I’m grateful for George RR Martin for producing this. And happy that Howard got a chance to see it before he died. Waldrop has been one of my faves for 35+ years.

And there are more Waldrop stories in the pipeline.

“The Ugly Chickens, starring Felicia Day, has been shot alongside adaptations of Waldrop’s short stories Mary-Margaret Road Grader and Night of the Cooters.”

via The Hollywood Reporter

235 titles in alphabetical order. Includes movies and TV shows/episodes. I’ve removed the ‘A’ and ‘The’ at the beginning of titles. This is the complete list to accompany the post Christmas Movie Watch.

Christmas movie watching season begins the day after Thanksgiving and ends January 6 (twelve days after Christmas).

1000 Miles From Christmas (2012)
12 Christmas Wishes For My Dog (2011)
12 Dates of Christmas all episodes, all seasons (2020)
13 Slays Till Christmas (2020)
42 Days of Christmas Movies
8-Bit Christmas (2021)
AD/BC: A Rock Opera (2004)
All Creatures Great and Small (2022)
All is Bright (2013)
All the Creatures Were Stirring (2018)
An Elf’s Story: The Elf on the Shelf (short) (2011)
Anna & the Apocalypse (2017)
Apartment (1960)
Arthur Christmas (2011)
Babes in Toyland (1986)
Bad Moms Christmas (2017)
Bad Santa (2003)
Bakin It – TV Series
Batman Returns (1992)
Best Man Holiday (2013)
Best. Christmas. Ever. (2023)
Better Watch Out (2016)
Bishop’s Wife (1947)
Bitch Who Stole Christmas (2021)
Black Christmas (1974)
Black Christmas (2006)
Black Friday (2021) (is it a christmas movie, tho?)
Candy Cane Lane (2023)
Carol for Another Christmas (1964)
Castle for Christmas (2021)
Catfish Christmas (2022)
Christmas as Usual (2023)
Christmas Carol (1951)
Christmas Carol (1984)
Christmas Carol (TV series) (2019)
Christmas Chronicles (2018)
Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020)
Christmas Flow (didn’t finish) (2021)
Christmas Horror Story (2015)
Christmas House (2020)
Christmas House 2 (2021)
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
Christmas Inheritance (2017)
Christmas is Cancelled (2021)
Christmas Karen (2022)
Christmas Movie Christmas (2019)
Christmas on the Farm (2021)
Christmas Prince (2017) the movie that sparked it all
Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby (2019)
Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018)
Christmas Set-up (2020)
Christmas Story Christmas (2022)
Christmas Tale (2008)
Christmas to Treasure (2022)
Christmas Train (2017)
Christmas Vacation (1989)
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Christmas With You (2022)
Cloudy with a Chance of Christmas (2022)
Cup of Cheer (2020)
Cupid for Christmas (2021)
Dash & Lily (2020)
Dashing in December (2020)
Dashing Through the Snow (2023)
Days of Our Lives: A Very Salem Christmas (2021)
Dean Martin Christmas Show (1968)
Deck the Halls (2006)
Designing Christmas (2022)
Dickensian (2015), Ep 9&10
Dickensian (2015), Ep. 8
Dickensian (2015), episode 2
Dickensian (2015), episode 3
Dickensian (2015), episode 4
Dickensian (2015), episode 5
Dickensian (2015), Episode 6
Dickensian (2015), Episode 7
Dickensian (2015), series, first episode
Die Hard (1988)
Dognapped: A Hound for the Holidays (2022)
Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (2020)
Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas (2022)
El Camino Christmas (2017)
Elf (2003)
Elves (2018)
Elves (Netflix Danish series) (2021)
ExMas (2023)
Falling for Christmas (2022)
Family Man (2000)
Family Stone (2005)
Family Switch (2023)
Fantasy Island: Welcome to the Snow Globe (2021)
Father Christmas is Back (2021)
Feast of the Seven Fishes (2023)
Four Christmases (2008)
Fred Claus (2007)
Friday After Next (2002)
Frosty the Snowman ()
Genie (2023)
Ghost Story for Christmas (series), ep. The Stalls of Barchester (197-)
Godmothered (2020)
Great British Baking Show: Holidays (2020)
Great Rupert (1950)
Gremlins (1984)
Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas (2023) (didn’t finish)
Hanukkah on Rye (2022)
