A Thanksgiving Cast Of Characters

It takes a large array of different people to make Thanksgiving what it is today. People who seemingly walked right off a TV show or out of the pages of book all gather together for a giant meal. Today, I thought maybe I would sit down and write about each character and their important role in shaping Thanksgiving.

The Hardened Veteran : Usually a woman, almost always a mother with grown kids who is quickly about to turn 50 years old. They’ve spent the last 25 years cooking for everyone, and they have made the decision to adamantly refuse to cook. They prefer to let Boston Market handle the holidays from now on.

The Stranded: People who suddenly seem to have no family whatsoever on Thanksgiving, and you begrudgingly make the half assed offer for them to spend Thanksgiving with you, and are shocked as hell when they accept and show up.

Housies: People who have recently purchased a home, and in their excitement invite everyone over for Thanksgiving. This is much to the Hardened Veterans delight.

The "New Family" Girl: This is always some guy’s ‘latest’ girlfriend who he drags to all of his family events and tries to force everyone to meld together.

The "New Family" Guy: The main difference from The New Family Girl is that The New Family Guy does not force people to be with his family, rather to the contrary, he flees his family and spends the holidays with his spouse’s family. Though he’ll never admit it, he’s desperately shopping for a better family.

Uncle Boozy: If it’s a Thanksgiving with the extended family, then Uncle Boozy will be there. While everyone is seated at the table saying grace, he’s having a few beers in the garage in front of a propane heater.

Aunt Boozy: To put it simply, the more she drinks the more rude things she says about children.

The Old People: They usually sit quietly, but if you get too close, they’ll trap you with their three hour stories and various complaints about their latest water bill.

The Goofy Pervert Neighbor: They don’t stay long, but they make sure to awkwardly hug your recently developed niece and maybe try and sneak her a beer out in the garage (granted Uncle Boozy has passed out). Every room he’s in smells just 10% worst than before.

Loud Children: (3-7) They’re very loud. They’ll destroy your house. They’ll get hurt on your staircase from running up and down it. They are so frickin’ adorable.

Loud Children: (8-18) You wish they were the ones who would get hurt on the staircase.

The Bitch: There are no requirements for this character other than being a woman and a total and complete bitch.

The Asshole: Same as above, only in male form.

You Must Give Me The Recipe: They ask for the recipe to every meal they have ever had in someone else’s house. They never get the recipe, but even if they did, they probably wouldn’t make it.

Angry Teenager: They spend most holidays thinking of far fetched schemes to leave and go hang with their friends. The most used phrase of this particular character? ‘I hate you.’ When you are an angry teen, you’d much rather be in a dingy basement with a wide assortment of drugs and freaky people who use you rather than having a wholesome meal with a family that loves you. I mean, what can’t they understand about that!!??

“Oh, great! Karen’s here!”: This particular relative seems to have a problem with everyone and openly shares all of his/her bad history with the family with everyone else, including complete strangers. Usually says “Oh great!!!______ is here” anytime someone walks through the door. Don’t worry though, they won’t stay long, they’ll start a fight and leave about halfway through the night. The rest of the night can be devoted to talking about what an asshole/bitch they are. (This person is almost always the Bitch or the Asshole)

Father: He’s unusually quiet on this holiday. Has a look on his face that he is consumed with the desire to go to bed, because he probably has to get up at 3:45 to go to work. He doesn’t laugh at your stories as much as the rest of the family.

Authoritative Father: What separates him from the standard father is that at some point during the night he will say “We are going to sit here and have a nice family dinner, damnit!” Outside of that, he’s pretty much the same as Father.

