Everybody has a favorite Christmas movie. What's flashing in your mind right now — Jimmy Stewart? A leg-shaped lamp? Will Ferrell in tights? See Scrooge, the granddaddy of them all on the big screen at the North Coast Repertory Theatre on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ($5). The 1934 adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol with Seymour Hicks set the standard for the scores of updated Ebenezers that followed (Bill Murray, McDuck, Susan Lucci — the list goes on). It's perennially satisfying to watch a stingy old curmudgeon shake off his holiday issues over the course of a single night's supernatural therapy.
For those who like their holiday a little creepier, the Arcata Theatre Lounge is running Tim Burton's stop motion musical classic The Nightmare Before Christmas on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 6 p.m. ($5). All the stop motion you loved in childhood TV specials with Burton's tentacled Goth styling. The lanky, skeletal hero in this one doesn't quite get Christmas either, and he and his freaky henchmen scare the plum pudding out of the kiddies when he takes over for St. Nick. It's the ideal Halloween/Christmas cocktail to cut the sweetness of the season with a little bite.
The ugly sweater party might seem like it's here to stay, but that's what everybody thought about fondue parties and roller limbo. Tastes change, as evidenced by the fact that people once wore (and, in remote pockets of the country, still wear) these woven holiday atrocities in earnest. If you have a legitimately hideous sweater, you need to show it off now.
Are you reading this early enough on Wednesday, Dec. 18? Then you can seize the sweater moment at Mad River Brewing Company's Ugly Sweater Contest at 6 p.m. The cable-knit cage fight features music from Raising Grain and prizes.
On Monday at 8 p.m., the Ugly Christmas Sweater Party at Six Rivers Brewery offers you the chance to showcase your sweater on stage. That's right, the musical equivalent of a garish pullover, karaoke. There will be prizes, of course, but you're a winner the moment your song comes on and the lights hit your spangled cardigan.
And don't mothball that baby until after next Friday, Dec. 27. The season unravels with a final Ugly Sweater Contest at the Logger Bar at 9 p.m., likely your last chance to win some prizes for fugly knitwear. Then you can retire it with dignity — or take it out back and shoot the thing.
Sad to report that Nocturnum Nightclub will be closing. We'll be having a LGBTQ Closing Party on Saturday January 4th. Mark up your calendar and come out one last time. Be sure to thank Gil and Nocturnum staff for hosting our monthly LGBTQ events for the past 3 1/2 years. Let's close it BIG!