Liar Liar Pants on Fire

So I haven't gotten around to working any overtime yet. Last night my brother was in town and wanted to hang out, and I am not in the habit of passing up opportunities to chill with Aaron. So I came home and played video games. A good time was had by all.

Tonight there was no OT available, so I'm home again.

At work today, a coworker brought in some Christmas specials, and our clients had a good time sitting around watching them. I requested "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" because I love stop-motion animation and it's an old favorite. Now that I've watched it through the eyes of an adult, I find it a lot more disturbing. First, there's Fireball the Reindeer. He wants to be Rudolph's friend until he sees he has a bright red nose, and then decides to lead the other reindeers in teasing and taunting him. I had forgotten about him, but as soon as I saw him, I knew he had to be an evil jerk, because he has gratuitous blond hair on top of his fur. Remember Andy's Rule of Hair: Assume any blond-haired male in a movie is a villain until proven otherwise.



Then there's Santa. I'm not sure there's a bigger jerk in the history of film. When I'm being exceptionally assholish in an over-the-top kind of way for the amusement of all around me, I'm still not as mean as Santa is in this movie. This is hardly the only instance, but it is probably the most heartless: After Clarice tells Rudolph she thinks he's cute at the reindeer games, he gets all excited and has a perfect take off and flies around a bit. He lands beside Fireball, and they celebrate by horseplaying, and his false nose falls off and everyone is shocked by how bright red his nose is. Santa comes up to Donner (Rudolph's dad), and says, "Donner, you should be ashamed. And he had such a good takeoff, too." This is exactly one scene after he tells the elves that he hates their singing. When the lion who rules the Island of Misfit Toys tells Rudolph he wants Santa to find homes for the misfit toys, I half expected Santa to jump out and say, "Fools! I personally instructed the elves to screw these toys up so they'd live out their days in misery exiled in an Arctic wasteland. Muahahahaha!" When he picks them up in the end, if you listen closely, you can hear Santa say, "We can give this garbage to those worthless crybabies at the orphange." Seriously, Santa is a dick.