I went to the North Pole last December for content, and what I found was DARK

The North Pole is a LIE. It's a pop-up installation that travels to different parking lots. I have PROOF (see photo).

They set up this arrow, blast some blue lights, pipe in "winter ambiance" sounds, and charge people $40 to take photos for their newsletters.

The guy running it? His name is Todd. He's from Phoenix.

He told me business was "mid" last year because everyone's doing an AI-generated winter wonderland now.

I asked where Santa was. Todd said he was on a sabbatical, working on his memoir.

Suddenly, my empty stocking makes sense.

And here I thought I was just plain naughty.

The title for Santa’s memoir is "Delivering: What 1500 Years of Gift-Giving Taught Me About Burnout."

PS: Do you guys still have your Christmas tree up? I do

I’m leaving it up until spring.