The Critical Drinker
Published 1 Sept 2025Toxic makeup, deadly pyrotechnics, abusive directors, drugged-up child actors and horny midgets — The Wizard Of Oz had it all, and much more. Join me as I recount the insane production of the 1939 classic.
December 27, 2025
Production Hell – The Wizard Of Oz
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QotD: The US Department of War does “The Twelve Days of Christmas”
The President signed an EO directing the Department of War to assist Santa with the Twelve Days of Xmas.
Status of acquisitions follows:
Day 1 – Partridge in a Pear Tree:
The Army and Air Force are in the process of deciding whose area of responsibility Day 1 falls under.
Since the partridge is a bird, Air Force believes it should have the lead. Army, however, feels trees are part of the land component command’s area of responsibility.After three months of discussion and repeated OpsDeps tank sessions, a $1M study has been commissioned to decide who should lead this joint program.
Day 2 – Two Turtle Doves:
Since doves are birds, the Air Force claims responsibility. However, turtles are amphibious, so the Navy-Marine Corps team feel they should take the lead. Initial studies show that turtles and doves may have interoperability problems.Terms of reference are being coordinated for a four-year, $10M DARPA study.
Day 3 – Three French Hens:
At State Department instigation, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs has blocked off-shore purchase of hens, from the French or anyone else.A $6M program is being developed to find an acceptable domestic alternative.
Day 4 – Four Calling Birds:
Source selection has been completed, with the contract awarded to AT&T.However, the award is being challenged by a small disadvantaged business.
Day 5 – Five Golden Rings:
No available rings meet MILSPEC for gold plating.A three-year, $5M accelerated development program has been initiated.
Day 6 – Six Geese a-Laying:
Six geese have been acquired.However, the shells of their eggs seem to be very fragile. It might have been a mistake to build the production facility on a nuclear waste dump at former Air Force base closed under BRAC.
Day 7 – Seven Swans a-Swimming:
Fourteen swans have been killed trying to get through the Navy SEAL training program.The program has been put on hold while the training procedures are reviewed to determine why the washout rate is so high.
Day 8 – Eight Maids a-Milking:
The entire class of maids a-milking training program at Aberdeen is involved in a sexual harassment suit against the Army.The program has been put on hold pending resolution of the lawsuit.
Day 9 – Nine Ladies Dancing:
Recruitment of Ladies has been halted by a lawsuit from the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Association”.Members claim they have a right to dance and wear women’s clothing as long as they’re off duty.
Day 10 – Ten Lords a-Leaping:
The ten lords have been abducted by terrorists. Congress has approved $2M in funding to conduct a rescue operation.Army Special Forces and a USMC MEU(SOC) are conducting a “NEO-off” competition for the right to rescue.
Day 11 – Eleven Pipers Piping:
The pipe contractor delivered the pipes on time. However, he thought DoD wanted smoking pipes. DoD lost the claim due to defective specifications.A $22M dollar retrofit program is in process to bring the pipes into spec.
Day 12 – Twelve Drummers Drumming:
Due to cutbacks, only six billets are available for drumming drummers. DoD is in the process of coordinating an RFP to obtain the six additional drummers by outsourcing. However, funds will not be available until FY 26.As a result of the above-mentioned programmatic delays, due to a high OPTEMPO that requires diversion of modernization funds to support current readiness, Christmas is hereby postponed until further notice.
“Old NFO Retired”, from social media courtesy of Moses Lambert.
