Sybil Bruncheon's "Christmas Bulletins From Out & About"... Wauseon, Ohio...

Breaking News from the Wilbur Wallerburton Elementary School Variety Players...

Mr. Herman Grabner, the drama teacher, has announced that for the Christmas Nativity Pageant, the role of King Herod will be played by Jeffy Chalmers because of his prematurely matured basso-baritone voice, and because his Ramses II costume is as close to a Judean King as the school can get right now with budget cuts.

Other cast members in the production include Carl Turph as Joseph, Mabel Haslip as the Virgin Mary, Georgie Malk as the sullen Innkeeper, his twin sister Inez as his grumpy wife, and Hester Dupling, Phil Kaston, Vera Buj, Nancy-Ann Norris, Perkin Gimph, Debbie Marcos, and several other grade schoolers as villagers, shepherds, local Bethlehem business persons, concerned and sore-afraid bystanders, and various animals milling about the stable, climbing over fences, and head-butting an annoying drummer boy, etc. The Hazleton triplets will play the three wise men; Stella, Dee-Dee, and Shirley-Jo as Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar respectively…

Felix Mamburton returns yet again as the Angel of the Lord because of his unusual soprano voice which is still going strong even though Felix just celebrated his 17th birthday. Showtimes are at 6 and 10 with a cookie and hard cider reception after the later performance and a meet-the-cast question and answer symposium till midnight. Reservations are recommended… but may be ignored.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Aren't Folks Funny?"... Miss Mitzi and Her "Friend"...

A neighbor yelled, “There’s Mitzi! She’s got something on a leash!

Is that a cat, so round and black? And look! How hairy! Jeeesh!”.

Another cried, “You’re wrong! Dead WRONG! It clearly is a dog!

Some freakish breed from far-off lands, or just a damn hedge-hog!”.

Miss Myrtle Mae claimed, “It’s a wolf whose glands have run amok!”.

Then Sally-Ann said, “You’re a fool! It’s a wingless, no-billed duck!”.

Reverend Peek let out a gasp and crossed himself and swore,

“That beast is from the Bible. It’s Babylon’s curséd Whore!”.

Each person saw and made a guess at what the creature was;

A guinea pig, a stoat, a rat, a rolling piece of fuzz?

A marmoset, a caracal, a goblin shark, a sloth!

A praying mantis, spider crab, maybe a poodle moth?

A pangolin, a scotoplane, a kiwa hirasuta! 

An Italian alto passing by said “Whatever! Eeet’s so cuta!”.

Folks stumbled up to point and stare and claim they knew the truth;

“It’s a starnosed saber-tooth ocelot without its saber tooth!”.

The fervor climbed to fever-pitch, a stampede then did ensue.

Hollywood was notified. And Selznick sent a crew.

Each day that passed the numbers grew to wait in frenzied state.

As Mitzi with her little friend would stroll behind the gate.

And then one day, Miss Mitzi said, “The time has come, it’s clear.

I must address this panic that has filled their hearts with fear!

They point and scream and tear their clothes! They swear and bite their thumbs.

They push themselves against the wall and crush my favorite mums!!”.

So one bright morn, she made a plan to leave the gate ajar.

And as the crowds assembled, she beckoned them near and far.

“Come in, come in!”, she called to all. “It’s a day so very fine!

I’m just so thrilled to have you here! Meet my daughter, Clementine!”  

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “Holiday Hospitality!”… reach out and touch someone!

Facebook Friends! During this Holiday season, won't you do your part to make everyone feel welcome?? At the Ice Cream Sociable, the Fruit-Cake Exchange, The Overseas Tollhouse Cookie Drive, or even the Office Mambo-Mixer, please make sure to ask that shy "wall-flower" for a spin on the dance floor. ...And nothing says "Merry Christmas" better than a dance card with YOUR name in it!!!!! Go on... she probably smells wonderful... even if holding her close does make you itch... or if she's infested with squirrels... (With thanks to George Sweet for the photo of Douglasina Furr!)

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Sybil Bruncheon's TV reminiscences... The ups and downs of "the little screen"...

You know, folks, at the end of every television season, I get kind of melancholy about all the amazing TV shows that I was cast in over the years... but that didn't make it past a season or two... or even the pilot. Ah well...

TOUCHED BY A CARROT (1971-1973): A nice lady gardener falls in love with a huge orange vegetable she has grown. After winning blue ribbons at county fairs, it abandons her and later runs for president. Comedy ensues.

