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I want to Thank ya Fa Lettin Me Be Mice Elf...Again

Upon reflection I have come to believe Thanksgiving to be the strangest holiday of the year. This estimation has nothing to do with the actual rituals of thanksgiving -- which really only include eating -- nor is this judgement a reflection of the holiday's origins or purposes. It just feels like strange things always seem to happen on thanksgiving. Things don't seem to fit within the boundaries of a simple, humble, family get-together.

Sure, you might get a little crazy on New Year's, but that sort of thing is supposed to happen on New Year's. We all approach that holiday expecting the unexpected. Halloween is the same way. It's scientifically engineered to turn the world upside down for one night, so nothing seems to phase me on October 31st. Even Christmas has the whole gift exchange aspect that tends to take center stage -- deflecting the participants from what's truly strange: our families.

Thanksgiving usually means getting together with a lot of people you rarely see and spending hours and hours in their company. Mostly (at least for me) it's people you love, and have known for years, but for some reason that doesn't make the event any easier. Especially when there are a lot of extended family around. There's always this weird expectation that comes with being related to someone. I might not know anything about my 3rd cousin's brother-in-law, but I feel compelled by some strange bond of family to engineer a "closeness" to him.

And that's just the "normal" thanksgivings. I've had a few abnormal ones over the years. Here now is the story of my strangest thanksgiving. I apologize to those of you who have laready heard this.

Thanksgiving Reno Style

While I enjoy seeing my mom on the holidays, I hate traveling to Reno on Thanksgiving. One reason is because it's the busiest weekend of the year for travelling. Long lines, delays, and the general chaos of the day gets on my nerves. I always feel stupid being one of those people in a security line who waits an hour and a half so that someone can confiscate a pencil-sharpener that's the size of a quarter.

Because of this my mom and I usually work out some other way to celebrate this holiday. Usually on some other weekend besides the "official" one. However on this particular year (lets say circa 2000) I had braved the throngs of desperate travelers and made my out to Reno.

My mom is a staunch republican. She listens to Sean Hannity on a daily basis. Her television only receives the Fox news channel. She subscribes to the Rush Limbaugh newsletter. Volunteered for George Bush's re-election campaign. She's into it. Therefore it made perfect sense that we would spend our thanksgiving at the home of two flamboyantly gay men and their live-in "personal trainer" who they may have met at "The Bird Cage".

well maybe that's a slight exaggeration...the people's who's house we were in weren't really "Nathan Lane flamboyant", but that personal trainer guy...Wow. I've never met anyone who dressed for a thanksgiving dinner in daisy-dukes and tank-top that's 2 sizes too small.

This was a wild get-together...like some sort of mini-burning man with cranberries and stuffing.

The evening really took a turn for the strange when I was sitting in one of the large easy-chairs of the living room and tried to make conversation with one of the few other attendees who was close to my age -- a young woman who was playing with her child on the other side of the room.

We made eye contact and I said, "phew...I sure am full" with a smile.

These were the first five words I had spoken to her all day. She responded by asking me what my astrological sign was and than commented on how similar I was to her child's husband before excusing herself to go outside and smoke her 37th cigarette of the day.

To put it bluntly -- Chain-smoking, astrologer, single-moms were never really my type.

I'm not really sure what we talked about for those 10 minutes but it must have been good because as my mom and brother and I were heading out to go home, this girl ran up to me, gave me her phone number and said I should call her if I wasn't doing much that night.

Give me a break right? I mean this girl was kinda cute but there was nothing about her that interested me.

On the other hand this sort of thing had NEVER happened to me before. Women generally don't throw themselves at me. So with the raging flames of my ego properly stoked, I did end up calling her, and she DID turn out to be a stripper.

I found out when I we were riding in her car to a casino lounge and I was looking at her CD case which had "Nova" emblazoned on the front of it.

"What's Nova mean?" I asked
"Oh that's my stage-name" she replied.
"Ah"

A few minutes pass while I think about this.

"Um...what sorta stage work do you do...that would require you to have a stage-name?"
"Well, I'm a dancer..."
"Ah...and what sort of dancer?"
"Ummm....Cabaret"

So that led to some interesting conversation to be sure. Just so we're clear I didn't engage in anything -- totally dirty -- with this girl. Plus she picked up on me, and i only knew her "details" till mid-way through our evening together. So my conscience is clear. Besides I'm no prude.

But that was an interesting evening. Good Ol' "wholesome" thanksgiving. yeeesh!

