Sometimes the Christmas Season comes around and it is a blustery evening and you have only one impulse, desire and wish: to watch a Cheesy Christmas Movie. And not just any Cheesy Christmas Movie, but one of the Hallmark/Lifetime variety. They're a special blend of mediocre (at best) writing, luke warm acting, costuming that inevitably looks like it came from the 2003 December issue of What People Who Dislike Themselves Wear magazine and heart-warming fake snow with a mistletoe kiss or two.

You find yourself craving that certain sort of holiday comfort found in the predictability of the three possible plot lines and the jazz flute remixes of Christmas carol classics ranging from Silent Night to Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

And sometimes you seek to satisfy that craving. So you log on to Netflix from your Mac Jacobs and peruse the assortment of Christmas fudge and cheese balls in the form of Recipe for a Perfect Christmas and Mrs. Miracle. After you've made your selection you watch with the rational half of yourself (which at any time of the year would probably be considered reasonable and worth listening to, but at this time and season sounds more like Scrooge in his miserly hay day) screams at you that what you are watching is manipulative, stupid and poorly done. But the other half of you (where sugar plums dance, everyone wears blackwatch plaid fancy dress with red shoes and lives on carmalitas, poppy seed bread and mint brownies) stuffs a sock in your rational self's mouth and activates your tear ducts.

Yes. You. Cry.

You cry because the two love interests just don't know how to communicate yet but they've got to before Christmas Eve or the pageant will be ruined and the children will become fully dysfunctional instead of just charmingly high spirited and mischievous. And then your throat starts to close up when, finally, just before midnight on Christmas Eve, the whole thing turns out all right. The new family made up of the love interest protagonists and charmingly high spirited children spend time with the old family that consists of a newly forgiven sister, her husband and their strange animatronic baby (only Lifetime still uses animatronics, guess a real baby just isn't in the budget). The tear slides down your cheek, the same shine as silver tinsel on the perfect Christmas tree on the film set.

And so help you, you're almost surprised that it all worked out so well. That is, until the credits start rolling and you come off your Hallmark high and remember that what you just watched was #1 in the three plot choices for those movies. But despite that, you are Christmas contented and everything looks like you've drunk the milk of human kindness offered to you by the Ghost of Christmas Present in Lifetime's sixth version of A Christmas Carol.

Sometimes that happens. Only sometimes.

It's that time of year when the world fills with love and when I confess my Christmas Music Before Thanksgiving infraction. I had held personally pretty strong until it came upon this mid-morning clear, when I just reached the snapping point. I needed a little Christmas right that very moment. I was writing my dramatic lit. paper (checking it twice), where I deconstruct the performances of the contestant designers and judges on Project Runway using postmodern practices(yes, yes, I know you're jealous, you wish you're final paper could be half as intriguing and current as mine is). When almost without knowing it, my mouse walked in a winter wonderland over to the iTunes icon. Clicked, and then rockin round the playlist tree to the Ks . . .and what does that naughty (or nice?) curser do? It clicks on Kurt Bestor's Noel. The first album of Christmas. So help me, I listened as I tried to cook my ideas for the paper like so many chestnuts roasting on an open fire. It was holly. It was jolly. And I don't regret a single note of it.

I guess there's only one thing left to say, although it's been said many times, many ways:

Let the Most Wonderful Time of the Year begin!!

Now don't keel over from the shock of hearing from me twice in one day after such an absence. But what I'm about to tell you warrants a two-post day.

It's no secret that I love theatre. And by love I also mean I am incredibly passionate about this particular art form. I go to see as much theatre as my wallet and planner allow. There are times when I am re-reminded the reasons theatre has survived for two thousand years and why I have fallen in love with it. There are also times that my pride in being a part of the BYU theatre program grows. Last night was such a time on all three accounts. Because of this:

I wept like a child and wanted to create into infinity because of this. I'm not sure what to say exactly because anything I say would probably guild the lily or cheapen the moment. One thing I will say: grow some culture and go see it. But save one ticket for me because I plan on being there once more.

(I'd also like to give a side note shout out to the BYU arts production for going back to using illustrations for the publicity posters for the shows . . .I feel as if my dissatisfaction was heard and the world was made better).

This semester (which I realize is almost over and I've neglected this little note so long that now it's probably forgotten in the back of your desk drawer) I'm taking a puppetry class. Yes, I'm learning the craft of Jim Henson, Adrian and Basil as well as the Tanglewood Marionettes.

You don't have to tell me because I'll beat you to it:

Ladies and gentleman I am a part of the world's coolest field of study.

