Christmas Past Blast: Over the Moon for Rainbows

Shoes: Madden Girl, Amazon

Coin purse: Kelly & Katie, DSW

Top: ModCloth; Skirt: Dickies, Dolls Kill

Jumper: Tinseltown, Macy's; Top: ModCloth

Season's Gleamings Necklace

Top: Madden Girl, Kohl's; Skirt: So, Kohl's

One of my favorite Christmas gifts ever was the Rainbow Brite doll I got in 1986.  I was so enamored with her ROYGBIV beauty that on Christmas morning I refused to play with anything or anyone else.  There's even VHS footage of me snapping at my little sister and her Cabbage Patch baby to go away because I was otherwise engaged.  So, when I saw that Amazon had the same doll in all her original yarn hair glory, I had to get one for Charlotte.

Sure, she's eighteen months to my four years when I got the doll, and the box clearly states that it's not for children under three.  (Apparently, there's danger of tykes choking on Rainbow's sprite sidekick, Twink.)  But there's no harm in letting her look at it.  Truth be told, I'd rather keep the toy mint for a while.  I'm not ready to see Char Bar unleash her considerable fury enthusiasm and mangle poor Rainbow.

To me, Rainbow Brite symbolizes Christmas and joy and nostalgia and all of the things.  And I want to instill that in Charlotte so that she can find her own merry muse, be it Bluey or Elmo or a character that hasn't hatched yet.  Because that's what Christmas is all about.  

Well, that and antagonizing your siblings.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve from Our Pal Steve

Zahn, that is.  Because I'm talking about the HBO Max original movie 8-Bit Christmas (which does indeed, however indirectly, have something to do with this pic.  But we'll get there.).  As nostalgic and charmingly rough around the edges as A Christmas Story, 8-Bit Christmas strikes a chord with anyone who's ever made a Christmas list, but especially those of us who grew up in the '80s.  Jake Doyle (Neil Patrick Harris) tries to connect with his cell phone-obsessed daughter by telling her the tale of how his tween self would stop at nothing to get a Nintendo.  So starts the setup for a classic Christmas frame story as Jake detours down memory lane.  And it turns out that scoring an NES is a tall order for young Jake (Winslow Fegley) and his ragtag group of friends.  First, because Nintendos are hard to come by in 1988.  Secondly, because, in a rare case of conscience over consumerism, the local parents' protest against video games has convinced stores not to sell them.  Jake's own dad (Steve Zahn) would rather Jake spend his time helping him with his endless home renovations than snagging extra lives and getting to the next level.  That is, when he's not nagging Jake to pick up the dog poop dotting their yard.  But Jake doesn't listen.  When he realizes that he's not getting a Nintendo for Christmas, he enters a competition to win one.  His tunnel vision pursuit of Super Mario Brothers bliss begets one disaster after another.  Yet somewhere in this caper -- which also features girls' Esprit snow boots, counterfeit Cabbage Patch Kids, and a steady stream of upchucked SpaghettiOs -- is the meaning of Christmas.

This was only one of my takeaways from the movie.  The other was that I won a Nintendo in 1989 for drawing this:

Never mind that the "little" girl is too big to fit through the door of the candy cottage.  Or that the angel doubles as a banner plane.  No, the most questionable thing going on here is the seemingly inexplicable sentence scrawled at the bottom: "I'm a girl!"

 All I can say is that for Halloween that year, I'd gone as an astronaut, and some young thug at the mall (because, yes, that's where I went trick-or-treating) hooted, "Hey, look at the little astronaut dude!"  Although I now see this as the compliment it was, I was filled with all the righteous indignation of a serious seven-year-old, my fury so fierce that it made its way onto my art contest entry more than a month later.  Which, now that I think of it, has a bit of a gender bender parallel, however tenuous, with something that happens in the movie.  Not to worry; as my gift to you, I'll squelch my spoiler impulses.  

None of this is the punchline of this yuletide anecdote, though.  That would be that I already had a Nintendo, kind of sort of making me the spoiled kid in 8-Bit Christmas -- minus the power plays and bullying.  (Always on the other side of the bully divide, I played my two Nintendos by myself, thank you very much.)  But nerd or not, I was still a nerd with multiple gaming systems, and this embarrassment of riches is just one of the reasons I (briefly) considered not blogging about this humble brag of an art contest win.  

We all knew how that would turn out.

Now the NES is a relic and kids play with something called the Switch.  But even if 8-bit doesn't mean what it used to, it's still better than a two-bit anything else.

And also picking up dog poop.

