Christmas Movie Review #4: It Started Off as a Cold

Well, it was bound to happen, sooner or later.

I got Covid-19.

Thousands of Americans are catching it daily. Here in Ohio, it's absolutely out of hand. More people I know get diagnosed every week.

It's a strange feeling, now that I know I have it. Stranger still, now that the worst of the symptoms have gone.

It started off as a cold. I was getting a bit stuffed up throughout the day Saturday. By late afternoon, my energy was starting to leave, so I left work two hours early to go home and relax.

Overnight, I came down with serious chills. I had a fever of 101.7 (I never get fevers higher than, like, 99.0). My head ached so bad it felt like it was splitting off my neck. But by Sunday night, the headache subsided, and the stuffiness hung around.

Then the double-whammy hit.

My boss texted me and said two coworkers' tests just came back positive. Minutes later, I sat down to dinner: tikka masala, one of my favorite dishes, as only my wife can make it.

I couldn't taste it.

I got up and grabbed one of my wife's Essential Oil bottles and opened the cap. I tried to smell it. Nothing. I stuck the entire bottle of Thieves up my right nostril. Still nothing.

I left and got tested. The results just came back. But I didn't need to hear the results.

My wife, who has had the same sniffles as me for two days, came down with the same headache tonight. All three of my kids came down with fevers.

I currently work at a butcher shop. The owners are great and generous people. My co-workers are kind and easy to get along with. But, there is no mask rule. Not only is Ohio's mask mandate not enforced, but many of the workers there say they'd quit before putting on a mask. The owners even put up paper over the windows, to stop the health department from seeing the cutters and packers in the meat room violating Ohio's mask mandate.

I am doing better now. My sense of taste is slowly coming back. My sense of smell is ever so slight, but it will come back eventually.

Listen, folks. I'm sitting here right now, watching all three of my kids wrapped up in blankets, my wife with an ice pack on her head. I feel absolutely miserable. Not because I'm sick, because I'm not anymore -- I hate seeing the four people I love more than anything else in the world in misery, all because of the people I work with.

Screw politics. Screw your personal views. Screw your temporary comfort. Wear. Your. F***ing. Mask.

CHRISTMAS MOVIE REVIEW: FROSTY THE SNOWMAN/FROSTY RETURNS

The good news is, I'm stuck in quarantine for another week, so that gives me plenty of time for Christmas shows to review, including:

They're using the term "holiday favorite" here very, very loosely.

Now, I have no issue with the original Frosty The Snowman. I watched it every year since I was knee-high to a snowball. You all know the story. The magician sucks. The kids groan. Then they cheer, which sounds like more groaning. The hat ends up on the snowman. The snowman talks and sings. The magician disappears or something.

The snowman tries to buy a train ticket but has no money. This is when it dawns on me that the girl with him is named Karen. If she really were a Karen, she wouldn't have taken no from the ticket broker; she would have asked to speak to his manager.

They travel north. They end up in a greenhouse with a door that magically locks only when Karens try to open them apparently, since Santa had no trouble opening it twice just minutes later. Santa then threatens the magician. Frosty flies away and proclaims, "I'll be back on Christmas Day," seemingly oblivious to the fact that, since he's traveling with Santa, it must already be Christmas Day.

Now, let's dive into the unauthorized sequel: Frosty Returns.

Let's not.

It's actually the third sequel. It's the first one that uses a new animation company as well as new voice actors. It has a freaky miniature Jonathan Winters who seems to show up everywhere for no reason, yet can't be seen or heard by anyone except the viewer, which is their way of convincing the viewer that s/he is slowly losing his/her mind.

The show itself starts with a bunch of Karens (a "complaint" of Karens?) singing a humor-leveling song about how bad snow is. We then see a little girl's "magic hat" fly off her head, fly through the air, and land on a snowman, predictably bringing it to life. Not so predictably, he takes the hat off his head at least three times throughout the show, yet does not revert to zombie form, because loopholes.

Then we see some old guy selling an aerosol can that eliminates snow. At one point, he used it too close to Frosty and it burned a hole right through him (Frosty, not the old man, though that would make the show infinitely more enjoyable).

Eventually, Frosty sings a song to the people, who side with him and name him king or something. The old man tries to run him over with a car (yes, this is a kids' cartoon) but drives into a lake. Frosty, however, forgives him, and everyone is happy in the end.

Do me a solid. When you buy this two-episode DVD, stop after the first one.