Thursday, December 22, 2005

The Meaning of Christmas...

Nah, not really. My insights on the holiday are nothing that several thousand other people haven't managed to come up with on their own.

Vignettes from the pre-Christmas odyssey up the gut of Arizona:

1. Downtown Flagstaff: Two PETA girls are standing at the corner of Aspen and Beaver, wearing only cheetah-spotted body paint and bikini bottoms with long tails, hiding their breasts with a banner proclaiming a fur-free Christmas. It's in the lower 40s at this point and you can almost see their goosebumps across the street. Several cop cars are attending to a fender-bender that's resulted from the gawking. A conspicuously-alone young man sheepishly asks if he can get a picture, mumbling something about his "buddies" wanting one, and poses between the girls as a passerby snaps the photo for him. Two other men walking a dog pass the girls. The girls chirp, "We like your dog!" The guys reply, "We like you."

2. Retiree-land, Mesa: We sit at the kitchen table. My grandfather and I talk about Johnny Damon bolting the Red Sox for the Yankees. My grandmother says, rolling her eyes, "What did we ever do before anyone heard of 'African-Americans' in sports? That's all there are any more is all blacks in every sport." I say, "Uh.... Johnny Damon's white."

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