Bah, Humbug

This holiday season, as I cram myself full to the brim of Christmas entertainment, it is likely I will see a version of A Christmas Carol, as I do every year. One year, Mr. Barefoot and I set about watching every version of Carol committed to video and/or DVD. I think we succeeded: we watched all forms, from the 1938 version to the horrible 50's version with the too-effeminate Scrooge and Christmas Past, up through Scrooged. We hungrily consumed all matter of Scrooge and Marley and Ghosts Past, Present and Future. And Mr. Barefoot always has to endure my saying the lines along with the movies. Through the various versions, there are some constants, lines that remain from version to version and I love that and cannot resist saying them. (I actually do this with all movies I love; it is as though I physically cannot restrain myself. Maybe it is genetic; my dad cannot resist telling people what is about to happen in a movie that he has already seen. And watching a movie with my mom is just as impossible, as she will ask questions about what is happening, though we have all seen just as much of the movie as she has.)
Alas, there is one version close to my heart that Mr. Barefoot will never get to see. Nearly a decade ago, yours truly got a role in a community presentation of A Chrsitmas Carol. I remember it very fondly and it was a great experience. It was fun to stretch my thespian tendancies. I became good friends with Christmas Past and dated Jacob Marley for a few months. Rich misers aren't my type, though, and things didn't work out. Plus, he had all those chains and never once did he get kinky with them . . .
Unfortunately, I moved away from that community to take a job with satan's attorneys, so that was my last experience with community theater. No Christopher Guest level experience, to be sure, but fun none-the-less. And, I managed to memorize the whole play, not just the few paltry lines that I had. It is inevitable, I think, rehearsing and spending so much time around the lines that they fall into your brain and you end up learning everyone's parts. Some of the lines are still stuck in my heart, as, I am sure, they are stuck into the heads of anyone who has seen the play or movies. So, I will end this with my favorite quote, an uplifting reminder of the spirit of the season: "Any fool who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."