November, a month with one of my favorite traditions. No, I’m not talking about National Sandwich Day (awesome) or National Cake Day (double awesome) or even about all of you that have been growing a mustache in honor of all those swollen penis glands for Movember. Although, I do tip my hat to you and your facial hair. Afterall, this world needs more mustaches. But no, I’m talking about the great November tradition that we Americans love to use as an excuse to booze and feast like a bunch of crazed zombies raging for turkey. That's right, Thanksgiving. So grab a fork and tie on a bib because it's time for us to all get fat together. I normally abhor obesity but when it comes to Thanksgiving I give everyone a free pass. Just don't confuse my kindness for stupidity; if you eat all the marshmallow covered yams I will cut your heart out with a spoon. 'Why a spoon? Because it will hurt more you twit.'
The only real downside to this holiday is that Canada has a thanksgiving too. WTF mates? I mean, you already have Boxing Day and Nickelback. How greedy can one country be? Ah hell, Thanksgiving is just too much fun to let anyone ruin our opportunity to be big fat drunk lazy gluttons. But since I will be missing out on the festivititties this November I’ve taken the time to recount some of the more memorable parts of Thankksgiving. Alas, this year I will be spending Thanksgiving in my hotel room, probably alone and definitely naked, eating chicken adobo and slowly getting drunk on Red Horse. So just go ahead and scroll down before you all slip into a tryptophan and microbrew induced coma, you lucky bastards.
Thanksgiving Traditions: Take 1
Pigskin – Football! Football! Football! Football!!! I don’t know what it is, but we all seem to cream our pants thinking about Thanksgiving football. I don’t even know why I like the game; I never played the damn sport in high school and typically hated the jocks who did. But hot damn do I sure like watching those meatheads sprint around the gridiron like cheetahs on meth out on a AstroTurf Serengeti. I also love that while I gorge myself like that one guy in Seven, eating seconds and thirds of bird flesh and pumpkin pie, I can watch a group of highly skilled athletes try to rip each other’s heads off from the comfort of my La-Z-Boy. On a more sobering note I'm a little sad to notice that whenever the Cowboys and Indians get into a fightin' match, the Indians never win (Dallas is 6-0 vs Washington on Thanksgiving). I mean, come on now, we should all be friends by now. White people forgave Indians for scalping Custer and [I think] the Indians forgave the white man for that big land ownership misunderstanding. So let’s have Washington pull out a victory this year and let bygones be bygones. Although if Chief Joseph was alive now he'd probably be in Dallas on the 50 yard line waving a tomahawk and chanting 'Romo's a homo.' And I couldn't blame him for it.
And then there is something about watching the game on TV and all the guys get a little restless and get itching to go try their luck at a friendly little game of two hand touch. Just watch out for Uncle Mo Lester; everyone’s got one and we all know he don’t remember once you touch ‘em the play is over. Such backyard scrambles always give you a new opportunity to prove to everyone that your 40 is still 10 seconds and that your younger cousin Nancy can tackle and catch better than you. No sweat though, at the very least you have an excuse to turn to anyone on the field and say “John, I was first team All-State. I can put the ball anywhere I want to. I’ll make it rain out there.” Sure, you’ll probably throw more interceptions than completions but don’t worry, it’s hard to be accurate when you’re holding a Solo cup of beer and calling plays with a cigarette hanging out your mouth. You’ll all be hammered soon anyway once someone suggests that you all shotgun a tallboy before each snap. All you need to do is wait until someone pukes cranberry sauce on the ball and you can all go back inside and ask the nearest mom to make a platter of turkey sammy's and bring them in while you watch Home Alone.