The Food I Eat...And Don't Eat

I am a terrible eater, filled with guilt and  undoubtedly high cholesterol. I follow no sane creed for my consumption of food. I revel in the delight of salts and starches, treasuring golden crispness and sparkling sugars. Always figuring if it can’t be covered in chocolate, then it can be in gravy. I am that terrible eater who can disregard schedules of meals, and just set myself on a course of ‘continuous sporadic snacking’.
I have had chocolate candy as my lunch many times. And I do not eat candy like most respectable upstanding citizens of the world. I have the horrible tendency to open a package, and finish it in one sitting. A man of my tiny frame should not have the capabilities to put away an entire bag of fun size Snickers. That’s the bag you buy for Halloween, that’s supposed to be enough candy for the entire neighborhood, not one person! It seems to wholly contradict hundreds of years of biological and anatomical research. I can just imagine a scientist somewhere saying “Well, we though we had a good grasp on how the human body operates, then this little shit had to come along and eat a bunch of chocolate.”
Not too long ago, I ate an entire package of Hershey’s Cookies n Cream Easter Bunnies over the course of twenty minutes. The fact that they were Easter Bunnies can tell you when this occurred. (Subtle Hint: It was last Easter). Luckily I did not get a stomach ache. But oddly enough, and this is the true testament to how bad of a diet I have, a few months ago I made the decision that I should eat better. This decision lasted a day, or actually a single meal. I packed a lunch for work: sandwich, juice, and a bag of potato chips. I got so unbelievable sick. I guess that’s what I get for eating “good food”.
One thing that I cannot eat though is spice. It may come as a surprise to you, but this short, wired, neurotic man has a weak stomach for spice. My sister on the other hand I think given the chance, would pour molten lava in her morning coffee as a substitute for cream. She can eat anything spicy and keep her composure the same way a 67 year old fat Irish man can drink for thirteen straight hours and still reshingle his mother’s house. It’s just amazing. When we were kids, she used to get us to try and eat spicy foods. She must’ve had some great entertainment watching us. It’s an Allport gene to be able to eat really spicy food. I guess it skipped me. But I’m not alone, it skipped my brother Adam as well. In fact, one time when we were kids, the spice was too much for Adam and he actually dunked his head in a baby pool, eager for any sort of relief. But I’m serious when I say that my sister could drink lava, and I’m even more serious when I tell you that she would probably pour Frank’s Redhot on it as well. When I eat spicy food, my whole face sweats, and I feel like Ben Stiller in Along Came Polly.
I’m also not a big fan of TV dinner macaroni and cheese. I don’t think this warrants any discussion though, it’s just nasty. My meals come in a can form more and more today. I get home starving and tired from work, and it’s just too easy to open a can of Chef Boy R Dee or a can of chili and make some super pretzels. You always hear about ‘On The Go Food’, well I consider my canned meals to be ‘After The Go Food’ the kind of food that you need in five minutes because you plan on changing into your pajamas and taking your meal to bed with you because you’re so tired.
I do need to stop eating in bed though. It’s a mess. Especially when it’s canned ravioli or chili, or pretty much anything with tomato sauce.
I’m also slowly coming to the realization that two cups of coffee does not constitute ‘breakfast’.

My Inner Old Man

I can’t wait to become an old man because then I can have an actual reason for not keeping up with the current culture. It’s not that I openly reject it or anything, I find it to be actually quite nice. But I get so wrapped up in my mundane existence and frantic thoughts that I have a social handicap. I’m behind everyone else six months or more. I would be that idiot who would hear Rolling In The Deep on the radio and go “Have you heard this yet!? It’s incredible!” And everyone would laugh, of course after saying “Yeah, it was amazing when it came out a year ago”. Then I die a little of embarrassment, try to tell a quick joke to distract, or maybe a small dance, anything to turn the conversation away.
But it’s no secret that I am a bit of a sucker for the old fashion way of life. I almost feel like I should list ‘Nostalgia’ under my hobbies. My inner old man shows several times a day, like when I’m lounging in my robe listening to The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘Take Five’ on my record player. And you don’t know who Dave Brubeck is because you are not an old man such as myself. And I think that must be the greatest reason in my favor. I have such a hard time keeping up on the times because I’m so preoccupied on keeping tabs on the past. Another way my inner old man shows itself is when I wake up at 6:30 on a Sunday, watch a public access show on PBS and maybe go do my grocery shopping, and be back home by 8.
I always dreamed of living in the time of Humphrey Bogart, wearing white dinner jackets, smoking indoors, talking really fast, a bit of casual sexual harassment, and occasionally slapping women when they start acting like ‘typical hysterical women’ (Sidenote: This is all being said in satire. I do not condone casual or any form of sexual harassment, and I do not slap women, unless of course they hit me first. My mom always said I could hit a girl if they hit me first because I am a tiny framed man).
I’m a huge technophobe. I hate cell phones, and only reluctantly got a cell phone recently last year because ‘People worry about you when you disappear for vast amounts of time’. I was born with the family isolation gene. We are overwhelmingly independent and solitary people. This of course leads to an alarming number of relatives who talk to themselves. Lately I’ve been catching myself talking to myself at work, and then going ‘Stop talking to yourself’ only to appreciate the irony that I am still talking to myself by saying that.
But I do fall behind on the times. I seriously did not know who Nicki Minaj was for the longest time. How does that happen? But I must say, after finding out who she was, I was ok with not keeping up on her. I can’t help but feel old. I may only be 21, but everywhere I look it seems like everyone is younger than me. The kids in the neighborhood are vicious little bastards who shout things at me, and all I can think is “That used to be me!!! I used to be one calling older people fags as I shot past them on my bike!!!” I don’t even have a bike anymore!
I can’t pull all nighters anymore. Hell, I can barely pull off a partial nighter anymore. For the first time in my life, I’m finding myself climbing into bed around 9:30. When I was a teenager, 9:30 was usually the time I left my house to go do something. And with all the work I do in the hardware store, I come home with sore feet, bitch about my day, and act lazy on the couch. Remind you of anyone? Because it sure reminds me a helluva lot like my dad.
But it’s not as if I became like this as soon as I entered adulthood. When I was 15 years old, sitting up in the morning with a cup of coffee, perusing the various daily newspapers or watching meetings of the Warren City Council, I knew I acted like an old man. When I was 12, I used to go to the library and check out John Grisham novels. What kind of 12 year old does that?
Also, I’ve always been a huge fan of slippers.
I think I will enjoy growing old. I can just sit around all day, be rude and obnoxious and have delusional people deem it sweet and adorable. I think I will enjoy that immensely.

