12 Days of #108Mas: Why we are ALL Cousin Eddie on Xmas?

Good day friends, it’s your pal BeefLoaf back with another of our 12 days of 108mas posts.  One Xmas (or CHRISTmas but most definitely not Cmas, gfy MSS) movies that I particularly enjoy is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (once again, gfy MSS).  I tend to catch it anytime it is on, because Beverly D’Angelo.  There is nothing like the nutty chaos that is a family Christmas when multiple portions of the family unit are staying together and trying to co-exist whilst getting through the holiday.  The tensions of being around family for the holidays are often hilarious to the outside observer and that is without even including the goofiest character in the film, Cousin Eddie (played by the even fucking goofier in real life actor Randy Quaid).

In the film, Cousin Eddie and his family are basically broke and coast into town in their mobile home without any cash for presents for their kids or possibly even to gas up their RV to head home….you know what, fuck it, I’m not explaining anymore of the plot, if you haven’t seen this movie yet, I suggest you run home right now, begin #108ing, wait till you’re Christmas drunk and flip on this flick (it’s probably showing on some basic cable channel every hour between now and the moment on the calendar that Mary’s water breaks).

Anywho, as I was watching this movie for the umpteenth time, I started realizing, as goofy and screwy a character as Cousin Eddie is in this film.  WE ARE ALL COUSIN EDDIE AROUND CHRISTMAS!  What!?!?! You say….yes, we are all him around Christmas, he is the character that all in one combines all of our discomforts and insecurities into one particularly grotesque skin.  Allow me to explain.

Overdressing for the occasion

We’ve all been there.  We are going to a holiday party and we don’t know if we need to go funky Xmas sweater or if we should dress more casual or wear something nice.  In Eddie’s case, to top it all off, his cousin-in-law is like the big success of the family, which is why everyone is going to be at his house.  Eddie doesn’t have a pot to piss in and doesn’t have much fancy clothes to wear.  We’ve all been there, whether it be we are short on cash for new threads for the big holiday party or we were working too much to find time to grab new threads or maybe we had a little too much Thanksgiving and that one nice outfit we had doesn’t fit as well as we’d like it to (Yea motherfucker that last one is possibly my own personal example).  Regardless, we gotta bite the bullet and do something and sometimes it looks a little off, but we were trying.  WE ARE ALL COUSIN EDDIE.

Going back for 2nd’s on a questionable dish at the meal

A sit down meal around the holidays is possibly the most uncomfortable ordeal you will encounter in your life (possibly giving a best man / maid of honor speech for a wedding you are kinda meh on is a little tougher, but I digress).  You are often sitting around people you don’t talk to on the regular and required to make small talk.  You have to be careful not to drop any food on your clothes, because you won’t be able to slurp those tasty mashed potatoes off your sleeve like you would normally do at home…NOOOOOO!!! you’ll be required use a napkin to clean up.  There is also passing food etiquette that I can never follow, I am always sending the bread or a side dish in the wrong direction, fucking things up.  You have done this as well I presume.  Imagine being Cousin Eddie in all this, and then, the most uncomfortable of all situations.  NOBODY IS EATING WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT THING IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TABLE.  Yep, you aren’t quite sure what it is (in Eddie’s case it was jello with cat food in it) but you know that it has barely been touched and you did have a little bit of it and didn’t gag too bad, so you have to do it, you have to go in for seconds and exclaim to the table “That is goooo-oooood!!”.  Fucking holidays!! WE ARE ALL COUSIN EDDIE.

Soft shoeing the poor behavior of you and yours

In the movie, Eddie’s dog “Snots” is not the best house guest, whether it be drinking the tree water or digging through the garbage for bones or destroying the house chasing a squirrel (actually that’s worse than it sounds).  We’ve all do something similar, maybe you brought that drunk friend to the holiday party that keeps hitting on the hosts girlfriend.  What about that time you brought your kid over to a family holiday dinner, she was only 6 and said “OH MY FUCKING GOD!”.  Or remember when your significant other brought like 5 extra people to a private gathering at someone’s house?  Yeaaaaaa….each time, you may or may not have given a sincere apology to the host because you were too fucking embarrassed or too stressed or whatever.  WE ARE ALL COUSIN EDDIE.

Wanting to help out with something and overdoing it badly

This is a feeling we tend to have anytime someone has a lot going on at a gathering and we get invited.  Eddie was feeling particularly helpless when he finally got an opportunity to help out and might have overdone it a bit (kidnapping his cousin Clark’s boss, Frank Shirley) and causing a zany disaster.  We’ve all tried to help put out the wine glasses while smashing a few in the process or we’ve carried the rolls into the other room and dropped a few, putting them back in the basket before anyone noticed.  We gladly volunteered to watch some element of a meal, only to get to talking and let that fucking thing burn up like Freddy Krueger’s skin.  WE ARE ALL COUSIN EDDIE.