Labels: holiday, memories

 
She super bad now
She's here to really blow your mind
Dancing, dancing, dancing
She's a dancing machine

Now for a holiday story...A story about holiday parties to be exact. A story about my company's holiday party.

Every year my benevolent and somewhat faceless employers throw us a holiday party that never fails to be extravagant and somewhat weird. I'm not sure who plans these things they have an penchant for employing drag queens, midgets, Mexican wrestlers, and perfomers in skin-tight, flesh-colored unitards. Usually not at the same party and never the same person.

This year we had a couple of cirque de soleil types (in flesh-colored unitards) hanging from strange drapery up in the rafters. We also had some sort of casino thing goin on. The money was fake which was good because the dealers (despite being very friendly) had trouble counting to 21 at times.

The theme of this years Gala was "Fire and Ice". This elemental motif was brought to life via a group of performers called "Fear No Ice". A group of people who bill themselves as the first ice sculpture performance group. Sometimes new ideas come to the surface and find a person surprised...Blown away that such a sublime and important thing lay dormant in the collective subconscious for so long. People see or hear about these ideas and say things like, "How is it that _I_ never thought about that!"

"Fear no Ice" is not one of those ideas. The reason why these guys are the first performance ice scupltures is because this is a silly idea.

The group consists of two men stomping around stage with chainsaws while a 2 minute piece of music is set on a 15 minute loop. The men are dressed in a furry white thing with lights on their heads. It's as if someone from the Blueman Group and Sam Fischer from Splinter Cell copulated and these artists are the result.

The performers run around and stare menacingly at big blocks of ice, than twirl away as oddly timed pyrotechnics belch out sparks and flame in such away that seems to surprise even the people on stage.

It was all very...Strange. As one sits there watching this spectacle she is bound to feel compelled to appreciate what's happening. It's apparent that someone put a lot of time and passion into this thing...But it sorta falls short of being as fantastic as it clearly wants to be.

Oh well.

The party did come with all it's usual good stuff. Plenty of great food, plenty of fun people, and plenty of free booze which always leads to the obligatory gossip item.

This year it was probably the woman who stood up on a table and started to get freaky-naughty in front of everyone. It was a PG performance, but what was striking about it was that the last time I spoke to this woman she was complaining about the amount of inappropriate sexual material she has to endure in her office. I couldn't stop thinking of this as I watched her twirl her clothes high in the air above her while doing a fantastic pantomime of something you might see on the discovery channel...Or the spice network depending on your cable package.

One of the areas where the party-planner fell a lil short was in the heating. It was colder than some sort of cliche in there. The good thing about this was that it promoted more dancing than usual since it was one of the few ways (aside from coffee) that could keep from ending up like Jack Torrance at the end of the shining.

In their infinite wisdom the party planners also decided to hire a group of "instigators" dressed in tight black pants and some sort of shiny, red, sequined shoulder pads. These young women (and one spastic man) were responsible for making dancing, getting other people to dance, and dance with people who were already dancing. They were all attractive and extremely enthusiastic.

At one point, while myself and a few others were out shakin it, two of these hired guns shimmied into our circle and began to raise the roof with us. This ended up being really strange. One part of your brain notices that these hot girls are smiling and dancing at you and says, "Damn G! Look at you all studly and shit". The other part of your brain is saying, "these women are being PAID to pretend to have fun with you sucka!"

It got weirder when I noticed that one of the dancers kept looking at me and sort of...Ghosting me. In other words, I would dance a certain way and her eyes would light up and she'd nod her head and start moving the same way. Her expression seemed to say, "OH you like THAT sorta move eh?! Yea I can dig your groove! WATCH ME!"

After a few songs the DJ started mixing in some older songs like Ton Loc's "funky Cold Medina". The hired guns stopped singing along and sorta seemed like they were pretending even harder than before to have fun.

"You've never heard this song before have you" I said to the one who WASN'T mimicking my every move.

"No...I don't think so" she said.

"How OLD are you?!" I asked.

"I'm 19!" she said brightly.

un-be-lieveable.

We left shortly after. I dunno what the others were thinking but I was feeling something close to shame. :)

-B

Labels: holiday

 
Another Milton's Meal

Say what you want about the crowded shopping malls and forced sentimentality of the holiday season, I still really like it. The pressures of preparing for gift exchanges and wading through crowds of shoppers is uncomfortable, yet the ritual of the exchange itself is still really fun and worth the effort. Especially when you luck out and stumble on a couple good ideas for people.