Food – where do I start with this one? I guess the most important part of dinner and the whole day is the turkey. You have to have a turkey. Prepare it any way you want but make sure you have a bird on the table come dinnertime. Stuff it with a duck and a chicken and wrap it in bacon and staple on some pork chops and drizzle on some pureed lamb. Get your hillbilly friends over and deep fry it in a bucket of lard and Budweiser. Fill the damn thing with Oreos and put it in a bathtub of milk. I don't care, just make sure you have a dead bird on your table come dinner time. If I didn't know any better though I'd think our country was turning into a bunch of veggie-tards who think it's OK to forgo the tradition in light of something else, like eating soy. I mean, what the shit is Tofurkey? You think the pilgrims took a bunch of corn and potatoes and sculpted them them into a bird?
Pilgrim Smykowski: "You know Squanto, I had an idea like that once. A long time ago. It was a called 'make a fake turkey' dish. You see, it would be this dish that you would put on the floor, and it would be made from different non turkey foods that you could pick from"
Squanto: "We bring you meat, furs and peace pipe"
Pilgrim Lumbergh "Squant, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it, that would be terrific, OK?"
Squanto "Excuse me, I believe you have my land..."
And we wonder why the Indians think white people sucked. No. The pilgrims buckled on their hats and shoes and went out blowing shit up with a blunderbuss. And for that matter, if you want to eat vegetables, just eat them. You don't see me taking my steak and shaping it into some broccoli. I don't disguise my pork chops like a plate of zuchinni. Camoflauging your soy-tempeh-tofu cat shit into anything resembling meat is nothing short of blasphemy and ought to be illegal. Alright meow, let's move on.
Like many of you I enjoy a nice big serving of mashed taters. It is one of my favorite and most interactive foods at the table, second only the Ashekanzi Jewish dish of kugel. Seriously, Yiddish food is so much fun; you'll see, the proof is in the pudding. I know, everyone starts by making a pond or volcano and pouring the gravy in and thinking you’re the first one to do it. Well, you’re not. Volgravos were invented long ago. But there are plenty of other shapes you can work on. Let's get creative out there. Why not make a snowman, an igloo or a mashed potato Hadron Collider? It would be just like a big potato gun, so that sounds easy enough. Of course you could always form up some boobs. It isn't the most difficult choice but it's always crowd pleaser. I bet you'd even get grandpa to smile at that one when you show him your plate with a couple of tuber titties and a turkey drumstick shooting gravy on them. Speaking of interactive food, the wishbone is a real opportunity to make things interesting. I figure that by the time you find the damn thing it’s late enough in the day that all the alcoholic relatives will have a pretty good buzz going and it won’t be too hard to convince them to make some entertaining wagers. Forget hearing your mom say “I wish someone would do the dishes” or dad wishing “someone would rake those damn leaves.” That shit ain't ever gonna happen. Instead suggest to the participants to put some real bets on the line. Have the loser beer bong the gravy or make them wear the turkey carcass like a hat all day or get them to play chubby bunny with that pile of gourds in the middle of the table.
Parades – I’m not one for parades, but then again I’m not one for hangovers either. And yet every Thanksgiving morning I usually find myself engrossed in both of them, curled up on a couch like a retarded kitten and wondering when would be appropriate time to start drinking again. If you’re like me, hangover-riddled Thanksgiving mornings probably started when you were 14. While I can’t say I miss my sober tweens, I definitely think I found daylight and the odor of old relatives much more tolerable. Needless to say, Thanksgiving parades, like all parades, blow. Are you wondering if I think giant balloons are fun? Yeah sure, I guess they're OK. But they were probably a lot better back in the 1930’s when everything was more awesome than the alternative. Let’s see.... do I want to go fight Nazis or watch giant balloons float by all day...
Today though, I think we could use some improvements to our parades. Let’s cut the high school marching bands, the floats with waving geriatrics and get rid of that giant creepy turkey whose head bobbles and eyes roll around his head like he had a 3 lb shroom omlette for breakfast. I know Tom Turkey is a stalwart of the parade, but he is god damn frightening. Look, let’s not get carried away but maybe we could add some exotic dancing, cage free wild animals and maybe, just maybe, we could get an announcer who is engaging with the audience. I swear they always pick some butthole surfer from a morning TV show that no one watches instead of recruiting some real talent. Please, just once hire a smoking monkey or Keith Richards or that guy from YouTube who talks about honey badgers. “Oh look there’s snoopy dog coming this way. Snoopy dog don’t give a fuck.” Once I hear that I know it’s my cue to start drinking again.
