Batson's Blog

Thanksgiving is the official start to the Christmas season, right? So why not watch a Christmas movie? That's exactly what I decided to do this weekend. I've watched a few of Netflix's cheesy Christmas movies, mostly just to have some sound in my house as I go about chores here and there. Most of them have a facepalm moment or two, but The Christmas Chronicles had multiple facepalm moments. What a horrible movie! I'm typically fairly lenient on the Christmas movies, but it seemed like the writers didn't even try with this movie. It wasn't really bad enough to be funny. It certainly wasn't funny enough to be funny. It was like a bowling shoe: just plain ugly. I was somewhat surprised because with Kurt Russell and Kimberly Williams-Paisley on board, I figured it may be decent. It started off with a heartwarming video montage that made it easy to predict exactly what was going to happen to one of the characters who was in that montage. ...

McAdenville's annual Christmastown USA is up and running again this year. The Charlotte area Christmas light extravaganza started Monday and is worth checking out, especially if you haven't seen it before. I went last year for the first time and it was a very cool experience. I drove in heading west on I-85 to exit 22. That was extremely crowded, so I continued on I-85 to exit 21. I took Cox Road to Franklin Blvd/Andrew Jackson Highway/74 and then took the back way in. That seemed to work much better. There weren't any designated parking spots that I found. It's more of a 'take what you can get' kind of thing. If you find a spot on a residential side road, take it. Town officials do remind visitors not to block railroad crossings or prevent the flow of traffic though. There isn't necessarily a route people follow. You basically follow the lights. Follow the cars and follow the lights.