Christmas day for me has changed for me over the years. My family always seemed to have something going on for the 25th of December (despite the fact that we lived in a Jewish household). In the years that followed my parent’s separation, I spend most of my Christmas days alone.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. I quietly get to work on small projects and gorge on video games while the rest of the country does the same with their home cooking. I almost never seem to have gone to the market before Christmas, so I make my yearly journey to Milton's -- the local Jewish deli (well...sorta Jewish...they do serve bacon and ham) -- for a decent bowl of matzo-ball soup.

(Here's an amusing little review of Milton's)

This year I managed a bit more human contact. A nice breakfast with my extended family, and some quality time with my friend Wendy and "The Return of the King" bookended an otherwise quiet Christmas day.

Lastly I'd like to point out how glad I am I didn't get swept away in a massive tsunami this holiday season. Descriptions of that chaos have been extremely unsetteling. One of these institutions is probably worth a visit.

-B

Labels: holiday

 
Never free, never me, so I dub the unforgiven.

--> Here's where I write something about how I haven't posted in a while. <---

Now that that's out of the way:

The 4th of July - Woo Hoo! I had a super-great holiday which consisted of lots of playing soccer, lotsa swimming in the ocean, and lotsa riding my bike up the coast. I got to visit with all my peeps, including Liz the outta towner, and The Buhrs (who I guess are also outa towners but closer than Liz).

Work has been very very busy for me lately, but I think we've finally managed to put the finishing touches in this latest project. Hopefully things will slow down a bit now. Why is it though that the longest part of a project is the last little bit? It just seems like it takes so long to tie up all the little loose ends.

Adam and Diana recorded the worst movie ever for me on my request: Lord of the G-string: Femaleship of the String.

It's not what you would call a sensitive, character-driven, tour-de-force.

It's more like a hastily put-together, poor excuse for soft-core porn. Which is exactly what I was expecting.

What I wasn't expecting was the cheesy "comedy". I was much more hoping for lots of unintentional humor. Instead the movie fancied itself a "parody" with a lot of sex. Never again will I call something "un-funny" lest it be this movie. Oh yea...speaking of the sex. Thumbs down man! I've seen a bit of pornography in my time on this planet and this was piss-poor.

Lots of unattractive women clumsily pawing at their own breasts does not = sexy. Cottage cheese thighs? Surely inevitable for most people...but extremely not sexy.

the funniest part of the "film" (in terms of the sort of funny I was hoping for) was the "special effects scenes"
Like the CG shots of "Throbbiton"...which resembled the sort of thing you would see in really bad local TV ads. Only much much much worse.

okay that's all for now.

-B

PS: okay I just ran a spellcheck on this post and only one word came up as wrong...that never happens to me. Is something wrong with this spellcheck?

PPS: Supersonic, Elektronik

Labels: holiday, pop and/or culture

 
Put the boogie in your butt.

Let's move on from that photo in the last post. The mohawk is gone, the head is shaved. By far the best part of having a shaved head is being able to just get up and go...not pausing for "product".

Coming soon to a Saturday near you is Valentine's Day. My friend Bitter-Mike hates Valentine's Day, and with good cause. "It's a fucking Hallmark Holiday" he's likely to say. It's a sentiment addressed in an episode of the Simpsons where everyone is forced to celebrate, "Love Day" (Marge celebrates by giving Homer a toy bear called "Sir Loves-a-Lot"). Valentine's Day, much like almost every other holiday we celebrate, often seems like nothing more than a way for some business (like cards, candy, and flower shops) to grab some extra cash.

Personally I'm pretty prone to get sucked in by most conspiracy theories. I like the idea that a group of card printers and gardeners got together in some underground bunker and decided that something needed to be done to keep their shops busy in February. I hear that President Kennedy grew suspicious about Valentines day and look what happened to him. How many mob-owned chocolate stores are there?

According to some several websites (most conveniently linked to sites where you can buy valentines day gifts), February 14th has been some sort of holiday since 498 AD, when Pope Gelasius declared it St. Valentine's day. Most places you look say that this was done to Christian-ize a pagan fertility ritual that took place at the same time.

I think this year for Valentine's Day I may find inspiration in this old school approach to the holiday. According to what I've read I should kill me a young calf, dip strips of it's hide in blood and slap my girlfriend with it to make her fertile. I think she'll appreciate all the trouble I'd be going through to accomplish that.

The fact that St. Valentine's day has been around longer than evil marketing departments doesn't necessarily validate the existence of the holiday in it's current form. I still think that most of it is crass commercialism, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.

