It’s a Tradition
Here I am, kids, at my mom’s house. My friend Erin is watching the kittehs and house-sitting for me back in Athens, and I’m sitting here with Mom, Tom (my step-dad), and my grandpa, watching “Glee”. Tomorrow we’re going to do the full meal with all the trimmings, but for now it’s just quiet, our tummies are full, there’s a pot of coffee on, and it’s the Holiday, almost. It’s not quite as great as it’ll be at Christmas when PaTRex and my sister in law Lisa Rex will be here (They’re in Indiana with her folks for Thanksgiving.), but it’s pretty awesome.
We don’t have a lot of traditions for Thanksgiving in my family besides eating turkey and dressing and mac and cheese until we can barely move and then collapsing into tryptophan-induced comas (we do call that sleep-inducing chemical in turkey “Turk-o-meene”). There’s no hiding Uncle Lou’s toupee in the light fixture, no contests to see who can fit the most satsumas into their mouth.
Oh! But there is the dressing. It’s my grandmother’s recipe. You take the Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing and mix it with an egg and some chicken broth and form it into little cookie-shapes and bake it on a greased sheet pan until the edges are brown and crispy. They’re sooooo good. I’ve never had dressing this way anywhere but home and, frankly, all other forms of dressing? A disappointment. For me it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving (or Christmas or Easter or my birthday) without it.
What about you guys? What are your Thanksgiving traditions?
Busy, Busy
It’s a travel day for me, so posting will be light.
You kids talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be back in the evening.
I’ve Seen the Future and It’s Uygur
Cenk Uygur’s internet talk show “The Young Turks”, who, by the way, were cool enough to feature me as a guest once, gets more viewers each day than MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”.
Uygur doesn’t look like a rebel, but there is something revolutionary going on here. Roughly 450,000 people watch The Young Turks on YouTube alone; thousands more in the precious 18-to-35 demo listen on Sirius Satellite Radio and through the TYT Web site, making it competitive with, say, MSNBC’s Morning Joe (382,000 viewers a day in September), or CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight (616,000). And that, says Uygur, is only the beginning of a campaign “to take down television.”
Somebody’s got to do it. I mean, David Gregory? Really?
And, And Ronald Reagan Was Stronger Than Superman!
Oh, Tucker, what is this mythical world you’ve dreamed up inside your empty little head?
Crooks and Liars: When asked about how people feel about quitter Sarah-Barracuda, Tucker pulled out the tired old McCain campaign rhetoric about how President Obama is “less experienced” than Palin even though he thinks there should be “more respect for the office” than to want to elect either one of them. Tucker added that he believes Palin is smarter than Al Gore, and just thinks its “weird” that anyone would be terrified of her and afraid that she might actually have a chance of being elected President.
Tucker, it’s amazing how you’re only just now 40 and yet you’re already a relic, a bit of unemployed cable TV detritus washed up on the polluted shores of Pox News and the less-watched spillways of C-SPAN. What last few wisps of credibility Jon Stewart was gracious enough to let you walk away with after he performed a back-alley abortion on your career, you traded in for a pumpkin-colored frilly pirate shirt, sequins, and a jerky, wooden-limbed three-episode run on “Dancing With the Stars”.
Honestly, that should have finished you off for good. And yet here you are again, like Alex P. Keaton gone soft and bitter in middle age, Granpa George Will’s lost nephew, rattling your tin cup on whatever cable shows will have you and spewing reheated talking points out of your swollen Moon Pie of a face that have the distinctly bleary, delusional aftertaste of the early second term of George W. Bush. It’s over, Tucker. Go home and lay on the deep, plushy cushions of your mother’s frozen food fortune and leave us working folks alone, okay? Thanks.
Horrible, Horrible People
The sad irony is that every last one of these baying MORANS would adamantly tell you they’re “pro life”. It’s amazing that the cognitive dissonance doesn’t make blood come pouring out of their ears.
I wish it would.
Oh, Vlad
You’re a power-mad, thuggish, totalitarian, ex-KGB bully, but at least you know trash when you see it. Now take off your shirt again.
(I don’t know who is responsible for this image, btw.)
Look on These Jerks, Ye Spite-y, and Despair
(Via Jezebel)
These are truly dark times for the conservative movement. It’s like Taibbi says:
Most normal people cannot connect on an emotional level with Rush’s meanderings on how Harry Reid is buying off Mary Landrieu with pork in the health care bill. They can, however, connect with stories about how top McCain strategist and Karl Rove acolyte Steve Schmidt told poor Sarah to shut her pie-hole on election day, or how her supposed allies in the McCain campaign stabbed her in the back by leaking gossip about her to reporters, how Schmidt used the word “fuck” in front of her daughter, or even with the strange tales about Schmidt ordering Sarah to consult with a nutritionist to improve her campaign endurance when she herself knew she just needed to get out in the fresh air and run (If there’s one thing Sarah Palin knows, it’s herself!).
Complaining about the assholes we interact with on a daily basis is the #1 eternal pastime of the human race. We all do it, and we get to do it every day, because the world is full of assholes.
And that same Brittle, Self-Righteous Substitute Teacher as Everywoman quality is what makes a certain segment of educated, not-a-Baptist-choir-director America retch and claw at our eyes and ears every time she starts serving more of her usual psycho-blathering word salad. We all know Sarah. Sarah is the woman you temped with who said the piped-in 70’s soft-rock in the break room was “full of demons” and insisted on Christian music or nothing. She’s the neighbor whose kids tore down your badminton net but who calls animal control every time your dog slips out of the fence.
She doubts your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Fortunately, she really does seem to have a knack for fucking up everything she touches. I predict that her presidential run, should it come to that, will be every bit as professional, rock-steady, and problem-free as Rudy Giuliani’s, but to like, the power of ten. I guess it’ll be entertaining, to say the least. Poor Teddy over at Firedoglake may have to invest in a sensory deprivation tank, though.
Why I Hate the Holidays
You know, every year I wait for news that Cokie Roberts has drowned Mara Liasson in some Georgetown hairdresser’s sink (or vice versa) over an invitation to the Widow Russert’s Christmas Ball and it never, ever comes.
The season is just so full of disappointments.
This’ll Steam Up Your Windows
I want-uh/a love that’s on the square…