Crackers

Yesterday, the Speardane and I headed downtown to gawk at the unfortunate Macy's display. As always, we were fascinated and appalled by the corpselike charcters and the semi-sexual subtitles ("Ooh," cooed Clara, "I wish all my dolls could be so large and life-like!" As soon as Godfather left the room, Fritz grabbed his sister's gift. "I'm the one who likes soldiers best!") Atalanta will eventually find her camera cord, but till then, the words will have to do. Among the night's sparklier ornaments:

• A lecherous, warty, eyepatched godfather
• Homosexuality
• A levitating woman with a severely broken wrist
• Marzipan piggies!
• A fat sister sitting in the corner stuffing herself with cake
• A mouse wearing a yarmulke (hey, isn't this a Christmas celebration?)
• A prince with the tightest ass of any mannequin yet
• A flying horse (what?)
• Nuts

They did some cool things with scrims and mirrors that I really appreciated, but those were overshadowed by the horrifying end scene in which Clara's parents come downstairs in the morning to find their darling girl DEAD! OH GOD! SHE WON'T WAKE UP! HOW COULD WE HAVE PREVENTED THIS? WHY DID WE LET HERR DROSSELMEIER GIVE HER THAT DOLL WITH THE POINTY SWORD AND EASILY-CHOKED-ON PARTS? The Speardane and I tried our best to muffle our exclamations, but I fear we may have added to strangers' children's trauma.

We made our escape back to the apartment, where we set the plum pudding to boil and watched Hercule Poirot (so charming! so cunning! such an accent!) catch a ruby thief for a mannerless Egyptian prince. Atalanta came home, and we opened our crackers and wore the funny hats and read the English and French jokes and played with our musical instruments (I'm on maraca, Anskov rocks the slide whistle, and Atalanta got a pirate tattoo, so she's our bad-ass lead vocalist. Our band: Crackers. It has two meanings, since we're white!).

The pudding was unmolded, almond/rum butter was placed on it, and we started talking in passive voice, for some reason. Here we go again. We flambeed it and turned the lights out to watch (Side note: I always thought you poured the vodka on something and set it on fire, but it turns out you set the vodka on fire and then pour it on something. Neat!). I was hoping for the traditional discovery of things hidden in the pudding (I got a sixpence! I got a thimble! I got a rock.), but no dice. There weren't even plums in it! What the heck? I was all disgruntled, but then the Speardane explained that in olden days, "plum" meant any dried fruit, so the figs, blueberries, and currants counted. It was delicious - Atalanta and I will probably have the leftovers for dinner for a couple of days.

And to round the night out, I made a pun so god-awful that I had to raise my right eyebrow while telling it. Speardane gave me a disgusted look and I laughed for a full minute. Har har.