Once upon a time there were 3 brothers named Zimmerman: Dave, Robert, and Ed. And they would put on a Christmas music show and bring joy and holiday cheer to all the people of McMurdo…
Okay so maybe it’s not as storybook as all that, but the there is something kind of fanciful about having Christmas traditions and here we don’t have a lot of them. There are no actual Christmas trees, no Christmas morning with the family, no home cooked meals, no chestnuts roasting on an open fire (does anyone actually do that?)…but what we do have is the Zim Brothers Christmas show. It started like a decade ago and generally involves 1 or more of the Zim Brothers (whichever ones are here at the time) playing Christmas Carols rewritten to fit ice life…”Ice Divine”, “Little Plumber Boy”, “I’m getting fired for Christmas.”, “Sam Feola’s Coming to Town” and so on. Last year the Waste Barn hosted the Zim Brother Christmas and made it a full on acoustic night, getting a lot of musicians from around town to serve as the opening acts for the main, Zim-tacular event. It was a huge hit, something truly in the holiday spirit (in other words, not just another drunken party) so I was really excited at the idea of doing it again this year. This year the only ice-inhabiting Zim brother is Ed, so it was pretty much up to him whether it happened or not. Sure we could have had a Christmasy acoustic night but it wouldn’t have been the same. Luckily Ed wanted to do it so the waste barn elves went to work…And a lot of work it was. We have to do all of the cardboard in town the day before so that we can take the conveyor belt out of the barn early enough to set up the stage and then get trash done in time to be able to close up all the triwalls in the barn and stash them out back to make room for a billion couches. (which we get to load and unload) and then decorate the place. And for some reason this year I had the bright idea of putting the bleachers we keep on hand inside the barn so there would be more seating, as it turns out the bleachers didn’t fit in the barn but they decided to put the outside and build onto the barn with a tent like structure. That took forever, part of me wished I had never opened my mouth but it looked like people actually did enjoy sitting there during the show so I suppose it was worth all the work people put into it.
We decided this year that it wouldn’t just be an acoustic show but more like an old fashioned Christmas variety show, so we set up the stage to look like a living room and my friend Ben Morin hosted acting as if it were his house and he was having all these musicians over to visit. The concept played out less and less through out the night but Ben kept the crowd entertained in between acts and it was a cozy atmosphere. We made cookies a few nights before and a lot of beer to give out and passed those out during the show dressed as elves. It was an incredibly cool event, one that I think gave people a little bit more holiday spirit in a place that’s hard to have any.
Christmas its self was a little anti-climactic, considering we didn’t get a two day weekend this year. We had to clean up after the show on Christmas Eve so it was a kind of intense day of work packed into a small amount of time. After which my back was killing me and I was wiped out from putting on/taking down the show so I didn’t really do anything with my night off. But I watched Nightmare Before Christmas and a Nativity Story and ate Christmas cookies while I did my laundry and cleaned my room so it wasn’t entirely un-festive. On Christmas morning I went over to my friends’ Salava and Nate’s room and drank coffee and ate cookies Salava’s mom made. I had Christmas dinner in the galley with Katie Leum and Ralph and a bunch of other people…which wasn’t terribly homey but it was good company and I hadn’t had a holiday meal in the galley since my first season. After dinner I went up to the BFC where everyone played games and sat around post-meal. It was fun but it felt odd to have to go into work the next day…
Between the Christmas show and my trip, in the past couple weeks, my season has peaked and now it’s on a serious downslide. I am feeling so done with this place in a way I never have before, in the sense that I just want to be done now and not even bother to finish the season…but I can’t afford to do that nor can I really leave before the busiest part of the season…ya see, while everyone else is gearing up to go home and wind down their season we wasties get to dig real deep and put on a waste barn party (not really excited about that one), all go on call for the entire time tanker is here, and then go to 12 hour shifts as we load up the vessel with trash. Uhg…
Okay so maybe it’s not as storybook as all that, but the there is something kind of fanciful about having Christmas traditions and here we don’t have a lot of them. There are no actual Christmas trees, no Christmas morning with the family, no home cooked meals, no chestnuts roasting on an open fire (does anyone actually do that?)…but what we do have is the Zim Brothers Christmas show. It started like a decade ago and generally involves 1 or more of the Zim Brothers (whichever ones are here at the time) playing Christmas Carols rewritten to fit ice life…”Ice Divine”, “Little Plumber Boy”, “I’m getting fired for Christmas.”, “Sam Feola’s Coming to Town” and so on. Last year the Waste Barn hosted the Zim Brother Christmas and made it a full on acoustic night, getting a lot of musicians from around town to serve as the opening acts for the main, Zim-tacular event. It was a huge hit, something truly in the holiday spirit (in other words, not just another drunken party) so I was really excited at the idea of doing it again this year. This year the only ice-inhabiting Zim brother is Ed, so it was pretty much up to him whether it happened or not. Sure we could have had a Christmasy acoustic night but it wouldn’t have been the same. Luckily Ed wanted to do it so the waste barn elves went to work…And a lot of work it was. We have to do all of the cardboard in town the day before so that we can take the conveyor belt out of the barn early enough to set up the stage and then get trash done in time to be able to close up all the triwalls in the barn and stash them out back to make room for a billion couches. (which we get to load and unload) and then decorate the place. And for some reason this year I had the bright idea of putting the bleachers we keep on hand inside the barn so there would be more seating, as it turns out the bleachers didn’t fit in the barn but they decided to put the outside and build onto the barn with a tent like structure. That took forever, part of me wished I had never opened my mouth but it looked like people actually did enjoy sitting there during the show so I suppose it was worth all the work people put into it.
We decided this year that it wouldn’t just be an acoustic show but more like an old fashioned Christmas variety show, so we set up the stage to look like a living room and my friend Ben Morin hosted acting as if it were his house and he was having all these musicians over to visit. The concept played out less and less through out the night but Ben kept the crowd entertained in between acts and it was a cozy atmosphere. We made cookies a few nights before and a lot of beer to give out and passed those out during the show dressed as elves. It was an incredibly cool event, one that I think gave people a little bit more holiday spirit in a place that’s hard to have any.
Christmas its self was a little anti-climactic, considering we didn’t get a two day weekend this year. We had to clean up after the show on Christmas Eve so it was a kind of intense day of work packed into a small amount of time. After which my back was killing me and I was wiped out from putting on/taking down the show so I didn’t really do anything with my night off. But I watched Nightmare Before Christmas and a Nativity Story and ate Christmas cookies while I did my laundry and cleaned my room so it wasn’t entirely un-festive. On Christmas morning I went over to my friends’ Salava and Nate’s room and drank coffee and ate cookies Salava’s mom made. I had Christmas dinner in the galley with Katie Leum and Ralph and a bunch of other people…which wasn’t terribly homey but it was good company and I hadn’t had a holiday meal in the galley since my first season. After dinner I went up to the BFC where everyone played games and sat around post-meal. It was fun but it felt odd to have to go into work the next day…
Between the Christmas show and my trip, in the past couple weeks, my season has peaked and now it’s on a serious downslide. I am feeling so done with this place in a way I never have before, in the sense that I just want to be done now and not even bother to finish the season…but I can’t afford to do that nor can I really leave before the busiest part of the season…ya see, while everyone else is gearing up to go home and wind down their season we wasties get to dig real deep and put on a waste barn party (not really excited about that one), all go on call for the entire time tanker is here, and then go to 12 hour shifts as we load up the vessel with trash. Uhg…
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Hang In there and Happy New Year - How was Icestock?
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