolly.

A couple of years back, I decided that at the AKA Grotto we would have a Christmas movie every year. (This is, of course, just an excuse for me to watch old movies. Let’s not kid ourselves.)

For the first Christmas in our new home, the choice was easy: It’s A Wonderful Life, the heartwarming confection about a suicidal depressive beset on all sides by small-mindedness, avarice, incomptenece, bullying and impending bankruptcy. It takes a particularly sick world to hold this movie up as The Spirit of Christmas, but I ain’t complaining. Dark, mean, and hard. Like Jim Kelly in a vendetta kind of mood.

Then, last year, I chose Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Yes, I know. My memory failed me on that one, ‘cos it’s a Thanksgiving movie, not a Christmas movie. Moving swiftly on...

This year, still mired in my strange 80s kick, I’m struggling to choose between two movies. Should it be Scrooged, with Bill Murray as (kinda) Ebenezer Scrooge, transposing Dickensian London to modern-day New York, and shifting the action to the life of a misanthropic television executive? With added Robert Mitchum for extra crustiness? And who could resist a side order of Lee Majors? Yes, TV’s Colt Seavers! It’s almost enough to make me start singing The Unknown Stuntman.

Or should I go for the classic (and I don’t use the word lightly) Trading Places? Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy when they were still funny! Jamie Lee Curtis when she was still hot! Denholm Elliott when he was still alive!

I think I’m going to have to make it a double-bill, because next year, I’m determined to choose Die Hard. Yippiekyay!

Well, I'm not the kind to kiss and tell, But I've been seen with Farrah.
I've never been with anything less than a nine, so fine...

Penetrating Logic

Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury is an ambassador for UNICEF and the U.N. anti-AIDS program. The Vatican has decided to drop her from its Christmas fund raising concert, because she planned to advocate the use of condoms to fight AIDS during her performance at the show.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized in 1981. This makes Avian Flu look like the sniffles. So far, in 2005 alone, AIDS has claimed an estimated 3.1 million (between 2.8 and 3.6 million) of which more than half a million (570,000) were children.

Fact is: something as simple and inexpensive as a male latex condom is the single most effective method to prevent the transmission of HIV. And they make for great water bombs, too.

Speaking at a news conference, event organizer Father Giuseppe Bellucci stated that "She was excluded because she had announced that at the concert she would openly promote the use of condoms to fight the plague of AIDS."

No, I don’t understand either. Given a choice between a raincoat for your rod, and the slow and painful depletion of your immune system, is it really so difficult to work out which is the lesser evil?