Tradition, actually

My buddy Jeff has two traditions he follows every Christmas. One is that he and his wife go somewhere on Christmas Eve (or Christmas Eve-Eve) and buy each other a little gift. His other tradition is, after the presents have been wrapped and placed under the tree for the next morning, to watch LOVE, ACTUALLY with his wife together.

They do it every year, and I envy the hell out of it. There's only a handful of movies I love as much as I do LOVE, ACTUALLY, but not having a wife (or anything remotely close to one), my viewings of the movie are always solo.*

Jeff just emailed me to mention that they finished the flick--it was as good as ever--and he's now on to bed. So I figured I ought to at least TRY to watch it, now that I've wrapped my own presents for tomorrow.

I love something new about the flick every time I watch it, and laugh at a new line I never noticed the other times through ("He now spends all his time up in his room." "There's nothing unusual about that. My horrid son Bernard stays in his room all the time. Thank goodness."). I'm a pretty tough sell when it comes to movies (at least more so than everybody except my dad and Big Anklevich), but they've really got me with this one.

It would be nice to develop a couple new traditions--preferably non-solo ones--but this is one I don't mind repeating from last year.

Happy holiday.

Rish Billy Mack Outfield

*Which might be a good thing; after all, how attractive can a man be to a woman when he consistantly bawls throughout what is universally-recognized as a Romantic-Comedy? I believe they even address it in the flick, when Emma Thompson says, "No one's ever going to shag you if you cry all the time."