Fight to the finish

So I guess it’s that time of year. I called home to my mom in Montreal the other day and she was all,

“Hey how’s it going”

“OK, I guess. You?”

“Um. Are you sitting or standing?”

“Walking around, actually.”

“Maybe you’d better sit,” she said, her voice grave. I nervously obeyed, wondering whether my brother had got himself into some scrape or other (that mischievous scamp!) or if perhaps she’d fallen through the floor of the bathroom was renovating.

“What is it?”

“Well, you know the weather’s been pretty bad here, and, well, we had a power-outage overnight.”

“Uh hunh…”

“And well,” she takes a deep breath. I hold mine in.

“Yeah?”

“You’re never going to believe this, but… I uh…”

“Mom, what?”

“I got bored without TV and put up the tree and all the Christmas decorations.”

Geez. Thanks for the holiday heart attack, mom. And she wonders how I ended up in drama school.

I took that whole conversation as a sign that it’s safe to start blogging about seasonally Christmas things.

This coincides with the probability that I’m going to be covering dance more regulary for Torontoist.com from now on.

So my first post in that vein resolves the question that has baffled mankind through the ages. No not, “can the frog tapdance?” but “Who would win in a knife fight: The Nutcracker or The Rockettes?” Like my mother, the answer is more surprising than you think.