I go through a similar thing during religious holidays like Passover. My friend Gabe is particularly critical of my enthusiasm for such holidays. This is because I am an atheist. Gabe (and I don't mean to put words in your mouth here buddy) seems to think that it's hypocritical to deny faith, but still receive some of it's earthly benefits.

To me though, holidays transcend faith. Most people I observe only give lip-service to whatever religious significance those holidays have anyway. What seems most important to all of us is the opportunity to celebrate the lives we lead, and the connections we make with each other. I enjoy Christmas and Channukah because I like exchanging gifts, eating good food, and spending time with friends and family (in that order :) ). I like Passover for basically the same reasons. Halloween, New Years Eve, and St. Patricks day could just as easily be to the liquor industry what Valentine's day is to cards and flowers....but fuck it. Those are fun holidays too.

A lot of people might say, "I don't need a holiday to tell my significant other I care for him/her"...that may be true, but does that make it less fun to have a special day that's set aside specifically for that purpose? Sure you could do that on any random day of the year (and you probably should) but a holiday that expresses that sentiment is pat of what culture is all about. It's about not only connecting with your girlfriend, but connecting with the human race. It creates a solidarity that your random acts of romance can't do.

So despite the sneaking suspicion that I am succumbing to a cheap marketing ploy, I enjoy Valentine's day.

But I still don't know what the hell I am going to do for it this year. Any suggestions?

-B

Labels: holiday

 
Hey Dirty, baby I got your money.

When the clock strikes midnight tonight the holiday season will be over and 2004 begins....The last year of my twenties.

That could be the most depressing thing ever. Oh well...No use in complaining about the inevitable I suppose.

Let's see...Lots to talk about.

Let's talk about my X-mas. Everyone I knew was either out of town on Christmas day, or participating in family activities where I was not invited. So there I was, just sorta chillin. I went to the Jewish deli for breakfast and headed into work to mess with my new ipod a bit. That ended up taking up most of my day...That and just futsing around on-line. It was around 11:00 at night when I left and I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I thought that there was a chance that In-N-Out would be open...But no dice.

I rolled home and searched the kitchen for food and came up with stale pasta...Which doesn't taste that bad once you boil it up and slap some tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese on it! Merry Christmas! :)

Other holiday stuff was fun though. My family exchanged gifts a couple days earlier, and on the Friday following x-mas a group of friends came over to my house for our annual secret santa party. We made gingerbread houses (pictures to come), ate latkes, hung out. My old friend Isaac stopped by as well. I had not seen Isaac in about 7 yeas and it was so fun having him over. He was really the same old guy. Isaac has always been a dynamic personality and a great story teller so it was no surprise to see that, by the end of the evening, he had drawn a semi-circle crowd around him in a corner of my apartment as he regaled everyone with stories of his mis-adventures in New York and San Francisco.

In preparation for the evening I needed to get a spice called "cream of tartar" for the frosting "glue" required for the G-bread houses. On the way home I was stopped by a homeless guy who mistook it for a bag of coke.

Anyhow...The holidays also brought around a lot of good friends who I don't get to see that often anymore. I had coffee with Meredith, hung out with the Randalls a few times. Good fun.

You know what else is good fun? Karaoke Revolution! I picked up a copy of it a few days ago. Even though I knew my friends would be far too self-conscious to give it a try I rolled it out during my secret santa party. It was received much the same way that a mob of villagers might receive Frankenstien's monster.

But I fired it up a couple nights later and had a grand old time. Actually it was especially fun when my roommate showed up. We were laughing and singing (terribly). I did a particularly stirring rendition of Wind Beneath My Wings at the "County Fair" level, and brought the house down a couple stages later with "When a Man Loves a Woman". You shoulda been there.

Heather actually gave it a try the next night and really got into it. It's the only video game I've shown her that she actually wanted to keep playing.

-B

Labels: holiday, video games

 
If you give me ten bitches then I'll fuck all ten.

(a lil snoop dawg comin at ya)

Well it appears that when my comments section was "closed for maintenance" that maintenance included blowin away all the old comments that were previously posted. Boo that. There was some cool comments there. Sorry.

It's now December 15th which means it's pretty much all holidays all the time till January 2nd. I've been in that holiday shoppin groove. Half the stores I went into look like the stadium after your football team wins the game. Everything is knocked over, outta whack and there's garbage everywhere. It's pretty cool.

