Jason goes to the Hypnodrome Holiday party and sees "A Junky's Christmas" and "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny"

So I spent last Sunday afternoon in one of my favorite spots, the Hypnodrome. Despite the light rain, they had the BBQ going and lots of food and drink. I was driving, so I stuck to a couple of glasses of wine and then switched over to soda. But it was cool hanging out with all the great people there.

Then, as the afternoon moved into evening, Dead Channels provided some cinematic entertainment. First up was an excellent short, a claymation version of William S. Burrough's "A Junky's Christmas". The story of a junky let out of lockup on Christmas day, and his wanderings through NY City trying to score a fix. A story of the kind of people who are out at that time, and how for a Junky trying to score, Christmas is any other day, just harder to find a dealer. And a surprisingly sincere ending that might just show the true meaning of Christmas.

And then there was the feature, "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny". An example (a bad example) of regional cinema, this was made in Florida by Barry Mahon, who specialized in two things--cheap soft-core skin flicks and kid's stories for the "Pirate World" amusement park. Santa Claus gets his sleigh stuck in the sand in Florida, and the reindeer all flew away because it was too hot. Unless he extricates himself, Christmas will be cancelled. Local kids show up and try to help with all sorts of animals--horses, sheep, pigs, a gorilla? Nothing seems to work, and they're about to give up. So Santa tells them the story of Thumbelina (insert Barry Mahon's "Thumbelina") to teach them the power of believing in yourself and never giving up or some such crap. So they run off and find a giant bunny rabbit who drives some sort of fire engine--ish truck. He rescues Santa and Christmas is saved. There's singing, the dialogue all sounds like the adults in the Peanuts cartoons, and there's absolutely no ice cream in this movie. The end.

Oh yeah, and the version we watched actually didn't have "Thumbelina" inserted into the right place, it was tacked on to the end. Hopefully they'll have that fixed for next year, as this will obviously become a tradition. Next year I'll be sure not to drive so I can be completely shit-faced.