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Hilariously I thought I might get through Christmas without eating sweets or chocolates. I allowed myself a toffee from the Quality Street a few days ago as a treat, but otherwise I was going to be healthy and more or less stick with my Zoe diet.
I have eaten nothing but sweets, cakes and cheese for the last three days and my coat no longer does up and it's not even Christmas Day! I either have unwavering self control or no self control. I only come with two settings. Which is one more setting than my love making.
I don't know how many times I have to go through this before I learn that I absolutely cannot just eat one piece of chocolate and then leave the rest of the chocolate. If you've been here for over three weeks then you must be bored with me failing to learn this lesson.
I am not going to beat myself up about it. And if I want to eat three packs of brandy snaps in three days (because that's the only quantity I could buy them in) then I shall. A relapse like this can't do you any harm. Just ask any drug addict. You can just stop again after Christmas.
We watched Muppet Christmas Carol for the second time this year, but you have to watch on Christmas Eve so you can get excited that there is literally only one more sleep to Christmas.
Yesterday I'd read an article about facts you didn't know about the Muppet Christmas Carol (I can't find it now so I might have dreamed it) and I made the film much better for the family by chipping in with the facts at the relevant places. I didn't tell them about the article. I just let them know the facts. When Sprocket the Dog appears at a window early on I pointed out that this was the first Muppet film to not feature any characters from Sesame Street, but there is a cameo from Sprocket.
When Gonzo appears I told them that 85% of his dialogue in the film comes from the Christmas Carol book (which I was pretty much aware of anyway) but did they know that originally they had intended to make a Charles Dickens puppet to narrate the film. Imagine how shit that would have been. Gonzo taking on this role and playing it straight and being amazing at it is one of the absolute triumphs of this movie. I've never seen this more brilliantly explained than by Joel Morris in this fantastic podcast about why the film works
https://joelmorris.substack.com/p/the-muppet-christmas-carol?r=2bgqhl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=trueOn the viewing earlier this month I had noticed that Scrooge's nephew's wife did not appear in the final dinner scene at the Cratchett house and had wondered why, but now I knew that the actor playing the part (who of course would later play one of the mums in the Inbetweeners) had a scheduling conflict and couldn't make the final day of filming. I'd have been tempted to not have the nephew in the scene either, as one being there and the other not raises all kinds of questions. Though I sort of want to see the film that explains the absence of the character who perhaps was suspicious of Scrooge's sudden transition (which everyone just accepts in a way that I don't think they would in real life) or doesn't want to abandon her own Christmas plans to schlep across to the poor part of town to share an admittedly large but not large enough turkey with 100 strangers. Or maybe she doesn't want to impose on another family or is wondering who is going to cook the turkey and how. And why don't any of those other characters have Christmas plans?
I had way more amazing facts and Catie couldn't understand where all this was coming from, but compared it to the Community episode where Piers gets some comedy writers to come up with lots of quips to make during a showing of Kickpuncher. I was amazed how many of them I remembered. I doubt my family have ever had such an enjoyable evening.
Michael Caine is so brilliant in this film, playing it all straight as is the only way to do it right and I genuinely think he should have won an Oscar for this performance
This is my favourite scene in movie history and perfectly demonstrates why the Oscar should have been his. Everyone playing it straight, especially Beaker and it being the funniest thing possible as a result. And did you know that Michael Caine found it difficult to retain his serious facade in this scene as he found the rats reactions and volte faces so funny?
I've got millions of these.
We surprised the kids by playing the version with "The Love is Gone" in it (now available as an extra on Disney+). They didn't like it that much. But they were wrong. The film is better with it in.
And it should also have included the song they cut. Didn't you know about that? I did.
(actually might have ruined it).
