A preview to this year's Thanksgiving leftovers...

Greetings Turkey Day lovers and a few token vegetarians,

Like turkey sandwiches, reheated mashed potatoes and the last piece of pumpkin pie that no one wants to eat because the top of the pie is beginning to shrivel and separate from its crust like some sort of earthquake fault, I deliver to you a rehashed and reheated blog. Hopefully it doesn't turn your stomach enough so that you can't enjoy today's fare. I've sent this out the day before Thanksgiving in years past and due to my busyness-- as well as forgetfulness-- I spaced out. So keeping in the tradition of being a day late and a dollar short, here you go, and enjoy. I edited it so it appears that I wrote it today. How's THAT for being clever!?

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

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'Tis time again to loosen the belt and shovel
in food in celebration of everything thankful. Yesterday
millions of Americans traveled by plane,
train or automobile to see friends and family in
preparation of a dinner today where we all give
thanks for what we have, if for nothing more than the
fact that we're not the bird on the table.

Like such traditions and classics as "Alice's
Restaurant" (OK, i'm dating myself here and revealing
to all that I grew up with parents who still think of
the 1960's as "groovy"), the Detroit Lions losing and
highway traffic jams, the following tedious email is a
mish-mosh of past Hump Day columns centering around
Thanksgiving. And, like "Alice's Restaurant", it goes
on way too long and has little or no point. But here
goes.



Today is one of the greatest days of the year as we
all get to give thanks for what we have and who we get
to spend it with. We do this by arguing over who is
supposed to do what, ingesting three meals worth of
turkey and fixings in about 6 1/2 minutes and then
falling asleep in a food coma, dreaming of how
thankful we are. Then tomorrow, most people spend the
day seeing other people... in line at the mall as the
official Holiday Shopping season begins.

As every redblooded American knows, the
Thanksgiving "holiday" is a three-day festival which
accurately portrays what our pilgrim forefathers did
back in the 1620's when they pahked their cahs on
Plymouth Rock (not really a big rock for those of you
who never saw it):



Wednesday (ysterday)- getting out of work early and
joining up at an area bar to get totally smashed and
pick a fight with some guy who dated the girl you
liked in high school. Just like the pilgrims who saw
Indians and decided to start shooting them to "make
peace".

Thursday- Hungover, some younger folks would attend
the traditional rival high school football game and
make up with the people they got in a fight with.
Then, lots of turkey and stuffing and sleeping on the
couch watching football. Just like the pilgrims who
then decided that killing wasn't all that cracked up
to be and made peace by having dinner with them, while
John Alden talked to Chief Massasoit and traded a
crock pot of yams for land that today is known as
"Rhode Island".

Friday- Either calling in sick to work, if it already
hasn't been canceled and then budgeting the Christmas
spending budget to somehow buy presents for 20 people
and spend approximately $50, not including the $62.99
you're spending on yourself for a new NFL football
jersey. Why the Patriots don't play the Redskins every
Thanksgiving is beyond me.



Women have a similar version, except it usually
involves getting in a fight with several old high
school friends (who are now, according to the women,
"fat") and budgeting several times the allotted amount
for people, including some they don't even know.

Thanksgiving to me means a little more since I grew up
in the cranky-yankee area of New England, where
Thanksgiving was "discovered". I've been privy to
witness great historical relics and achievements, such
as the Freedom Trail, the Freedom Big-Dig Tunnel, and
various new Dunkin Donuts construction. I didn't grow
up in Boston but rather Western Massachusetts, (which
Bostonians refer to as "friggin faah") yet shared such
eastern Massachusetts customs as creating needless
construction projects like repairing a bridge that
seemed to work perfectly fine, cutting public
education budgets, and erecting statues to Ted
Kennedy, paid for by the Coalition to Cut Public
Education Funding.



New Englanders are, by tradition, irritable and
abrasive by nature. Much of this irritability is due
to the fact that New England, specifically
Massachusetts, is the "oldest child" of the United
States. Useless States that came out long after
Massachusetts, like Utah, Colorado and North Dakota,
got all sorts of benefits that Massachusetts didn't,
like straight borders and two-way divided highways.
What does this all have to do with Thanksgiving? Take
it easy, I'm getting there, and now will give you the
National Enquirer version of how Thanksgiving came to
be, since you want to know.

If you refer to your history books, which I know you
won't, you'll see that New England was first inhabited
by the Pilgrims for Limited Taxation. The pilgrims,
tired of the oppressive King who hated their funny
black hats, set sail on Mayflower Van Lines and landed
in Boston, only to find that construction diverted all
ships south of the city, and thus ended up in
Plymouth, named after the Volare that one of the
Pilgrims, nicknamed "Sully", drove. They celebrated
their journey at a tavern called The Rock (Sideline
here-- if you've never been to Plymouth, for some
reason the Hysterical-- I mean Historical Society of
Plymouth chooses to spell the name of the town
"Plimoth", for no reason other to create the need for
someone with nothing else to do to go to the
historical society HQ and ask why). Immediately upon
arrival, the pilgrims built triple-decker houses,
liquor stores and Chinese restaurants. Rather than
waste needless energy that could otherwise be spent
repressing people, they let their horses run free and
make up the roads in the town, the reason why today it
is virtually impossible to find a straight road longer
than 10 feet anywhere in Eastern Massachusetts. They
built these domiciles along side of these curvy roads
and homage to this architecture is found today in a
land called the South Shore (South Shore motto: "We
are not the North Shore").

