Garlic Christmas Special - David Sedaris Christmas Letter

Yes, it is that time of year, where all your hip friends will be introducing you to David Sedaris, and his Christmas essays, ‘Holiday On Ice’ (or, if they are true hipsters, they’ll be giving you his ‘Barrel Fever’).

Now, in an overwhelming number of circumstances, you’ll be directed to Sedaris’s “Santaland Diaries”, the recounting of his working as an elf at Macy’s.

While extremely funny in it's own right, the killer, fall-down-pee-your-pants-laughing is his other essay, 'Seasons Greetings To Our Friends and Family!!!' … The Dunbar's Christmas letter …

Well, lucky for us, as This American Life, on their website, has a reading of Sedaris’s work, in a stage production titled ‘A Very Special Sedaris Christmas’ including The Dunbar Christmas Letter (which begins, read by Julia Sweeney, at approximately 14:55 and runs for approximately 18-minutes).

If you choose to read the essay, do it in the privacy of your own home. Attempting to read it at Starbucks or on the bus, you’ll end up annoying those around you, as every few seconds, you’ll be bursting out in uncontrollable laughter.

Oh yeah, it will definitely give you a different perspective on any Christmas letter you receive from family and friends.

Season’s Greetings!

Links

‘A Very Special Sedaris Christmas’

David Sedaris

This American Life

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Joyeux Noel!

Felice Navidad!

The Garlic wants to wish all a very happy, healthy Merry Christmas.

Check in over the holiday lull, as we are planning on posting, and with a holiday surprise or two.

Once again, thank you for visiting The Garlic and have a very happy holiday

Peace

JTD

Top Ten Cloves: How Rep. Virgil Goode Believes His Letter and Comments Against Rep Ellison and Muslims Are In The Christmas Spirit

News Item: Lawmaker Stands Firm on Quran Criticism

10. Since Ellison has already been elected, doesn’t think he’ll have to ask new Congress for a fence or wall to be built around Minnesota

9. Nothing wrong, now that there’s a Muslim in Congress, to reinforce the walls of his office and suggests other members do likewise if they want to enjoy future Christmas Holidays

8. Didn’t call or refer to him as a “Macaca”

7. As soon as he’s finished with Ted Haggard, would like to see Rep. Ellison sit down with James Dobson for some "Spiritual Restoration"

6. Denies that he said he wants, after a vote in Congress that Rep. Ellison walk around with purple dye on his finger

5. Hasn’t asked Rep. Ellison to prove he’s a good American by going out, as President Bush advocated, shopping

4. Sending new letter ... Instead of causing trouble, would like to see Rep. Ellison take his six imam constituents to the airport and sing Christmas carols

3. Wouldn’t think of defacing, in any way, the Koran Ellison will use for his swearing-in ceremony

2. Hasn’t called for any Danish cartoonist to draw anything that would insult Ellison

1. Willing to go up to Minnesota with Rep. Ellison, drop in the snow and see who makes “Snow Angels” or who makes “Snow Allahs”

Didn’t call or refer to him as a “Macaca”

Top Ten Cloves: Signs That Christmas Is Coming In The White House

News Item: Presidential Message: Christmas 2006

10. Miss USA dropped by, with a little too much Holiday Cheer for the Bush Twins

9. All of Scooter Libby’s Subpoenas have been hung by the fire with care

8. Everyone is mournfully reminiscing about the great gifts they used to get from Jack Abramoff

7. Josh Bolten has started coming to work dressed - completely - like an elf

6. President Bush took his own advice about shopping and is banging away on “The Google”, looking for some gifts

5. Staff is using the Iraq Study Group Report for wrapping paper

4. CIA decks out the plane and prison they use for Extraordinary Renditions to look like the Polar Express

3. Condi Rice has parked herself under some mistletoe, and mumbling about snaring herself a husband

2. Vice President Cheney is resigned to his usual Christmas - His stocking stuffed with stocks in Coal companies

1. President keeps calling the Postmaster General every hour, asking if his letter to Santa Claus has been delivered

Top Ten Cloves: Things Overheard At Vice President Dick Cheney’s Holiday Party

News Item: Cheney Holiday Party Sponsored By Kazakh "Snow Queen" Vodka...

10. I asked for a Gin-and-Tonic and what I got was a Gin-and-Caffeine-Free Diet Sprite

9. Nice touch, sending out the party invitations in the margins of newspapers

8. I’m surprised Cheney didn’t come out and announce that Rumsfeld was in his final throes

7. I heard that right after Christmas, Cheney’s going to begin rehearsing his testimony for the Libby Trial

6. Don’t worry about Cheney having a cocktail, or two ... The guns are locked up in a different location

5. Bush wants to put his Presidential Library at SMU, where’s Cheney going to put his Vice Presidential Secret Bunker?

4. Too bad Judith Regan got fired, I heard Cheney was up for writing “If I Lied, Here’s How I Would Have Fabricated The Case For WMD’s”

3. If only the President had a “Bush’s Bush”, just like “Cheney’s Cheney”, we’d be a lot better off

2. You’ll find out who was in his Energy Meetings before you’ll discover who the father is of his daughter’s baby

1. You want to see fireworks? Get a few drinks into the wife and say the words “Wolf Blitzer”

Nice touch, sending out the party invitations in the margins of newspapers

Minced Garlic - Year of the Special Comments

On MSNBC’s Countdown tonight, our anchor-hero Keith Olbermann offered not the typical 5 Top news items, but rather a review, titled Year of the Special Comments: Lies, Lessons, Cowardice and More (which must mean that next week, being the holiday lull of Christmas to New Years, were in for a “Super Package of Doc Blocs”)

With adding some introductory comments, Olbermann only had time to represent four of his Special Comments.

