You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!

Forget about Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life, the best Christmas movie of all time is A Christmas Story, the wonderfully demented saga of Ralphie Parker's quest for 'an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two hundred shot range model air rifle.'  I remember my dad taking my brother and I to see it at the theater when it first came out (that's right bitches, I'm old) and howling with laughter at Ralphie's schemes, humiliations and the objections of others warning him 'you'll shoot your eye out.'  I must have seen this movie a hundred times since, and it's as much a part of Christmas for me as Santa, Rudolph or Jesus, so it was really cool to meet Peter Billingsley, the original Ralphie Parker, today at Rockefeller Center, both eyes intact.