This might be as close as Judy Garland came to making a bad movie, and it was great! I’d never seen the ending before. Turns out it was a complete ripoff of The Shop Around the Corner nine years earlier with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan (spellcheck doesn’t recognize her and neither do I).

I’ve always been fascinated with Hollywood’s lack of originality, and this one is no exception. Usually the remake pales in comparison, but not in this case. The viewers on IMDB gave the Jimmy Stewart version 8.1 stars. The Judy Garland version 7.2 stars. Sure I love Judy Garland, but I am not gay!

The “wisdom of the crowd” can take a hike on this one. I’d reverse those numbers easy. Just the opening scene blows anything Shop has out of the water, when Van Johnson inadvertently destroys Garland’s outfit and leaves her half naked beside the road. Leaving her to muster what dignity she had left and go on.

Then you throw in technicolor, some pretty good cinematography, kick ass musical numbers, and voila! It sure beats The Shop Around the Corner in my book, even if they were copying someone else’s work. It turns out they’d brought Buster Keaton in to develop the opening slapstick scene, and the one where the violin is demolished in a pratfall. Both very good.

Nobody has winters like Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Michigan and Wisconsin. Its what makes men out of us (throw in North and South Dakota). One of the big irritants of those winters is having to scrape your cars windshield in the morning. When I worked in electronics years ago they had these dense rubber safety mats that you could cut to the size of your windshield and they wouldn’t blow away during the night. Can’t find them any more. You could just lift them off and your windshield was pristine.

Now in my old age I finally discover these two de-icer sprays, and they really work! Spray these on your windshield, flip on your wipers, and poof! The frost is gone. Pretty stinking nice. There, my good deed for today.

Read about ‘Rolanda’ the red-nosed reindeer here.

“Rolanda is a shining beacon for young, female reindeer in more ways than one,” stated the president of the North Pole Reindeer Games Committee, Bob Chairman. “She has shattered records in every event she has entered, which says so much about the physical potential of all female reindeer.” – Babylon Bee

Olive had “no comment”.

I mean, “Oh yes, what a charming idea.” Why go to the trouble of actually doing something original? That would require thought.

I got the 2″ snub nose version, M 206. Same gun, shorter barrel. Rock Island Armory is all over the map with their revolvers. Once I figured out why the cylinder was binding up, and took about 1/32nd of an inch off the lower portion of the cylinder latch, poof! Works like magic. $228 out the door (it was a display model they took 10% off the $239 sticker price). If I’d want to pay about $400 for the Charter Arms next to it, I wouldn’t have had to do the file job.

That’s guns in the real world. Stores don’t stand behind what they’re selling. If you have a problem you have to go through the hassle of shipping a firearm back to the manufacturer and waiting weeks and months to get something back you literally just got, or you fix it yourself. Or pay 2 to 3 times as much for something that works out of the box. 6 of 1 half dozen of the other. Now Rock Island does a fantastic job with their 1911’s. I understand the equipment they inherited were Colt machines, that helps.

Firearms are unique in the world of consumer goods. You don’t get to try them out before you buy. If you’re lucky you get to pull the trigger and work the action. But you pretty much never get to fire a gun before you buy it. That’s why you do a lot of research first. Your YouTube gun channels like Hickok45 and sootch00 are just sucking up to the gun makers and everything they test is just the most wonderful gun ever made. Plus the ‘test and evaluation’ guns they get sent have been looked over real well.

But after 2 days of farting around and 2 trips to the range, I got a sweet little shooter at a fantastic price. A young guy next to me at the counter at Fleet Farm buys Kimber ($1,000 each) revolvers and semi-autos. He doesn’t get the thrill of bargain hunting, he just gets firearms that work real well and look real nice. Another gun that is through the roof hot is the SIG Sauer P365. You’ll pay a minimum of $600 for the base model (by the time you are out the door), and it had problems when it first came out. So nothing is a guarantee.

[On an interesting ammo note, Scheels is still leading the pack as far as supply goes. Bass Pro 3 weeks ago suddenly got up to speed. Fleet Farm this past week did. Plus, my jaw hit the ground when I saw Fleet Farm had primers. Nobody has primers. Theisen’s comes and goes, they’re pretty good right now. Walmart about every 2 months has .22LR, .22WMR and shotgun shells. Bomgaars is pathetic. As is Sportsman’s Warehouse. I called down to Scheels to see if they had any .38 Special. He said they had ‘bird shot’! You have limited capacity on your .38 line and the one you choose to devote your limited resources to is bird shot?! I saw that a little while ago with .45 ACP bird shot and .38 blanks! What in the sam hell are they thinking?]

Oh its that time of year! In central Iowa Christmas music is heard on 104.1 EZ FM. It helps if you really like Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey and Johnny Mathis. The 4 CDs I’ve dug out so far are Christmas Classics on Piano The O’Neill Brothers, Drew’s Famous, Cool Christmas and Mannheim Steamroller Celebration. 20 years ago a wicked sister thought she was playing a joke on me by getting A Bluegrass Christmas, turns out it was an opportunity to get in touch with my inner redneck.

Heather McCready does an Ave Maria like nobody else. Mannheim Steamroller Extraordinaire has a few different ones. Capital City Brass! We Wish You A Merry Christmas is a wonderful one for the horn lover. The O’Neill Brothers do it again with Holiday Treasures new offerings. Love it all, from big orchestral pieces to the Beach Boys and Chuck Berry. EZ 104.1’s neat trick is to have a page that list what they just played and who sang it.

But as to the Wham! version of Last Christmas, I think its the best.

I’ve heard a growing amount about this in recent years. Regrettably it gets very little play on Christian television and radio. Those 2 outlets seem to contain plenty of hucksters and shysters, but not something like this that is truly miraculous. I’ve noticed in the past God will do something similar with Jews. Fascinating stories. I’ll have to look some more up.