Have Yourself A Very Specific Type of Christmas Movie...

Are you looking for Christmas movies to put you in a specific mood? Here are my top five choices:

1.Neo-Retro Leather and Blood on White Snow Christmas: Batman Returns

Not the Tim Burton movie most people will recommend for Christmas, but people tend to forget that Burton had a bit of an obsession with the holiday leading up to Nightmare Before Christmas, as both Batman Returns and Edward Scissorhands take place around Christmas time. I just love the tone that the holiday adds to the story for Batman Returns. An extra layer of beauty and tragedy via fresh white snow as a canvas for dead bodies and chaos to fall on. Plus, the great touch of that 1940s-era design that the two Burton-directed movies (as well as the Bruce Timm cartoon) had just adds to the classic Christmas vibe of it. The movie sometimes looks and feels like it could take place in the same universe as a Fred Astaire movie.

2. Stark Stylized Neon 80s Christmas: Less Than Zero

Just as Batman Returns mixes 1940s nostalgia with Christmas imagery, Less Than Zero slaps you in the face with the 80s and puts an obnoxious stark cold 1980s L.A. vibe all over Christmas and New Year's. Add in all the ridiculous opulence and the painful scenes of Robert Downey Jr's character being kicked out of his father's home just in time for Christmas... and you have a great movie to watch to appreciate what you have.

3. Small Town Falls to Crap Christmas: Gremlins

No music score says "Christmas" to me quite like that of Gremlins. It takes the idea of a Christmas movie set in a small town and turns it into a monster movie set in a small town. With a sing-along! And as someone who has worked a fair share of Christmas Eve's, I always appreciate Phoebe Cates's scene of serving drunk and crazy gremlins at the bar (while also always asking...why would you keep serving them?!). But I feel that Gremlins gets that "why am I supposed to be happy just because it's Christmas even though crappy things are happening?" mood perfectly.

4. Ruined Christmas in Chicago: While You Were Sleeping

Okay, here's a nice one that I like for the specific 1990s Chicago-flavored Christmas setting (yes, I'm picking this over any John Hughes Christmas movies). In the grand scheme of the Sandra Bullock oevre, I imagine that While You Were Sleeping falls more on the All About Steve side of things in the long run, because it's very odd when you rewatch it. It really goes the distance while trying to convince you and Bullock's Lucy that it's very important that she continue to pretend to be Peter's fiance. And while I can't say that the movie does a "good" job of making it seem like a good idea, it puts more effort into the issue than a rom-com from the 2000s ever would. It actually reminds me a lot of rom-com plots from the 30s and 40s- like Bachelor Mother, starring Ginger Rogers and David Nevin, which also takes place around Christmas. But While You Were Sleeping is a little less disturbing (I could write a dissertation on Bachelor Mother, but that is for another post...).

5. People Are Insane Yet Apathetic During The Holidays: Brazil

Two of my three favorite movies take place at Christmas, so it was tough to make a call on which one should be on this list. But I choose Brazil because it's a lot less well-known compared to The Apartment. And really nails the mania that seems to take over people as Christmas gets closer and closer and how life just gets kind of weird for a couple weeks. My favorite thing might be the pointless "executive" gifts that Sam keeps encountering. But then there's just how you can be told "Happy Christmas" and "You're going to die" in the same breath in the world of Brazil. With the same amount of apathy.

When You Take A Third Job...

You think, "Hey, at least it'll be a quick way to catch up on finances."

You give your availability as being 7 days a week, just working around the hours of all your other jobs. You're available 7 days a week. Five days, you give a 6 hour window but during the evening only. One day with all-day availability. And one day where you can work as early as possible but have to leave by 3 for your set shift at another job.

You hope for 15-20 hours a week. You can get ahead of things again and get a cushion with 15-20 hours a week. At least to start. It'll be tough and you'll probably want to cry a lot, but it'll be a great way to quickly fix things.

Just fifteen to twenty hours a week for a few weeks. You're relatively young. And it's early enough in the fall that the weather won't make things worse.

And when you get the job and they tell you that your position will be for up to 30 hours a week, you think things are going almost to plan.

But then, the job starts. First, you'll accidentally be scheduled for time frames where you clearly stated when hired that you would not be available.

Then, there just won't be any shifts.

You realize that they essentially hired for seasonal staffing in September and that there's a lot of staff and very few hours for most. But... it'll be okay, right? Eventually, there will be hours, right?

I mean, there are enough hours that you won't have a day off for three months and you have 12+ hour work days followed by days where you need to make-up extra time at your full-time job because you needed to leave immediately at the end of the work day one night and it put you behind schedule on a project. But you're not getting that extra 15-20 hours a week you wanted. You're barely getting 20 extra hours a month.

At least you're sort of saving on gas, though, right? Two nights a week, you're not driving home in rush hour traffic- the gas should be lasting a little longer, right? It would be, if it wasn't for how you have to schedule all your medical appointments for either the beginning of the day or the middle of the day, as this new job only does the scheduling a week in advance and makes doing end-of-day appointments near impossible. So when you have a mid-day appointment, you're driving 30 miles away from the office and then 30 miles back, to go back to work. No gas saved.

But, if I hang on through the holidays, it'll eventually pick-up, right? And even though, with 2-3 shifts a week at this job, you often feel like crying as the prospect of having to go to it after a rough day at another job, you convince yourself that if it does pick up to that beautiful 15-20 range, you'll stick with it. It'll be worth it. You won't destroy yourself at that point.

Even when the weather turns cold and your left foot becomes convinced that it's broken. Even when everyone at your full-time job starts telling you that you look worn-out, because you've been working your ass-off for that job at the same time.

And all your favorite co-workers at this third job start leaving, not having the patience to hang-on for the holiday season. So, you hope there's at least a silver lining of more shifts coming.

But, even when the Thanksgiving-week schedule comes out, things don't seem to have picked up. And you've hung on to this job that's not helping when you might as well have looked for one that would give you that sweet 20 extra hours a week for a few weeks.

Maybe it's time to look into becoming a Christmas Elf.