Seattle Notes: Part 3

I made the decision that I should probably take a cab if I was going to be drinking. I made the decision after I got drunk (drunk is putting it lightly) in a bar, and had to stumble (stumble is putting it lightly) back to my hotel, which in that capacity I just did not know where it was. For the first time in my life, I was ‘that guy’, the obnoxious drunk guy who can barely walk who is out showing his pretty face to the world. I was surprised that a cop didn’t stop me or something, because I was walking like that one broken shopping cart at the store that simply doesn’t want to go straight, but rather zig-zag in a random pattern. I’m surprised I didn’t try and stick a cigarette in my mouth the wrong way and light the filter. I sat down after sobering up to calculate what felt like the world’s longest walk. The world’s longest walk was six blocks it turns out, not exactly a very far distance. I do remember being briefly trapped in my elevator. It was one of those elevators that didn’t work unless you put your key card in. For a few moments, I just kept hitting three and shouting cuss words at the elevator. This of course probably made me look like quite a fool to the staff in the lobby while the doors were still open. Luckily they are strangers and I never have to see them again. Then I remembered and had a hell of a time trying to slide the card. Every time I slid it in, it wasn’t reading. All I wanted to do was go upstairs and lay down, and possibly puke. For you see, not only was I completely hammered, I had eaten a large quantity of sushi for dinner prior to. I have a new rule that I will be keeping with the rest of my ‘Rules For Life’ and that is this: Don’t eat large quantities of sushi if you plan on getting really drunk. This is probably the best time to offer my sincere apologies to the cleaning staff of the Hotel Max in Downtown Seattle, Washington, for I just barely missed the toilet. Sorry gang.
I’m not a big drinker, or a drinker at all for that matter. If I do enjoy a cocktail, it’s usually one or two, max. But since I was on vacation and in a strange city where nobody could judge me, I decided I was going as far I could go. Outside of that one night, I had only been that wasted on my 21st birthday (and some of you remember how that turned out). I collapsed in bed fully clothed, shoes and all. I told myself I just had to sleep it off, eat a greasy breakfast in the morning, and remember to take a cab next time to avert having to repeat that walk. That was the tiny little rational piece of my brain that was still operating normally. Fifteen minutes later, I’m dancing to LCD Soundsystem like a madman in my hotel room, minus several articles of clothing I had shed in a fury. Yeah, I was acting crazy.
I feel foolish sitting at bars, being as such I’m not a drinker. They come over and ask me what I’m drinking, and suddenly I realize I have absolutely no idea. I had never really ordered anything at a bar before, and tried to think of something that wasn’t beer. I can’t stand beer. So, by pure chance, I end up with a vodka and cranberry. It’s all I ordered the whole time I was there, and when somebody asked how old I was, I told them 21, they said “That’s a very 21 year old kind of drink you have there.” I felt foolish and admitted that I didn’t even know why I ordered them in the first place, it was just the first thing that popped into my head. By the way, the person who told me I had a very ‘21 year old drink’ also said I had ‘the heaviest Midwest accent ever’. What the hell!!??
While exploring the Seattle nightlife, I happened upon a gay bar (one of the many that they have there). How did I know it was one? It was called Purr, had a neon cat on the sign and was full of men. I simply said “This is either a gay bar or a cat fan club and all the wives are using the bathroom” The first seemed more likely. I had a lot of fun there, and that’s probably all that needs to be said about that.
One night I randomly ended up at a jazz club that was only accessed down an alley. It was really nice, but everyone there was at least 45 and older. There was one person my age though, sitting at the table next to me. He was very obnoxious. I overheard him say that he had never been to see a jazz show before, that he mostly went to punk rock concerts, which was very obvious. It was obvious because he kept shouting at the band, who were all in their seventies it seemed. And he had this desire to be the first person to clap, so he would begin applauding whenever he thought the song was about to end. He was wrong more than once, and just had to sit there with the embarrassing fact that he had just clapped really loud in the middle of a song all by himself. Tool.
After spending each night drifting around the city, I would finally convince myself to go back to my room and force myself to get into bed and stay there and try and squeeze out five hours worth of sleep. And I started every morning as a lifeless zombie, walking haggard into the Starbucks right next to my hotel, sitting down with a coffee and a book and just spend an hour reading and watching people walk past. And then I was good, and I could go on walking all over the city and see what else was going on.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas Shopping

