Off The Top Of My Head: Every Christmas Episode Of Every TV Show I Can Remember Without Looking Them Up (and their plots)

The other day, I watched every single episode of The Office that dealt with Christmas, a task that was far harder than it ought to have been.  Why don't TV show producers put those out at this time of year, on Netflix or pay-per-view or something, all in a neat package?  And why, for Pete's sake, are we still not able to just watch any TV show from any era at any time?  Why, in short, can I not see Herman's Head online anytime I want?  Stupid future.  I hope the Mayans were right.  It would serve you all.

That got me thinking, though: How much of an impact on me did TV show Christmas episodes make? Are they lodged as firmly in my brain as the song lyrics to If I Had A Boat, by Lyle Lovett?  I love that song:

So here goes: all the episodes I can remember without researching:

1.  Modern Family: the episode where they hold Instant Christmas or whatever it's called because everyone's going to be away on the 25th.


2.  Friends: The episode with the Holiday Armadillo.  Also there was one where Rachel was giving stuff she could steal from the office and Ross said "Should everyone expect presents you can steal from your office?" and she said "You shouldn't," because they were fighting that season.

3.   Growing Pains:  They had a Christmas episode.  I don't remember the plot.

4.  Family Guy: the Christmas episode where Brian and Stewie fill in for an exhausted Santa and kill someone in their house is what got me to start watching the show again.  They also had that one where Peter wanted to watch A KISS Christmas which was about a pterodactyl.

5.  Seinfeld:  I can count Festivus, right? Because it was about Christmas, partially?

6.  Futurama did those episodes with Robot Santa terrorizing people.  I think there were two.

7.  The Simpsons:  They got their dog, Santa's Little Helper, when Homer bet the Christmas money at the racetrack, losing it but taking the dog he bet on as a present.  That episode changed the usual arc of a Christmas story by taking a family, making them worse off, then not quite putting them back exactly where they started and calling it a happy ending, because the Simpson family was a little worse off, if you ask me.  I don't want to own a dog.

8.  The Office which honestly I don't know why this wasn't first since I mentioned it in the header but they did a bunch of them including this years, with Dwight's weird Santa.  The best one was the classic Dutch Christmas episode where Michael got Ryan an iPod and they all kept trying to trade presents.  That was The Office at its greatest.

9.  Spongebob Squarepants:  I know he had a new special out this year but we started watching it and the first few minutes was a claymation thing that was boring (to me) and frightening (to Mr Bunches) so I'm not counting that one; I'm counting the one where Spongebob finds out about Santa and all of Bikini Bottom writes letters to Santa, who then doesn't show up and Squidward has to pretend to be Santa because Spongebob cries.  It had a really good song in it.

10.  Phineas and Ferb: Again, they had a Christmas episode and again I can't think of what it was.  How can I remember that a thing exists without remembering a single thing about that thing? Way to be on the ball, brain.

11.  Didn't Three's Company have to have a Christmas episode?  I want to say they did but my mind is a blank.  So the list is done and I'm going to go look that up...

 ...they did:  It was called Three's Christmas.  Wikipedia, which I am really starting to rely on despite my longstanding skepticism of it, says:

The trio decides to celebrate Christmas at home because they haven't been invited to any parties, even by their neighbors the Stevens. The Ropers invite them downstairs for a party, and they accept, but moments afterwards the Stevens call to reconfirm their invitation to the party, which must have gotten lost in the mail. Jack and Janet want to go, but Chrissy makes them go to the Ropers. The evening is spent listening to Roper sing silly songs, till finally the kids are able to excuse themselves. They go off to the Stevens' where they run into the Ropers, who also found out too late that they had been invited. Roper had spent the evening trying to bore them into leaving so he and Helen could go to the party. 

That sounds awesome.  It's the true spirit of Christmas: not being able to stand being around the people you are around.

PS:

Growing Pains DID have a Christmas episode:

"A depressed department store Santa consulting Jason decides to commit suicide by leaping down the Seavers' chimney."

FESTIVE!  I couldn't find it online, so here's a Kirk Cameron Ice Capades video I haven't watched:

These are the best words I know, as evidenced by the fact that they popped into my head so quickly. (Off The Top Of My Head List.)

Off The Top Of My Head lists are what they sound like. Ordinarily, I stop when I run out of steam. But today's is a bit different, to kick off the A To Z Challenge that's starting tomorrow and which I've never read the rules for because rules are for suckers and wallabies. That's right, I went there.