Update, 29 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
December 26, 2025
Allied Bombing 1944 – Distraction and Destruction before Dresden
HardThrasher
Published 25 Dec 2025Hello my little Christmas puddings; today’s film covers the strategic bombing forces in WW2, what they did to support Operation Overlord, the aerial war across France and into Germany during 1944, taking out enemy formations, V1 and V2 sites, and breaking up the Nazi oil fields in the process. But all did not go according to plan … this is the inbetweeny bit from June – December 1944 and the part everyone forgets before the Bulge, Dresden and all that …
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:12 – A Word From Our Sponsor
00:03:25 – A Few Notes For New Viewers
00:04:02 – How End A War
00:06:25 – A 90 second (well 6 minutes) Recap of the story so far
00:12:15 – On With The Show
00:18:40 – The Key Players
00:20:10 – Enter Trafford Leigh-Mallory
00:24:05 – Trafford in Charge At the AEAF
00:26:15 – The Strategic Bombers Role In D-Day
00:27:29 – The Bombers As Part Of The Deception Plans
00:28:18 – Cutting Off Normandy
00:29:41 – The V1s, Poison Gas and Biological Warfare
00:37:31 – The One True Raid To End The War
00:41:50 – Self Harm in Normandy (It’s Trafford Time Again)
00:52:04 – Focus On Oil – Why, How and What Happened in 1944
01:05:00 – And on to Dresden
01:05:25 – Survivor’s Club
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The US-Mexican border
An amusing exchange on the social media site formerly known as Twitter:
Ordnance Jay Packard Esq. @OrdnancePackard
Hey @LineGoesDown, interesting your little map includes the Comancheria, a vast section of that northern green area that Mexico never set foot in because they’d get their shit pushed in by the Comanche.
It was only after the Mexican-American war that the United States put a stop to the Comanche using Mexico like an ATM.
It’s actually even funnier than that.
The reason Mexicans kept getting their shit pushed in by the Comancheria was gun control.
No, seriously. It was Spanish colonial policy to keep the population disarmed and rely entirely on deployment of the military to keep order and prevent Indian incursions. Mexico inherited this.
This was impossible. The land was vast. State capacity and the military were overstretched. The Comanches were too mobile. Result: misery and massacre.
Americans, inheriting the British colonial policy of everybody bring your own guns and form militias, didn’t suffer as badly. Raiders more often went where the soft targets were, and that meant the disarmed ones in the Mexican zone.
This is also why Alta California was so sparsely settled that Spanish and Mexican control over it was at best nominal. Anglo settlers were culturally and politically much better equipped to hold the territory, making the Mexican session eventually inevitable.
ESR, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2025-12-25.
Update, 28 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
The Pinnacle of Movie ⚔️Swordfights⚔️
Jill Bearup
Published 8 Sept 2025Scaramouche had, until recently, the longest swordfight in cinema history. It’s still regarded as one of the best. Why? Let’s talk about it.
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QotD: In defence of fruitcake
To start, fruitcake has two important things going for it:
- Fruit.
- Cake.
As we all know, fruit is healthy. We are constantly being badgered by dietary experts to eat more fruit. What better source of fruit is there than fruitcake? Besides every other source, I mean.
I do think it’s important here to dispel an enduring myth that the fruit in today’s modern fruitcakes is infused with colossal amounts of sugar.
That is a lie.
It is glacéed with colossal amounts of sugar, which is an entirely different process that involves speaking French.
Okay, I am willing to admit that the fruit you typically find in fruit cake these days, assuming you find any, has been … glacéed with so much sugar it resembles Gummies more than fruit, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that it has the word “fruit” in it, so when your doctor asks you if you’ve been eating fruit you can give him an answer that won’t necessarily require a visit to confessional both and a half dozen Our Fathers.
[…]
Fruitcake has a long history, dating back as far as the Egyptians and has played a role in shaping our lives to this very day. Roman legions used an early form of fruitcake called satura to fuel their expansion. Did they rely on kale salads and quinoa? No, otherwise we’d all be speaking German by now. Or something.
Fruitcake is versatile as well, appropriate for both breakfast and dessert, bookending your busy day. Plus, how many desserts can you wrap up and give as an actual gift as opposed to just something you bring to a dinner party? Let’s just say you aren’t going to drop banana pudding in a FedEx box.
And yes, all jokes aside, it really can be used as a doorstop. You can’t say that about peach flambé, if only for the safety hazard.
“One of our writers was crazy enough to pen this defense of fruitcake, God bless him”, Not the Bee, 2022-12-19.