Happiest Season (2020)
Haul Out the Holly (2022)
Hitched for the Holidays (2012)
Holdovers (2023)
Holidate (2020)
Holiday (1938)
Holiday Affair (1949)
Holiday Dating Guide (2022)
Holiday in the Vineyards (2023)
Holiday Shift (series), episode 1
Holiday Shift, episodes 2&3
Holiday Shift, final episode(s)
Holiday Sitter (2022)
Hollywood Christmas (2022)
Home Alone (1990)
Home for Christmas Season 2 (2020)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1969)
How to Ruin Christmas (Season 1 – 2)
I Believe in Santa (2022)
I Hate Christmas (), S2 Ep6
I Hate Christmas (2023), S2 Ep2
I Hate Christmas (2023), S2 Ep2
I Hate Christmas (series 2022)
I Hate Christmas (Series), (2023), episode 1
I Hate Christmas, S2 Ep3, December 23
Ice Harvest (2005)
Ideal Home (2018)
It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)
It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder (2022)
It’s Christmas Carol (2012)
Jack Frost (1997)
Jack Frost (1998)
Jingle Bell Bride (2020)
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020)
Jinkx and Dela Christmas Show (2020)
Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show (2019)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Klaus (2019)
Krampus (2015)
Ladies of the ‘80s: A Divas Christmas
Last Christmas (2019)
Last Holiday (2006)
Last Tango in Halifax Christmas Special (2017)
Let It Snow (2019)
Letters to Satan Claus (2020)
Librarians and Santa’s Midnight Run (2014)
Love Actually (2003)
Love Hard (2021)
Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Medea Christmas (2013)
Meet Me in Saint Louis (1944)
Menorah in the Middle (2022)
Merry Friggin’ Christmas (2014)
Merry Happy Whatever (2019), TV Series, episode 01
Merry Little Batman (2023)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street (1994)
Mistletoe & Menorahs (2019)
Mixed Nuts (1994)
Most Wonderful Time of the Year (2008)
Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)
Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Murder She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery
My Southern Family Christmas (2022)
Nasty Piece of Work (2019) (Blumhouse holiday Into the Dark series)
Naughty or Nice (2021)
New York Christmas Wedding (2020)
Night Before (2015)
Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
No Sleep til Christmas (2018)
Noel Diary (2022)
Noelle (2019)
Once Upon a Christmas (2000)
One Magic Christmas (1985)
Pottersville (2017)
Preacher’s Wife (1996)
Princess Switch (2018)
Princess Switch 2 (2020)
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Red Christmas (2016)
Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (1964)
Sacrifice Games (2023)
Santa Camp (2022), documentary
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970)
Santa Clause (1994)
Santa Girl (2019)
Santa Inc. (2021)
Santa Jaws (2018)
Santa Stakeout (2021)
Santa Who? (2000)
Scrooge (1935)
Scrooge (1970)
Scrooged (1988)
Serendipity (2001)
Shared Rooms (2016)
Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989)
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
Single All the Way (2021)
Snow (2004)
Snow 2: Brain Freeze (2008)
Snow Globe Christmas (2013)
Spirited (2023)
Stopped – Da Kath and Kim Code (2005)
This Christmas (2007)
Trading Places (1983)
Trailer Park Boys: XMas Special (2004)
Treevenge (short) (2008)
Under the Christmas Tree (2021)
Unlikely Angel (1996)
Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (2011)
Very Murray Christmas (2015)
Very Sunny Christmas (2009)
Violent Night (2022)
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
White Christmas (1954)
White Reindeer (2013)
Who Killed Santa? A Murderville Murder Mystery (2022)
Winter Romance aka Colors of Love (watched 11/26) (2021)
Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
Yoh! Christmas (2023), episode one
You Better Watch Out (aka Christmas Evil) (1980)
Your Christmas or Mine? (2022)
Your Christmas or Mine? 2 (2023)
Yule Log (2022)
Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas (2021)

