The Sheila Variations

"Would you please reinflate so that I can stop feeling so tremendously sorry for you?"

Boy, how many times have I heard that?

Hey, if you were stuck in the North Pole making toys with nothing but midgets for company all year long, you'd go on a bender when you first got to New Jersey too. Party on, Santa.

hahahaha. poor guy. seems to have gotten a case of really bad osteoporosis.

Haha! Funny, but you know what I love about it? You were forward-thinking enough to snap a picture of it! :)

um, sheila....does this remind you of anything? "FROSTY'S DOWN! FROSTY'S DOWN!"

Allison - that is EXACTLY what I thought!!! We don't have a photo of Frosty goin' down, right? Or do we? I think we were sans camera at that moment - so i just had to capture deflated Santa for posterity. It's just too hilarious.

Our neighbors have like three or four of those inflatable things. They unplug them at night, and in the mornings it looks like some sort of bizarre post-Xmas massacre. Like the terrorists have REALLY won.

hahahaha it's really quite alarming!!

I should have linked to this as well. Same topic. Santa's deflating left and right.

Ahhhh! I'm melting! Mellllltingggggg!

Does he know it's Christmastime at all?

I AM glad it's him instead of me!

He looks like I feel.

Oy, my back.

Looks like Dan Ackroyd in "Trading Places".

Lisa - BWAHAHAHAHA

My brother-in-law's mother has those illuminated wicker-like reindeer on her front law. One year, my brother-in-law and his brother put two of them in a compromising postion, snapped a picture and took the film to CVS to have Christmas cards made up. My favorite part was the inclusion of "Joy to the World" in a very elegant font.

If I can find it, I'll scan and send it to you.

Uh, front lawn, rather.

Does he know it's Christmastime at all? Great. Now I have the Band Aid/Feed the World song stuck in my head. Thanks a lot. It's hard to concentrate at work with Bono singing "Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you" over and over in my head. Seriously. That video was a who's who of 80s pop royalty: Jody Watley, dude from Spandau Ballet, three fifths of Duran Duran, George freakin Michael, most of Culture Club, and the delightful Bananarama (featuring Siobhan Fahey, which, thanks to my reading this blog, I now know how to pronounce correctly). And I tried to think of a way to bring this ramble back around to deflated Santas, but I couldn't so I'm stopping typing right after I type this: Feed the World.

Not to mention the fact that perhaps the REASON 'they' don't know it's Christmas is that many of them are Muslim.

Which perhaps explains Santa genuflecting toward Mecca.

Now - who was the guy who sang first in that song?? What was his name? "It's Christmastime ... there's no need to be afraid ..." Right?

Was it Paul Young?

Yes, it was.

You scare me.

In a good way.

My offer to be your "useless knowledge and ridiculous trivia" lifeline should you ever go on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is still good.

Oh, this is great. I'm dying here. He's not only defeated by life, he's deflated by it.

One of the things I should have photographed my last December in Dallas (but didn't, because I didn't have a digital camera at the time) was an elaborate display down my street consisting mainly of inflatables. They had placed a maniacally grinning inflatable Santa behind a grouping of inflatable reindeer; so far so good, but apparently they'd anchored the reindeer better than they had Santa, or maybe the deer just stayed up better because they were lower to the ground [insert something smart about centers of gravity here].

But what would happen every time the wind blew with any force at all was that Santa would tip forward, coming to rest with his pelvis up against the behind of one of the reindeer; so that more days than not, Santa appeared to be enjoying the HELL out of himself with that reindeer. It didn't help that his arms were positioned slightly forward, making him look as if he were holding on to that reindeer booty for dear life.

Uh, ho ho ho?

ilyka - I am guffawing - that is so funny!!!

"There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas...
Since it's in the Southern Hemisphere and all
Bob Geldof doesn't know
It's equatorial
Did he learn geography at all?"

Not that it matters, Bob's now hard at work writing an Emo anthem to help deflated Santas everywhere.

hahahahahahaha

Oh man - you know I loved that song when it came out, Nightfly - I admit it proudly - but I could probably write an entire dissertation now on why it is ridiculous.

I mean ... what???? When is there EVER snow in africa? hahahaha

Maybe, just maybe, snow in Africa occurred after Toto went down there and blessed the rains...

Now wait. Isn't there a line in the song:

"We'll let in light and we'll banish shade"??

Why do you want to banish shade in a place like this?

If I have misremembered the lyrics, then my bad. But it seems like Africa needs MORE shade, not LESS.

Curly - bwahahahaha! I remember the whole bit about "nothing ever grows," even though, well, about half of the entire continent is JUNGLE. It's like, hey, there's war, famine, and poverty - but you don't need to lie about the place.

Nightfly - hahahahahahaha Your point about the jungle negates my point about the desert which just goes to show you that, uhm, it's a CONTINENT, mkay? Lots o' weather!! Rain and sun and grass and animals and snow and fog ... Mkay?

I still think that "banishing shade" is a bit extreme.

I am having so much fun right now deconstructing this song with you guys. It's hysteircal.