Here, I'm going to list the first word I think of when I type each letter. No matter how long it takes to get through the alphabet. And I'm going to time it, because that seems to be my thing today. And I'm going to do it in reverse order, because that is awesome.

Z: Zither.
Y: Yellow
X: Xylophone, but that's what everyone says, right?
W: Water.
V: Victory.
U: Underwater
T: Thomas.
S: Snake.
R: Refrigerator.
Q: Quiet.
P: Possum.
O: Overture.
N: Nightingale. And I'm not even sure what one is! Maybe I'm thinking of Florence?
M: Mockingbird. But that's probably influenced by nightingale.
L: Leopard. Get off animals.
K: King.
J: Jumping jack! Double word score.
I: I
H: Happy.
G: Gardener. Yep. I didn't stop at garden.
F: Friend.
E: Exciting.
D: Dance.
C: Computer. Honestly, I thought of cat first but deemed it boring.
B: Benign.
A: Alphabet.

3:17. (Three minutes, seventeen seconds.)

It was made more difficult by the fact that Mr Bunches was, as I typed those, watching a video of jungle animals he likes and excitedly pointing the best ones out to me -- but they never coincided with the letters, so as I typed Q he was saying "Hippo, daddy! Hippo!"

Also, I know a nightingale is a bird. I'm just saying that if a nightingale were to walk into my house right now, I wouldn't know it was a nightingale. But I would offer it some toast, because I'm polite.

I suppose I should make this more pop culture-y, since that's kind of the point of this blog, so here's a similar list, in reverse order, of the top pop culture references I can come up with that begin with that letter. Again, timed.

Z: Zoolander.

Y: Yemen -- from the episode of Friends where Chandler says he's moving to Yemen.

X: X-Men. Which is weird, because I'm not even a fan of theirs.

W: Walrus -- as in I am the...

V: Venus -- as in I'm your ... I'm your fire...

U: Undertaker. Wasn't he a wrestler? Why do I know that?

T: Thomas -- weird. Thomas The Tank Engine is my go-to T word.

S: Snake Plissken. Not sure of the spelling, never seen Escape From New York, don't know why I know this nor why it was first to pop up in there but remember that one Kurt Russell movie where he got superstrong eating a kind of cereal and entered a weightlifting contest? I liked that movie.

R: Reptilian: Specifically, I'm thinking of those things from V back in the 1980s.

Q: Oh, god. Think think think think Qwikster. That's all I've got, man. When push comes to shove, I'll throw Netflix under a bus as fast as the rest of you.

P: Pushme-Pullyu. Isn't that a Doctor Doolittle thing? I feel like I'm learning something about myself here.

O: Octopus. Doctor, not Garden-dwelling Ringo friend.

N: Nightcrawler. Stupid X-Men. But I did like Nightcrawler in his own comic series.

M: Mr. Roboto. Domo arigato to you!

L: Oh, God, seriously what I thought of first is Larry The Cable Guy and kill me now.

K: Knight. Which doesn't seem pop culture-y specifically but isn't Game Of Thrones knight-ish? Otherwise, consider it a reference to, I don't know, Excalibur. Or... wait! Jedi Knights. Redemption is sweet.

J: Jedi Knight! I make the rules here.

I: I came up first with igloo and don't know why. That led me to Ice Castles, which I blame Sweetie for because she loves that movie. I've never watched it.

H: Halloween. Once I start thinking of movies Sweetie likes, I'm stuck in a loop.

G: Ginifer Goodwin. She's a person, right? I'm wondering if maybe I didn't have a stroke.

F: Friends.

E: Everything at Once, a Lenka song that is used as a preview on about 1/2 of the boys' DVDs, so I grew to like it and then downloaded it.

D: Donkey. From Shrek. Seriously, what is wrong with me?

C: Caterpillar -- the one from Alice In Wonderland. Has there ever been a superhero based on the caterpillar? Shouldn't there be?

B: Boy Meets World. You know who's hot? Topanga.Now, I mean. I'm not some kind of sicko.

A: I am stumped. I've got nothing. Anderson Cooper? Sure, why not.

I think we all learned a little something about me today. I won't be showing my face in public for some time.

Just for a test, I ran the first two by Sweetie. She came up with:

Z: Zahara Pitt. And she's on Team Jennifer!

Y: Yvonne DiCarlo. If you know who she is, give yourself a gold star. (She's the wife on The Munsters. I'm married to a very special lady.)

