Christmas Monster

The Josh Wells Weekly, Episode 331

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Telling jokes at the birthday Hell Yea! show. I can see myself aging in this picture.

Random Thought

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. There’s something about Christmas where it comes on like a little monster that I’m sorta scared of but as it gets closer, it’s more of a lovable, cuddly monster and my fear subsides. I suppose I stress out too much around the holidays. There are multiple things that tend to drive me crazy this time of year.

The biggest would be the financial aspect of it all. It feels like such a financial obligation/burden to get everyone’s gifts and some years I’m doing better than others and can better afford the sudden splurge. This was not one of those years.

Beyond that, I work in online retail, and the holidays is our busy season and everything is crazier at work and sometimes we even have to work the actual holidays (although I lucked out this year and only had to work Black Friday. Not too bad if you ask me).

Beyond that, Christmas is overbearing AF. It’s everywhere and by the time the 25th rolls around, it feels like enough is enough. I find myself almost relieved that we’re finally getting this over with and hoping next year’s Christmas season doesn’t come on too soon.

But as Christmas gets closer, the stress starts to subside. My family celebrates on the 25th (Thursday this year) and it was on Wednesday the 24th when I finally started thinking about the upside to Christmas. How nice it will be to see and hang with my family. I really enjoy that part of it. We had a very cool, chill Christmas. I got to hang out with the nieces which is always the best. And Yana got in the Christmas mix this year with the family and that all played out very well. The family seemed to enjoy Yana and Yana seemed to enjoy the family. Take that, Jinx (Jinx, my cat, is taking her sweet cat-ass time warming up to Yana).

I also begin to fill up with feelings of gratitude as Christmas hits. Sure, I stress out about some things in the lead up, but none of it is life or death stuff. It’s all small stuff that I tend to let snowball out of control. But it’s all manageable and if I’m being honest, I’m very fortunate for how I get to spend my Christmases.

I know the world is full of people who won’t have a good Christmas. For all the stress I put myself through in the build up to the holiday, I know there’s too many people who would trade places for that kind of stress. People with real struggles. People who would make my "Christmas gives me anxiety” song and dance look like a holiday of its own.

I don’t wanna feel gratitude at the expense of others who are less fortunate. I wish we could shut the whole machine down and have everyone break bread together. Shit isn’t like that though and that’s sad. But maybe when we’re all stressed out in our first world bubbles, we can try to slow it down and pass some thought on what this holiday should and could be. And if we can somehow manage to put ourselves in that mindset, then why just stop at a holiday? Why can’t we work on improving every day for everyone? All of us collectively making sure everyone has food on their plate all the time.

But y’know, all that pie-in-the-sky optimism will probably disappear the next time my ears happen to stumble into “All I Want for Christmas is You” again, which can throw me into Grinch mode real easily depending on the circumstances of the moment. What a vicious cycle, this Christmas thing.

(post-note: I feel a slight obligation to say that, yes, I am an atheist who celebrates Christmas. I’m not celebrating the birth of a savior although I dig his values and wish more people followed them. I celebrate the BIG commercial, capitalist holiday that Christmas has become. And I like a fun time, so I roll with it. Far be it for me to be a buzzkill about all this just because I think when we die we die and that’s it. In fact, even more reason to have fun with whatever we can while we’re here. Also, I have no side in the “war on Christmas.” I do enjoy writing/typing out “X-mas,” but that’s mostly because I think it looks cooler and maybe upsets a few people who are uptight about the whole thing. But other than that, who cares?? Let’s just eat pie, exchange gifts, and enjoy beating my nieces at Mario Kart.)

Here I am looking like a Christmas monster standing next to my nieces. I look bigger than the tree in this picture.

Movie I watched this week: Electric Slide

(Prime)

This movie is based on a true story about a Hollywood hipster who went on a bank robbing spree in 1983. He robbed banks around Hollywood by pretty much being charming to the bank tellers. It’s an interesting story for sure. It’s a mostly okay movie. It’s a different spin on the bank robbing genre.

Also, watching bank robbing movies during times of financial struggle can turn into inspirational viewing really quick if you’re not careful. (I would NEVER rob a bank. No one’s getting away with that in these modern times of surveillance).

It would be kind of funny though if some modern-day equivalent of a hipster went on a bank robbing spree and it made the news. I’d find myself rooting for him/her much like I feel like we were all rooting for those people who robbed the Louvre recently. Remember that?

TV show I watched this week: Stranger Things

Stranger Things dropped three new episodes (they’re about an hour long each) and me and the girlfriend got through the first two so far. It’s all very entertaining but shit is getting really crazy. There are wormholes and dimensions made of memories and the constant struggle of wondering who’s the worse villain, Vecna or the US military??

I’m super excited to finish this up. I’m allowing myself to be a complete cheeseball and root for a Super Mega Happy ending (although I skeptically think at least one beloved character has to die). Because we just binged most of Season 4 before this, it’ll be weird when it’s all done (New Years) and then that’s it, no more Stranger Things ever again.

