Ask the Flying Monkey! (December 14, 2009)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Send it to aftereltonflyingmonkey@yahoo.com! (Please include your city and state and/or country.)

Q: Dude, what the hell happened to Santa and his elves between the 1964 Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus? They look totally different! The elves don’t even look like the same species! — Mark, Hudson River Valley, NY

Did Santa have work done between 1964 (left) and 1974

A: You might recall that between the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill was in a disfiguring car crash (which was “explained” by the Wampa attack)?

Now The Flying Monkey can finally reveal that something similar happened to Santa in 1969: a sleigh crash with a Russian satellite that was so disfiguring that it somehow even managed to move Santa’s eyes much farther apart.

Lest you feel too sorry for Santa, keep in mind that he’s also responsible for altered look of the elves. In 1972, the Rudolph elves unionized in order to ask for both heat and the option to not always be singing a happy tune. Santa immediately fired them all and hired scab-elves, two of whom, Jingle and Jangle, were featured prominently in 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus.

Union-busting Jingle and Jangle

But shortly after the filming of that Christmas special, these new elves complained about the horrible, sub-freezing working conditions, and Santa fired them too, replacing them with the gang from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Since the children from Peanuts never age, and since the North Pole is excluded from international child labor treaties, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Snoopy continue to toil in Santa’s toy factory to this day.

Q: Is Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays Mitchell Pritchett on Modern Family, hearing impaired? In a freeze frame a little over four minutes into episode 1.6 (“Run for your Wife”), he appears to have a hearing aid in. – Lionel, Seattle, WA

A: I watched the scene in question, and at least on Hulu, it looks to me too like there’s something in his ear. But I asked the network, and they were very clear that Tyler Ferguson is not hearing impaired and does not wear a hearing aid, nor do they ever use such devices to feed actors lines.

Ooooo, I love a mystery!

What is in Jesse Tyler Ferguson's ear during this Modern Family scene?

Next page! Old-timey lovers (or just good friends) in a Progressive ad campaign.