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December 25, 2025
Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is still the best-selling single of all time
I knew Bing Crosby was big with my parents’ generation (including my father, unusually, who generally had little time for American singers), but I didn’t know that Bing’s recording of “White Christmas” is still, after all these years, the top single. Ted Gioia has more:
Pop culture devours its own. The destiny of all bestsellers is to fall off the charts. Even the stars in Hollywood, like those in outer space, eventually stop shining — and it happens a lot sooner.
Consider the case of Bing Crosby. Some of my readers might not even recognize the name. But a few people still alive today can recall when Crosby was both the biggest pop singer in the world and the hottest movie star in Hollywood.
Bing Crosby publicity photo from the 1930s via The Honest Broker
If he’s remembered nowadays, it’s only during December, when his version of “White Christmas” briefly returns to heavy rotation. Even today, it ranks as the bestselling single of all time. There aren’t many records that last eighty years, and least of all in the record business, but Crosby still sits atop this chart.
Here it is (courtesy of Wikipedia):
I’ve written about Crosby before, and will again. But today I want share four of my favorite (and very different) perspectives on Bing.
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Repost – “Fairytale of New York”
Time:
“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
This song came into being after Elvis Costello bet The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan that he couldn’t write a decent Christmas duet. The outcome: a call-and-response between a bickering couple that’s just as sweet as it is salty.
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QotD: Christmas dinner
It is a simple recipe for happiness. First the meal, then the antidote, then another meal. The ancient Romans were the great masters of this technique. However, having just looked up the word vomitorium in the Latin dictionary, I find that after all it does not mean a place where you went to be sick after dinner. So perhaps this was not a normal feature of every Roman home, as is commonly believed.
Implied in the above-mentioned advertisement is the notion that a good meal means a meal at which you overeat yourself. In principle I agree. I only add in passing that when we gorge ourselves this Christmas, if we do get the chance to gorge ourselves, it is worth giving a thought to the thousand million human beings, or thereabouts, who will be doing no such thing. For in the long run our Christmas dinners would be safer if we could make sure that everyone else had a Christmas dinner as well. But I will come back to that presently.
The only reasonable motive for not overeating at Christmas would be that somebody else needs the food more than you do. A deliberately austere Christmas would be an absurdity. The whole point of Christmas is that it is a debauch — as it was probably long before the birth of Christ was arbitrarily fixed at that date. Children know this very well. From their point of view Christmas is not a day of temperate enjoyment, but of fierce pleasures which they are quite willing to pay for with a certain amount of pain. The awakening at about 4 a.m. to inspect your stockings; the quarrels over toys all through the morning, and the exciting whiffs of mincemeat and sage-and-onions escaping from the kitchen door; the battle with enormous platefuls of turkey, and the pulling of the wishbone; the darkening of the windows and the entry of the flaming plum pudding; the hurry to make sure that everyone has a piece on his plate while the brandy is still alight; the momentary panic when it is rumoured that Baby has swallowed the threepenny bit; the stupor all through the afternoon; the Christmas cake with almond icing an inch thick; the peevishness next morning and the castor oil on December 27th — it is an up-and-down business, by no means all pleasant, but well worth while for the sake of its more dramatic moments.
Teetotallers and vegetarians are always scandalized by this attitude. As they see it, the only rational objective is to avoid pain and to stay alive as long as possible. If you refrain from drinking alcohol, or eating meat, or whatever it is, you may expect to live an extra five years, while if you overeat or overdrink you will pay for it in acute physical pain on the following day. Surely it follows that all excesses, even a one-a-year outbreak such as Christmas, should be avoided as a matter of course?
Actually it doesn’t follow at all. One may decide, with full knowledge of what one is doing, that an occasional good time is worth the damage it inflicts on one’s liver. For health is not the only thing that matters: friendship, hospitality, and the heightened spirits and change of outlook that one gets by eating and drinking in good company are also valuable. I doubt whether, on balance, even outright drunkenness does harm, provided it is infrequent — twice a year, say. The whole experience, including the repentance afterwards, makes a sort of break in one’s mental routine, comparable to a week-end in a foreign country, which is probably beneficial.
George Orwell, “In praise of Christmas”, Tribune, 1946-12-20.