Shopping – Black Friday can either be the best day in the world. Or it can be the worst. Worse than the time you got caught peeing bed at summer camp when you were 12. Worse than that time grandma walked in on you with your penis in your hand a look of terror in your eyes. And worse than that time you walked in on grandma blowing the milkman. - (do milkmen still exist?) The scenario looks something like this. You wake up with your gut rumbling to make an emergency exit. Your bowels empty what could only be described as a 7 lb gravy covered Butterball shit hurricane. You walk into the kitchen in search of more rations only to find yourself in a storm of conversation with a pounding headache creeping up behind your eyes. The headache could be from the women talking, daylight or the 4 bottles of red wine you finished last night. Through the haze you hear someone mention it's black Friday and all the women (mothers, wives and girlfriends) are going shopping. All day. At this moment time nearly freezes and the woman who controls your life (pick one from the list) turns to you in slow motion and says to you “Hoooooney. Weeee neeeeeeeed yoooooou toooooo driiiiiiiiive”. Your heart stops beating for approximately 30 seconds. Then life suddenly comes back to full speed as you nearly pass out in shock. Your Friday and potentially your life are ruined. You begin wondering why you even got up this morning. You’d much rather have pooped yourself like tubgirl then endure a whole day of being a chaueffer to a van load of frenzied shoppers. You silently make a pact with God that if he could strike down everyone in the room you'd go to church, swear off drinking and start volunteering. You immediately revise that to "I'll drink less" and close your eyes before the smiting begins.
On the other hand your lady could turn to you and say “Honey, why don’t you stay here while we go shopping.” Now look who’s the genius for getting up early? You'll feel like Christ himself, come to save world as you stroll in to tell the other men that it is because of you that they can all relax and get drunk and eat pecan pie all day. You've rebuffed the muff and no one has to drive! Of course we all know that if given the chance you would have thrown any and all of them under the bus if it would have meant more pie for you. There are no heroes on Thanksgiving. Just a bunch of fat bastards getting drunk and watching football all day.
Happy Thanksgiving America.
The only real downside to this holiday is that Canada has a thanksgiving too. WTF mates? I mean, you already have Boxing Day and Nickelback. How greedy can one country be? Ah hell, Thanksgiving is just too much fun to let anyone ruin our opportunity to be big fat drunk lazy gluttons. But since I will be missing out on the festivititties this November I’ve taken the time to recount some of the more memorable parts of Thankksgiving. Alas, this year I will be spending Thanksgiving in my hotel room, probably alone and definitely naked, eating chicken adobo and slowly getting drunk on Red Horse. So just go ahead and scroll down before you all slip into a tryptophan and microbrew induced coma, you lucky bastards.
Thanksgiving Traditions: Take 1
Pigskin – Football! Football! Football! Football!!! I don’t know what it is, but we all seem to cream our pants thinking about Thanksgiving football. I don’t even know why I like the game; I never played the damn sport in high school and typically hated the jocks who did. But hot damn do I sure like watching those meatheads sprint around the gridiron like cheetahs on meth out on a AstroTurf Serengeti. I also love that while I gorge myself like that one guy in Seven, eating seconds and thirds of bird flesh and pumpkin pie, I can watch a group of highly skilled athletes try to rip each other’s heads off from the comfort of my La-Z-Boy. On a more sobering note I'm a little sad to notice that whenever the Cowboys and Indians get into a fightin' match, the Indians never win (Dallas is 6-0 vs Washington on Thanksgiving). I mean, come on now, we should all be friends by now. White people forgave Indians for scalping Custer and [I think] the Indians forgave the white man for that big land ownership misunderstanding. So let’s have Washington pull out a victory this year and let bygones be bygones. Although if Chief Joseph was alive now he'd probably be in Dallas on the 50 yard line waving a tomahawk and chanting 'Romo's a homo.' And I couldn't blame him for it.
