OK, Black Friday has come and gone so the Christmas shopping season is well under way.  Time to start looking at those chestnuts that make seasonal music even worse than it normally would be.

For the young, the Flinstones were the hip cartoon on TV when I was growing up.  They were reasonably funny and watched by just about everyone.

The premise was that Motown artists like the Supremes and The Jackson 5 (with little Mikey before he got wierd) would have their Christmas music sandwiched between “funny” little bits from the stone age families. Great idea Marv!!  We can make money off the folks in the suburbs and the homeys in the projects.  Crass and completely unnecessary. 

I won’t even begin to get into the who was hotter – Betty or Wilma – debate but I can say, with certainty, that this was a bad idea.  I don’t remember if I’ve ever actually heard this lump of coal but, if I have, I’m very glad that the ravages of time have washed the memory from my mind.

Is it still available?  I don’t know.  Should you buy it if it is?  Yabba Dabba Don’t.

UPDATE:  Believe it or not, the thing still is available at Amazon.com for as little as $0.25.  I’m happy to say that the Canadian Amazon site doesn’t have any.  What really gets me is that the release date is 1999 while the Flinstones went off the air in 1966 which must have been when the last ice age hit.  Marv and the marketing boys waited 33 years to unleash this horror on us?

Victor Borge

“Laughter is the closest distance between two people.”

I’ve been trying to quit smoking for a week now and I’m doing pretty well.  Down from 1 pack a day to 1 a week.

The downside is that I’m not sleeping well.  At first, I thought it was the patch but that only accounted for the really vivid dreams.  I quit wearing them on Thursday and the dreams stopped but I still have trouble sleeping for more than a few hours at a time.

If you’re going to get up at 4am every morning, you have to find something to fill your time.  This morning, I took the camera and tripod out and tried a long exposure shot of a very foggy morning.  This is the result of a 10 second exposure.  Interesting.

I wanted to go out early this morning and catch the sunrise through the fog but it was so thick that even now, at 11:15am, we still can’t see the sun.

(Click picture to see larger)