Hey, folks. Was Santa good to you this year?

Let me tell you a little about Santa. He took some elves, filled up a stadium (like maybe Madison Square Garden, or the Palladium) and he rocked the fuckin' house. Hard core. He brought friends with him. They were all egg-nogged up or something. Santa brought it hard this year, psychic-style. I mean, at least at my house. Santa-rockin' varies by location.

But enough about Santa. How are you? I finally got my ass to some stores, finished up the shopping, sent out a few more cards (if I didn't send you one, it's probably because I don't have your address, or I don't like you, or I had your address and deleted it by accident, or you moved to Cabo or something and left no forwarding).

The other thing I did, like last night, was sneak around my 'hood and take some photos. This isn't as easy as it sounds. It involved rolling my car around really slow, stopping, whipping out the digital camera and taking pictures before somebody can look out their window and notice me taking pictures of their home in the middle of the night. I realized right away that taking flash photos is probably not the best way to be stealthy and unnoticed.

But it was all in the service of bringing you Terribly Happy's First-Annual "Omar Rates the Shitty Christmas Lights in his Suburban Area."

What constitutes Shitty Lights? Basically, any lights that I myself did not install or contribute to that were put upon a residential structure. Or any that I was able to photograph before being followed around by a white sedan that probably was some kind of vigilante neighborhood watch group-mobile.

Let's begin, shall we?

Ah. Yes. Never try to take photos of Christmas lights through a car window. This is what happens. Right. Lesson learned.

Outwardly, this would appear to be two graceful trees engaging in a dance of lights and harmony, as if to say, "Do you pas de deux? You too? Oiu." But, no. These lights are Shitty. Stringing up lights all over trees is wrong on some awful, fundamental level, like dressing up a dog in a Sherlock Holmes outfit or knitting a cozie for a flashlight. Do you want your trees to look like tree-sluts? All tarted up for the passing cars? Awful.

This just scared me. There I was in my car and the combination of the lit, oversized fiberglass snowman and the green-tinted tree just made me want to pee my car seat. I thought the tree was going to come after me like the one with the branches in Poltergeist. First rule of Christmas lights: Don't make people piss themselves in fear.

My photos all came out uniformly Shitty (not as Shitty as the lights themselves, but still Shitty), so I asked my photo editing program to "Auto Brightness/Contrast"). The photo was so bad, this is the best it could do. It looks like grainy surveillance footage from Iraq. I like the little American Flag light. That's so Santa will know where to bring the really good, capitalist gifts. Oh, and these lights are Shitty, in case I forgot to mention that.

This was kind of standard this year for my area. Just a string of icicle lights along the roof, just enough to be able to say, "Look, motherfuckers. I got my ass on the roof. I got Christmas Fucking Spirit. You got something to say about that, Ned?" Bonus Shitty Points for the disco-ball looking thing. Is that supposed to be a snowball or Frosty's head, or what?

You can't really tell from this photo, but this house was PACKED with lights. They had to steal electricity for this. It was insane. And those balls around the tree? Those are the big hoop earrings upon the tree-slut's visage. And that little yellow thing is supposed to be a Santa Gnome, but it looks like Santa and Pikachu's secret love child.

 

More Shitty lights, plus Big Pimpin' ==>