Saturday I attended my company's x-mas party which was awesome. The event was held at On Broadway, a big dance club in downtown San Diego. Our company rented the whole place out for most of the early evening (they let all the regular peeps in after 10:30 or so). There was casino games, plenty of dancing (with DJs playing in multiple rooms), pool tables, and some awesome food, including bottomless plates of sushi, along with plenty of free booze to insure that someone would make an ass out of themselves.

Once again however, our department got shut out of the sweet prize raffle that goes on every year. Boo!

Sunday we got some good news about our buddy Saddam. I was very pleased to hear this news. I don't necessarily think this vindicates the war effort, but it was certainly a requirement for it to be perceived as a success, and politics aside, I want my country to be successfull. Of course this event makes it more likely that we'll be beating around the Buuuush for another four years, especially with the economy on the rebound (at least in the short term).

I had a long conversation with Ms. Bill O'Reilly (also known as my mom) the other day. During the conversation she displayed some astute debate skills and elaborated on her conservative position by calling Al Franken "A fucking jerk", as well as saying she was glad that fundamentalists were attacking soldiers in Iraq rather than striking targets here in the U.S....which I thought was very brave of her to say. I doubt she would be so bold with the lives of the military people over there if I was among them. :P

It was a sweet conversation.

I helped participate in a facial capture today. No...It has nothing to do with bukake...It was a motion capture session for the face only. Here's what I look like when I get marked up for facial mo-cap in the morning:









despite the expression captured here in this photo I had a good time helpin out!

-B

Labels: holiday, pop and/or culture

 
Let's play master and servant.

Well it was a fabulous thanksgiving holiday extravaganza supreme to the extreme.

The first half of a holiday season that says so much about we Americans. The gluttonous Yin of Thanksgiving so compliments the consumer Yang of the Christmas season that it makes me want to belt out the star spangled banner.

Not that I'm opposed. I really do like the holidays. I love eating myself silly at thanksgiving as well as the pseudo-sexual "giving and receiving" of X-mas. I just like to temper it with a bit of cynicism is all.

I had the good fortune of attending not one but two thanksgiving feasts this year. The firsts was a thanksgiving lunch with Heather's family, It was a delicious meal, the highlight of which came when Heather's dad tested out his new CO2 powered, whipping cream device, on his wife. The initial trial did not go as planned and yielded hilarious results.

Heather and I basically went straight from her place to my dad's house. My dad and Ko had put quite a spread together. The long table accommodated some 13 or 14 people (maybe more?). Aside from the usual thanksgiving fare, there were little snacks like fruits, breads, nuts, and spreads, scattered all over the table. It was very nice.

My brother spent thanksgiving with my mom again this year. I had originally planned to travel to Reno to see them the week after thanksgiving, however circumstances made that trip much more difficult this year, so I decided to cancel it. My mom was planning on traveling to Long Beach for Christmas a few weeks later anyway so I figured I would see her then. I only found out later that her work would not allow her to follow through with those plans and so she had to cancel her holiday travels as well. Bummer :(

I called her on Thanksgiving and she seemed sad. I hope she's okay.

Heather was swamped with schoolwork this last weekend so after a mellow Thursday night with a rented movie (The Whale Rider) we parted ways as she spent all of Friday studying and left for L.A. that night.

So her weekend was not as fun as mine. I spent Friday playing soccer, and then hanging out with Wendy and Eric Cheng. The three of us decided to brave the third Matrix film. I had not seen it yet and heard so many bad things about it. My expectations were really low and as a result I definitely liked more than I thought I would. Not the best movie ever...But there was plenty of cool fight scenes and creative special effects.

Only a few weeks left till Return Of The King!!!

It was good to see the Chengs as always. Holiday weekends tend to be a whirlwind so I was glad time was made on both sides.

I also managed to be nice and productive this holiday. Mostly got caught up on some birthday and wedding gifts I needed to get sent out to peeps (just in time for the holiday season), but I got some good cleaning done around the apartment as well.

Saturday was super fun. A group of us boys got together from a somewhat traditional game of thanksgiving flag football...Complete with flags! (nice work coach Iwan).









We played for an hour or two and then retired back to my apartment for some post-game Mario Kart Madness. Good stuff. That night we went to dinner at a Fondue restaurant. I had never been to a Fondue restaurant...It was a lot of rich foods and basically felt like eating appetizers for about 3 hours. It was tasty enough though, and was a great way to spend time with friends.

I woke up Sunday with a bit of a sore throat and so I cancelled my soccer plans and bunkered in for a long day of football and video games.

-B

Labels: holiday, pop and/or culture