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December 24, 2025
Welcome to Bland World
Ted Gioia yearns for the return of the weirdo, the eccentric, and the non-conformist to spice up our bland, smooth, grey world:
“People are less weird than they used to be,” claims psychologist Adam Mastroianni. He describes this as “an epidemic of the mundane”.
The strangest thing, he believes, is absence of strangeness. Nobody wants to make waves — or even trickles. Conformity is the flavor of the month, and it tastes the same every month.
We live in a “smoothness society”, explains philosopher Byung-Chul Han. He points to the smooth, rounded contours of the iPhone as a symbol of society’s desire to remove friction. Our phone apps demonstrate the exact same thing. We scroll and swipe with such ease, and anything with complexity, nuance, or resistance is eliminated from consideration.
“The smooth is the signature of the present time”, he claims. Everything from the Brazilian wax job applied to human bodies to the wax coating put on fruits and vegetables aims at the same ideal.
Resistance is futile. Everything must be smooth. Paradise now really is that paved parking lot.
In a world without complexity or resistance, nothing ever changes. Most movies, music, books feel like stagnant rehashes of the same formulas. And that’s intentional.
For the first time in history, fashions don’t change. We don’t change.
Others have noticed this avoidance of anything new or different. Things are designed to blend in, not stand out. Jessica Stillman, writing in Inc., complains about a “blandness epidemic“. Brian Klaas calls it the “surefire mediocre“.
Everywhere you look, the system is serving up more of the same.
It’s not just in our imagination — the “world really is getting grayer“. A researcher recently studied photos of household items going back two centuries. An analysis of the pixels showed a scary collapse in color.
Even the Victorians — often considered as conformists — lived a more color-filled life. We have almost completely abandoned red and yellow and other bright hues in favor a boring black-and-white spectrum.
But what’s most striking is how this descent into grayness has accelerated during the last few years. The most popular color is now charcoal — and at the current rate it will soon account for half of the marketplace.
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The Korean War Week 79: Soviet Technology Surpasses the USA – December 23, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 23 Dec 2025Both sides finally release POW information to each other, as required by the Geneva Convention, but neither side is happy with the information, charging it either wildly incomplete or grossly mischaracterized. The Communists also refuse to allow the Red Cross in and the UN doesn’t want compulsory repatriation of POWs, but both are required under Geneva. And away from the truce tables, the Communist air power menace continues to grow, but should there be an armistice will they be allowed to rebuild air bases in North Korea?
00:00 Intro
00:38 Recap
00:58 POW Lists
05:02 Repatriation
07:52 Geoje-Do
09:01 Ambush Program
09:54 Airfields or Armistice
12:00 Communist Air Power
13:23 Summary
13:32 Conclusion
14:50 Call to Action
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The real agenda
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Karl Harrison makes a case for fighting against the key element of the federal government’s all-encompassing drive to control the lives of Canadians because it’s the one that will enable all the other controls to operate:
All Canadians should read this carefully:
“They are flooding Parliament with distraction bills so the public is overwhelmed and cannot see the one bill that makes the entire system possible. More than a dozen federal bills are advancing simultaneously — each attacking a different pillar of Canadian freedom but S206 is the key. They fall into clear clusters:
Bills attacking due process and court rights.
Bill S-206 — Administrative Monetary Penalties (the central pillar) enables penalties without hearings, judges, trials, or common-law protections.
Bill C-63 — Online Harms Act. Undefined “harm”, digital speech penalties, CRTC enforcement authority.
Bill C-27 — Digital Charter Act. Creates federal AI regulators empowered to issue compliance orders without court oversight.
Bill C-52 — Beneficial Ownership Transparency. Expands federal surveillance and administrative enforcement.Bills attacking parliamentary supremacy (power shift to agencies).
Bill C-26 — Critical Cyber Systems Act. Sweeping regulation by order-in-council, bypassing Parliament.
Bill C-11 — Online Streaming Act. Gives the CRTC unprecedented control over content curation and digital reach.
Bill C-18 — Online News Act. Allows federal regulators to determine access to, and compensation for, digital journalism.Bills attacking property rights.
Bill C-234 — Agricultural Fuel Restrictions. Expands federal control over farm operations and production.
