For all the terror that the holiday season has to offer, there’s the occasional beauty, too. You just have to stop and take note when you see it.
Even when it makes you late for a meeting. Especially when it makes you late for a meeting.
(Shot in front of the James L. Allen Center at Northwestern University.)
And now? Back to the fear.
Thus, it begins. As of 12 am your time this morning (Black Friday, Nov. 29), it’s on—the fear is here.
Now, to paraphrase the noted philosopher Walter Sobchak, this is the LDBC. There are rules. So here’s a quick restating for easy reference and sharing:
Make it from 12 am the morning of Black Friday ’til 12 am the morning of Christmas Eve Day without hearing “The Little Drummer Boy,” and you win. As soon as you hear it on the radio, on TV, in a store or performed live—whatever—you’re out. And you record your loss on the official reporting form, then tell us all about it on the Facebook wall, along with the time and place of your demise. Be charming and creative enough, and we’ll also share it on the site, enshrining you in the Annals of LDBC Heroics, Tragedy, and Failure for all time.
And remember, you cannot be done in by anyone tricking you into hearing the dreaded tune or otherwise hitting you with it on purpose.
Again, live versions count, as do renditions and interpretations. (Yes, that means Vince Guaraldi’s “My Little Drum.”) Hearing it in TV episodes and movies is lethal, too, but parodies and samples are harmless.
Got it?
Godspeed, LDBCers. Show the Boy who’s boss. And let’s be careful out there.
So how’d you do? The Little Drummer Boy Challenge ends at midnight, your time, on Dec. 23rd. Now, we love seeing you brag or mourn, depending on your result, on the Facebook page. But it also helps us out quite a bit if you fill out this form to record your win or loss officially. So take a minute and increase your Challenge karma exponentially. — Mr. LDBC
Perhaps the blame lies with Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the medium. After all, last year, it was American Horror Story, and just tonight it was Will Ferrell doing Robert Goulet doing LDB on the SNL Christmas Special.
The dead piled up like cordwood. Anne Sussman, Jesse Blatt, Richard Arnold, Lee Ann Shollenberger, Steve Friedman. OK, so it was only five people, but still—kindling, at least. And poor Anne had already admitted she was jinxing herself by saying she was an LDBC machine. (Some may laugh and gloat, but not me, certainly. Not in public, anyway. Kudos to Hadley Taylor, though, for stepping over Anne’s corpse and heading to the future.)
Perhaps the correct spelling from now on is “Ghoul-et.” Or maybe Ferrell needs to change the name of his site to Funny and Die. Either way, it’s no laughing matter.
Godspeed, lost LDBCers. I guess it really was an impossible dream.
Here at LDBC Central, we’re more Tiny Tim than Ebeneezer, so Mrs. LDBC and I can’t afford to spring for this bit o’ day-by-day enchantment ourselves. But I can’t think of a better way to ride out a good chunk of the Challenge.
(Oh, and a side note to you suspicious types. We don’t make a dime off of this link. It’s merely a public service.)
Puh-rum-pum-pum-clink!, people.
“We were having a party, and Harry Warden started killing everybody!”
—Tommy Whitcomb, My Bloody Valentine
Here we are, with mere hours to go in the LDBC (actually, players in Krakow and Limerick have already finished, even if they don’t know it), and already I know exactly how poor Tommy feels. See, I joke. I kid. I make light-hearted fun of those who are eliminated early on, even if they’re people who are dear to me. Especially if they’re people who are dear to me. But as the weeks pass, and the lucky manage to stay in the game without getting puh-rum-pum-pum-pummed, I begin to silently root for them harder than ever.
They’re like my children. OK, so I don’t want want any legal responsibility for them. But they’re like my hamsters. Or an ant colony I enjoy watching for an intense number of weeks once a year. So when someone or something comes along and scorches them with a magnifying glass, it’s like they burned a tiny but painful hole in me, too.
So imagine Wednesday night, when the bodies began to pile high (well, three deep) within minutes of one another as a trio of my beloved LDBCers were snuffed out by the finale of … American Horror Story? I’ve never even watched the damn show, but I cannot imagine it’s good enough to make it worth that. Noah Richard. Jill Cimorelli. Libby White. Just names to you, but to me, they’re names with little square icons next to them.
Anyway, it’s 8:15 pm here on the Third Coast. Hang in there, my long-sufferin’ LDBCers. We’re almost ho-ho-home.
Little Drummer Boy Challenge 