Thanksgiving Myself Agita Worrying For No Good Reason

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

So of course I start worrying about it well in advance.

By last Tuesday, when the Cheez and I had actually started on our road trip to San Francisco, where we have spent every Thanksgiving since 1992, I was in full on panic.

Carol is coming this year I pointed out to Cheez, meaning our friend Katie's mother. This is shocking because though she is invited every year, she always declines. Something about not wanting to see her adult offspring in lingerie.

Oh, yes, I guess I should mention that in addition to spending every Thanksgiving since 1992 in San Francisco, we have spent every Thanksgiving since 1995 in lingerie.  

Trust me, it cuts down on the unwanted relatives at the dinner table.

At least it did until this year.  

This is just like when the AAA magazine ran the article on Burning Man I moaned, my complaint shrilling out like an RV tailpipe dragging along the hipster-encrusted desert. It means it's all over.

Then, as we were holed in the Motel 6 in Redding, we realized Cheez had forgotten to pack his Farrah Fawcett wig. How can you have Thanksgiving in your regular hair? I wailed.  You might as well be sitting home with a Tofurkey sandwich. 

But by the next morning, things dawned brighter. Or so it seemed when I discovered that the gas station across the street from the Motel 6 sold souvenir spoons.  $6.99 later, I knew I was really on vacation. 

By Wednesday night, we were firmly ensconced in Little Orphan Annie's flat in the Lower Haight, with all eight of our Tgiving pies baked.

What the hell are we going to do with ourselves tomorrow morning? Little Orphan Annie wondered. 

She panics about Thanksgiving even more than I do. 

I reassured her that we could use the time to pay fitting tribute to the Native Americans to whom we Haole Americans owe our earliest Thanksgiving.  AKA the ones from whom we stole this great land. 

Which we did by riding down to the bison paddock in Golden Gate Park.

Herd of bison in the park.

Herd of bicycles in the park.

Things were definitely looking up. Little Orphan Annie lent the Cheez a replacement wig that not only clashed admirably with his made-by-Victoria's Secret-but-actually-purchased-at-Goodwill holiday outfit . . . 

. . . it also made him bear a striking resemblance to everyone's favorite Greek singing sensation.

Now our only worry was how to get us, eight pies, a guitar, an accordion, a salad, half a case of wine, and enough cheese to stink up the entire state of North Dakota from Little Orphan Annie's flat in the Lower Haight to Katie's house in Bernal Heights.

The trunk of the Prius being suPIESingly roomy, everything seemed on the level as we left the Haight.

But I was INCLINED to believe things might be compromised, or really compropiesed, when we popped the trunk after parking the car up on the Heights.

Or at least, half the car was parked up on the Heights. The other half was rather far down.

We were greeted by our co-hostess with the mostest, who seemed oddly ready to play some Live Action Role Playing game.

Very oddly. 

Ever since the breeders among us have started reproducing, I've been keeping close tabs on the queers to kids ratio for Thanksgiving.  But according to Katie, this year it was going to be a shut out.

I couldn't quite imagine a what a No HoMo Lingerie Thanksgiving might mean.

But of course, I'd forgotten that drag queens and five year-old girls are virtually interchangeable. 

Here is Katie's daughter, unwittingly proving that preK can also be pretty queer.  

Speaking of odd couplings, Thanksgiving is the day when I most realize that in addition to being an interfaith couple and an international couple, the Cheez and I are also an inter-animal print couple.

Of course, as John Lennon so beautifully sang, You may say I'm a leopard going out with a bovine, but I'm not the only one . . .

Okay, maybe his panties are a little more equine than bovine, but it's a holiday, people, don't be so uptight. 

Or rather, up tights.

After all, the holiday is about joy and thankfulness and gathering with your loved ones.

Indeed, this pink-crowned and red boa-ed guest is the exemplum of family values, surrounded as he is by his daughter, son, niece, and two nephews.

I guess I don't know why I was so worried that things were changing.  

After all, Thanksgiving will always be my favorite holiday. My pies will always be delicious. Faux leopard will always be the outfit of choice.  My team will always lose the post-prandial football game.

But we will always have the better team photo.

And Carol did do a great job of keeping her five grandchildren occupied, while we in the middle generation had the Accordion-Christmas Carol-and-Endless Eighties-Singalong that are a long-documented Thanksgiving tradition.

Farrah may be dead, but Nana lives on.  

Oh the Humanities!

Trust me.  I'm a doctor.

Albeit not the kind Jewish mothers kvell about.  

More the kind lavender ladies croon about. 

Which is just (closer to) fine with me.