Bill S-241 — Jane Goodall Act. Sweeping biosafety authority over wildlife, land, and private property.
Bill C-49 — Atlantic Accord Amendments. Expands federal control over offshore land, climate restrictions, and energy development.Bills attacking freedom of speech and assembly
Bill C-63 — Online Harms Act. Criminalizes undefined “harm”, empowers bureaucrats to judge speech.
Bill C-261 — Misleading Communications Act. Penalties for “misleading” speech — undefined and discretionary.
Bill C-70 — Foreign Interference Act. Mass surveillance powers with vague thresholds.Bill attacking religion freedom.
Bill C-9 — “Harmful Conduct” Redefinition. Allows the state to regulate spiritual beliefs and pastoral work under “harm”.The critical pattern. Different bills, different sectors and different rights being attacked. But here is the truth: Every single one of these bills depends on ONE central enforcement pillar, and that pillar is:
Bill S-206 — The Administrative Penalty SwitchBill S-206, the hub of the entire system, gives federal departments the power to issue penalties without:
▪︎ a hearing
▪︎ a judge
▪︎ a trial
▪︎ due process
▪︎ common-law protections
▪︎ judicial review in practiceIt turns federal agencies into their own courts — investigator, prosecutor, judge, and enforcer. No democracy on Earth should tolerate this.
This is the enforcement engine behind:
▪︎ Digital ID
▪︎ CBDCs
▪︎ Carbon allowances
▪︎ Biosafety / One Health rules
▪︎ Smart-meter penalties
▪︎ Travel scoring
▪︎ Online speech controls
▪︎ Zoning & land-use mandatesData alone cannot control a population. They need the power to punish. S-206 provides it. Remove the keystone → the arch collapses.
Why scatter us with other bills? Because if Canadians focus on S-206, the agenda dies The distraction bills serve one purpose:
▪︎ to scatter attention and exhaust the public.
▪︎ to keep citizens debating side issues
▪︎ to hide the enforcement bill under noise
▪︎ to make resistance impossible to organize
▪︎ to create outrage fatigue
This is how large control systems are built — through distraction around the edges while the core is slipped into place.What are they building – and why S-206 is the core. Here is the architecture of the planned digital-governance system:
▪︎ Digital ID → who you are
▪︎ CBDCs → what you buy
▪︎ Carbon scoring → how you move & heat your home
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The Pagan Roots of Christmas
History With Hilbert
Published 23 Dec 2017It’s Christmastime everyone, as you can tell from the name, it has a lot to do with Christ and Christianity, after all, Jesus was born on the 25th of December, right? Well, not quite. Most of what we do at Christmas time has little or nothing to do with Christianity and is rather rooted in the ancient pagan pasts of both Europe and other places. In this video I’m going to explore the aspects of Christmas that come form the traditions and beliefs of the Northern Europe Germanic or Nordic Pagans as this is what I know the most about and what interests me the most. This isn’t to say there are more explanations for where certain traditions come from or that there were other groups who contributed aspects of our modern Christmas celebrations. Things like Carol Singing, Christmas Trees, Christmas Lights, Yule Logs, Christmas Dinner, Santa Claus, the Elves, New Year’s Resolutions and Kissing under the Mistletoe can all be traced back to the pagan times of our forefathers and to various characters of Norse Myth and Legend like Odin, Freyja, Baldr and Thor.
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QotD: Moderation for the inveterate port fan at Christmas
A nice spätburgunder, the delightful German word for pinot noir, would be a good alternative. Or perhaps an English red. They’re not easy to find or cheap but I can thoroughly recommend the 2020 pinot noirs from Gusbourne in Kent and Danbury Ridge in Essex.
With the turkey, keep the pork accessories to a minimum. Don’t sneak into the kitchen to polish off the pigs in blankets. Instead have lots of vegetables, but do not have seconds, no matter how tempting that might be. As for Christmas pudding, avoid, avoid, avoid. Maybe a crumb for appearances’ sake. But you must resist the sweet wine. I’m a sucker for a nice monbazillac but I’ve decided you don’t need port and sweet wine, and I’m going for the port. Eyes on the prize and all that.
