Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s the Christmas Season and there’s still no sign of snow here in Naples, Florida, folks. So, there’s no real snowmen yet and I’m not holding my breath. Those LARGE, plastic inflatable snowmen are all over though. Some of them are TEN FEET high.
If these LARGE, plastic inflatable snowmen were filled with helium they’d make great radio controlled, camera equipped Christmas toy dirigibles. Imagine one flying down the street at dusk above your head filming you for some neighbour’s coarse pleasure as you sing “Deck my balls with boughs of folly” and you deftly pick up a steaming, rather wet turd with a poop bag. “Good boy, Otto!” you exclaim to your miniature Schnauzer, garbed in festive green and red Santa elf garb. The LARGE, plastic inflatable snowman is singing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” in a quantized, digital vocoder voice. And you’re hungover from too much egg nog at the company Christmas party….
Frosties. Complete with black plastic top hats, red scarves, black button facial features and brown stick arms. I see them sagging, bending out of breath like they were laughing at their own bad jokes or completely deflated and supine like holiday drunks on the neighbourhood lawns. Along with a plethora of plastic inflatable Santas, reindeer, penguins and candy canes. All of them losing their Christmas Spirit through entropic heat exchange.
The plastic Christmas inflatables are made by the ACME Secret Lover Plastic Inflatable Doll Company in Upper Jawbone, North Dakota. As the nudge and wink company name indiscreetly says, ACME Secret Lover manufactures high end plastic inflatable dolls: the company retools for the Christmas sales period which begins right after Black Friday. Although workers take a perverse pride in the faux Made in America tattoo stamped on the right buttock of each Secret Lover doll, they also find some kind of secret relief in the production shift. It’s the only company in America that still produces plastic inflatable Christmas figures. All the rest come from China. I don’t know if plastic inflatable dolls for personal use are made in China yet. Cripes, maybe there’s a multi millionaire in Shanghai with a whole collection of plastic inflatable concubines dressed and undressed in Tang Dynasty period costumes.
The workers receive Christmas bonuses because the profit from the Christmas sales outweighs the plastic inflatable doll sales. It’s a kind of Christmas spirit.
“Frosty the snowman
Knew the sun was hot that day
So he said, “Let’s run
And we’ll have some fun
Now before I melt away.”
These deflatables lie around on lawns like forlorn and discarded laundry. It’s like they are kind of tired or partied out. Maybe they will get a second wind before New Years. It’s after Christmas now and still there is no sign of Plastic inflatable Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph or the Three Wisemen. My Chocolate Jesus melted this afternoon: I carelessly left Him on the windowsill. And it’s only Christmas, not Easter!
I did see Midget Elvis today though, on Nighthawk Drive. He was costumed in a too tight white, sequinned jumpsuit and screaming at his full sized agent on his cellphone. “Happy New Year, Midget Elvis!“ i waved. He just cocked an eyebrow at me from beneath his pomaded pompadour and scowled.