Now, I want some of ALL of these candies. (Off The Top Of My Head)

The other day, reader Anna Carrera and I mixed it up a bit on Twitter because she said that she loved Raisinets; as a firm backer of Boston Baked Beans, I took offense to the notion that something could best my beloved candy. Then, today, because I am theoretically working from home, I got to thinking, and what I thought, in order was:

I would like some Boston Baked Beans.

Come to think of it, I would like some French Burnt Peanuts.

Now that I ponder it, I'm kind of weird.

With that, I started trying to think of all the kind-of-obscure candies I'd ever liked and decided that I'd do a list of them, because you deserve to be constantly updated on whatever it is that crosses my mind. So here is the

Off The Top Of My Head List Of Kind Of Weird, Obscure Candies I Love:

Boston Baked Beans.
French Burnt Peanuts
Pop Rocks
Pixy Sticks
Chocolate Key Limes
Those little brown peanut-butter candies that come wrapped in wax paper at Halloween.
Charleston Chews
Bun
Chick-O-Sticks
Zero Bars
Hot Buttered Popcorn Jelly Belly Jellybeans
Nibs, but only the black licorice kind
Circus Peanuts
Bit O'Honey
Zotz

And there was a thing that was like caramel and nougat spiraled together on a stick and it was a square and I can't think of what it was called and it's killing me to not know, and I went so far as to ask Sweetie but she doesn't know and Google was no help, and yeah, I know I'm not supposed to Google things for these lists but what're you going to do, call the Internet cops?

Also, I just found them. They were Slap Stix. Turns out they have banana in them.

I asked Sweetie if she wanted to do a list, but she just got a weird look in her face, one that seemed to say something like "What in God's name am I married to?" only I'm sure that's not what it was really saying.

This list is very Larry-Niven oriented, for some reason. (Off The Top Of My Head)

My focus, on Saturday, on Star Wars and Star Trek led me to try to think of how many sci-fi series, movies, or books I could think of that had nothing to do with either of those things... Off The Top Of My Head:

1. Ringworld, Larry Niven.

2. The Integral Trees, Larry Niven.

3. Footfall, Larry Niven.

4. The Last Starfighter

5. Battlestar Galactica (original and remake)

6. That one cartoon series when I was a kid in which they made ordinary battleships into space cruisers, only I can't find any records of it anywhere.

7. Space: 1999.

8. Logan's Run.

9. The Black Hole.

10. Flash Gordon.

11. The Mote In God's Eye.

12. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

...

And I'm out.

That dragon from "Tic Tac Dough" haunts my nightmares... (Off The Top Of My Head)

I listened to This American Life last week with the guy who figured out how to beat Press Your Luck, and it made me remember the two (!) times I qualified for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? but didn't get called to New York. Screw you, Millionaire. You broke my heart! And that led me to think of

The Best Game Shows I've Actually Watched and Would Want To Be On:

1. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (I can't quit you!)
2. Jeopardy!
3. The Joker's Wild
4. Tic Tac Dough
5. Family Feud
6. Wheel Of Fortune
7. The Price Is Right.
8. The Amazing Race, which, actually, I haven't watched, but that's because I really want to go on it as a family but I can't convince Sweetie to let me enter our family even though we would be incredible at it.

(I'm also not sure it's a game show.)

Imagine the Smurfs as brought to you by Stanley Kubrick... (Off The Top Of My Head)

... I might actually see that. Smurfs Wide Shut.

The Smurfs movie opens this week, and despite sharing Lisa Pepin's distaste for that movie, I can't help but wonder, as I sit here this morning, how many actual Smurfs I can remember off the top of my head. Here is

The Best (?) Actual Smurfs I Can Name Without Cheating...

1. Hefty
2. Brainy
3. Papa
4. Vanity
5. Smurfette
6. Gargamel
7. I want to say there was a dumb one...

And I'm done.

Note 1: Yes, it really did take me to five to get to Smurfette.

Note 2: Gargamel wasn't a Smurf. But was he the only human in that universe? And how did I miss him on my post about wizards?

Note 3: There was a Clumsy Smurf. And a Reporter Smurf, which seems to go against the grain for how Smurfs were named.

Note 4: There was a robot smurf. Seriously. And in some sort of sick inside joke, he's called "Clockwork Smurf." Because what goes better with smurfs than a little of the old ultraviolence?

But I'm not making that up. Here's the whole episode:



Note 5: I got all my background information on Smurfs from this site, which exists.