The best thing about getting a Ph.D.?  The tiara I bought myself to celebrate finishing the damn degree.  After spending a year writing a fascinating and insightful dissertation that I'm pretty sure nobody has ever read (and yes, I am including my advisor in that assessment), I figured I ought to have something to show for it.

So why not something sparkly and glamorous and likely to be coveted by drag queens?

Who says a girl has to be biologically a boy just to wear herself a crown?

Are you a princess or a queen?  the neighborhood crazy lady queried, as I marched into the post office, tiara-clad, to mail something off on my way to school to file my dissertation, that fateful long ago day.

Neither I answered, only slightly put off that the person calling me out on weird wardrobe was the neighborhood crazy lady I am a doctor.

These days, seldom having any occasion to dissert, profess, or

 serve as a beauty pageant runner-up, I only find cause to don the tiara once a year.

My birthday.

Because everything, even chocolate cake, is better with rhinestones.

And, apparently, a bra strap hanging out.

Ah well, it was mostly a glamorous birthday bash we had here at Dutchboy this past Saturday.  

Even if it was a little lacking in the sexpertise of yore.  

And my actual birthday, which was Monday, was pretty rocking too.  

My boss brought me a cupcake. And she didn't even pretend to have baked it herself.

Then I Delved into some Shakespeare. 

Specifically, into the final class of the Shakespeare seminar I've been teaching.  

Because, you know, having a new full time job plus my usual twelve thousand hobbies just didn't seem like enough to fill my days, without a good dozen hours of reading Elizabethan English every week.

The seminarians were really great.  One of them said she took the class because she liked my article in Bitch magazine critiquing the global politics of Viacom's Dora the Explorer franchise.   Si, se puede, as Caesar Chavespeare might have put it.

Another seminarian told me I was the first good teacher she ever had.  The fact that she has a graduate degree is perhaps more a statement about the lows of higher education than the heights of my Delving.  But I do not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Or, in this case, a Greek bearing gifts.  Which she was, both in terms of Hellenic heritage and in terms of giving me a handcrafted, locally grown, chocolate vodka.

If that wasn't enough of a Jewish girl's dream day, I came home to discover the postal carrier had delivered the latest issue of Bridges, which in case you never heard of it is like Bitch mit a bissel Yiddish thrown in.  And there, right on pages 75-77, was a poem by little old me.

About a course I had to take to get my Ph.D.

So now, in addition to being a doctor, a tiara-donner, a righteous 9 to 5-er, a Dora-critiquer and an intrepid Delver, I am also a published poet.  

Next thing you know, we'll be seeing Robert Pinsky traipsing around in a rhinestone crown with his bra strap hanging out.

From the Mouths of Bards. Well, Only One Bard. And Thus One Mouth.

I meant to do a Happy Hallotween post.  

It involved an Erev Halloween voicemail from our favorite tween, in which she shrieks in terror.

Terror because her father walks into the room while she is leaving us a message about how she can't hang out with us on Halloween because she is going on a six hour trick or treat binge with her peers, and tells her in that cruel way parents do that she totally not going trick or treating for six hours.  She is only allowed to go trick or treating for like four hours.  Five max.

Then Halloween actually happened.  And the Walloon of Walgreens and his Wuvely Wife surprised the whole block by dressing up as me and the Cheez.

That Is Not My Beautiful Walloon

So I kind of lost the thread of the Hallotween post.  And apparently of the All Saint's Day, Election Day, and Veteran's Day posts as well.

But now I've got a surefire idea for a post topic.  

Plagiarism.

Only, that's an ugly word.  Let's go with Literary Tribute instead.

That's much nicer.  And appropriate, as I am plagiarizing a literary treasure.

So here, without further ado (i.e., more crap photoshop) are the quotable quotes from the eight-week-minus-that-one-I-was-with-my-Schwinstress-in-San-Francisco poetry workshop I took this fall with Peter Sears.

My Own Personal Sears Catalogue:

We do depend on narrative to some degree, especially here in Oregon.

Read the cummings poem and have a glass of wine.

Hot language beats everything.  Deep meaning--leave that to John Donne.  Or whoever.

We have a right wing in poetry that is kind of formal  But they're just stodgy.  They don't really write.

That's what poets do.  They don't want characters chapters, plot.  Screw it.  They want language.

Where can I get a pink tshirt?

You have a real strength in things.  The thingness of the poem. [said in response to a poem we were critiquing, not, alas, one of mine.  Apparently I'm a little thing-lite when it comes to poesy]

We call that in the business POETICIZING.  Poeticizing, a nasty way of saying what she just said.

There he is throwing up in the john, or having angst, or looking out the window.   Whatever it is.

Are we talking your talk, honey?

Sounds like a Ronald Reagan speech.

