Fastest Christmas Yet

Hard to say what made it so fast. Maybe losing a week after Thanksgiving. Maybe it is just everything is getting faster in a cyber world. But it was fast. Boom. Here and there and over. Not even enough time to see Macys windows and the lights in Lincoln Park or Its A Wonderful Life at the Music Box Theatre. Like a lot of people we have been backfilling after Christmas but of course it is not the same.

The Xmas blues comes a few days later when you face the winter. Could it be we are really in the countdown toward spring? And what does it say when we are continually looking from one date to the next. Ok Easter. Ok Fourth of July. Ok Thanksgiving. Ok Christmas. Ok New Years. That's right we do still have New Years.

But New Years didn't even live up to its reputation when I was still in the city and doing all the twenty something things. People were just sort of spent and the bad parties were legendary. But what the heck. We still have a few days to play Xmas tunes and stare at the tree. And you know what. NEXT YEAR we will get it all in.

After all there are only 361 days until next Christmas. Not so many.

Real Santa...how far would you go for your kids?
MOVIE RIGHTS SOLD!      
  Vicki Rocco of Modern Family optioned the movie rights of William Hazelgrove's Real Santa for her production company Small But Mighty Productions with an eye to a feature or a made for television movie. Ms. Rocco has to her credits, Modern Family, Arrested Development, Stand and Deliver, U23D, Empire Dreams, Heather, Britany Spears Live, and sees Real Santa as a classic that will pull in people hungry for a new take on the Christmas movie. "No one has done this. No one has taken on the physics of being Santa Claus. It is funny and heartwarming and has all the things we look for in any great Christmas movie."
                                           
STARRED REVIEW BOOKLIST

"If somebody doesn't make a movie out of this book, there's something wrong with the world.                                                                               
                                                                                                 David Pitts Booklist


"The author marries the everyday dramas found in the novels of Tom Perrotta and Nick Hornby to the high camp of Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry. Adults looking for a funny holiday-themed tale that doesn't lose its sense of wonder in the face of realism will find a treat here. A lovingly crafted comedy about the madness that fatherhood inspires."
                                                                                              Kirkus Reviews


 

The Christmas Vortex

You know it's coming. You see it in the stores. The decorations already out and you know that the Christmas vortex is maybe a week away. And what is strange once we enter the vortex we will find ourselves suddenly on the other side facing January. But lets go back to the vortex. Thanksgiving. It really begins there but the ramp up is there too. Jockeying for the holidays. Who is going where. Whose house will host all those festivities.

My dad asked me about a weekend  and I feigned fatigue and having to consult my wife. I just couldn't believe I had to commit already to the family Xmas with all its attendant machinations. And yet it is here already. We have counted up the weekends and there are not enough to fit everything in. It is amazing to say the but the season is already too short. And then I think about that great quiet on the far side of the holidays and I know that too is coming.

Because after the vortex comes the venturi of winter life with all it's OH MY GOD WE HAVE THREE MONTHS of winter before spring. And maybe that is what all the talk is about time flying which is probably more of time jetting past us now. But for now lets enjoy and enter the vortex with dignity and start lining up those dates.

So I will call my dad back and commit. Tomorrow.

Real Santa...What one man wont do for his kids
www.williamhazelgrove.com