YO! Adrian! (Off The Top Of My Head)

This week, one of the people I follow on Twitter -- This American Life-featured Dad Joshua Karpati (@jkarpati) -- sent me a link to watch a portion of Goodfellas that played off my telling him he was funny.

And I watched it, because I'll watch almost any video link you send me.

(Almost any.)

Then I got to thinking about how I never saw Goodfellas, which is a movie everyone else seems to have seen, which led me to the

Off The Top Of My Head List of The Best (?) Movies Everyone But Me Seems To Have Seen:

1. Goodfellas.
2. Citizen Kane.
3. Godfather Part II
4. The original Halloween.
5. The original Friday the 13th.
6. The Outlaw Josey Wales.
7. The Magnificent Seven.
8. Gone With The Wind.
9. The Hustler.
10. Casablanca
11. It's a Wonderful Life
12. Raging Bull
13. Apocalypse Now
14. Any Rocky movie.
15. Any Rambo movie.

Ring-A-Ding-Ding (Off The Top Of My Head)

Green Lantern opened this week to dismal reviews, which I find really annoying because once bad reviews come out, I can't justify going to see a movie in a theater (because I am not like people who are able to believe that something is so bad, it's good.)

So I won't be seeing Green Lantern until next year on some weekend when I can't sleep and it's available for free on TV. But I will be thinking about Rings of Power, and hence this Off The Top Of My Head list of Famous Rings In Pop Culture.

1. Green Lantern's power ring.
2. Sinestro's power ring.
3. The One Ring from Lord of the Rings.
4. All the lesser rings from Lord of the Rings.
5. The ring that shoulda been put on it in Single Ladies.
6. Ring My Bell by Anita Ward.
7. Ring Around The Rosy.
8. Ring Lardner.


Off The Top Of My Head is lists created without any research or time to think; read more of them here.

Off The Top Of My Head: The Best Obscure TV Shows I'm Pretty Sure Only I Watched.

And they're not available anywhere, so far as I can tell -- so all I've got are my memories of these (great to me) shows:

1. Herman's Head.
2. Brother's Keeper
3. Andy Richter Controls The Universe
4. Buffalo Bill
5. Cop Rock
6. Andy Barker, P.I.
7. Joey






Click here for more Off The Top Of My Head Lists.

Off The Top Of My Head: The Best Movies In Which A Dance Featured Prominently

Prom is huge this year -- or so I'm led to believe, what with there being a movie about Prom and This American Life featuring four stories about prom last week, and I'm not one to miss out on cashing in on a trend, so here's the Off The Top Of My Head List of

The Best Movies In Which A Dance Featured Prominently:

1. Pretty In Pink.
2. Footloose.
3. Grease.
4. Dirty Dancing.
5. Pulp Fiction
6. Black Swan


Click here for more Off The Top Of My Head lists.

Off The Top Of My Head: The Best Books I Ever Read.

What's this? Click here for an explanation.

I started thinking of this as I got ready for work this morning, after an article in Newsweek made me remember Sherman McCoy and The Bonfire Of The Vanities. So here's the

Off The Top Of My Head List Of...
The Best Books I Ever Read:

The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Stand
Jonathan Norrell and Mr Strange
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The World According to Garp


...and I'm done.

Off The Top Of My Head: Table of Contents

Here's all the lists I've got so far:

The Best Sci-fi books, etc., that have nothing to do with Star Wars Or Star Trek.

The Best (?) Smurfs I Can Remember Without Cheating.

The Best Movies Everyone But Me Seems To Have Seen

The Best Rings In Pop Culture.

The Best Books I Ever Read

The Best Obscure TV Shows I'm Pretty Sure Only I Watched.

The Best Movies In Which A Dance Featured Prominently.


Gut feelings count for something, right? They do if you read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and/or if you'd like to set up a system for your life where you never have to ponder anything or do research and instead can justify everything by saying something like gut feelings count for something.

That's how I came up with the concept for Off The Top Of My Head. Well, that and that I keep trying to come up with posts that won't take me three weeks to write and you three weeks to read. I thought to myself "How can I get some filler for this blog"

That is, I thought to myself "How can I create posts that are quick to read and yet create the same thought-provoking response that most of my posts here do?"

And the answer was to go with my gut feelings: To create, from time to time, lists that I write up as fast as possible without any, or at least much, explanation of the contents of that list. Here's how it works:

I think up a topic.

I begin typing the entries on the list for that topic.

As soon as my mind goes blank, I stop.