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on this blog but I have watched A LOT of Christmas movies. (I’ll append a partial list at the bottom of this post.) And, on Friday, I’ll start to watch more.

I haven’t always been this way. There was a time when I shunned everything Christmas. Just not my vibe.

So, how does something like this happen?

Our Christmas movie watching started in 2019 but it’s rooted in our movie watching habit which began in 1999.

One of the ways Jennifer and I bonded when we started dating is through movies. Friday night quickly became movie night when we dated (hmmm, now that I think about it, we started hanging out and watching movies before we started dating) in 1999 and it’s been a part of our routine for the last quarter century.

Some quick math. Watching 50 movies a year for 25 years equals 1250 movies. We haven’t watched a movie every single Friday night, but more often than not. And, we often watch movies even when it’s not Friday night. So, a conservative estimate is that we’ve watched more than 1300 movies together.

That’s a lot of movies.

We’ve watched entire horror franchises, we’ve selected performers and watched every movie in which they appeared. We’ve picked out directors and writers and watched everything they’ve done. We were once diligent about watching everything nominated in the major categories of the Academy Awards. We’ve gone through phases of watching classics, indies, international, animation, musicals, and all the genres. We watch highly recommended flicks and cringe-inducing schlock.

But not Christmas movies.

Until 2019.

It was the day before Christmas, or perhaps the day of or the day after. It was a cozy night and we were lazing in front of the television trying to decide what to watch. Netflix was pushing A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby, and because it promised to be frothy and cozy, I suggested the first of the series — A Christmas Prince. It was cheesy and got us talking about classic Christmas movies and what we’d seen and what we hadn’t.

We made some idle plans to watch more Christmas movies. That same winter there was a BBC dark fantasy version of A Christmas Carol that I watched. In all, we watched eight or nine Christmas movies between Christmas eve and a few days after the start of the new year.

In a different timeline that was the end of it. But in this timeline, 2020 was a very special year.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around in 2020 we were conditioned to stay inside. Covid deaths were high and there was a lot of uncertainty when and if a vaccine might be rolled out. Recalling the coziness of the previous year’s Christmas movie watching, combined with our past experience of immersing ourselves in particular genres or styles of movies, we decided to go all in on Christmas movies and Christmas shows.

It was a lot of fun. (Remember, we have a remarkable tolerance for cringe-inducing schlock.)

We watched about 40 movies between Thanksgiving and Epiphany (12 days after Christmas). And about 10 or 12 shows/episodes.

An aside. I grew up in a place with snow. As a child I built snowmen and lived through blizzards. One memorable winter, wind blew snow against the front of the house creating a drift that reached the roof. We had to exit through the back until we dug out the front door.

Here, in the semi-tropical weather of Florida, there are none of the environmental triggers I learned to associate with winter or Christmas. And so, Christmas time in Florida is weird to me. How can there be Christmas lights, Christmas music, AND I’m walking through the neighborhood in shorts and a t-shirt? It feels alien and wrong.

Watching Christmas movies helped Florida feel a little more winter-y, a little cozier in a time when we craved comfort and coziness.

So, we did it again in 2021.

This year will be our 5th year of Christmas movie/show binging. To this point we’ve watched approximately 235 shows and movies. Last year we watched about sixty shows/movies. So, if we do something similar this year, we’ll be pushing 300 by the time we wrap up in 2025.

That’s a lot of Christmas movies!

Here is a list of what we watched in the winter of 2020. I’ll post the entire list of 2019-2023 in a separate post. Here’s the complete list for 2019-2013.

Christmas Movie Watchlist 2020

Drama
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
A Christmas Carol (1951)
The Apartment (1960)
Die Hard (1988)
Scrooged (1988)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
The Preacher’s Wife (1996)
The Family Man (2000)
Love Actually (2003)
This Christmas (2007)
A Christmas Tale (2008)
All is Bright (2013)
Ideal Home (2018)
Happiest Season (2020)
A New York Christmas Wedding (2020)

Horror
Black Christmas (1974)
You Better Watch Out (aka Christmas Evil) (1980)
Gremlins (1984)
Black Christmas (2006)
Red Christmas (2016)

Musical
Meet Me in Saint Louis (1944)
White Christmas (1954)
Scrooge (1970)
Anna & the Apocalypse (2017)

Comedy
The Great Rupert (1950)
Mixed Nuts (1994)
Elf (2003)
The Night Before (2015)
Cup of Cheer (2020)
Holidate (2020)
Letters to Satan Claus (2020)

Hallmark Style
Christmas Inheritance (2017)
A Christmas Movie Christmas (2019)
The Christmas House (2020)
The Christmas Set-up (2020)
Dashing in December (2020)

Variety Shows
A Very Murray Christmas (2015)
The Jinkx and Dela Christmas Show (2020)

Cartoon / Animations
The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
Klaus (2019)

Television Shows / Episodes
The Librarians and Santa’s Midnight Run (2014)
Last Tango in Halifax Christmas Special (2017)
Dash & Lily (2020)
Great British Baking Show: Holidays (2020)
Home for Christmas Season 2 (2020)

The combination of the beginning of the semester, two hurricanes, and an anxiety-provoking election season left me feeling I was done with My Gothic Body. However, I’m now feeling much refreshed and have started back up on the writing. Looking forward to the long weekend.

The zero draft of My Gothic Body is about 10,000 words. I’m going to add another braid about representations of masculinity in mid-1970s television. In an utterly non-trivial way television shaped the way I understand what it means to be a man. Some representations I adopted, some I rejected, but all the TV men I watched helped shape the way I recognize the boundaries, parameters, and meaning of manhood.

It’s these ideas of masculinity (among others), ghosts, intangible forces that haunt my experience, that shape my reality, and contributed to the way I approach(ed) my health, which led to the kidney stone operations.