And then there is something about watching the game on TV and all the guys get a little restless and get itching to go try their luck at a friendly little game of two hand touch. Just watch out for Uncle Mo Lester; everyone’s got one and we all know he don’t remember once you touch ‘em the play is over. Such backyard scrambles always give you a new opportunity to prove to everyone that your 40 is still 10 seconds and that your younger cousin Nancy can tackle and catch better than you. No sweat though, at the very least you have an excuse to turn to anyone on the field and say “John, I was first team All-State. I can put the ball anywhere I want to. I’ll make it rain out there.” Sure, you’ll probably throw more interceptions than completions but don’t worry, it’s hard to be accurate when you’re holding a Solo cup of beer and calling plays with a cigarette hanging out your mouth. You’ll all be hammered soon anyway once someone suggests that you all shotgun a tallboy before each snap. All you need to do is wait until someone pukes cranberry sauce on the ball and you can all go back inside and ask the nearest mom to make a platter of turkey sammy's and bring them in while you watch Home Alone.
Food – where do I start with this one? I guess the most important part of dinner and the whole day is the turkey. You have to have a turkey. Prepare it any way you want but make sure you have a bird on the table come dinnertime. Stuff it with a duck and a chicken and wrap it in bacon and staple on some pork chops and drizzle on some pureed lamb. Get your hillbilly friends over and deep fry it in a bucket of lard and Budweiser. Fill the damn thing with Oreos and put it in a bathtub of milk. I don't care, just make sure you have a dead bird on your table come dinner time. If I didn't know any better though I'd think our country was turning into a bunch of veggie-tards who think it's OK to forgo the tradition in light of something else, like eating soy. I mean, what the shit is Tofurkey? You think the pilgrims took a bunch of corn and potatoes and sculpted them them into a bird?
Pilgrim Smykowski: "You know Squanto, I had an idea like that once. A long time ago. It was a called 'make a fake turkey' dish. You see, it would be this dish that you would put on the floor, and it would be made from different non turkey foods that you could pick from"
Squanto: "We bring you meat, furs and peace pipe"
Pilgrim Lumbergh "Squant, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it, that would be terrific, OK?"
Squanto "Excuse me, I believe you have my land..."
And we wonder why the Indians think white people sucked. No. The pilgrims buckled on their hats and shoes and went out blowing shit up with a blunderbuss. And for that matter, if you want to eat vegetables, just eat them. You don't see me taking my steak and shaping it into some broccoli. I don't disguise my pork chops like a plate of zuchinni. Camoflauging your soy-tempeh-tofu cat shit into anything resembling meat is nothing short of blasphemy and ought to be illegal. Alright meow, let's move on.
Like many of you I enjoy a nice big serving of mashed taters. It is one of my favorite and most interactive foods at the table, second only the Ashekanzi Jewish dish of kugel. Seriously, Yiddish food is so much fun; you'll see, the proof is in the pudding. I know, everyone starts by making a pond or volcano and pouring the gravy in and thinking you’re the first one to do it. Well, you’re not. Volgravos were invented long ago. But there are plenty of other shapes you can work on. Let's get creative out there. Why not make a snowman, an igloo or a mashed potato Hadron Collider? It would be just like a big potato gun, so that sounds easy enough. Of course you could always form up some boobs. It isn't the most difficult choice but it's always crowd pleaser. I bet you'd even get grandpa to smile at that one when you show him your plate with a couple of tuber titties and a turkey drumstick shooting gravy on them. Speaking of interactive food, the wishbone is a real opportunity to make things interesting. I figure that by the time you find the damn thing it’s late enough in the day that all the alcoholic relatives will have a pretty good buzz going and it won’t be too hard to convince them to make some entertaining wagers. Forget hearing your mom say “I wish someone would do the dishes” or dad wishing “someone would rake those damn leaves.” That shit ain't ever gonna happen. Instead suggest to the participants to put some real bets on the line. Have the loser beer bong the gravy or make them wear the turkey carcass like a hat all day or get them to play chubby bunny with that pile of gourds in the middle of the table.
