Good morning 🐣

You know what’s a real Christmas miracle? For years Tom Cruise has done his own increasingly insane stunts — holding his breath underwater for six minutes, climbing the Burj Khalifa, hanging onto the side of a plane that’s taking off — and yet still he lives.

His latest stunt? Check out this nine-minute behind-the-scenes video showing the training and planning process for a scene in the next entry of his “Mission: Impossible” series. He rides a real motorcycle off a very real cliff, deploying a parachute within six seconds to glide to safety.

500 skydives and over 13,000 motocross jumps went into his training, with computer calculations of his trajectory, a massive but worryingly narrow ramp built onsite, and state-of-the-art cameras on drones to capture closeups of him potentially falling to his doom.

It’s a really interesting video showing the logistics that go into something like this. And when he finally pulls it off… he does it five more times! The looks of relief and exhaustion on the crew’s faces after each jump are palpable.

A brief intermission 🍿

“What Were America’s Christmas Monorails?” is a 19-minute video on YouTube diving into the brief fad of mid-20th century mini monorails in department stores. They were all over the country at one time, just hanging there from the ceilings, waiting to whisk kids through the air above aisles and aisles of toys. I’m not sure how their parents never lost their heads with these low-hanging vehicles, but it sure looked fun!

Now watch this 👀

You know, I was working on a big Christmas double feature for y’all, but it’s getting late and I still have some shopping to do, so I’ll postpone it ’til next week and keep the holiday spirit going well past its sell-by date.

In the meantime, let me help — if I may — bring a little Yuletide cheer into your home.

My house loves putting on a good Yule log fireplace video. That warm fire and that festive music is just so cozy, especially when kittens randomly pop in for a little playful wrestling. Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim recently debuted their own version, advertised as the seemingly innocent “ADULT SWIM YULE LOG: Get in the holiday spirit with this cozy, crackling fire.” Running at an hour and a half, it truly starts out like any other, but after a few minutes you can hear strange things going on in the background. The craziness swiftly escalates from there.

Without giving away anything else, I will say it was directed by Casper Kelly, creator of the “Too Many Cooks” sitcom satire from 2014 and the Cheddar Goblin sequence from “Mandy.” If you’re familiar with either of those, then you have an idea of what’s in store.

Check it out now on HBO Max. But before you do, just promise me you won’t leave any coal in my stocking afterwards.

Happy Holidays!

Until next time! 👋