TAMBOURINE MAN-GIRL (1969): A lady gym-teacher decides that dodgeball offers no fulfillment and takes up with a traveling jug-band as their bouncer. Sadly, her nickname is "Mr. Debbie".

MR. POOF'S PIXIES (1973-1974): A Saturday morning children's show involving cartoons, guest appearances by zoo animals, carnival clowns, and pain-free dentists. I was hired to teach table manners and ballroom dancing to the preschoolers in the live audiences. I often smelled of urine, especially when we did "Kiddie-Tango"...

BUT I LIKE VEGETABLES! (1978-1979): A spin-off of TOUCHED BY A CARROT. The lady gardener, now single but still nice, makes her own way into the world of politics as a vegan candidate for governor of an unnamed but cattle-centric state, probably Texas. Her carrot-lover, now president, has an on-again-off-again romance/rivalry with her. Comedy ensues.

WHATTSUP? (1975-1976): A lady teacher in an inner city school has heartwarming (and life-affirming!) adventures with a gang of quadriplegic graffiti-thugs. She turns their lives around by making them into Bergdorf-Goodman make-up artists to the rich and famous. They hold their tools in their mouths.

HEY, GURRRRRRRRRRL! (1981-1982): A spin-off of WHATTSUP?, the lady school teacher takes students who've lost their arms in bizarre shop-class accidents and opens a hair salon on the roof of Saks Fifth Avenue. They do color, cuts, and blow-outs using their feet. Also heartwarming and life-affirming.

SCHOOL'S OUT …AND BURNED TO THE GROUND (1982-1983): Broad sit-com set in an end-of-the-world dystopia. Lady school teacher opens orphanage for children and childish adults, and makes due with radishes, foraged styrofoam, and common sense. A message at the end of every one of the three completed episodes.

I MARRIED MY DOG (1983-1984): A nice but awkward young paleontologist claims his bichon-frisé, Bitzy, is his reincarnated fiancée and marries her. Comedy ensues when the police find him walking her in a collar, leash, and negligée. I provided Bitzy's voice.

ZORT & THE POOOSIES (1984-1985): A man from another planet lands in suburban Milwaukee and gets a job at a brewery. He forms a garage band with three beautiful policewomen and they solve crimes on the side. I played their housekeeper, Bertha.

I'M A KID! BITE ME (1985-1986): A nice lady from a Republican gardening club, bumps her head, and through amnesia, becomes a wacky neighborhood troublemaker with a slingshot and a penchant for practical jokes on her former friends. Comedy ensues when she burns down the statehouse.

HI! MY FACE IS ON A MILK CARTON (1987-1988): An eccentric lady-performance-artist in NYC's downtown art scene begins meeting and saving street urchins during her sidewalk presentations. Each week, she rescues a new child and starts them on a new life... comedy ensues along with heartwarming, life-affirming messages and mild violence and nudity.

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SYBIL'S STORY BOOK CORNER: An Irish Tradition...

Oh, Children!!...so many of you have said, "Please Mummie! Don't stop telling us stories of your Christmases from around the world!".... and I have said, "OKAY!".... Here's a charming tradition from Ireland where some of Mummie's funny relatives come from. On Christmas Eve at about 2 in the morning, children wait up to hear the sound of jingling bells and a knock on the door. Sometimes, it's a very loud knock, even pounding...and then some mumbling, or yelling...or yelling and singing. Or someone jingling bells... or keys, and yelling a song in a very grumpy voice. And maybe breaking things out on the front porch! When it finally stops, children peek out the window to see St. Nicholas, often accompanied by his friend Old Sooty McAshburn sleeping!! ... or at least lying quietly face down!! They've brought toys and sometimes candies or even funny drinks for all the good children to have. And when the children are sure that St. Nick and Sooty won't wake up, they tip toe carefully outside and quietly get the treats and dash quickly back inside and bolt the door. Of course, many older children don't believe in St. Nick or Sooty. They claim that it's just Daddy and a nice neighbor man dressed up having fun... and that when they fall down they have to "sleep off" their fun. What do YOU think, Children??

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Sybil Bruncheon's Breaking News from the CNN news desk!... Wauseon, Ohio... and the luncheon!

