If you’re looking for an affordable and interesting getaway after the holidays, why not head up to the Cincinnati Zoo for an informative and stimulating discussion about the joys of bamboo. The winter meeting of the Mid States Chapter of the American Bamboo Society will be at the Cincinnati Zoo, in the education building, Saturday, Jan. 5,  starting at 11 am.

The meeting is open to the public, though I admit to having a bit of  a problem seeing the fun. It’s a little like a crabgrass club or support group for people who collect empty bags of cat litter.  Maybe there are mystical healing properties to bamboo. I’ve been told it brings good luck. The people who told me that were the zen masters of the lawn and garden section at Lowe’s, who wanted to sell me a machete and a saw. Reservations are required for entry to the zoo, which you should do if you plan to burn up a tank of gas and the better part of a day to go and listen to some dude tell you about how bamboo is not only an attractive plant, but can be used in a wide variety of ways.

Just ask these people.

To make your reservation, call (877) 899-3446 (toll free). You can also check out the American Bamboo Society and maybe join up. They have over 1,400 members worldwide, which could be an interesting way to meet people — possibly a little too interesting. There’s probably a fee somewhere and maybe you can get a membership card to show off at parties.

I did OK for Christmas. Got a couple bags of Kona Coffee (which ounce for ounce is the best coffee I’ve had so far); a nifty new coffee mug with the slogan “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Gandhi said that, which was later appropriated by Frankenfurter in “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” I think. It wasn’t the headpiece to the staff of Ra, but I’m not complaining. I was just going to put it on my keyring.

I got a nice hooded sweatshirt and a laser leveler, which I’m not 100 percent sure what to do with. Not a single floor in my house is level. A marble cast into the middle of any room will probably roll in a circle before winding back to it’s point of impact — but no complaints. The landlord leaves me alone. Of course, if I had the staff of Ra, the laser leveler might come in handy.

With the holiday over, I’ll have to actually get back to strange stuff real soon. Just not today. So… what’d you get?

From my heart to yours…

May you not have to leave your home for any reason except to pick up the newspaper from your front stoop.

May all the things you bought from Amazon.com, Geeks.com., Victoriassecret.com and the like  show up undamaged and if not, may you be able to get a full refund over the phone. May your wait time be only twenty to thirty minutes and the holiday theme music not include a didgeridoo, a kazoo or Tuvan throat singers. May your mixture of profanity and desperate begging cut through the language barrier of the Nepalese Sherpa hired to take your call.

May you be able to get your home cleaned in time for the holidays, and if not, perhaps gas prices will miraculously jump by five dollars a gallon, thus reducing the likelihood that only the most rabidly jovial relations will even consider making the trip over the river and through the words.

May your bathroom scale be buried under store circulars, tinsel or crumpled wrapping paper. You do not need to know what your weight is today, tomorrow or the day after. If you want to feel terrible, go ahead and hop on the scale Dec. 26th.  Everybody else waits until the 2nd.

May you find your entire collection of lousy 80s pop music. After six weeks of Christmas carols, the only thing that’s going to drive the loathesome noise of Bing Crosby and his fever dreams of a White Christmas from your brain is a giant dose of Hair Metal.

May the children be nice, just for a little while, so you don’t feel like you’ve just blown two paychecks to placate a horde of ingrateful goblins. If they can’t be nice, break things. You’ll feel lousy Christmas morning and you’ll have to return it, get them a new one, but it will feel good, at least for now.

May you feel no guilt in using your TIVO to zip past the holiday messages. Everytime some creepy jerk comes on the screen to wish your family a Merry Christmas in front of a line of quality pre-owned vehicles, skip ahead.

May someone eat the rest of the cheeseball that’s been sitting in your fridge for the last two weeks -a leftover from the office Christmas party. If nobody does, by Monday, do the honorable thing. Throw it away. Do not give it to the food pantry. Do not leave it for the mailman. They’d rather cash anyway.

Stay sane. Whatever else happens, remember, it’s all over in a couple of days.  

An alternative to the mad commercialism of Christmas is the George Lucas-inspired (though not endorsed) Life Day. The story of Life Day is a mix of comedy and tragedy. Back in the day, someone talked “Star Wars” creator George Lucas into believing a Christmas special would be a good idea.

Well, it wasn’t… I remember watching the thing when I was about eight. The best part was the Boba Fett cartoon, which seemed kind of cool in retrospect, after watching “The Empire Strikes Back” a couple of years later. The rest was crap — a huge steaming pile of crap and everybody knew it. The show was critically panned. Early fans hated it. Lucas hated it, but it has managed to endure thanks to the Christmas magic of bootlegs. (more…)

So far, I’ve made two cakes this month. Another one is due before this is all over (contractual obligations, you understand). In the effort to be fair, I bought one of the industrial strength mass-produced fruitcakes from my local grocery store. I found them in a display, stacked like firewood, which is about what I liken them to — carmelized lumber that wouldn’t make a very good fire.

Unable to actually eat the thing myself, I unwrapped the log o’ fruits and nuts, put it on a festive holiday plate along with a sharpish looking knife and left it for the rest of the newsroom to consume.

(Now… a word about the eating habits of the newsroom. It has been said, on more than one occasion, the way to wipe out the staff in this place would be to leave a platter of poisoned brownies next to the coffee pot. A batch of brownies could do the job in roughly 30 minutes. If they were frosted or mocha brownies or perhaps cut in the shapes of the cast members of “Lost,” it might only take 15 minutes.)