Parades – I’m not one for parades, but then again I’m not one for hangovers either. And yet every Thanksgiving morning I usually find myself engrossed in both of them, curled up on a couch like a retarded kitten and wondering when would be appropriate time to start drinking again. If you’re like me, hangover-riddled Thanksgiving mornings probably started when you were 14. While I can’t say I miss my sober tweens, I definitely think I found daylight and the odor of old relatives much more tolerable. Needless to say, Thanksgiving parades, like all parades, blow. Are you wondering if I think giant balloons are fun? Yeah sure, I guess they're OK. But they were probably a lot better back in the 1930’s when everything was more awesome than the alternative. Let’s see.... do I want to go fight Nazis or watch giant balloons float by all day...
Today though, I think we could use some improvements to our parades. Let’s cut the high school marching bands, the floats with waving geriatrics and get rid of that giant creepy turkey whose head bobbles and eyes roll around his head like he had a 3 lb shroom omlette for breakfast. I know Tom Turkey is a stalwart of the parade, but he is god damn frightening. Look, let’s not get carried away but maybe we could add some exotic dancing, cage free wild animals and maybe, just maybe, we could get an announcer who is engaging with the audience. I swear they always pick some butthole surfer from a morning TV show that no one watches instead of recruiting some real talent. Please, just once hire a smoking monkey or Keith Richards or that guy from YouTube who talks about honey badgers. “Oh look there’s snoopy dog coming this way. Snoopy dog don’t give a fuck.” Once I hear that I know it’s my cue to start drinking again.
Shopping – Black Friday can either be the best day in the world. Or it can be the worst. Worse than the time you got caught peeing bed at summer camp when you were 12. Worse than that time grandma walked in on you with your penis in your hand a look of terror in your eyes. And worse than that time you walked in on grandma blowing the milkman. - (do milkmen still exist?) The scenario looks something like this. You wake up with your gut rumbling to make an emergency exit. Your bowels empty what could only be described as a 7 lb gravy covered Butterball shit hurricane. You walk into the kitchen in search of more rations only to find yourself in a storm of conversation with a pounding headache creeping up behind your eyes. The headache could be from the women talking, daylight or the 4 bottles of red wine you finished last night. Through the haze you hear someone mention it's black Friday and all the women (mothers, wives and girlfriends) are going shopping. All day. At this moment time nearly freezes and the woman who controls your life (pick one from the list) turns to you in slow motion and says to you “Hoooooney. Weeee neeeeeeeed yoooooou toooooo driiiiiiiiive”. Your heart stops beating for approximately 30 seconds. Then life suddenly comes back to full speed as you nearly pass out in shock. Your Friday and potentially your life are ruined. You begin wondering why you even got up this morning. You’d much rather have pooped yourself like tubgirl then endure a whole day of being a chaueffer to a van load of frenzied shoppers. You silently make a pact with God that if he could strike down everyone in the room you'd go to church, swear off drinking and start volunteering. You immediately revise that to "I'll drink less" and close your eyes before the smiting begins.
On the other hand your lady could turn to you and say “Honey, why don’t you stay here while we go shopping.” Now look who’s the genius for getting up early? You'll feel like Christ himself, come to save world as you stroll in to tell the other men that it is because of you that they can all relax and get drunk and eat pecan pie all day. You've rebuffed the muff and no one has to drive! Of course we all know that if given the chance you would have thrown any and all of them under the bus if it would have meant more pie for you. There are no heroes on Thanksgiving. Just a bunch of fat bastards getting drunk and watching football all day.
Happy Thanksgiving America.
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