Of course the pilgrims weren't the first inhabitants
of Plymouth or America in general. Native Americans,
who were called Indians until one of the pilgrims who
actually hailed from India, Ahmed Abdul-Rahim Johnson,
objected, roamed the land and had crazy ideas like
building casino and selling cheap cigarettes. Pilgrims
wanted the land for themselves and thought it might be
best to fight these Indians for their lands. But
instead, the pilgrims built toll-bridges to gain
entrance to this new land and the Indians, who were of
course penniless, were forced to retreat to a land now
called Foxwoods. However, today we salute these
Indians by naming all of our rivers and lakes after
them and today they get the get the last laugh by
hearing motorists try and pronounce the name
"Pemiwagassetaweebawopashishboomba River" as they
drive in rotting bridges over these bodies of water,
on their way to deposit their money in area casinos*.

*- A casino was founded by Indians as a way to pay for
those aforementioned tolls.



The leader of the pilgrims, Johnny Massachusetts,
proclaimed this new land his own, and had his buddies
Fred Braintree, Darren "too tall" Dedham, Josiah
Weymouth, Bill Rica, Tom Finneran (whoops) and two
guys just nicknamed "Sully" go off in the land and
found their own villages. Each agreed that for one day
a year they would all gather in Plymouth with their
Native American casino breathren, have a nice meal and
give Thanksgiving, and then try and destroy each
other's football teams the next day.

So this year, as you sit down at your table wherever
you are, carve into the bird, grab a spoonful of
potatoes and a forkful of stuffing, be thankful of the
many blessings you have and enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's clearly black and white

Howdy all,

It's been a while since I've written anything-- never mind one of these little ditties-- and while I never promised a timetable on when I would post something, under normal circumstances I would have written about all sorts of things since my last post. Things I consider interesting, like why ESPN Sportcenter is still interesting after the 6th time in a row that you watch it, or who come up with the universal picture symbols for digital cameras. Well, interesting to ME, that is.

However my time and my focus has been shifting towards the health of my Dad who unfortunately has been diagnosed with some sort of mysterious illness which has hospitalized him for the last month or so and has impaired his speech, vision and motor skills. On the surface, it sounds like he suffered a stroke yet the tests he's had shows that this is not the case, so now they believe that there is a form of lymphoma and he's undergoing chemotherapy to treat that.

So how am I doing? Surprisingly well. Of course, the whole situation sucks, but one thing I can do well is keep an optimistic outlook on things and remain positive. I'm a firm believer that people's thoughts about someone, either positive or negative, change their "energy" so the more positive the thinking, the better. And fortunately, I'm surrounded by many positive people in my life including some I know are more prominent in my life for this reason!

So why am I writing about this? Well, they say that things happen for a reason, and as I went out to help my mom with a bunch of things around the house, I used my Dad's computer and realized that his project he had worked on to scan all of the old black and white slides and pictures had been finished. At least I assume he was finished with them all-- I had never seen most of these before and there are a ton of them. My dad is an incredible photographer and in the late 60's bought a Mamiya/Sekar 35mm camera (don't bother trying to find one, they are long out of business) and learned how to develop his own pictures as well. Much like those of you with kids make sure you have a good digital camera or camcorder, he wanted to make sure that he would be able to get these memories on film. And some of these pictures are rather cool and not just because the feature subject was me in a great majority of them. So I thought I would write about some of them, post them as well, and share them with you.

Before I begin, this isn't a call for your pity or sympathy or anything like that or some sort of therapeutic exercise on my part... well perhaps that last part has a little truth to it. In fact I wasn't going to write about these pictures at all but rather some of the albums that I found of his that I have and how incredible the year 1977 was for music (well, at least for these albums. I guess that the hits by "Player" and "Ambrosia" from that year could be argued against calling them "incredible") and still plan on doing so. Yet here goes with some pictures that I got a smile out of and perhaps you will too (caption after photo):


They say that a sense of humor is something that is not genetically transferred from generation to generation however this picture of me circa 1972 or so has me wearing a sweatshirt that says "I am a tax deduction". This is not only hilarious but something I would totally put on my kid, to which all of you are collectively sighing a breath of relief that to date, I do not have any kids (that I know about).



I wasn't going to roll out the "awwww" pictures this early... however this picture of me and my mom is not only purposely trying to drag the "aww what a cute kid-- what the hell happened?" comments out of you but also hopefully shows the warmth that film can capture in a picture-- something that digital pictures simply cannot do (I am convinced).



Someone call DSS!! My mom is giving me a Schlitz. You all wonder where my love of cheap beer comes from? Well now you know.



What is the significance of this picture? This picture was taken around 7:15am on November 6, 1971. I was about two hours old.



I like this picture because I believe it was the last time where I was smiling while shoveling snow.



My first set of wheels, license plate and all. It ran far smoother than my first motorized set of wheels, a 1977 Plymouth Volare. Go ahead, sing it, everyone does... "Voooo-larrr-e". Gag.


I love this picture because it captures several action points at once. My grandfather is on the right, pensively passing sugar to someone, my mom is on the left talking to no one in particular (ah, how things remain the same over time) and my aunt Julie ponders another piece of Bundt cake.


Vaudeville runs in my family and my wacky aunts are no exception to that fact. As they put on some sort of broadway show, I apparently don't seem too interested as for me, it's all about the bottle.


I love making funny faces and while I like to think that at age 1+ I was making one for the camera, I think it could have been because I am apparently teething.


This would have been a totally cool abstract picture had it not been for the reflection of my dad in the water below.


One thing about my Dad-- he loves to read. And I am totally sure that this article about the upcoming '72 Election is captivating him to the point of making a rather ominous face. Hey, at least he's not holding the magazine vertically.

OK that's it for now... expect something soon about 1977 and three albums that you should own if you either lived in 1977, were curious about 1977, or if you need to cover a hole in the wall and would like an album cover to do the trick!

Mike