All the poems work that way Peter declares.  Dubious, workshop student responds, All?.  Peter considers.  A lot of poems he concedes.

Wallace Stevens wrote a few good poems, you know.  And he did philosophy up and down.

On lyric: That's a place, especially with males, where things strut.

Also, the soul is only one syllable, so I like it much better than spirituality.

By young, I mean under fifty.

On William Stafford:  That's why a lot of people hate his poetry.  They can't figure out how the hell he does it.

Sex, war, and some good meals.  There's a title for your first book.

As you can imagine, it was a deeply edifying experience.  

Maybe because I have so much to learn about writing poetry.

But at least I know where you can get a pink shirt.

Right over at the Walgreens.  Which is just the place to go when you're celebrating having your second ever poem accepted for publication anyplace that isn't your high school literary magazine.  

Mishpucha at the Movies

I have some news.

It has taken me quite a while to blog it.

Now the news is so old it's almost retro.

I have a job.  

A full-time, go to the office five days a week job.  

I had heard about these things,  but I never thought it could happen to me.

Farewell FurryCon, and Winkel in my eye, and all the other strange adventures of being self-employed.

The new job is very nice.  Everyone there is very nice.  Welcome to the family, people keep saying.  

Because apparently family is an indication of a warm workplace.  So long as you don't happen to be a Soprano, a Corleone, or have a family like mine.

Most people, upon landing a new job, might take a week off and go on an exotic tropical vacation, perhaps indulge themselves with a major purchase like a fancy new car.

The Macaronimaniac version of this Bermuda and a Beemer indulgence, alas, turned out to be spending the weekend in San Francisco hanging out with my college roommates, and treating myself to a new used Schwinn off Craigslist.

Yes, I am now such a bike geek, I am keeping a spare bike in another city.  

It is a little like having a mistress.

A maroon, ten-speed mistress whose tires could use a little air.

Okay, so maybe it's nothing  like having a mistress. 

It is a lot like having a method of transit to whisk yourself around the city, which is what college roommate Little Orphan Annie and I did, that one glorious Friday of her playing hookie from work and me not having started my new job yet.

We were so wild and out of control, we decided to go see a film right in the middle of the day.

Specifically, the new Coen brothers film.

Only problem, when you go to see a Jewish movie during the day, i.e. when they are not charging full price for the tickets, you are pretty much asking for it.

It being, having two AKs sitting behind you.  

(Note to my goyishe readers:  If you don't know what the AK in the previous sentence means, suffice it to say, 47 is about 20 too short.  If you still have no idea what in the name of Yiddishkeit I'm talking about, read up on it here).

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of amusing lines in the new Coen brothers film.  I just didn't need to hear them in surround sound--first from the screen, then repeated by Siskel and Eberg in the row behind us.

Welcome to the Mishpucha.

Air Show of Force

All work and no play makes Mac a dull blogger.

Most of the time.

But every now and again, work takes me to some fascinating new place, where I have exotic new experiences.

Like accidentally attending a FurryCon.

College friend Nick and I were back on the road this week, this time in San Francisco.
And since our biz travels always seem to coincide with something kinky, perhaps it's no surprise we turned up here to find it's Fleet Week.

It seems a little redundant to have shore leave in a city where everyone is already covered in tattoos, but I guess that's military intelligence for you.

For us, Fleet Week turned out to be more of flyover week:

The thing about the Blue Angels is that they're not as impressive as they used to be, back before movie special effects got so interesting.

Turns out, the actual planes are sort of mediocre by comparison to whatever is playing at the local multiplex. If you look closely enough at the clip above, you can practically see Shatner being tossed sideways in his Naugahyde captain's chair.

Still, it is loud and proud and does attract attention.

Kind of like a Jewish mother at her son's medical school graduation. Since the day he was born, I am telling you, the nurses in the delivery room all looked at him like he was already the one in charge.
Sort of amazing to see the cultured peeps of the City by the eBay getting their Blue Angels on.

Here are my fellow museum goers, in the sculpture garden, anxiously awaiting the next swoop of the jets.

Funny, most places in the world, when the U.S. military is about to fly over, the people beneath them are anxious in a whole other way.

Hebe on the Range

Dateline, 5770

Shanah Tovah I said to my friend Elon.

Not exactly big news (though perhaps big nose), one Jew wishing another a Happy New Year.

Except that it was happening in the VIP room at the Pendleton Round-Up.

Elon expressed some concern that I was going to get us killed, revealing our shared tribal identity.

I tried to reassure him that with any luck, our furrin jibberish would be mistaken for another tribal language entirely.

Not the kind of Princess who attended High Holiday Services at the Dix Hills Jewish Center, back on Long Island

Apparently, in Eastern Oregon, tribal dancing does not refer to the Hora.