So, as I pursue this new draft I might drop some sections into the blog. Or not.

I’ve also decided to join Bluesky. Partly to see if judicious addition of a well-curated social media feed can help me navigate whatever is to come. (lol, or to see if I can find a way to distract me from writing!) I’m @patadave.bsky.social.

It turned out OK. I have a ton of notes, read a bunch of classic Gothic novels, closely annotated Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and started incorporating it into a longer work about my relation with my body. I’ve started piecing it all together into a longer project and with any luck I’ll start sharing chunks of it in the next couple of months.

I want to do something with all this malevolent energy burbling up, might as well blog! This round I think I’m going to shoot for quantity over quality. And, I want to do more short posts about the random stuff bouncing around in my skull, and less pointing to stuff on the internet.

Don’t forget to stay hydrated, move your body, get away from the screen. If you don’t meditate or do yoga, now might be a good time to start incorporating those practices into your routine. Connect with friends and allies. Allow yourself time to feel grief and anger. Despair is a rational response.

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.” —Toni Morrison

In his biography of William Godwin, William St. Clair suggests the following passage from St. Leon is Godwin writing about the birth of Mary Shelley. So much to unpack!

“At length the critical period arrives, when an event so extraordinary occurs, as cannot fail to put the human frame in considerable jeopardy. Never shall I forget the interview between us immediately subsequent to her first parturition, the effusion of soul with which we met each other after all danger seemed to have subsided, the kindness which animated us, increased as it was by ideas of peril and suffering, the sacred sensation with which the mother presented her infant to her husband, or the complacency with which we read in each other’s eyes a common sentiment of melting tenderness and inviolable attachment!

“This, she seemed to say, is the joint result of our common affection. It partakes equally of both, and is the shrine in which our sympathies and our life have been poured together, never to be separated. Let other lovers testify their engagements by presents and tokens; we record and stamp our attachment in this precious creature, a creature of that species which is more admirable than any thing else the world has to boast, a creature susceptible of pleasure and pain, of affection and love, of sentiment and fancy, of wisdom and virtue. This creature will daily stand in need of an aid we shall delight to afford; will require our meditations and exertions to forward its improvement, and confirm its merits and its worth. We shall each blend our exertions, for that purpose, and our union, confirmed by this common object of our labour and affection, will every day become more sacred and indissoluble.—All this the present weakness of my beloved Marguerite would not allow her to say. But all this occurred to my reflections; and, when we had time tranquilly to compare our recollection of the event, it plainly appeared that in all this our hearts and conceptions had most truly sympathised.

“The possessing a third object, a common centre of anxiety to both, is far from weakening the regard of such a couple for each other. It does not separate or divert them; it is a new link of connection. Each is attached to it the more for the sake of either; each regards it as a sort of branch or scion, representing the parent; each rejoices in its health, its good humour, its smiles, its increase in size, in strength, and in faculties, principally from the idea of the gratification they will communicate to the other. Were it not for this idea, were it possible the pleasure should not be mutual, the sentiment would be stripped of its principal elevation and refinement; it would be comparatively cold, selfish, solitary, and inane.

The first paragraph is very sweet. The “melting tenderness” as they gaze upon their first born.

But then, the use of “creature” and “it” to refer to the newly born infant is unsettling to modern ears. Is this a testimony to Godwin’s emotional inhibitions? Or is it simply a different norm, language from a different era and different place?

If this is indeed Godwin reflecting upon Mary Shelley’s birth, and knowing that Mary Wollenstonecraft will be dead within a week (and that this passage truly reflects sincere feelings about the birth of his first child), then the third paragraph takes a dark and haunting turn. The joy of the baby is in the sharing; the sharing of creation, the sharing of responsibility, the sharing of love. Without this shared sentiment then a single parent is confronted with a world that is “cold, selfish, solitary, and inane,” a phrase that seems to aptly capture Godwin’s parenting style.

Mary Shelley writes about the birth of Frankenstein’s creature.

“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”

“The beauty of the dream vanished.” Echoes of St. Leon. The dream of a child as a source of joy evaporates for both Godwin’s St. Leon and Shelley’s Frankenstein. Frankenstein removes himself from his child, instead of feeling connected to the new life, he feels “breathless horror and disgust.”

I haven’t taken a deep dive yet into the critical studies of Frankenstein, so I don’t know what others have written about the creature as an analog for Mary Shelley. My reading, however, suggests that Mary is often writing about herself when she is writing about the creature. Not necessarily autobiographically, but that she uses her experience to inform the experience of the creature. In many ways she is writing about the experience of women when she is writing about the experience of the creature. Perhaps in another world Frankenstein was subtitled: A Vindication of the Rights of Monsters.