Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and come Black Friday you’re gonna need to go for a long, slow, fat-burning ride to recover from the turkey flu. Sweat a little gravy. Know what I’m talkin’ about?
But your kit won’t fit anymore for some strange reason.
Just click here to take advantage of our special holiday offer* and you, some anonymous porker who happens to be wearing your XXXXL underwear, or a gravity-challenged friend, co-worker or family member, can be trundling along in style like a Clydesdale hauling a beer wagon, just in time for the New Year.
We even have a long-sleeved model now, the better for mopping grease from your chins.
• The fine print: Some restrictions apply.** One jersey per customer.*** Offer void where prohibited by law.****
* Actually, it’s not that special.
** No, they don’t.
*** Bullshit. We’ll run your credit card until it smokes. Buy as many as you can afford, and in ascending sizes, because you’re only gonna get bigger, bubbeleh. Eat, eat; like a skeleton you look.
**** Law? What law? You see any law around here lately? If we had any laws in this country we’d have a jail on every streetcorner instead of a Starbucks, and there would still be a waiting list to get in.
Editor’s note: This was intended to be the kickoff to a podcast, but I couldn’t quite corral the folks I had hoped to rope in as contributors. So instead it’s just words in a row, in the usual fashion.
Thanksgiving, man.
The holiday is practically synonymous with “turkey,” and man, did we ever have a big one come home to roost this year. Orange. Noisy. Indigestible.
He looks more like a turkey buzzard, when you get right down to it. Your turkey buzzard sings no songs; when it speaks, it does so in grunts and hisses. It roosts on lifeless trees, and will shit on itself to stay cool when things get too hot for it.
And if you fuck with it, it will puke on you. Generally around three in the morning, on Twitter.
Still, hail to the Chief, right? Right.
Thanksgiving, man. Definitely a holiday with its ups and downs.
In my misspent youth Turkey Day around the O’Grady table was often an exercise in intoxicant management and impulse control, which can be rough on the digestion. Also, the crockery. Once I left home and took up the news biz I generally worked holidays, having no family of my own to preside over with a scepter of vodka and crown of thorns. It’s a lot more fun to argue with people when you’re getting paid and can eat whatever you want for lunch, especially if it’s whiskey.
Once I was married and the parents were gone, the daily news biz receding in the rear-view mirror as I detoured into the cycling press, holiday mealtimes mellowed considerably. Herself and I spent Thanksgivings with friends and neighbors, or my sister and her husband, since Herself’s kin were a ways off in Texas, Tennessee and Maryland. Lacking a sparring partner, I indulged my contrarian streak by cooking non-standard meals — Chinese, Mexican, Italian, whatever. “Home for the Holidays,”“Alice’s Restaurant” and (if we were driving to my sister’s place in Fort Fun, for some reason, “Sam Kinison: Live From Hell”) replaced the turkey in our family tradition.
Thanksgiving, man.
Herself the Elder joined us for our first Thanksgiving here at El Rancho Pendejo, but I can’t remember what I cooked. Last year, with just the two of us, it was chicken cacciatore, Emeril-style, with a side of Martha Rose Shulman’s stir-fried succotash with edamame.
And this year? Braised turkey thighs with roasted spuds and steamed asparagus. It’s just the two of us again — sis and bro-in-law had hoped to come down, but work intervened, and Herself the Elder is in Florida inspecting another daughter’s new quarters. Thus, something easy, for a simple mind in complex times.
One thing that won’t be on the menu: Arugula. Twice now I’ve come home from the Whole Paycheck with bad batches and I’m kind of over cracking the lid on its plastic coffin and getting a $4 snootful of stank. Who knows what’s going on there? The arugula dude probably left his 18-wheeler parked in the sun while he was doing the nasty with a lot lizard in the sleeper, but who am I to judge a man by how he spends his lunch hour? I like to spend mine eating lunch, but it’s not for everyone, especially if you’ve been taking those little white pills and your eyes are open wide.
Thanksgiving, man.
I’m lucky I made it to the grocery at all last week. I put it off until Friday afternoon, which is amateur hour — all real pros shop on Tuesday or Wednesday — and I nearly didn’t get there on Friday because it took three or four tries and about two hours to send a two-minute video review to the Adventurous Cyclists in Missoula, almost certainly because the Duke City remains mired to the driveshaft in the Adobe Age and uploading video via our internet hookup is the equivalent of tossing a thumb drive into the arroyo behind the house and hoping the wind blows it to Montana.
So I’m sitting here watching the progress bar mostly not move and thinking Jesus, the Merrick Garland nomination is moving faster than this file. Hell, the entire federal government is showing more speed, if only in reverse, motoring back to the Articles of Confederation or maybe King George III, if George wore an even cheesier wig and was the shade of an overcooked yam.
I stopped the upload and restarted it, then stopped it again and restarted it again, and finally unplugged the modem and stomped around the house, which still smelled faintly of rotten arugula. Then I plugged it back in and hey presto! The file finally transferred and off to the Whole Paycheck I went.
So I’m thankful for that.
And I remembered not to get any arugula this time, for which I am also thankful.
Chicken cacciatore and a side of stir-fried succotash with edamame.
It was quiet around El Rancho Pendejo yesterday. No friends, no family, just the five of us — Herself, Mister Boo, Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment), Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and Your Humble Narrator.
Ordinarily we do the holidays with my sister and her husband, but with Fort Collins now an eight-hour drive each way, and the road conditions decidedly Novemberish between here and there, we decided to give the road trip a miss and instead treated them to a FaceTime video tour of our new digs.
Thanksgiving Day breakfast: leftover taters smothered in green with eggs over easy, English muffins and a side salad.
This seemed a particularly bright move after we heard from our pal Hal, who did the big U-turn from Weirdcliffe to Highlands Ranch and back again, narrowly avoiding disaster. Via e-mail, he reported that Bibleburg “was dry on the north end and a fucking skating rink on the south end. A six-car pileup happened right in from of me on I-25 and I was lucky to not be No. 7.”
Good times. Maybe not.
So, yeah. We stayed home, and I whipped up a mess of Emeril’s chicken cacciatore with a side of Martha Rose Shulman’s stir-fried succotash with edamame. Herself was detailed to prepare a green salad and a raspberry cobbler but instead chose to lean on her shovel, sipping a glass of vino, and who can blame her? Not me. Plenty of veggies in that succotash, yo. Plus we had a salad with breakfast (right), which included eggs over easy atop spuds slathered in green chile. And we had ice cream for dessert.
Mister Boo is thankful for monocular vision, but says the Cone of Shame can get lost pretty much any old time now. Turkish and Mia are thankful that nobody has tried to put Cones of Shame on them lately, and so are we.
That time of year again, is it?
Mister Boo is thankful for monocular vision following successful surgeries to remove one bad eye and repair one not-so-bad eye. Also for the delicious bits of chicken breast that accompany his four-times-daily rounds of post-op medication.
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) and Chief of Staff Miss Mia Sopaipilla are thankful for full bowls of top-shelf cat chow that for some reason are on my kitchen counter.
Their staff is thankful for paying work, a flat roof over their freshly New Mexican heads, and the sod firmly underfoot where it belongs. Here’s hoping Thanksgiving 2014 finds you likewise.
And a special thanks to everyone who keeps popping round to check on us, despite the irregular posting of late. We’ll be back on track before you can say “Happy holidays.”
Meanwhile, you still can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant, kid. Don’t forget to pick up the garbage.
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