Oh my Godddd. Everything has been breaking. My laptop battery died. The stove broke at 2PM on Thanksgiving. The power steering and both front axles broke on my Mom’s car, then a headlight burned out less than 24 hours after she got it back from the autobody shop. My unattractive-but-sturdy circa-2007 Canon PowerShot jammed its own lens for what is apparently the last time. My sister’s laptop exploded. My cell phone continues its slow flail towards death. My guitar is bowing.
Beside the fact we had to cook everything in a toaster oven/on the stove top/with a crock pot, Thanksgiving was nice. I love the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I love a parade I don’t have to stand outside to watch, but I feel like the parade is the last two hours you can breathe before the holiday season. By mid-morning you’ve started a month long cycle of cooking, cleaning, shopping, struggling to get into the holiday spirit, weight gain, suppressing the urge to assault your family members, more shopping, guilt, anxiety, mall parking lots, fury, panic, sleeplessness, debt, seasonal affective disorder, abruptly resurfacing family tensions, gift wrapping and feelings of inadequacy. That is why I need the parade. Every year I watch the first hour from the comfort of my bed, then I watch the second hour on the couch, in sweatpants, drinking black coffee while no one talks to me. And I love it.
I love the dog show too, despite being against everything the dog show represents. I loosen my morals for the holiday season because it’s the only way to not have an aneurysm. I would listen to the dog show’s podcast. I just want Mr. Peterman and that other guy educating me about bichons and exchanging soft-toned haughty dog banter for six straight hours. It’s so soothing. However, I’m convinced there is an anti-conventionally attractive (?) dog conspiracy. They’ve employed a reverse human pageant qualification system. Every year since I’ve been around ten I wait for my long haired chihuahua, or a pomeranian or a yorkie, or something fluffy with a teddy bear head and big eyes, and it never happens. The only winner I would have ever adopted was Banana Joe the affenpinscher from a couple years back, but that’s because he had a busted monkey face and I love an ugly little Ewok.
Dinner was quiet and nice even though my sister decided to use bringing up what we are thankful for as an opportunity to express her excitement at the recent downfall of Lena Dunham.
As an aside, I am not a cook but my one holiday cooking tip would be shove bourbon in it. You seriously cannot go wrong with bourbon. Is there anything that tastes or smells better than bourbon? No. I often think about the possibility of a liquor-based perfume, and am so sad the influx of fraudulent DUIs it would cause will never allow it to happen. Bourbon. I used this Bon Appetit recipe and fucked it up by not putting in enough maple syrup and had to pull it from the oven and feverishly start scooping filling out and re-mixing it and scooping it back in and it turned out fine, because MAPLE AND BOURBON.
I watched Comedy Central’s All Star Non-Denominational Holiday Special alone while drinking an entire bottle of sparkling cider (???) and it was lovely.
Other than that my family just watched a bunch of Netflix. We watched Three Stars which was about chefs/restaurateurs working under the Michelin system, which was “meh” as expected. It turns out that the key to getting your third star is no one knows what the fuck the qualifications for receiving your third star are. I thought most if not all of the chefs had interesting personalities and philosophies toward food, but there just wasn’t much to explore that I didn’t already assume. Some of the chefs embraced the system more than others (usually the ones with three stars, no surprise there) a couple outright rejected it, there was some discussion of bias and rigging in an attempt to win over new markets (Asia) and everyone agreed the expectations placed on restaurants with stars, or that hoped to receive stars, was intense to say the least.
The real winner was Tucker and Dale vs. Evil though. It was truly adorable and my whole family liked it, which is rare. The concept makes you want to kick yourself for not thinking of it, two hicks and a truckload of hot college students are vacationing in the same creepy backwater town, only the hicks are portrayed as intelligent, empathetic and tolerant while the college students are hysterical, judgmental, and vengeful. I’ve been meaning to watch it for years because Tyler Labine, who I’ve had a crush on since Breaker High, plays Dale, and Katrina Bowden, who in my opinion goes under-appreciated as Cerie from 30 Rock is the female lead. Not a defining criteria, but, you know, just throwing it out there, I also found the actor who plays Tucker incredibly attractive.
Apparently they’ve recently announced plans to make a sequel, so there’s another reason to get your shit together.