Whenever I travel, I think about buying real estate wherever I am. I live in Los Angeles. I love my Hollywood neighborhood. Due to the peculiarities of the housing market, there are two houses on my block which have been for sale for over a year. I’d be pleased to own either one of them, but they both list at more than a mil, despite the fact that clearly nobody is rushing to pay that for either of them. So I rent. Even if I had a million and a half dollars to drop on real estate, which alas I currently do not, I wouldn’t spend it on something unlikely to appreciate and unlikely to sell for what I paid for it. This sort of thing causes me to drool at the costs for houses in Portland and even shopping malls in Baltimore. I travel and I think I could just write a check for a house in many cities yet I despair of ever buying one in Los Angeles.

But then something like Hunky Santa rolls around and reminds me why I can never leave La-La-Land. For the last half dozen years, my favorite local mall, the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills, has featured a Hunky Santa. (I probably spend more at South Coast Plaza where I get my hair cut, but that is in another county and thus does not count as local.) This year, Hunky Santa has been getting a frantic flurry of attention, way above and beyond prior years, because they cast Eli Wilhide as Hunky Santa and he is remarkably perfect for the role, in both appearance and personality presentation. According to All Things Christmas, in order to play the sexy son of Old Saint Nick, one had to best 350 other applicants for the job of Hunky Santa. Eli Wilhide brings his experience as an Anthony Robbins motivational speaker or Peak Performance Strategist to the role of Hunky Santa. Eli Wilhide certainly works at that peak performance thang, as evidenced by his diet and workout tips for the LA Times and of course the results of his regimen.

As Xmas approaches, during the week and early in the day, the Beverly Center features Classic Santa and then, on weekends later in the day, Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane girls do hourly performances thereafter. A lot of people show up for this hourly act and some dress up their dogs or children in red ribbons or Santa hats to get into the holiday spirit for the occasion. There are two huge red silks hung down multiple floors of the mall for female acrobatic Candy Cane girls to contort on. The shows also feature those dances where the chick waves the ribbon around and does impressive flexible moves, like they had during the Olympics. I admit that, here at Blue Blood Global Secret HQ, we did refer to the ribbon event as the Stripper Olympics, but I digress. The Candy Cane girls also included a particularly awesome and effervescent stilt-walker.

After each show, both Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane girls move through the considerable audience making people feel holiday cheer and just radiating a certain pleasant warmth. I think that kind of intense close-up attention would make me hyperventilate with social anxiety after a few days, but I was extremely impressed with how welcome and joyous Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls were able to make shoppers feel. They really brought an upbeat vibe to an otherwise less-than-cheery holiday shopping crowd.

So I will always love that Los Angeles is the kind of place where they would be able to cast the perfect Hunky Santa and have incredibly talented Candy Cane Girls. Just for weekend performances at the mall.

In 2005, an Alaskan named Billy Powers and his kids built a sixteen foot snowman. It is not clear how the giant Frosty lookalike came to be known by the moniker of Snowzilla, but the attributes of being monstrously giant and made of snow probably both had something to do with it.

There is nothing like an enormous snowman to capture the hearts and minds of people who love to frolic in the snow. I hope the denizens of Anchorage enjoy frolicking in the snow. According to City Data, Anchorage has a significantly above average crime rate, but Alaskans get to enjoy sixty inches of snow a year to make up for the extra arson, assault, murder, and so forth. Then again, the Anchorage airport is named after extremely indicted U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, so maybe the people of Anchorage enjoy crime more than snow after all is said and done.

Somebody in Anchorage sure is Grinch-y, anyway, because city zoning stopped the Powers family and friends from completing their annual Snowzilla in 2008. Apparently, some Scrooge felt that the joyful snow behemoth disrupted traffic patterns by attracting rubberneckers and camera crews. Reportedly, all but the head of Snowzilla was complete when the order for his execution was handed down. Snowzilla may be missing his head, but some people in Anchorage are going to be getting coal in their stockings this year for lacking a heart.

All that glitters may not be gold, but I love it. I am a magpie for tinsel and colored lights. I think Santa hats are all adorable.

Only I’m not a holiday person. My parents eloped and haven’t been cool with a special occasion since. They would rather see their offspring any day of the year which does not fall on a holiday, birthday, or other special commemorative occasion. So I admit that the whole December freak-out thing misses me. Occasionally other people get me thoughtful gifts and I appreciate them. But mostly I enjoy the decorations and the eating a lot.

