Twelve Days of Christmas Images, #7

Still in the attic.

La Familia, three when they were little, Grandpa singing, three more when they were little, three new Sox caps and the family minus.

Twelve Day of Christmas Images #8

Christmas is all about the kids. So, like Clark Griswold did, I'm going up in the attic to look at some pictures of days past. You're invited.

More tomorrow. Some really fun ones, too. If you have photos that you'd like to share, please email a digital image.

Bowling For Dollars/Twelve Images of Christmas #9

Every December, invitations go out selected institutions of higher learning to round up their football players, coaches, gear and especially a few thousand of their loyal alumni and fans and bring ‘em somewhere for a holiday football game. There’s bowl games from DC to Detroit, from Miami to Boise, and of course there are games in California, including “the Granddaddy of ‘em all”, the Rose Bowl.

Other than providing a vacation for those fortunate enough to have some spare cash and vacation days, and filling up a lot of TV time for those who couldn’t go in person, what is the allure? It is a trait older than the holidays.

It is greed.

The bowls, you see pay incredible sums of money to the participants. Here, for your wonder and amazement, is a partial list. By the way, most of the participants pool their payday with other members of their conference, so everybody wins. Let us be reminded that this is, of course, amateur athletics.

The FedEx National Championship Game, January 8 in Miami
Estimated Payout Per Team: $17.5 Million

The Rose Bowl , New Year’s Day in Pasadena
Estimated Payout Per Team: $17.5 Million

The FedEx Orange Bowl , New Year’s Day in Miami
Estimated Payout Per Team : $17.5 Million

(yeah that’s 4 x $17.5 = $70 Million one week in Miami)

The Allstate Sugar Bowl , January 2 in New Orleans
Estimated Payout Per Team: $17.5 Million

The Tostitos Fiesta Bowl , January 5 in Tempe, AZ
Estimated Payout Per Team: $17.5 Million

also...
The Eagle Bank Bowl, December 20 in DC, $1 Million Each
The Champs Sports Bowl, December 27 in Orlando, $2.25 Million Each
The Alamo Bowl, December 29 in San Antonio, $2.2 Million Each
The Capital One Bowl, January 1 in Orlando, $4.25 Million Each
The Outback Bowl, January 1 in Tampa, $3.1 Million Each
The Cotton Bowl, January 2 in Dallas, $3 Million Each

There are more games, more dollars; you get the idea. I’m going to search for the big money numbers: how much is wagered on these games.

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Twelve Days of Christmas Images #10

This is Thimble City. In our pre video game world, we had this manual version of Sim City, a piece of pressed board painted like a town center, elevated by plastic legs at each corner. Thimble City had several buildings, with the people and cars moved around the city by using plastic wands with a magnet at the tip. The people and the cars had magnets in their bottoms, and the wands were moved around underneath the city surface, and we played two at a time. This is the only toy that I can remember my sister and I actually playing together. Sort of like an ancient version of the internet link for XBox, except we were actually there, together, in the same place. There were also occasional monster attacks on Thimble City, those occurring when our cat would join the playtime and stalk the city. If you want to relive this bit of your childhood, there are some sets out there for $300 and up. If I recall correctly, this was another Remco product. Remco, Marx and Ideal shaped millions of little lives in the world before Microsoft.

Pre-binary Christmas.

Twelve Images of Christmas -- #10

Late addition: Pirate Update, good guys score one! http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081213/ap_on_re_af/piracy

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A pair of Christmas toys from my childhood today.

First, from Marx, is the Big Bruiser tow truck that I got when I was eight or so. Big Bruiser was huge in comparison to my other toy cars, made of white nylon-like plastic, and incredibly brawny. It had an electric winch that could pull any of the toy cars, except that Big Bruiser's tires were a pretty hard rubber that slid on the tile floor, so you couldn't hook up to his collar and pull the dog across the kitchen. Equipped with blinking lights and a siren, too (I think), Big Bruiser had one overriding flaw: it had an alkaline battery appetite in a non-alkaline world. It simply ate batteries like crazy. I loved it. Still photo below, and a commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJHO8AP8Gx0


Toy number two today is even cooler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCVjT2N8dIg This is maybe the ultimate child's toy from a cold war world: the Steve Canyon fighter jet. Play the video, and imagine little me sitting there at the controls. It was all about air superiority in my childhood.

Scary Christmas.

Twelve Images of Christmas -- #11

Christmas Eve dinner in Polish homes is the celebration of the Wigilia, the Vigil. Dinner gets started by sharing bits of these wafers, oplatki, with your family. They're made of the same stuff as a communion wafer and may be plain or, like these, embossed with a scene. The dinner itself is traditionally meatless, but as the elders got older in our family the rules were changed on the fly. When I was a small boy, the main entree was perch. The kids complained, so french fried shrimp was added. Over time, the perch disappeared, the shrimp got top billing, and then one day Grandpa decided that polish sausage was acceptable, partly because he had made it himself. Mushroom soup, using incredibly costly imported dried mushrooms, has also been a headline item for the Wigilia dinner.