Also, happy first day of Kwanzaa. And, if you are of the Welsh persuasion, today would be Gwyl San Steffan, otherwise known as St. Stephen’s Day, a holiday that La Gringa did not know existed until our wee tiny church sent us a Christmas liturgical calendar in the mail last month. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, in Wales of olden days, Gwyl San Steffan was celebrated very much like a messy BDSM play party:
Some activities that took place on this day seem peculiarly Welsh, including that of "holly-beating" or "holming." In this, it was customary for young men and boys to slash the unprotected arms of female domestic servants with holly branches until they bled. In some areas it was the legs that were beaten. In others, it was the custom for the last person to get out of bed in the morning to be beaten with sprigs of holly and made to carry out all the commands of his family.
Yes, well, then. Ahem! It’s probably a foregone conclusion that La Gringa won’t be letting the blood of any fair young maidens today. (Unless they piss her off for some reason.) But we did want to report on our muchly-fun albeit slightly unorthodox Christmas celebration.
On Christmas Eve, SoundGrrl and Book Stud joined La Gringa for a couch potato feast: scads of wine, cheese, rosemary bread, fresh cherries and baked salmon combined with hours of boob tube enjoyment.
The salmon was particularly good, and La Gringa wishes she could tell you how it was prepared but in point of fact, La Gringa cheated with the salmon. Earlier that afternoon, she ventured into Giant Yuppie Food Porn Store (otherwise known as Whole Foods) to do some last minute shopping for unnecessary but very yummy food items. For the day before Christmas, Whole Foods was surprisingly empty. La Gringa wandered past the seafood counter and was suddenly struck with the idea that salmon would be the perfect thing to prepare for dinner…however, we are utterly clueless as to how to prepare salmon. When we asked the nice Mr. Whole Foods Fish Man for advice, he not only gave La Gringa detailed instructions on how to cook the salmon, but he also rubbed the salmon steaks with a fragrant cornucopia of Mediterranean spices before wrapping them in paper. All La Gringa had to do was lay them out in a pan with a little olive oil and pop them in the oven.
SoundGrrl brought over chocolate and lemon tarts from City Bakery for dessert; these combined with the gourmet dark chocolate covered graham crackers that Book Stud brought pretty much ensured that the three of us would eat ourselves into delightful food comas before the evening was over. We watched some episodes of Battlestar Galactica, but because Book Stud is still one season behind, it became a lesson in cruelty to make her try to follow the convoluted plotlines. We then switched to Pay-Per-View and watched a couple of movies: the hilarious teen revenge flick John Tucker Must Die, which is a lot more fun than it sounds, and the nearly incomprehensible moody horror film Silent Hill, a complete disaster of a plot sadly captured forever on celluloid by a producer with more money than sense. Silent Hill eventually proved to be so terrifying that it lulled Book Stud off to a peaceful slumber on the sofa, while SoundGrrl (who works in the motion picture industry) gleefully picked apart the technical deficiencies of the film for La Gringa’s edification.
Great company, good food, bad movies. Like the song says, two out of three ain’t bad.
Christmas morning, La Gringa accidentally slept until nearly 11:00 AM, which meant she didn’t make it to church services. But we got the dishes from the previous evening done in time for new friend Small But Mighty to trek over from the wild of Brooklyn for lunch and yet more hours of really mindless boob tube entertainment. Small But Mighty brought with her a lot of fresh chocolate rugelach, which La Gringa and she then consumed with a pot of Peet’s coffee. SBM suggested we have a real Jewish Christmas and order in Chinese; alas, there are no decent Chinese restaurants in Astoria, so we settled for spicy Thai curries from Ubol’s Kitchen on Steinway Street. La Gringa also received the most hilarious Christmas present ever when SBM proudly presented us with a Boba Fett Pez dispenser, guaranteed (she said) to help La Gringa pick up hot chicks in a bar.
More confusing episodes of Battlestar Galactica ensued. At one point, SBM posited the idea of a special "continuity spaceship" peopled by magical leprechauns that followed the TV spaceships around supplying things like cosmetics (cos the Cylon chicks all wear an awful lot of make-up), satin sheets (again, only to the Cylons), and hair gel. We finally gave up on Battlestar Galactica when both La Gringa and SBM were reduced to fits of giggles by SBM’s spot-on mimicry of the guy who plays Galactica’s one-eyed XO Saul Tigh. It was utterly ridiculous.
We then watched our share of bad movies. First we attempted to sit through Behind Enemy Lines II. Ouch. Bad idea. When an entire hour had gone by with nary an explosion, we decided to try another movie. the second movie we watched was called 5ive Girls (yes, that’s 5ive), your typical reform school girls trapped in a haunted house with Satan kinda film. (The actual tagline for this film is "Five girls vs. 2,000 demons. You do the math.") We started re-writing the film in our heads (out loud, of course) and re-naming the characters, placing bets on which of the nubile young things would get offed first. SBM though that the token lesbian character (whom we named Dykey McCargopants) would be the first to go, but La Gringa felt that this character would secretly be shown to have a heart of gold and ultimately save the film’s heroine, the slightly clueless blonde that SBM named Buffy McNot-So-Much. Sadly, the Buffy character got whacked in the end (along with Ron Perlman as the good-hearted priest, who is stabbed to death with a bazillion crucifixes) but hottie Dykey McCargopants strolled off into the sunset (covered in blood and gore, of course), and the direct-to-DVD film industry was saved once again.
A most unorthordox La Gringa Christmas, indeed.
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