Our Best Stuff From the Week, and Some Help With Last-Minute Gifts
Happy Saturday! For most of the year, if I’m in charge of the remote in our house, ESPN is on. College Gameday for college football, whatever college basketball game is on, SportsCenter to fall asleep to. Now that it’s December, though, it’s often Christmas Vacation. We start at Thanksgiving, because you can’t cook a turkey without someone saying “Save the neck for me, Clark” and carry on through Christmas Day—“Welcome to our home. What’s left of it.”
Even if you haven’t seen it (is there anyone out there who hasn’t? I find that hard to believe!), Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold invited the whole family to spend Christmas. Meanwhile, his big reveal for the holiday is that he’s putting in a pool, but he needs his Christmas bonus to cover the check he wrote for the deposit. He’s increasingly stressed out until a messenger arrives on Christmas Eve.
As it happens, his boss had decided to cut out bonuses. The messenger delivered a letter telling Clark he’d been enrolled in the Jelly of the Month Club, which would definitely not help him pay for a pool. Before he totally loses it, Cousin Eddie tells him, “That’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year.”
That movie came out in 1989. Fortunately, gifting options have improved since then. Why spend $300 for 12 months of jelly (it’s a real thing) when you can give someone a year of The Dispatch for $100? (You saw this coming, right?)