Many people believe that suicide rates climb through the roof during the Winter Solstice, Xmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, etc. season. Countless serious psychological studies and demographics analyses have entirely debunked the notion that suicides go up during Christmas. In point of fact, on average, fewer people either commit suicide or attempt suicide (parasuicide is the bonus vocabulary word of the day!) around the December 24 and December 25 dates and the month surrounding them.

The faulty theory is that lonely people are made more aware of their loneliness during a time of year when others can be visibly seen getting their connectedness groove on. There is also the Seasonal Affective Disorder concept that those afflicted with SAD (Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!) are more, uhm, sad during the less sunny months. Unless they get high end tanning beds under the tree.

The reality of Christmas suicide is that people socialize more in December. They eat more delicious food in December. They deny themselves less in December. They reach out and connect with their fellow man better in December. So they may be more stressed, but they are less depressed and kill themselves less often in December.

New Years, on the other hand, is a whole nother ball o’ death. Many studies have found a significant uptick in suicides and parasuicides as people ring in the New Year. I know I like to use the New Year as an opportunity for reflection and resolution, so maybe some people don’t like what they reflect on. Of course, more people kill themselves at the beginning of the workweek than on the weekends, so January 1 suicides may just be about the horror of having to go back to work.

At any rate, you can relax about Xmas because New Years Eve is actually the day you have to worry about. Aren’t you glad to get to procrastinate your self-harm another week? This will give you more time for shopping. I know I’m thinking about going to the Beverly Center mall and checking out Hunky Santa and the acrobat Xmas sluts later today.

Three very deviant ladies whose work I know well just perked up my holiday season like a handful of little blue pills and a mason jar of Alabama moonshine.

This may come as a shock to those who don’t know me, but the holiday season and I are not exactly sympatico. (Those who know me, however, are rolling their eyes: “We know, we know!”) I’m not sure at what point during my misspent childhood I turned into a Grinch, but knowing me it probably involved finding out that the Thompson submachinegun I’d just received under the tree wouldn’t, you know, kill anyone or anything. In fact, the damn thing was made of plastic.

Since then, I’ve developed less and less of a taste for the holidays every year, especially after working in the sex toy business where budgets lived and died based on the number of Class V Mister Fuck Double Dongs you move before December 24. I understand it’s the same with plasma televisions. The advertising blitz designed to make you cough up your hard-earned for that new sweater, or in recent years The Next New Shiny Thing, used to begin the day after Thanksgiving; then it was some nebulous date in early November; nowadays, the pumpkins are shredded in storefronts across the nation in the desperate race to get the damned Christmas trees up. “Bankrupt yourself,” the ads seem to say, “Or your Wife/ Husband/ Girlfriend/ Boyfriend/ Kids/ Dog/ Gynecologist won’t like you any more.” It’s Guilt Trips for Jesus, and I’m havin’ none of it.

The only thing that gets me through the holidays is all the Christmas themed smut that’s out there. I will admit, I am a sucker for the irreverent trope-orgy satisfaction of a themed photo shoot or dirty story, and three Blue Blood hotties just got to the heart of holiday happiness, with a dose of nasty Santa Claus and a succulent suck on a candy cane that’s been somewhere your pastor wouldn’t approve of.

First there’s lovely April Flores; now there’s someone whose spunky style is begging for the Blue Blood treatment. Curvy & gorgeous, April is the muse of photographer and videographer Carlos Batts; she is the main subject, in fact, of two of his erotic DVDs, Alter Ego and Voluptuous Life both of which which showcase her pouting, preening, dressing up, dressing down, having decidedly deviant fun with various people and generally looking amazingly hot. An extended cut of Voluptuous Life is out from Adam & Eve’s DVD sublabel Bad Seed — Carlos’s first major DVD distribution. I just got the disc today, in fact. I’m betting it’s even dirtier than the awesome indie-underground version.

In this Amelia G & Forrest Black shoot, April is dressed up like a candy cane and every bit as scrumptious. Bright red hair, silver gloves, red stockings and candystriped dress are enough to keep Santa happy (and off my roof!), but what every girl wants for Christmas is a pair of silver heels like these. Things get more interesting when April shows just how skillfully she can lick a candy cane, and let’s just say the dress, nice as it is, doesn’t last long and neither does the candy cane’s innocence.

