Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

         Recently, I was inspired to write a comedic post about Conjure , a Magic: The Gathering magazine from 1994. Conjure is a charmingly incompetent relic seemingly published by a team of guys killing time before the refill date for their anti-psychotic meds. As I wrote this post, though, I found myself with a problem: in order to write the sort of article I wanted to write, the piece was turning out to be pretty insider-y. That is to say, an audience without some understanding of the game of Magic would probably be fairly lost. As such, it didn't seem to be a great fit with the rest of my site (no mean feat for a blog combining lunchmeat reviews with an exhaustive analysis of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ). Rather than dilute the article, or scrap it entirely, I decided to see if a site dedicated to Magic content might be interested in it. I contacted noted Magic rabble-rouser Dr. Jeebus, proprietor of just such a site, mtgbrodeals.com , and after a bit of back an

     One night, I was supposed to meet a friend of mine at a dingy but reasonably-priced local watering hole. As it happens, my friend ended up unable to meet me due to a family emergency...or so they said, anyway. Rather than immediately go home, where there was no beer, I decided to soak up some local color and hang around for a drink or two. As I sat at the bar fiddling around with my cell phone, an elderly gentleman wearing a shirt that looked like it should be covering a picnic table sat down next to me. After some small talk about the weather and whatnot, the man blindsided me with the following story, which I transcribe here word-for-word, more or less. Naturally, I don't believe a word of it. But  the look in that elderly gentleman's eyes told me that he did.      If I had known how much trouble it was gonna cause me, I never woulda shot Terry Merton. Now, don’t get me wrong, everybody knows old Terry had it coming. He was stealing from me left and right, and it

             He came in that night, same as any other. Sat down on that green stool in the corner, the one with the big tear right down the middle that exposes the white fluffy stuffing inside, wisps of it sticking out like the hair of an elderly clown. He likes that one stool in particular. Says it suits him.      “You made it just in time,” I said to him with a smile. “Fifteen minutes until the ball drops.” As ever, my smile was not returned.      “Just give me the usual,” he grunted, scratching the top of his head. “And spare me the ball talk.”      I grabbed a frosty pint glass from beneath the bar. As I raised it, tiny pinpoints of light twinkled along the surface, reflections from the multicolored Christmas lights still strewn around the bar. There was no point in taking them down until January at least; hell, I thought, I might just leave them up all year ‘round. Might brighten the place up. I filled the glass to the brim with the cheapest beer we had on tap, a bi

Let’s face it: Christmas is the 800 pound gorilla of holidays. All other celebrations and festivals bow before its merry might. Some time in mid-August, when the air is crisp and the aroma of gingerbread-scented tanning lotion fills the air, the Christmas decorations begin to pop up in the bowels of Michael’s and Big Lots, and by the time Halloween rolls around, said decorations have already surged forth to populate storefronts everywhere. Such is the power of Christmas, and every year reminders of it pop up just a bit earlier than the last. It thus stands to reason that this holiday juggernaut would have innumerable songs dedicated to it, glorious hymns to sign aloud while roasting a freshly slaughtered turkey, pheasant or goose. Today I would like to talk about a few Christmas songs that have caught my interest over the years due to the simple fact that their existence is, well, inexplicable. And I don’t mean songs like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” that we’re all so fam