Monday, December 24, 2012

Scouting Report on Santa, Christmas Eve 2012


Ever since Drive and Dish began its run in 2007, we've published an annual Christmas Eve scouting report on Santa.  In 2009, personnel losses, as well as business, work and life demands forced the Drive and Dish proprietors to cut back on our hoops blogging.  As a result, Drive and Dish went from being a blog that published on a daily basis (at least during basketball season), to a blog that published only a few times per week.


Over time, Drive and Dish devolved even more -- we eventually reached the point where even multiple posts in a single week became the exception, rather than the rule.  But while output went down, the quality of our writing probably went up.  After all, if our writers found some issue or occurrence to be so compelling that they (we) moved heaven and earth to blog about it, the resulting Drive and Dish post was likely to be well thought out and, accordingly, at least fairly well-written.

Without a doubt, though, the posts that we most enjoyed writing were our annual Christmas Eve scouting reports on Santa.  Year after year, the scouting report was more or less the same.  In the interest of saving time and space, here's the ultra-truncated, Cliff/Spark Notes-style version of the annual scouting report: Santa is old and fat, but since  he can still pilot his flying sleigh to every corner of the globe (minus Saudi Arabia, Iran and most of Pakistan) in a single evening and sneak into and out of your house to leave presents by sliding down your chimney and jumping back up to the roof, it's fair to say that he hasn't lost a step, that he can still sky, and that he's still got his hang time.

This year, we've let the blog go more than ever before.  Without doubt, it's been the most stressful and trying time for our remaining writers/editors since the blog was founded.  Since the start of basketball season in October, Drive and Dish editors have been involved in the liquidation of two corporations and the sale of the corporations' commercial real estate.  We've also been trying to lay the groundwork for the start-up of something new (but more on that later).  It's been a chaotic time around here, and as such, we've neglected our blogging duties.  So this year, we don't have a new scouting report on Santa to post.  We're just referring our readers to last year's scouting report.

But if you must know the truth, we'll probably be able to slide by with last year's scouting report because we've heard that even though Santa is a year older and a few pounds fatter,  he can still pilot his flying sleigh to every corner of the globe (minus Saudi Arabia, Iran and most of Pakistan) in a single evening and sneak into and out of your house to leave presents by sliding down your chimney and jumping back up to the roof, it's fair to say that he hasn't lost a step, that he can still sky, and that he's still got his hang time.