good turkey

Today I am considering baking a post-Thanksgiving pie. Yesterday I baked a Thanksgiving-Thanksgiving pie, an apple-cranberry number that I'm moving right into permanent rotation (a rotation that might begin, say, tonight). The dessert was my token contribution to a glorious full-throttle no-strings dinner put on by C&A (great food! board games! a $1m idea for a line of stretchy eating pants!), and now I want another one to eat all alone like a crazy person. This strikes me as the kind of binge an morbidly obese person goes on just before they're confined to bed or schedule the date for gastric bypass surgery but, as they say on Springer, Whatever! I do what I want.

Baking the pie reminded me of last year's Thanksgiving, which I spent with my sister here in Chicago. It was my first time cooking the big meal, and I'll have to say I prefer being the other end of the process (i.e., the eating part). We ate at like 11:30p after a grueling day of Internet shopping (for H) and dealing with how to butter the turkey without ending up with a creepy turkey skin glove (for me). By the time we finished, we were sort of drunk and punchy. I guess that's how we ended up taking so many magical Polaroid pictures of one another? I don't know, it's unclear.

I do remember we conceived of the shoot as a series of advertisements for different items on the table. (This is the kind of thing my people do when left to our own devices.) The concept evolved into a contest wherein we took pictures of each other "selling" the same item to see which was better. These pictures were for our pie advert:


H was a seasoned pro. Notice the smooth hair, the sweet smile, the subtle "weather girl" stance. She sure is selling that pie!


Mine didn't go nearly so well. Notice the palsied claw, the unruly pigtails, the unhinged expression, the bared teeth. You may eat pie, it suggests, but I eat PEOPLE.

We still laugh about these pictures one year later. My sister is the best. I miss you, H!

bad turkey

Sometimes I’m such a bad person. I don’t recycle even though I drink like ten cans of Diet Coke each day. I am woefully out of touch with the news of the day and I couldn’t care less. I rarely give people the benefit of the doubt and my default mode is mockery.

I mean, I worry about the world. I buy thoughtful gifts for my loved ones. I even help little old ladies across the street (literally—just the other day!) (though honestly it made me VERY uncomfortable). But I’m just terrible in so many ways.

I have mostly come to terms with my own awfulness, but every so often, something happens that makes me confront it with fresh eyes. Much like helping little old ladies across the street, it’s an uncomfortable process.

Basically, what I’m trying to tell you is that I feel sort of bad about how often I laugh at my mentally retarded Facebook friend.

Let me back up for a minute to explain that I went to a public high school, which means I had classes with pregnant girls, homeless people, and retards. Of the latter, those who were really bad off (biters, helmet-wearers, etc.) were corralled in their own special class, but this fellow (my Facebook friend, that is) was sort of a floater. So he was in, like, “normal” PE classes? Or maybe regular American Government class? The truth is, at my high school, there was a fine line between retarded and regular kids.

Anyway, this particular re wasn’t one of those sunny sweet people with Down Syndrome. He wasn’t one of the self-flagellating autistics either, but he was always sort of melancholy. One of his great tragedies was his undying and unrequited love for my friend W. He colored her pictures and wrote her misspelled notes in crayon asking her over for romantic Spaghetti-O dinners at his grandmother’s house. Sometimes, for holidays, he’d tuck in a crisp dollar bill. W, who is a much better person than I, was always so gracious about it. I was never cruel to him, but I’m not going to say those invitations went by without remark.

Fast-forward some 13 years to the day I received his Facebook friend request, when I called my most mean-spirited friend (Z) to share highlights from the re’s profile (references to Jesus, AM radio(?), etc.). Z went to a progressive private school where everyone could read, so he was too hung up on the strangeness of high school res to properly appreciate the whole story.

Of course, all that was nothing compared to the first time the re IMed me. It was short and sweet—something like “Hey girl, how r u?” (me: Hey, I’m really good!)—but I was laughing like crazy because I’m such a big jerk. Some time later came our second (totally amazing) conversation, which went something like this:

High School Re: hey
Me: hi
High School Re: how are you
Me: Good. How about you?
High School Re: good I have a nephew take a look @ the pic
Me: awesome, that must be fun
Etc.

I didn’t actually look at the picture because I was worried that “nephew” was some sort of re code for penis. I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess I’m thankful I’m not retarded?

Oh well! Happy Thanksgiving!

bloody hell

Like most people in their right minds, I have a crippling fear of the dentist. It all started with several unfortunate incidents courtesy of my childhood dentist, who instilled in me sort of generalized dread and despair with regard to my mouth. My anxiety became more acute in my early twenties, when some sadistic bitch spent an hour or so sticking my gums with a glorified pin to see how much I would bleed. That’s when I learned that my genetic destiny is to live life with the gums of an octogenarian. My mouth is basically a big lump of necrotic tissue.

As a result, I’ve spent the better part of my adulthood trapped in this terrible, retarded, self-destructive cycle where I don’t go to the dentist for a while because I’m freaking the fuck out and then, when I muster the courage to go back, terrible things happen because of the hiatus. That’s why, earlier today, I went through a gruesome procedure called periodontal scaling, which is where you pay someone thousands of dollars to give you a dozen or so numbing shots and maul you with some sort of supersonic screeching device of doom.