This is fairly normal, in my experience. Over at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the running joke used to be whenever food was present, the news department would be in attendance. If there was a line, they’d be near the front –right behind the TV guys. When I worked in radio in Bluefield, the news guy had a line: “Where there’s food, there’s news.” He used it whenever he was dispatched to a Rotary Club meeting or press event. News is a hungry business.

Anyway, I left the cake out at around 1 p.m. yesterday. There was still cake by mid-morning. Based on that, I rest my case.

Only a couple of working days until Christmas. Time is running out to take advantage of the bonanza of free crap to be sent to someone you probably only marginally know and maybe resent a little from your office. This big pile of unwanted CDs, books and assorted press material freebies will literally only be tossed into a dumpster, where it will likely outlive you and me. See… I’m not even going to recycle it. So, taking something to give to someone you don’t even like, might be helping the environment. Hell, I could send it to Rich Rodriguez. Nobody loves that @$$#%*& anymore — just need an address.

So, last call… Make your request, by sending an email to lynch@wvgazette.com.

Meanwhile, let’s start thinking of the future… Every year, I make a list of things I’d like to accomplish. Two years ago, it was over twenty. Last year, it was just over ten. This year, I’ve got eight posted on Don’t Print This. Here are even more, which are more a mission statement for the next year.

1-Steal Mayor Danny Jones parking space. Just once… and I’ll move it, just as soon as I get a snack.

2-Take pictures of the city’s urinals (post here, unless stopped by the wizard).

3-More interviews from our friends at Slack Plaza.

4-Discover proof of life after death. (more…)

Singer/songwriter Bill Withers told me he believed gifts were in the giving, not the receiving. The person who gives the gift gets more out of it than the person who gets it. But when it comes to charity during the holidays and giving gifts to those who actually need it, there’s a certain kind of cookie-cutter mentality to the goodwill of the season. You give money in church. You give at the office. You give your change to the bellringers and go ahead and give a dollar at the counter at the grocery store, the pharmacy or the gas station. It’s like the fruitcake. You don’t really want the stuff, but you still end up eating a slice when it’s offered and it’s always offered.

You reach a point of fatigue. You just don’t care anymore. This year, I was lucky with my seasonal giving. Last year, during the paper’s organizing for “The Corporate Cup” I missed out on every opportunity to do the sports portion of competition. If I wanted to participate, all that was left was to give blood or agree to become a driver for the American Cancer Society. Cancer has decimated both sides of my family, and it never occurred to me such a service would exist. (more…)

As promised, here’s:

 Uncle Bill’s Anti-Fruitcake, Holiday Apple Cake 

1 1/4 cups oil

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups peeled and chopped Granny Smith apples (or other tart variety)

1 cup pecans or chopped walnuts (I prefer black walnuts — just better flavor)

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

 (Get two bowls — one medium sized and one larger and grease a bundt pan with baking spray or pure lard if you’re a purist who just has to have animal fat in everything.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (when Will Robinson and Dr. Smith are a rich, golden brown, remove from pan. Prod with fork.)

How Uncle Bill says to do this: Mix the oil, the sugar and the eggs together in the larger bowl until it turns into a weird-looking tan goo. Add the vanilla. This will change virtually nothing, but it will smell more interesting. Slowly work in the apples and nuts. It should now look pretty awful. Offer a bite to a child, watch them cringe.

In the second bowl, combine the dry ingredients — flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon. I don’t own a sifter , so I just take a whisk and make sure it’s mixed together very well.

As carefully as you can, add the dry mixture to the goo. Mix by hand. Do not use the whisk to do this, as chunks of apple and nut will get stuck to it, much the same way popcorn gets stuck in the mouth of a kid with braces.

Scoop the cake batter into the pan, which should half fill the pan. If it is substantially more or less than that, you’ve made a mistake, possibly tragic. Quietly toss whatever you’ve done. Start over. Tell no one.

Bake for 45 to 5o minutes. Allow to cool. Place on cake plate. I like serving it just like this, without any additional icing. It’s good with coffee, tea, eggnog or quarts of rum.  

Due to some minor malfunctions on my fruitcake recipe that nearly resulted in me being trapped in 1978, I’ll be doing the fruitcake challenge portion of our holiday hootinanny tomorrow. Let’s just say some things are not really designed for human consumption — like molten snow tires, for example. You shouldn’t eat them, even if some well-meaning idiot offers them to you on a plate.

Anyway tomorrow, there will be cake. Until then, however, please accept this musical interlude in the spirit for which it is intended.

An unforseen bonus (at least for me) has occurred with the Secret Satan Santa experiment.

For those of you just joining us, this would be where I have this mountain of crap I’ve accumulated (books, CDs and gadgets) that I’m willing to send as Christmas gifts to virtually anyone you want (it’s the perfect way to get out of having to buy a gift for a co-worker you don’t like, a relative you don’t know or a spouse who is about to be served papers).

Last week, someone opted in for the Alvin and the Chipmunks T-shirt and CD and brought me a copy of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows.” The album was near the top of my wish list, along with a Chuck Palahniuk novel that’s not due out for five months, some smoked cheese, Ben Affleck’s “Daredevil” mask and an ice bucket full of buffalo nickels (I added the last two this morning. I figured if the other stuff showed up, other people would need things to look for). (more…)