The Ghost of Christmas Past

It's 10:45pm on December 24th. A friday night. I'm sitting at home, drinking an Old Milwaukee, and listening to some music. This is like any other friday night to me. Go to the bar after work with my boss, get home early, and stay outta trouble. The fact that it's Christmas Eve really doesn't mean a damn thing to me. I went to the strippers and the OT before this. Not exactly full of yuletide spirit.

There is one thing I do like about Christmas though. In my never-ending quest to be anti-Christmas, I usually end up doing some entertaining and/or retarded shit on Christmas Day. Your average person probably looks back on Christmas Day's past and remembers a pretty standard 24 hours:

2008: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. I hate my brother. Who needs 9 ties?
2007: At my brothers house. The kids got a Wii, and I wanted to shove a controller down little Billy's throat by 4:30.
2003: At my parents house. Mom and dad argued. My sister didn't show. Major drama OMG!
1996: At my parents house. I asked for a portable CD player. I got a walkman. I hate life.


And so on. My timeline is a little bit more entertaining, at least to me. So, here's a brief synopsis of some of my more interesting Christmas Days. Sure, I spent some with family too, but other than a fire poker fight or 2, it was usually pretty boring. These are my memories of the times I managed to bail on that bullshit and do something interesting. Without further ado...

2008 - I wrote about it last year. But, here's the cliff notes version of the 25th, if you don't feel like reading: A 24 hour train ride to Jasper full o' booze on the 23rd/24th led to a massive hangover that spilled over onto the 25th. The only cure was Pilsner, of course, but this was not to be. Nothing in town was open. Even our hotel bar didn't open till 5pm, which led to me basically crying in public. After it finally opened, it was less-than-fulfilling, so Len and I got the bright idea to go to the fancy lodge up the hill where actual people hang out.

Too bad it was CHRISTMAS HELL and the Disney movie cheerfulness nearly made us commit a homicide or 23. 14 dollar ceasars finally broke the drunk camels back, and after a brief stop back in the hotel bar where I purchased a 27 dollar 6 pack, Christmas was mercifully put to it's death via Comedy Roasts and my best friend Pilly.

2007 - Me, Lisa and Len all have various reasons to hate Christmas, and we figured since none of us could go on vacation, the best thing to do was to get drunk at the best bar in town (which happened to be the only bar open)...the Cambie. 194 people were invited. 3 showed. Me, Lisa, and Len. We arrived at noon. 6 other people were in the bar...which was 5 more than we expected. We set a firm no shots rule, and went to work on some 10 dollar pitchers of shitty beer, while Len's Mr Hanky doll eyed us warily.

After 8 hours of playing pool with immigrants, picking terrible music from the jukebox, taking pictures of Mr Hanky shamelessly swimming in our beers, and downing like 24 shots (we're not good at following rules), we were finally escorted from the premises. Lisa yelled "LET'S GOOO TO THE CASINOOOO" pretty much the whole way home on the skytrain before passing out, and I honestly don't remember what happened to Len. Dumping Lisa out of a cab onto her lawn at 9pm on Christmas Day while her parents looked out the window disapprovingly is way better than any shitty Christmas present I could get. That shit was GOLD!

2004 - You can read about it here, if you feel the need. If not...

Pretend you're me (but not as cool), and picture this: I wake up groggy and cotton-mouthed and take a look around. After a minute or so, my surroundings start to come into focus. I'm in a Days Inn hotel. In Anchorage, Alaska. I look over at the other bed. The person I came on this trip with isn't in said bed. This is all amusing and stuff, but our flight to Fairbanks leaves in 2 hours and going alone wasn't part of the plan. I gradually piece together the night before at Chilkoot Charlies (the best bar in the WORLD)...I came back to the hotel after nearly hiccuping draft beer all over some angry native broad. By myself. Len chose to stay. Uh oh.

While this assessment is being made, the door swings open and a fucking toasted co-pilot is standing there. He manages to make it to his bed, explaining to me that he was helping some dude change his transmission in -20 degree weather at 4am. This is highly amusing, until I inform Len that he can't go to sleep because we have to fly to Fairbanks in 2 hours. Many curse words followed.

