Ah, my friends after watching Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade Holiday special, I am just filled with all sorts of good cheer and Pepto-Bismol. Did you guys happen to see that pink elephant in the room? No, not the one you in the bottom of your Crystal Cocktail, the other one. Look -- it's Sandra's crumbled marriage. She's gathered her family around her -- her sisters, brothers, their children, and that friend of hers, "Cull-een," who, by Sandra's accounts, drinks almost as much as her semi-homemade friend does -- but who is missing in that snow-covered house up in Whistler, Canada? Would that be her husband, Bruce Karatz, CEO of KB Homes, who is now off homemaking with Martha Stewart? Of course, the word on the iridescent-fabric-over-a-regular-tablecloth street is that, while Bruce might be off having himself a Martha little Christmas, Sandra's producer and fellow Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup enthusiast, Gordon Elliot, is now the one slurping Cheez-Whiz out of Sandra's wrinkled, orange navel. By her own admission, being known as "Aunt Sandy Claus" to her nieces and nephews is "a tall order to fill," but it becomes even taller without the use of Bruce's deep pockets. I'm sure Gordon's pockets are just as deep, but it's often hard to find money when the pockets are off in Australia with the wife with whom he has shared 35 years of "successful" open marital bliss.

After watching her shove huge cloves of garlic in the prime rib until it looked like a tumorous piece of beef, glop white chocolate down some stale macaroons, and doing something truly repulsive to salmon-flavored cream cheese, onions, pimentos, and plastic wrap, all I could really think about was how severely poor little nephew Brycer was going to suffer as soon as this episode aired. The making of a "sweet little Brycer angel" with his "pretty little mouth" and dressing the Brycer angel in a powder blue polka dotted SKIRT just sealed his fate as the most beat-up kid in America. Sandy closes her show with, "It's all about friends and family and I want every good thing for you." What goes unsaid is, "And a very fat alimony settlement for me."

Anyway, as I sit here listening to Christmas carols and Time-Life X-Mas albums, visions of Ol' Puddin' Cups dance in my head, and I start to think about what would happen if Sandy put out her own Semi-Homemade Christmas Album.

Thinking of appropriate recording artists…well, she doesn't get Nat King Cole because, even dead, he outclasses her. Yet, Dead Dean Martin would be oddly excellent at the alcoholic songs. She wouldn't be able to get Patti LaBelle, Carly Simon, Trisha Yearwood, Gloria Estefan, Amy Grant, or Liza Minnelli because we already know that their loyalties, like Bruce's, lie with Martha. Basically, I've decided that it all comes down to the Beach Boys. I do love the Beach Boys, but something about their over-UV-rayed refusal to grow up and admit they aren't the beach blanket himbos they once were puts me in mind of our girl.I've already got the songs all sussed out:

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