From 1998 to 2007, I ran and edited the humor and entertainment publication (and website) “Tastes Like Chicken.”
Starting in 2002, we began to give our loyal readers a Christmas video card each December. The videos started out very simple and silly (with me in drag lip-syncing as Gladys Knight while Vinnie, Fphatty and Debbie served as my backup Pips), but over time the videos became huge productions with great editing and even a few celebrity cameos thrown in.
The videos from 2003 thru 2006 are archived for you to check out here.
In December 2007, we began working on that year’s Christmas video. The idea wasn’t wildly imaginative, but still fun: A future version of myself would come back in time and visit a present-day me to warn me of a wrong I had to right to save Christmas.
The future version of Wayne Chinsang (or me, for those of you who don’t know that I happily live a double life) was played by my grandfather, Robert “Hi-Guy” Steib.
So one night in early December, Jeremy Scott and I headed over to film all of my grandfather’s scenes.
And that’s about as far as we got.
People always ask me, “What happened to the magazine?” and my answer is always the same: Life. We got older, got married, became parents, moved away… and because of that, had to concentrate on work that would actually pay our bills.
In addition to the regular insanity of everyday life, my grandfather became very ill shortly after filming and had to be hospitalized. A month or so after this was shot, he passed away at the age of 78.
For a year and a half, the footage sat on Jeremy’s hard drive. Finally, fearing that nothing would be done with the footage, Jeremy took what we had and put together a little trailer for the Christmas video that never was.
I’m putting the video up here now because today would be my grandfather’s 80th birthday.
So this one’s for you, Hi-Guy!
Here it is, approximately 18 months late: The 2007 “Tastes Like Chicken” Christmas Video (Trailer)! Better late than never, right?
Keep an eye out at the end for a finale that all my fellow moon-haters should appreciate.
I still hate the moon,
15 comments
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June 26, 2009 at 3:19 am
paulyspooner
Nice…Big Trouble in Little China was my favourite film when I was a kid….I had a massive crush on kim Cattrall…(still do!)
June 26, 2009 at 9:20 am
kittridge
LOVE it!
June 26, 2009 at 11:51 am
jshady
Yeah! Jocco threw in that “BTILC” clip! And he made the moon blow up, Star Wars-style!
June 26, 2009 at 12:18 pm
DoriZori
That was awesome. And it made my cry. And pee a little bit.
June 26, 2009 at 12:20 pm
jshady
Yeah, but everything makes you pee a little bit.
June 26, 2009 at 1:16 pm
jeremyrscott
I’m just glad your Uncle Kevin will leave me alone now. He has wanted to see that edited together since we shot it LOL.
June 26, 2009 at 3:18 pm
thevogels
Thanks Justin! I had Hi-Guy right here while we watched the video. If he could speak, he’d say “well done”. Happy 80th b-day Hi-Guy!!!!!
June 26, 2009 at 7:30 pm
jshady
Say “Hi, guy!” to Hi-Guy for me!
June 27, 2009 at 9:10 am
thevogels
Thanks to Jocco also. Nice job!!!! Now you are in Kevin’s good grace’s again.
July 1, 2009 at 5:18 am
decker
It’s really cool that you have this now that he is gone.
July 1, 2009 at 11:58 am
JAMIE
wonderful.
July 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Frank Cvetkovic
No joke: I had that same EXACT experience happen to me once.
Not so much the “saving Christmas” part, but the old guy telling me that he’s me from the future and that I needed to change my ways to save blah, blah, blah.
Had a feeling that he wasn’t me — and just some nutter from the home for the mentally ill next door to the public library I work at — when I noticed he was black.
Now, I’ve always thought of myself as a black guy in a white guy’s body and, somewhere down the line, if science finds a way to turn me into a cool black guy, then I owe myself an apology, ’cause that may have really been me.
July 2, 2009 at 5:24 pm
jshady
You’re gonna be SO PISSED when you wake up black one day.
March 29, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Big high-five to my cousin Matthew… « THE BLARG
[...] late grandfather, known lovingly by most as Hi-Guy, had the same (for the most part) tattoo of Flower from “Bambi” on his arm. [...]
July 7, 2011 at 8:03 pm
In the mid-1950s… « THE BLARG
[...] Grandpa Hi-Guy painted a portrait of Yogi Bear on my then-infant mother’s bedroom wall. When they moved out [...]