The strategy is to reach the port and stilton course having consumed no more than the equivalent of one bottle of wine. Ideally less. If you’ve had two, that’s too much. Go for a walk.
Assuming you’ve reached this stage soberish and with a stomach that’s not rebelling, that doesn’t mean that you can suddenly channel your inner Georgian squire when the decanter comes round. Don’t be like John Mytton, one time MP for Shrewsbury, who arrived at Cambridge University with 2,000 bottles of port: unsurprisingly he didn’t graduate. He was notorious for drunken antics such as setting fire to his nightshirt in a bid to cure hiccups and once rode a bear into a dinner party for a jape. We’ve all had that urge after too much port.
It might seem heretical, but you don’t need to finish off the decanter at the table. A vintage port should be good for four or five days, whereas tawny lasts for weeks, so you can keep coming back to it. If there are only a few port fans in the family, it’s worth opening a bottle on Christmas Eve and having a glass or two. Then if you do decide to polish it off while outlining your plan for getting the British economy back on track, there won’t be quite so much in the bottle. Oh, and tiny glasses, please. Think Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany in Master and Commander.
When lunch is over, say no to coffee and find somewhere to have a nap until it’s time for a cup of tea. Try to avoid eating or drinking alcohol again for the rest of the day. But who am I kidding, I’ll probably open a bottle of Beaujolais to go with my turkey sandwich. And maybe a little port and Stilton. But nothing after nine o’clock. That is very important.
And so to bed for a good night’s sleep and awake rested, if not quite refreshed, and without an angry wife glaring at me. That’s the plan anyway.
Henry Jeffreys, “How to drink port without the storm”, The Critic, 2022-12-09.
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December 23, 2025
Vagabond by Tim Curry
Andrew Doyle reviews Tim Curry’s new autobiography Vagabond:
Tim Curry, Nell Campbell, Richard O’Brien and Patricia Quinn in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Tim Curry is a shapeshifter. I have a childhood memory of the moment I learned that the demon in Legend (1985), the villain in Annie (1982), the butler in Clue (1985) and the cross-dressing alien scientist in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) were all played by the same man. It was quite the revelation.
Curry’s protean talents have meant that as a personality he has forever remained mysterious. He rarely gives interviews – only grudgingly whenever there is a movie to promote – and fans have therefore tended to project onto this reclusive figure the persona that best fits their expectations or desires. When more insistent fans have formed an emotional bond with the Tim Curry of their imaginations, he has on occasion been forced to put them right. “I’m just a person,” he says, “and I’m not your person”.
Fans will therefore be delighted at the publication of Curry’s memoir, Vagabond, which offers fascinating snapshots from his life. The approach is episodic, with chapters devoted to particular projects in his career. As such, Curry offers us morsels in lieu of a meal. Those who are hoping for salacious anecdotes about his love life will be disappointed, because – as he rightly points out – “specifics about my affairs of the heart or the bedroom are – respectfully – none of your fucking business”. Instead, we have a wonderfully compelling account of Curry’s origins and how his philosophy of life has informed his craft.
Tim Curry as Wadsworth in Clue and King Arthur in Spamalot
His vagabond status has been well earned. As the child of a military father, he was forever on the move, and it is easy to see how these early experiences shaped his capacity to embody such a wide breadth of humanity. His first accolade came early when he was awarded the prize for the “Most Beautiful Baby in Hong Kong”. His family relocated roughly every eighteen months for the first eleven years of his life, which is why he tells us that “mutability felt like a part of my DNA”. It was the ideal apprenticeship for his future vocation.
Writing in 1817, William Hazlitt called actors the “motley representatives of human nature” who “show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be”. For his part, Curry sees the actor as the vagabond of his book’s title. “How can you trust somebody, or truly know somebody, who appears as a king one day and a jester the next? What does it mean when neither role is the true identity of the person, and when that very person might be gone the next day?” In this, he could be paraphrasing Hazlitt’s description of actors as “today kings, tomorrow beggars”, and how “it is only when they are themselves, that they are nothing”.
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