The Wauseon Republican Ladies Luncheon Club celebrated their 43rd anniversary with their "Come As Your Favorite Movie Star Holiday Extravaganza!"..... each year the gals spend months on their costumes and accessories, hair-dos and make-up to come as their Hollywood idols. And some of them are really quite convincing! From left: Mrs. Lurleen Hankin as Joan Fontaine, Mrs. William Guttle as Sally Ann Howe, Mrs. Deedee Tepp as Eva Gabor, Mrs. Scottina Mootlin as Radie Harris, Mrs. Francine Wendover as Ethel Merman, Mrs. Gertrude Julian as Rosalind Russell, Mrs. Freda Quarles as Angela Lansbury, Mrs. Kiki Tunwhistle as Patrice Munsel, and the caterer, Mr. Cliff Hunt as his mother.... who was an usherette at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Details at 6. Plaster of Paris footprints at 11. Stay tuned.

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Sybil Bruncheon’s Christmas Memoirs: My Adventures on Christmas TV Specials...

Have I told you about my adventures with one of my favorite photographers over the years?? Lawrence Hunter was by my side for so many of those planned (and UNplanned!) moments in one's career! Here's one from a Christmas television special that almost was!!!......

Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) and I had known each other for years and traveled in the same circles in New York during the 40s and 50s. It was in that vein that, as television became bigger and bigger an entertainment medium, he suggested that I play a new character he came up with in the Christmas of 1956, "Mrs. Finch", a charming and slightly mischievous creature who would bring toys and treats for underprivileged children on Christmas eve in a flying saucer!!... from the planet Uranus!!! 

The concept ingeniously incorporated charity to the poor, social awareness, interplanetary brotherhood, and the birth of the space industry in the newly created NASA. Sadly, our sponsors at Nabisco felt that any mention of "Uranus" was ..."unappetizing for a brand of breakfast cereals and cookies", as Cuthbert Cubbins, the chairman of the board described it.

This, despite the fact that the Nabisco logo had always reminded people of a flying saucer...and that "Nabisco" did NOT in fact mean "National Biscuit Company", but was an anagram for “Bascion”, a Gaelic word from the Renaissance that loosely translated to “ baked goods from other worlds” (the Irish always had a fanciful sense of so-called wee-people and the color green).

Anyway, Theodor and I lost the argument, and the project was ..um... shall we say, re-imagined in a more conventionally acceptable way… although, the story became more of  a diatribe against J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy, and the neo-fascistic metaphor of the Jolly Green Giant… but that’s a story for another time!

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SYBIL'S STORY BOOK CORNER: Christmas Celebrations Around the World!

Yes, Children, it's true! Christmas is celebrated in all sorts of different ways by our Friends in other lands! Did you know that in Mummie's own home country of Greater & Lesser Marnier and the Triple Sec Islands, children of all ages get up bright and early on the day before Christmas to be part of "Santa's Sleigh Ride". They hook themselves to the fastest cars and trucks in town symbolizing Santa's very own magic sleigh, and they are dragged out into the countryside, over hill and dale for hours of merriment and eventually screams...of ....um...delight. Later, that night, at say... oh, two in the morning or so... the remaining children are dragged back into town to be reunited with their parents and the hypothermia units at our hospitals...... And on Christmas morning, they open the presents waiting for them!!...mittens for Sally, an electric blanket for Beatrice, tickets to St. Barts for Pierre.... a new artificial leg for Genevieve!! ...ah, good times!...good times... How many of you dear readers would like to go on the same merry "Santa's Sleigh Ride"??

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Sybil Bruncheon's Holiday Favorites!... "A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS!"...

A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS!!! ...One of my favorite Holiday traditions. I love watching it with a big thermos of eggnog (spiked heavily and don't skimp on the freshly ground nut meg! I like my hallucinogens!) The music by Vince Guaraldi of course is like an additional character, and it's entered the American-Christmas psyche forever, I'm sure. Even in Walmarts, when the main theme comes over their muzak, shoppers by the hundreds stop and smile, their oversized carts with the wonky front wheel full of sweatsocks, diaper wipes, tinsel, and beef stew.... of course, it IS a bit discouraging to realize that the original cast of children is all in their mid-eighties now. On the other hand, it’s heartening to know that the dog that played Snoopy lived to be 162...

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Sybil Bruncheon's CHRISTMAS UPDATES: ... Macy's Employees' Holiday Benefits...

...Macy’s Department Store has opened a special “Employee Holiday Relaxation Clinic”! And with the world-famous Macy’s Santas working overtime to satisfy hundreds of children everyday, the Human Resources division has determined that every possible stress should be …um…”relieved”. Here, a trained psychological-health professional applies her skills to an exhausted but devoted worker….. and she’s even reciting, in a loud and commanding voice, the names of reindeer and oblong vegetables and anything else that will work to bring him, um… satisfaction!

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