One of our recent projects was to create a parade puppet that advocated for some kind of social cause. I was in a group of three. And for some reason I'm still trying to tease out, we, as bright, young women, who are advocates for the arts and generally socially aware, chose to create a puppet to raise awareness about not throwing your gum on the ground where birds can eat it. Once the birds eat the old gum, it expands in their stomachs and they die, or so swears one of the girls in my group. . . whether or not I actually believe it expands in the bird's stomach and doesn't just sit there like a flavorless zebra striped rock, is beside the point. The fact is, we (where we is used in a rather loose sense) chose to be advocates for little gum ingesting birdies everywhere. The validity of the cause aside, we made a pretty kick kidney puppet. Behold:

Feel free to be impressed. That loveable blue bird is probably about 500 times the size of an actual blue bird and is made of hot glue, blue felt, hot glue, styrofoam, hot glue, wire, hot glue and plastic tubing. Oh and 6 fake feathers. Bet you just want to cuddle him. Well, I'm here to tell you, he doesn't cuddle . . .but he does dance.

The musical accompaniment and artistic cinematography as well as the really cool video quality are all complimentary bits of the experience. If you're not a hip enough film consumer to appreciate the artistic choices of this little documentary, then look at content. Isn't he utterly charming when he dances? Of course he is. He's made of hot glue magic.

Y'all, y'all, y'all. My mama and I had a girls' date on Wednesday and we got ourselves to the nearest movie theater, bought us some popcorn and sat down to the best two hour book turned film I've seen in a long time The Help. Do you remember me talking to y'all about the novel. First of all, get off your hiney and get your sad self to the library and borrow a copy if you've not read it. Second, read it and then get your less sad self to a cinema and watch this movie. I mean it.

Aibileen. Oh mercy. I'm not even really sure what to say, other than: spot on. Gorgeously done.

And Skeeter. At first I wasn't sure (before I saw the movie) I mean I adore Emma Stone (I have since House Bunny and The Rocker. What ya looking at? You don't know my life) but I had my doubts. But child, I'm a believer now. Look at her. And the thing is, it's not just her, everyone was perfectly cast. The acting was honest and sensitively done. And the chemistry between the cast as a whole was enough to make you believe in movies again. Hallelujah! I believe.

Just do yourself a favor, go see it. Love the costuming. Love the accents. Love the storytelling and the acting. And I'm not going to tell you to be moved and learn something but I'm telling you you're made of something less like jello and more like stone if you don't.

And so it comes to an end, mes amis. SYTYCD Season 8. And I'm not sure I could be any happier with the results. Because guess who won?

Melanie. Fat sack of a dancing force in a pixie body with a dash of acting finesse and adorableness. I mean come on. Do you see her hair cut? The girl has naturally curly hair and she still rocks a boy/pixie cut. How on earth. It makes a person (and I bet you can't guess who) feel almost tempted to go out and tempt the curly haired fate and chop all the cheveux straight off. But I digress. Melanie won and she deserved it. I think in all the seasons I've been watch SYTYCD I've not been as satisfied with the winner as I am this year. Usually the naming of the winner on the season finale sees me a nervous wreck, who has to fast forward through Cat's whole speech and then feeling a bit let down by who was crowned. And although the first part of that equation was entirely true (the dilapidated state of our den's love seat is a testament to that), the second most definitely was not. After a wonderful finale showing us highlights of this truly inspiring (when they have good dancers and good choreography I find the show to be so creatively inspiring I just have to talk to the computer or tv screen) dancing watching Melanie cry her eyes out and saying "thank you" after being named winner, was equivocal and perfect. I guess the ending of Season 8 means summer is ending, fall is coming and school is starting. But it was such a good season I suppose I can't be any kind of sad (especially since I have a whole new set of dances to use as homework breaks in the dead of winter).

All good Americans go to Paris when they die. Thomas Appleton, a 19th century American rich-boy, artist/writer/arts lover, said that.

It may be because I'm reading David McCullough's new book The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris or that I'm watching Julie/Julia right now or just my general neuroses but I've been nostalgic for ma belle ville more than usual lately. Perhaps this is a bit melodramatic, but Paris is always a dull ache in a small corner of my heart. Something always pulls me back to that city. And I'm not the only one. According to McCullough's book, thousands and thousands of Americans crossed the Atlantic to see and learn in the City of Lights in the 19th century. Many went back again and again, while other just staid.

More than anything I want Appleton to be right, or I guess not quite that far but I think if my version of heaven could have a slightly cleaner Paris, where the metro always runs on time because the workers never are on strike and I'm never without someone's hand to hold whilst strolling in Parc Monceau and I could live in the Musee Rodin . . .well I think I'd be vachement contented. But I suppose more than that I want to go be the good American who goes there again while she's still living. I've never been in a city that I felt more immediately at home in. I was comfortable as soon as the jet lag wore off. Is it possible to fall in love with a city? I never thought much of Paris as a teenager or really at all until I applied to study there. I thought it was the city that people pretended was wonderful and put into bad teen movies about vespas and twins and fashion. Which of course, it absolutely is not. But in some ways, it was like it was meant to be. Now that I've put enough vaseline on the lens of the camera filming this post, so everything is misty and glowing, I suppose I only have one thought: read Mr. McCullough's book. Eat it up like chevre and chocolat. And then go get a private French tutor . . .I know I probably should.