Me and the zombie manage to get ourselves to the airport and onto the plane. Len is completely done at this point. Talking and walking is rocket science to him. The flight to Fairbanks is ridiculously scenic, and I celebrate this awesome show with an Amstel Light at 8:30am. Len dry heaves at the sight of it.

Upon arrival, we are ripped off by the only asian guy in town, who drives the taxi to our hotel. Len is asleep 0.243 seconds after we get into our room. I went to buy beer, and realized it was -37. I thought that was cool for about 20 seconds, until my face, nose, snot and beer all froze at once on the walk home. Seriously.

After Len slept off his hangover, we decided that we're going to North Pole, where Santa lives! Honestly. It's a real town with a real Santa house, like 11 miles north of Fairbanks. I know, the scrooges heading towards the heart of Christmas sounds weird, but cut us some slack, what else were we gonna fuckin do?

The lady at the hotel said Santa's house would be open. One 40 dollar cabride later, IT WAS NOT. Len pissed on his house to show him who's boss. Another 40 dollar cabride back, and we're pissed. We go looking for a restaurant for dinner. No dice. Everything was closed. Every. Single. Restaurant. In. Town. We ended up at a gas station, and we bought burritos for our Christmas dinner. I think we were asleep by 9:30pm. Goooo Christmas!


2003 - It's just me and Mikey. Jay just moved home, so we're down a roommate. In his honour, our whole goal for the day is strippers and beer, because we know he would approve. Mikey kept telling me about a poster he saw at Mugs (same peeler bar I was at today, different location) that said something about an all-day stripathon on Christmas Day. Nuthin says yuletide joy like amateur boobies, so we walked all the way down there from here (5km, give or take) in the early afternoon. Just to find out that it was closed on Christmas Day. What the fuck?

Apparently Daly can't read and it was on Boxing Day. Damn him! Either way though, we had committed ourselves to debauchery, so we went to the only place that was serving beer in all of New West...the riverboat casino. We played some blackjack and somehow we both won, probably 100 total between us, which basically doubled what we had to start with (fuck off, this was when we were young and financially irresponsible!)...so it was ON. Booze in face, pronto.

Somehow day turned to night, and some old lady was following us around, thinking we'd spend money on her or something. Obviously she was delusional, but she did give us one nugget of info - Barfly was open that night! Barfly (now The Standard) is a terrible club in New West, but it was Eden to us that night. Mikey and me ran to a cab to dodge the old lady, but she was like a fuckin' drunk FloJo and kept up with us all the way there. We jumped in, and she attempted to do so as well...but it was kind of difficult with Mikey's hand on her forehead, launching her away from the door.

So we get to Barfly...obviously, no one's there on Christmas Day. Maybe 6 people. That didn't stop Mikey from shotgunning a beer and doing a ridiculous dance on the floor that some of you have probably seen if you've hung out with him for any length of time. Suddenly we were the center of an 8 person club party...for about 10 seconds. It was about to be 9, because guess who walked in the door! The old lady! And she was PISSED. Somehow, Mikey talked her out of homicide and had her dancing within a few seconds, which was even funnier because she was easily 30 years older than everyone there.

A whole lot more liquor was consumed, and I woke up on the living room floor the next morning. That's about all I can tell you..I have no recollection of much else. Mikey eventually came out of his room and we had the same conversation we'd had countless times..."What the fuck happened?" "I dunno man." "How did we get home??" "No idea." "Do you have any money left?" "I have 5 bottlecaps and a bunch of ripped up coasters in my pocket. No money. You?" "I thought I had like 30 bucks in change, but they're all quarters. I have 6 dollars, tops." "What do we do now?" "Call Lisa and tell her to pick us up and buy us breakfast, that's what!"



In approximately 12 hours, 2007 will be repeated. I think over 160 people were invited this time. 10 SAY they're coming, but we know who's gonna show...me, Lisa, and Len. And hanky. It's gonna be a shitshow, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Merry Christmas motherfuckers. If you want to do something a little different this year, we'll be at the Cambie. Come on down. Make this a Christmas you'll actually remember.