In perusing my wife's Facebook account, I came across a photo that she had posted that was reportedly taken by her youngest stepson after he finally set up some Christmas lights under the upper storey eaves at the front of our house ─ we have never had Christmas lights up there before.
All of the other Christmas lights in the following photo are my handiwork, but most of them are left up year round ─ all I had to do this season was set up the lights of that archway in front of our front door:
Perhaps I will also include this bit of Facebook advertising for my wife ─ she posted this yesterday as a struggling agent for various health-related products from Thailand's The iCon Group:
Anyway, I downloaded that Christmas lights photo after using Online-Convert.com to enlarge it, and then I uploaded it to this post. If I had access to the original photo, I know that it would be far sharper and probably larger as well, for that stepson has quite a fancy camera with a tripod. He had set it up on the carport roof as he worked at stringing the unfortunately subdued lights that are apparent in the photo, so he likely also took video footage.
I just have no idea what he does with the images he captures. Perhaps he has some, most, or even all stored somewhere in "the cloud", for he has had the camera for a couple or so years. He's very secretive online with his accounts.
When he bought those lights that he set up along the eaves of that upper storey, he had no idea that the fairly large bulbs were going to be as dim as they turned out to be. I bet that is not a feature prominently advertised on the product box (two boxes, actually, for he bought two sets of the light strings).
It was around 5:30 p.m. by the time we were all finished, and we left the lights ablaze for passersby to see. I was to finally unplug them just before going to bed, so I probably did so around 11:30 p.m. last evening.
Earlier that evening before my younger brother had gotten home, I tuned in a so-called Christmas movie from 2012 titled Holiday Spin.
As Christmas movies go, it was a considerable disappointment. Certainly, Christmas music and decor abounded as the movie progressed, but an article at TheMovieScene.co.uk ─ Holiday Spin (2012) ─ identifies the problem:
But whilst "Holiday Spin" has more TV movie cliches than you could shake a tail feather at it is also a Christmas movie as well as a dance movie. But the thing about "Holiday Spin" is that like all Lifetime movies it puts the emphasis on the cliches so as a Christmas movie I don't rate it with it really only used as a backdrop for the drama whilst being a dance movie means we have a variety of training cliche scenes and enough giving Garrett Clayton to appear shirtless. Maybe for fans of Clayton this will be enough but for me it wasn't and sadly "Holiday Spin" is one of those movies you watch, waiting for something good to happen and finding yourself still waiting when the movie is over.
What this all boils down to is that "Holiday Spin" didn't do it for me and in truth was a bit of a disappointment as it failed to deliver on the Christmas whilst the dancing side of the movie was often far too cheesy.
Amen! Heck, there was a scene at a huge Christmas party where people supposedly were spontaneously dancing, but it was clearly intricately rehearsed and far too involved to have just been impromptu coordinated moves that were 'spur of the moment' as we the viewers were supposed to accept.
There was absolutely no feel or sense that this was a Christmas movie despite its trappings.
I also found the acting at times to be amateurish and overdone. Ralph Macchio spent most of the movie looking ridiculously pained emotionally. And the closing scene where his character and his character's erstwhile estranged adult son embrace in reconciliation for a ludicrously long time ─ there is no telling how long the embrace endured, for the movie slowly faded out while that unnaturally lengthy embrace was still on strong display ─ was more than I could credit as being plausible.
Should I mention that I have never been a Ralph Macchio fan? It's not that I dislike the guy, but the fuss about "The Karate Kid" never managed to get passed along to me. When that first movie came out in 1984, I was 34 years old and with absolutely no interest in what I knew of the plot. I don't even know if I would have had any interest in it had I been 12 years younger (and thus around Ralph Macchio's age). But movies about some martial artist "kid" just didn't appeal to me in my middle age. And so I have never sat down to watch one of them.
The actor (Garrett Clayton) playing the 17 - 18-year-old son in Holiday Spin was probably 21 years old, and he looked it. When I saw him delivering something to his character's mother's dance studio while she was teaching a group of youngsters, I honestly thought that they supposed to be a couple. He had quite a prominent 'five o'clock shadow', and the early part of the movie had him sparring in a boxing ring MMA-style with another dude. There was absolutely nothing indicating that this was some 17-year-old teen ─ I wholly accepted that he was a young adult into his 20s. And that seemed all the more certain when he learned after that sparring match that there was an MMA scout who wanted to arrange to check him out.
To be honest, apart from the fact that I had poured myself a dark rum to watch the movie with, it was actress Allie Bertram who alone held my interest. What a lovely young woman! It was easy to accept that her character was still a virgin.
And I couldn't get enough of those nicely-muscled legs of hers!
The most comprehensive biography I can find on her is at WikiCelebs.com where I see that she is just shy by about three months of being two years older than her co-star Garrett Clayton.
Alas, I have no intention of ever again watching this movie. Sure, it was interesting enough, I suppose; but it was definitely NOT a Christmas movie. And thus I have no reason to ever bother seeing it again.
By the way, I did not realize that the movie was filmed very near to where I live in Surrey ─ apparently in nearby Langley and Abbotsford. See this December 21, 2012 North Shore News article: Talented dancers go for a Holiday Spin.
I think that drink of three or more ounces of dark rum ─ which I later followed with two cans of beer (one at 8% alcohol, the other at 5%) ─ likely adversely affected me. I did not have a particularly good sleep overnight, and there was no motivation to try to rise early to do some shopping.
The day has been sunny and rather chill, so what little frozen snow remains is not much thawing and melting. We will most likely be having a freezing night tonight.
I watched quite an interesting interview performed by Dr. Joseph Mercola ─ I tuned it in during the latter morning to watch on T.V. with my younger brother: VAERS Data and What it Reveals About COVID Jab Safety- Interview with Jessica Rose, Ph.D.
It was uploaded to BitChute on December 15, and is just under 1½ hours in duration.
As with the movie I discussed above, we watch most of our shows on T.V. for free via our Android TV Box.
My brother and I have seen Dr. Jessica Rose on several videos in recent months, and I have grown quite attracted to the woman ─ I really love her girlish laugh. Sometimes I will become so enrapt while watching her that I will focus overmuch on her and not what she is saying, and then I will pull myself out of the state and resume paying attention.
Both my brother and I sought some further bed rest during the noon hour ─ perhaps I waited until 1 p.m. or soon thereafter; I rose from that nap to find that my brother had already left for the afternoon. My eldest stepson was home, but his younger brother had left for work during the mid-morning.
I am unclear, but I may yet do some shopping at some point soon after dark. But whether or not, I will definitely have to get cracking during the week, for I have yet to get my Christmas shopping done. I do have a 750-ml bottle of Scotch for my brother, but I would like to get him another. And I would also like to get a good bottle of merlot for my wife, and some sort of appealing bottle of drink each for my two stepsons. I also want to get everyone some scratch lottery tickets ─ and that will include my brother's girlfriend Bev, for she is to be spending most of the Christmas weekend with us.
I have some exercising that I want to do, and I also have to have a bath. it is already nearing 5 p.m., so it may well be that I am going to remain home and obligate myself to somehow get my Christmas shopping done during the coming five days.
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