Double Rainbow, Double Dier

 Red Pompom Bow Barrette

 Red Rainbow Rose Necklace

 Snow Bright Bangle

Sweater: Macy's

Skirt: Dolls Kill

Shoes: Christian Siriano for Payless

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

 Ballerina Baby Earrings

 Mint Rainbow Rose Necklace

 Clara Cupcakes Charm Bracelet

Sweater: Macy's

Skirt: Macy's

Shoes: Worthington, JCPenney

Bag: City Streets, JCPenney

I've always been into rainbows.  There's a Christmas morning home movie of five-year-old me fiercely clutching a brand-new Rainbow Brite doll and setting up the Color Cottage with the focus of a hibachi grill chef.  My little sister toddles over to me to show me her new Cabbage Patch preemie Noreen Rhoda (the only thing weirder than those dolls' names were their Xavier Roberts butt tattoos).  And I scream for her to go away.  Obviously, I'm too busy seating the sprites at their wavy-edged, pink plastic table.  Does this behavior reveal that little me could be a tantrum-throwing Gremlin?  For sure.  But does it also show my love for the sacred spectrum?  Um, does the hibachi grill chef burn Big Bertha's perm when he's flipping the shrimp and singing happy birthday?

Spoiler alert.  He does.  Sometimes.

A few years ago, my sister gave me this Rainbow Brite Itty Bitty.  Which makes me feel like even more of a villain.  If only I could reciprocate with a bobble head Noreen Rhoda.  If you're listening, Xavier, get on it.

Anyway, they say that double rainbows are rare.  (They also say something else, but I won't go into that here.)  Which is why these twin rainbow sweaters are so awesome and cute and give me all the '90s feels.  (I refer, of course, to fashion feels, as most other feels from my teen years are locked in a mental drawer marked do no resuscitate).

Do you know what's almost as rare as a double rainbow?  Brett Dier's reign on Wednesday night TV.  I know that Brett Dier isn't a household name and that this announcement may be underwhelming.  Also, that it has nothing to do with anything else I've said.  But I'm okay with that.

What are the odds that Dier's new sitcom Schooled and his old dramedy Jane the Virgin would air on the same night on different networks, back to back?  And that it would all be so symbolically full circle?  Because Schooled is in its freshman year and Jane is sadly ending.  (Some) Jane fans fell in love with Dier's Michael five seasons ago and are still reeling from his return from the dead.  Not only was it super stirring and emotional, it put Jane (Gina Rodriguez) right back where she started, forced to choose between Michael -- her husband -- and Rafael (Justin Baldoni) -- the father of her child.  Never mind that she was accidentally artificially inseminated when she was still a virgin, before she'd even properly met Raf.  Because Jane is, as the narrator often and snarkily tells us, a telenovella.  As for Schooled, we're just getting to know Dier's C.B. as a slightly Michael-esque but also slightly annoying hey-kids-I'm-your-friend-not-just-your-teacher-and-I'm-wearing-the-jeans-and-wacky-ties to prove it kind of guy.  Yet nerdy or not, he seems destined to date fellow teacher and rebel with a heart of gold Lainey (AJ Michalka).  If you think that Lainey's too cool for this fool, think again.  After all, she was engaged to Barry Goldberg.  And who knows; she could still rekindle that flame.  Which would leave old Brett (or as my sister calls him, triangle face) to play second fiddle a second time.  Because my spidey senses tell me that Jane will be riding off into the sunset with Raf.  And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Time to change the subject.

When I wore rainbow-rama outfit number one, I was so excited that I decided to photograph myself in it.  This meant breaking out this here selfie stick, which my mom gave me almost six years ago for my wedding.  I'd never used it before, which is obvious from the frustrated look on my face.  The subpar camera on my 3G phone wasn't helping.  But then I thought, who cares?  The graininess and washed out colors make this pic look like it's from back in the day.  Which is fitting because this outfit could've come straight out of the costume trailer of That '70s Show.  "But Tote Trove lady," you may be (but probably most definitely are not) thinking, "you said this was a 90s look!"  So I did.  But when I wore stuff like this in the '90s, my mom would say that it was just like something she'd worn in college.  So even fashion -- especially fashion -- comes full circle.  Everything old becomes new again.  And like Dier, rainbows never say die.

All of this philosophizing has me craving shrimp. Hold the hair spray; I'm headed to the hibachi.

Make and Tell Challenge, Day 147: More Painting and What Was Xavier Roberts Thinking?

The jungle is beginning to come into its own. I'm getting excited about that.

On a completely unrelated note, I started thinking about all the Cabbage Patch Kids my sister and I had and their crazy names. They were:

Allison Cherie

Alicia Joelle

Ana Angelina

Noreen Rhoda

Edith Adelaide

Weird, right? Especially that last one. And what was with Xavier's autograph tattooed on their butts?!

I don't know what became of any of the dolls except Noreen Rhoda, which was my sister's much-loved preemie. She lives on in our mom's kindergarten classroom.