            I started my Christmas shopping, and I’m hitting a dead end already. First off, if you are starting your Christmas shopping November 1st, then you are starting late. Anyone with half a brain knows you should start June 1st, because it takes 7 months to pick out the perfect blender and necktie to give someone. I am forever cursed to be linked to this family of mine that is so difficult to shop for. It isn’t that we don’t know what we want for presents, it’s the simple fact that we are so impulsive that anything we want, we usually go out and buy it for ourselves. In essence, we are a bunch of children. “I can’t wait till Christmas, I WANT IT NOW!!!” And I’m sure there is a private temper tantrum somewhere in that inner monologue as well, but I won’t even attempt to decipher that one today.
But I did something this year that I’m not sure how I feel about it. One Christmas present given this year will have come from….yes, Aco. I have joined the legion of people who have inadvertently found a nice (and affordable) Christmas present at the hardware store. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the subject of hardware stores though, my dad always asks for the same thing (both Christmas and Birthday) and that is a Home Depot gift card. Many of you who know me are aware that I work for ACO Hardware, and Home Depot is to ACO as what the Soviet Union was to the United States for about 60 years. And yet he continuously asks me for a Home Depot gift card every single year. Finally I just told him “Why don’t you ask me to quit my job for Christmas?” He thought it was funny. We’ll see who’s laughing when he get’s a coffee mug with a polar bear on it this year. (Sidenote: I did not buy him a coffee mug with a polar bear on it. As a kid, I completely exhausted the coffee mug as a present avenue, and he has enough coffee mugs to begin a side business of selling coffee mugs on Craigslist)
It turns out Dan Wise and myself both want the same thing from each other for Christmas, so I just suggested that we each buy it for ourselves right now and just cancel each other out. There’s that great impulsiveness again. I like to do my shopping early (and online usually) because people Christmas shopping are absolute barbarians. There is no bigger example of the decline of society than to see how people act while Christmas shopping. Since when was it acceptable to just toss items you no longer want on the floor? You can be walking through the mall, pass a little old lady, she’ll smile at you, you smile back and keep walking. But if you turn around, odds are you’ll catch that sweet little old lady sucker punching another little old lady to get her hands on a Jack LeLaine’s Juicer. Vicious.
And all this crap they are fighting over, these so-called presents? The people you are giving them to absolutely hate them! After all that fighting, half of it’ll probably end up being returned December 26th.
“What can I do for you?”
“I want to return this tea pot shaped like Felix the Cat”
“Any reason?”
“Yeah, it’s a teapot shaped like Felix the Cat”
Christmas didn’t used to be all about shopping. What happened to the Christmas I remember? Christmas was a great tradition where everyone got together as a family. The kids opened presents while the adults got slowly hammered and worked up enough courage to confront someone about ‘what a complete asshole they’ve been this last year’ (Note: If they didn’t work their courage up then, they would have a second venue to do so on New Years Eve). That’s the traditions I remember, good wholesome drunk American family values.