Visit Year of the Special Comments: Lies, Lessons, Cowardice and More for links, with video, to all of the Special Comments Olbermann has offered.

You can also scroll down the right sidebar to Garlictorials and view the Minced Garlic’s

Garlic Special - The Sounds of Christmas

To get into the swing of the season, The Garlic took a very informal survey of what people were listening to, in regards to Christmas Music.

We can trust that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is blasting it 24/7 but who else was out there groovin’ to the Sounds of the Season.

Here’s a brief sampling;

President Bush - Go Where I Send Thee

Mary Cheney - I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

Donald Rumsfeld - Little Drummer Boy

Condoleezza Rice - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Judith Regan - I’ll Be Home For Christmas

KKK, David Duke, Michael Richards - White Christmas

Medellin Cocaine Cartel - Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Al Qaeda - Sleigh Ride

Existentialists - What Is Santa Claus? (Stan Kenton version)

Emmanuelle - O Come O Come Emmanuel

Eddie Murphy - What Child Is This

Former Wal-Mart VP of Marketing Communications Julie Roehm - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Former Sectary of the Interior Gale Norton - O Tannenbaum

(We Wanna See) Santa Do the Mambo

Weekend Special - Sautéed Cloves 17 December 2006

In preparation for the President announcing his new Iraq strategy, old props and sets are getting moved out, cleaned up and repainted. White House Officials are telling The Garlic that the former “Plan For Victory” stage set is getting a makeover and will become “Resolutions For Victory” on January 1st, with the President revealing his New Years’ Resolutions right from the set

Following his dolphin-saving heroics last week, Bao Xishen, the world’s tallest man at 7-foot-9-inches, from Inner Mongolia, will be receiving an invitation from the Democratic Leadership when Congress returns to session next month. The hope is that, once Oversight Hearings start, Xishen can use his 41.7-inch reach to pull the lies out of witnesses appearing before the committees

Unconfirmed reports have Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne Cheney, to assure them that he has already spoken with God, and that any tsunamis or earthquakes that he has asked God to strike homosexuals with, Mary Cheney, the couples expecting daughter will be spared. Robertson also echoed President Bush’s belief that the Cheney’s lesbian daughter will make a “loving mother”

Publishers of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary announced today that they will immediately edit both their on-line and hard-cover dictionaries to include Time Magazine under the word “Lame”, after the magazine named their 2006 Person of the Year as “You, Yes, You. You Control The Information Age. Welcome To Your World”

Other dictionary publishers indicated they were likely to follow with placing Time Magazine under “Lame” as well

If ESPN has anything to say about it, Senator Barack Obama will be joining the network’s Monday Night Football crew. Obama’s opening of the show last week, a tongue-in-cheek tease of the popular Senator possibly announcing his candidacy for President exploded over the Internet.

ESPN is said to be pursuing Obama “heavy” for ‘Monday Night Football’ and that it should be a “no-brainer” because “we’ll pay him a heck-of-a-lot more then what a president of the country makes”.

ESPN is also believed to be throwing at Obama, a package that includes his own show, a video game starring the Senator and ESPN will work with the NFL to see that Obama’s favorite team, the Chicago Bears, win the Super Bowl this year

'Ahh, Dick ... Isn't There Something We Can Do About All These Subpeonas? ...The Results - The Garlic Week Poll

Considering all the xenophobic rhetoric, phony terror alerts and smearing during their terms to-date, that it is all but certain President Bush and Vice President Cheney are the first two people that are the least happy with the House and Senate going over to Democratic Majorities in 2007, and our Garlic Poll Voters were, as usual, quite perceptive to that.

And with the Democrats promising a “back-to-business” in the new session, and Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi already announcing a return to the five-day work week, you can take all this talk about bipartisanship for what it is, and begin smelling the burning heat of those subpoenas being fired into the White House

While it would be fun to hear Keith Olbermann taunt “The Sleepiest Congressman of the Week” award, which placed a close second in the voting, or to have the Gregory-Snow version of the “Thriller In Manila”, duking it out in the Press Room (and, okay, Snow apologized but that was last week), we’ll have to be patient and see just how it will be when our congressman and senators truly get down to some serious work.

Stay Tuned ... After all, 2007, in the Chinese Calendar, is the Year of the Pig...

The Results - The Garlic's Weekly Poll December 10 - December 16, 2006

With the Democratic-led 110th Congress planning on working a 5-Day week, we can expect...

1. Pissing-and-moaning from Bush and Cheney, because the new oversight is impeding the gathering of more Executive Power Tally 30%

2. New C-SPAN or Keith Olbermann “Sleeping Congressman of the Week” award Tally 29%

3. NBC’s David Gregory to become even grouchier; A lot more podium head-banging from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow Tally 28%

4. More K Street Lobbyists, as they will have to work double-shifts to keep pace Tally 13%

This week’s Poll - President Bush is delaying his new strategy for Iraq until next month because

Scroll up to the top right corner to place your vote

The 110^th Congress will likely wipe the smiles of Bush and Cheney’s faces, and have them wishing that they received one of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “Snowflakes”, telling them that you “Go with the Executive Powers you have, not the Executive Powers you wished you had at a later date”