I want answers to the biggest question that I’m sure is on everyone’s mind, WHAT HAPPENED TO ARGYLE???

Album I listened to this week: Cosplay / Sorry

I’m not really sure how to encapsulate in words what I thought about this album. I enjoyed it. It’s weird, bizarre, and interesting. If I had to compare it to something, I’m not sure if there’s any one act that would help make sense of their sound, but I suppose it’s sorta like a mix of indie rock and Portishead.

It’s mellow and at times trance-like and oddly captivating. There’s a subtle hint of attitude with a lot of the lyrics. It’s unique and weird and off the beaten path and for those reasons, I found it to be kinda cool.

Sometimes when I look at a thing and think it’s weird, I can sorta tell you what makes it weird to me. That is not the case here. I’m not even sure if that’s a person or a bear or what on the cover.

Also, props on their bio in Spotify. That’s great.

Book I’m currently reading: Death in Her Hands / Ottessa Moshfegh

This book hit me real heavy when I was done with it. The entire book follows a lonely older woman as she mentally unravels. She’s fresh off her husband dying and moving into a cabin in the woods with her dog. She moved to a town where she doesn’t know anyone which ups the isolation and loneliness. Along the way, we learn a lot about her husband and her entire life with him and how sad, cold, and unloving it was. It was her entire life and that life is gone and all she has to look back on is sad memories of a person she didn’t enjoy that much to be around.

She stumbles across a note in the woods while walking her dog that may or may not suggest a murder took place nearby. She throws herself into trying to solve this possible murder. She practically creates a new reality for herself while doing so. At one point she gets so involved in it, she stops paying attention to her dog who ends up running away. This seems to only intensify the sad playback of her life. And then she has to try and find her dog and that becomes this whole other mission of hers.

Heavy stuff for sure. I dug it but it’ll definitely leave you with something to think about.

While googling this book, I found out it was part of this “Weird Girls” series and by the below description, seems very fitting:

Random Sports Thought: NFL Stuff

Is the NFL weird this season or am I just not paying close enough attention? Going into this season, all I really wanted was a Detroit Lions/Buffalo Bills Super Bowl. That was a thing that felt like it could definitely happen at the end of last season, so why not go into this season with those expectations?

Except the Lions sorta fell apart. They lost a game last night that officially knocked them out of playoff contention. They went from what I thought was the most fun team to root for to being oddly disappointing. It probably doesn’t help that they lost both their offensive and defensive coordinators at the end of last season. Their ex-offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, is now coaching the Chicago Bears who look like the most fun team to root for this season and Johnson is looking like a very strong candidate for coach of the year.

Meanwhile, the Bills are good, very good actually. But are they great? They’ve shown some magic at times but they’re not even leading in their division. That distinction would belong to the New England Patriots who are currently 12-3 which is crazy because I thought they had another season or two of rebuilding before they could even talk about playoffs.

A couple of other weird things:

-The Chiefs are not going to the playoffs. The Chiefs gotta be the best football team of the past five years and at the beginning of the season, seemed like a lock for the playoffs by just being the Chiefs. And now they’re out of playoff contention and to add injury to insult, Patrick Mahomes is out for the remainder of the season with an injury. Somewhere, Taylor Swift is crying into a mountain of money.

-Philip Rivers is playing QB at age 44. Matthew Stafford is probably going to win the MVP at age 37. And Aaron Rodgers is going to the playoffs again with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Old men are having a moment.

The Colts are 0-2 since signing Rivers. The Colts had the biggest collapse in the NFL this season and will not be going to the playoffs (they were 8-2 and looked dominant at one point). But yet, somehow, Philip Rivers is the best and most enjoyable story right now in the NFL. The Colts could go winless with Rivers and I don’t care… I just wanna see this 44-year-old, trash-talking without using curse words, grandpa air it the frick out.

Random Pro Wrestling Thought: AEW Christmas Collision

I was very fortunate to be offered a free ticket for AEW’s Christmas episode of Collision at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC (it was recorded on the Sunday before Christmas). I had a very rad seat, 2nd row, in what is a very small, cool, intimate venue for pro wrestling. Never mind the wrestlers, I was bugging out about being close to all the other AEW personalities I see on my TV every week like the security dudes, ring announcers, and the bell girl.

I’m not gonna bore you with all the details of what happened on the card that night. It was a very cool, fun night of pro wrestling. And it was super cool to be closer to the ring than usual. For AEW and WWE stuff, you can usually catch me in the nosebleeds (Which is okay. That’s where my people are at. We stay wild in the cheap seats mostly because we have a few extra bucks for beer).

I didn’t take a lot of pictures. Must’ve been too busy enjoying myself since I was up close. I took this pic before the event started (They film episodes of ROH before Collision).

Top 5 Christmas Songs

1- Christmas in Hollis - Run DMC

2- Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis - Tom Waits

3- Run Run Rudolph - Lemmy, Billy Gibbons, and Dave Grohl

4- Oi to the World! - The Vandals

5- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer- DMX

Weekly Quote

“Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store.”

-Dr. Suess

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