Friday, November 26, 2010

Fakesgiving

(Photo of Heather at the Wagon Wheel, fall 2010.)

Uncle Roger has a New Yorker with a cartoon of "The Last Thanksgiving" where everyone at the table has a prohibitive and incompatible dietary restriction- a joke you're already tired of and living out in the land of gastro-provisos. Thankfully our meal has no tofurkey glutardenous raw and superior feeling substitutes and the stuffing has organs and the gravy has lumps. It's a bachelor's turkey- roasted in a wok and safety-pinned together, but this more than works. I feel a genetic bond surrounding this turkey, a totally Macgyver'd endeavor with an endemic logic that pairs nicely with the bat pie and brussels' sprouts. We are here for the wine, the scrabble, and the jokes about how fat all our heads are. Yes, there is something otherish about our handling of Thanksgiving, at odds with the Martha Stewart ideal and seasoned with our own perplexed awe that we are even doing this, and yet the ritual surrounding this bondaged bird is still done in earnest. We are each of us holiday hacks, skillfully faking our way into the big time with a dash of salt and a safety pin.