Matching April’s candy cane and raising her Saint Nicki and a pervy lesbo elf are Michelle Aston and Aiden Starr. I had the pleasure of meeting Aiden Starr at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas last year, and since then I’ve made strange howling noises every time I think about her. Petite but naturally curvy, she’s an intoxicating mixture of sugar and spice, the sugar being honey the color of her shimmering blonde hair, and the spice being deadly nightshade with a hemlock chaser — just to my taste. If you don’t believe me, look at the wicked glint in her eyes: she loves to hurt people, you know it. Or maybe I know it, because she told me, and I’m fairly confident she was not blowing smoke up my ass given her sadistic bent showcased in about half a dozen BDSM flicks I’ve seen.

Who better than Aiden, then, to frolic as a green lipped corseted elf to Michelle Aston’s stiletto-heeled Santa? The answer is none, none more better. In these shots (also by Amelia & Forrest), things go from playful to PLAYFUL if you know what I mean, and if two dirty girls are having fun then it’s these two.

I love two particular things about this shoot. First, Aiden’s corset is not some schmantzy leather but what looks from this angle like down-to-business cream-colored number like what your tweaked-out gramma wore when she smoked reefer with Mitchum and did him and all his friends back in the ’50s. That, or it’s medical grade support fabric, which I don’t even want to think about — it gives me goosebumps. Anyway, I also love that Michelle has been practicing in the mirror, I think, between playing scenes from Sid & Nancy on repeat — she’s got her sneer down pat. If she didn’t chase each erotically derisive lip curl with the that slutty little thing she does with her tongue, I might think she didn’t like me.

You are never going to see two hotter women getting it on in holiday costumes, I guarantee it. After some luscious shots detailing these two beauties’ very special attributes, they get delightfully busy, and strategic portions of both Santa’s and elf-girl’s wardrobe go bye-bye along with my holiday gloom, and probably yours too if you’ve got any taste in the ladies.

I first wrote and published this article October 29 of 2005, but it is that time of year again and I’m simultaneously having a lot of fun and really stressed out from being stretched so thin. We’re crazy busy, so I’ll make this brief. The “Blue Halloween” article has not been available through the Blue Blood site navigation since the redesign, and I was thinking that this is the time of year when some of you might need to hear this.

Around Xmas-time, a lot of apparently normal people get completely freaked out. They just want everything to be so so so very perfect. They tear up at the very thought of how perfect they want everything to be. They spend more money than they can really afford on things that neither they nor their friends and family really need. But- but- but it is Xmas and everything has to be so so so very perfect. If there is the slightest flaw in the ornaments or the gifts or the comfy sweater, then it is like there is no good fellowship among mankind, no peace on earth, no family love, blah blah blah.

Just try wandering through the mall around Yuletide and you will see the stress level I am talking about. I can look at that objectively and just sigh and think they need to relax and maybe get more mistletoe.

But Halloween rolls around and, ooh boy, I am singing a different carol. I just want everything to be so so so perfect. I mean, if every day is Halloween, then Halloween has to be super duper Halloween, right? Almost everyone I know is totally off the rails right now. Everyone I come across is so edgy that the slightest thing blows up into World War III.

A lot of the people I know are either doing totally nothing for Halloween this year except maybe taking their kids trick-or-treating. Or else they are trying to do twenty different things every night for the four nights around Samhain and hoping a chemical assist gets them through.

My phone keeps ringing with people who want me to play free casting agent for them. My voicemail keeps overflowing, so I’m probably getting even more calls than I know for this stuff. Who knew there were so many mainstream organizations and people who wanted to throw a spooky party and didn’t realize until the end of October that they wanted some spooky people to perform at it? Now everyone I know who does performances is either (a) booked or (b) double-booked or (c) so hard to work with that I wouldn’t recommend them to someone I like or (d) totally spazzing out that it is Halloween and they want it to be so so so perfect.

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. The one day a year I was most myself. I suppose I should pat myself on the back that I get to enjoy those aspects of myself pretty much 24/7/365 now. Maybe everyone I know should give themselves a bit of an attaboy for the very same reason.

I tell myself that serious drunks don’t go out on New Year’s. They know that is amateur night. But somehow the comfort rings hollow. I just want everything to be so so so perfect for Halloween.

The costumes, the parties, and the sweets, the pranks, the tricks, and the treats all have to be just right or there is no community, nothing is cool, all my choices have been wrong, there is no joy in Mudville, the sky is falling, blah blah blah.

I’m glad I don’t freak out in December. That would be so unimaginative, dull, and mundane. Or maybe it would be the same damn thing on a different calendar.