About two hours in, when I found myself staring at a glittering scraper covered in gore like someone out of an Eli Roth movie, I thought surely things couldn’t get worse. But the worst moment actually came after the appointment when, following an epic survivor’s nap, I tried to resume a normal life by baking a pineapple upside-down cake. I was chopping fruit when suddenly my mouth felt very strange. Imagine my surprise and horror when I spit up two teaspoons of blood followed by what I believe to have been a giant repulsive scab.

You guys, it was soooooooooooooo grody.

You know you’ve had a bad day when all the world you want is to treat yourself to a nice cleansing horror-barf but choke it back out of fear that it will make your teeth will fall out.

taxonomy of FEAR

Like most members of my generation, Jim Henson was an important influence during my formative years. The Muppets and Sesame Street brought me a lot of joy. They taught me how to spell and sing and eat cookies—vital skills that continue to enrich my adult life.

But, like most things in my nervous existence, the muppets were also a near constant source of fear and anxiety. For every googly-eyed charmer, there was some crazed monster that sounded as though his tongue had been cut out.

Ten Most Fearsome Muppets
10. Bruno Even as a child, I sensed Bruno was what we in Tennessee call a sex pervert.



9. Two-headed monster I somehow found their horns more upsetting than their two heads.



8. Frazzle Clearly eats people




7. Sam the Eagle The bird phobia started early.



6+5. Dingers & Honkers Freakish mutes, excepting Ernie (obviously).



4. Swedish Chef There was always something sort of sinister about his enthusiasm.



3. Yip Yips I’m feeling better about the Yip Yips these days, thanks in part to this swell video.




2. Sweetums Haunted my dreams as a toddler



1. Beaker TERRIFIES ME STILL

notes from the sickbed

Let me just say right off the bat I feel a little uncharitable writing about how disappointed I was with Where the Wild Things Are. I liked the idea of this movie so much that it seems mean to say anything bad about it. You know how The Believer was founded on the idea of praising the things you like instead of panning the things you don’t like? I feel the same way about that as I feel about this film: the premise is nice, but it’s ultimately an exercise in self-indulgence.

I bring up The Believer, that tiny corner of the Dave Eggers empire, because I am genuinely puzzled that he was one of the brains behind this relentlessly bleak movie. How could Eggers, someone who is well known for his generous spirit—someone who has, in fact, built an awesomely original charity by adapting the McSweeney’s idiom to the weird world of children—have written this tone-deaf screenplay? I’m so confused.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t object to the fact that this wasn’t a movie for children. I object to such a joyless adaptation of a book that, in my own childhood, inspired a strong sense of excitement and wonder. It is one thing to romanticize a rough-and-tumble boyhood, which I believe the book does. It is quite another to make your protagonist a biter—as in a biter who bites people—who tells his mother grim little stories about vampires whose teeth are falling out. I think the movie means to suggest that childhood can be a bit dark, but movie Max seems genuinely disturbed. What are we meant to make of the part when he stands on the counter and shouts, “Woman, feed me!” at his mother? And then bites her?

That said, young Max was very well played by child actor Max Records, who had perfectly flushed cheeks and a very fine wolf suit. But I have to ask: do you think that Spike Jonze, a person with a silly made-up name he gave himself, shows favoritism to actors with silly made-up names? And is Max Records the love child of, like, someone’s zine and a performance artist? Are 12-year-olds allowed to have made-up names now? Also, check out this fun fact, via IMDB: “At the age of 8, [he] led a protest for vegetarian options at his school cafeteria.” Whew boy. Good luck with life, Max Records.


Did Spike Jonze inspire Max Records to renounce his slave name?

Anyway, movie Max bites his mom and is then transported through the power of imagination to the land of the wild things, who are almost as disturbed as Max is. The wild things are sinister, cynical, and probably clinically depressed. Max’s best friend is the volatile and violent Carol, who is immediately flagged as the wild thing with the biggest behavioral problems since he is voiced by James Gandolfini. For me, recognizing Gandolfini’s nasally whine was another red flag. Should the Land of Pure Imagination really be populated with the likes of Tony Soprano? At that point, I half-expected Jigsaw to crawl out of a cave in a bear-trap mask.

“Hello, children! MURDERSODOMYBEARTRAPMASKSBLARGHHHHH!”

Another red flag was raised when Max was introduced to the special friends of wild thing KW—two sweet-faced owls, Bob and Terry. Poor Bob and Terry are flying by when KW heaves big rocks at them and knocks them right out of the sky. Then she tells Max that the owls like being knocked out of the sky with big rocks. I know that Jonze and Eggers took some liberties with the source material but WTF was that? It was this weird depressing detail that didn't even make sense. “She hits them because she loves them” seems like a weird message to send...anyone.

Just when I was sure Max and Carol were ready to murder-suicide, Max takes his boat back to the land of the living and is rewarded with a big piece of chocolate cake. I think the last shot of a tired single mother watching her disturbed child snarf dinner was supposed to be heart-warming? I guess Warner Brothers cut the bit where Max bites her nose off and feeds it to the dog.