THE GREAT GADFLY:

Wait. What?!

It started with a one-day temp gig that cost me more money than it earned me, I'm sure, considering the fact that my lunchbreak walk around the block ended in a downtown Chicago wrecka stow where I was shocked by the ridiculous Christmas sales within. So. A copy of The Streets, a reissue of a Love & Rockets album, and one Snoop Dogg CD later, I was doing the Walk Of Shame back to my temp slavery camp, wishing I grew up in the kind of religion where I could trundle my guilt to a little booth and tell some anonymous stone faced elder about how horrible I am.

Or maybe it's a good thing I grew up a dirty filthy heathen, I don't know.

And anyway, whatever. I spent under thirty bucks on three albums I've really wanted for a good long while. Whoop-de-doo and Merry Christmas to me. It's been a rough month and I deserve some damn pleasure. What boy doesn't? And, heck, it's been a good day to be my ears: the Snoop album is, predictably, the shizzle. Meanwhile, jury's out on The Streets - some nice sounds, but as for the icy delivery of this Brit boy rapper in Gap crazy stripes, well, I haven't heard such a dispassionate drone of a vocal set to dance music since...uh...The Flying Lizards, maybe? Who knows, maybe I'll grow into it. It kinda sounds like Utah Saints to me, by way of the Spice Girls' "Wannabe", as interpreted by the hypothetical offspring of that "you are The Weakest Link - goodbye" woman. So there you go.

Ah, but the Love & Rockets reissue was a nice trip down memory lane - it's the eponymous one with the op-art cover and "So Alive", with a bonus second disc featuring an e.p. called "Swing" and some live radio show performances. Listening to Love & Rockets automatically puts me in a pretentious 19-year-old artfag frame of mind. After all, this album originally came out in 1989, when I was a sophomore in college, had to have a spikey pompadoured hair-don't just like lead singer Daniel Ash EVERY DAY (oh, I know, the shame), and I gave plasma for fun money until I passed out one day at the plasma center with the needle in my arm and they put a twenty in my hand and told me never to come back.

I've come a long way, baby. Oh, wait a minute...no I haven't.

Then, when I came home from work and checked my mail, I was met with dismay when I discovered my grandmother is insane. Well, okay, I knew this already, but every now and then I guess she likes to drive the fact home with the occasional illustrative act of guerilla crazy grandmothering. I mean, this is a woman who told me my mom's house was haunted, that she hears the spirits of cows clomping around on her roof, and that Bigfoot lives in the forest behind her house.

No, really.

So I got a Christmas card from Grandma today and when I opened it, I did a double take when I saw the image on the front of the card - that of a big, fat, jolly Santa Claus trundling a bag of toys and winking gleefully at me.

It was a black Santa.

Now, okay. You know. That's cool and all, and there should be all kinds of Santas on all kinds of Christmas cards, and none of them should look like Strom Thurmond, okay, but this is coming from my Grandma of all people. My dyed-in-the-wool Midwestern, country music-lovin', Martha Stewart-watchin', flag-on-the-pickup-truck-wavin' Grammaw (and yes, she has spelled it "Grammaw" on many holiday and birthday cards throughout my life).

I'm wondering if maybe I should wrap up my Snoop Dogg CD and offer it to her for Christmas. Maybe this is Granny's way of saying she wants to kick it with the flava from here on out. Am I perhaps her gangsta boo?

So I called my mom and told her of this unusual card, and she replied with something like, "damn that cheap old bag, I can't believe she sent you one of those cards!"

I pressed for an explanation. Apparently, according to Mom's story, Granny did some shopping at the WalMart in her town and found a good deal on boxed holiday cards and just grabbed a box without looking at what was inside. When she got home, she was surprised to see the words "FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN FAMILIES" on the front.

Yes. This is my family. Where's OUR reality TV show? Surreality is more like it.

I opened up the card, and there he was again, bent over next to the little yuletide greetings poem inside, screenpainted in forest green. He looks a bit like Steve Harvey.

I suggested to my mom the idea of giving Grandma a "Paid Tha Cost To Be Tha Bo$$" CD for Christmas. With a strange righteous indignity in her voice she spat, "well maybe you just SHOULD!"

From my mom's tone of voice, you'd think Granny toppled over the Christmas tree in a drunken rage and stomped on all the presents. Shee.

I like the Black Santa. Of all the wonderful greetings I've gotten this year, it's my favorite card thus far.

Oh, but the party doesn't end there. Later in the evening I get a call from a friend. "I have no idea what you want for Christmas," he spat out like a bullet train, "so I'm going to ask you a question and just answer it: If you could go anywhere in the continental U.S. in the next month, where would it be?"

Oh, holy crap, what is this insanity? So I thought a moment. Of course, New York came to mind first, but I have designs on being there permanently sometime quite soon, so I considered visiting my dear friend Neener in California for New Year's. After all, who makes a better Bloody Mary than The Neener? And I could use a really good Bloody Mary. And we'd just been chatting about how a visit's way overdue, and how we should just damn the logistics of our lives and one or both of us should just hop on a plane and DO IT. And so, figuring the fates had somehow bizarrely bum-rushed my life, that's what I said.

To which my friend replied, "I have to get rid of all these United frequent flier miles and I can't use them on my own, so I'm giving them away as presents. So you have to tell me when and where. NOW."

Ah - eh - oh - ACK!

So, well, okay, that happened and then I got an e-mail confirmation and apparently this is, like, kinda really happening and I'm going to visit The Neen at the end of the month for a happy, drinky west coasty New Year's celebration. Eh?!

And so then I called the Neener and told him about my wacky surprise Christmas present and he freaked out and said "MY HOME HAS BEEN WITHOUT POWER FOR FOUR DAYS AND MY TOWN IS FLOODING SO BAD WE'RE IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY AND OH MY GOD, THIS IS A GREAT SURPRISE BUT DON'T TAKE IT THE WRONG WAY IF I SAY IT'S REALLY FUCKING WITH ME RIGHT NOW!!!"

At which point I checked the mirror to see if, in fact, I had somehow transformed into the second coming of Mary Hartman.

In fact, I had not.

Today's entry was originally going to be very brief, and dedicated wholly to the super TV treat of a certain special guest star on last night's action wigfest head-kick-chocked episode of "Alias", and I was going to just say something like HEAR ME NOW: FAYE DUNAWAY IS A HORRIFIC WRAITH and maybe just add something about how the actor who plays the quirky comic relief spy gadget inventor guy on the show appears to be a dwarf in real life, but they make it look on the show like he's of average height, and is that cool in an inclusive kind of way, or is it uncool in a keeping dwarf actors in the closet kind of way, or is he not a dwarf at all but just kind of a stubby guy of average height with a dwarfy looking head, and perhaps all my dwarfen musings are just plain moot? I don't know, people. I just don't know.

Oh, today has been a funked-up day...