Still and all, if you want a reason to say the Shehecheyanu (i.e., the blessing for new experiences) you really can't do better than Jew at a rodeo.

The entire weekend was very educational.

This is not a slick lick banker from the city, come to talk simple farm folk out of their land

This is the Cheez, in his homemade string tie (Recipe: buy string. tie string. good to go.), sitting with Young Joey Smallwood and not-s0-Millie Vannelli, in the lobby of the Balch Hotel in scenic Dufur, Oregon, where our party spent Erev RoundUp.

Half our party had rooms with a Mount Hood view. The other half had rooms with a private bath. Suffice it to say, Mount Hood is breathtaking, but a bit far to hike when you need to take a leak at 2 am.

Nevertheless, I do recommend the Balch Hotel. Especially over the alternative.

Alleyway "Suite," The Dalles, Oregon
No Mount Hood view, but you can pee just about anywhere,
including on the mattress. You probably wouldn't be the first.

I realize rodeo is not without controversy. I mean, just because I'm pro-seal hunt, doesn't mean I can condone a "sport" that involves animals being prodded and herded through a chute.

Oh, wait, those are the patrons.

So if you're wondering how a nice bleeding heart Jewish pescetarian like Macaronimaniac ended up Rounding Up: it was really an act of international diplomacy. Because Little Joey Smallwood had arranged for us to share the event with Hannu Penttila.

Hannu Penttila being not a pineapple-glazed Hawaiian pork dish (so not Rosh Hashana), but rather the Deputy Mayor of Helsinki.

Of course, the Finns being known for their wild and crazy ways, Hannu really taught the otherwise dour and sedate Pendletonians how to cut loose.

When Ken Isley, aka the Rodeo Clown, announced to the thousands of gathered fans that the crowd included a couple who had come all the way from Finland, someone in the stands greeted them with the welcoming shout, "At least they're not from France!"

I am not making that up.

The Finns were not the only ones having trouble crossing the cultural divide. When Cheez went off to the Little Cowpokes room, I asked him to pick me up a vegetarian snack on the way back. Alas, he spent twenty minutes waiting in the Beer Chips line.

Still, plastic beer tokens might have had more culinary appeal than some of the weekend's other offerings.
Of course, any event whose tagline is Let 'Er Buck offers fascinating gender politics as well.




I hadn't seen anything quite so manly since . . .
hmm, well . . . I guess that would have to be, since I lived in West Hollywood.








Seriously, I had no idea that when they announced which bareback rider had won the purse, they would mean it so literally.
Yes, men compete in grueling physical activity, and then the winner rides around the arena with his new handbag and new blanket. How butch is that?

Okay, not very. But I wouldn't mention that in Pendleton, any more than I'd wish them a great big L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu, and a rousing Vive La France.

Spotted at the Performing Arts Festival

Quiz:
What is the most striking element of this picture?

Answer: It's that in the three weeks since I leopardize my bicycle, no one has noticed it.

Well, no one except several homeless people, various of whom have commented positively as I rode by them.

This kind of hurt my pride.

And here I mean the vanity kind of pride, and not the pack of wildcat kind of pride. I'm pretty sure there is not yet a pride of leopard-bike riders in town. But it's Portland, you never know.

I even put in extra miles on the bike, shlepping all over to see TBA events. And by TBA events, I do not mean Traditional Birth Attendant. It's not that I don't know nothin about birthin babies. It's that I know this much about birthin babies: I have no damn desire to be doing it.

I mean Time Based Art, Portland's performing arts festival. Where you can see such inspired creativity as this:

Those are not hip artists doing performance art. It is a bunch of art lovers trying not to drop dead from the heat while sitting in Pioneer Courthouse Square on a ninety degree day, waiting for the performance art to start.

Here are the hip artists:
Or are they here?No, wait, right here! Here is art happening:Not the dude with the Free Hugs sign. He's just a random freak.  Not unlike Bovine of Arabia in the picture above.

The artists are the two short guys, who are part of a theater troupe called Back to Back Theatre (wily buggers, since they are actually pretty much belly to belly in this shot).  Back to Back features actors with disabilities, who perform plays in public spaces.

Spaces that happen to be filled with other people.  And, in this case, with tents, balloons, and free huggers (which now that I think of it are perhaps an inevitable  product of cross-pollination between Portland institution of free box and Portland infestation of tree huggers).  

The point is, none of this stuff was put there by the troupe.  They're just a handful of actors, performing without stage sets or extras.  Or performing with whatever stage sets and extras happen to turn up.

Part of the audience experience for me was watching everyone else in Pioneer Courthouse Square, to see whether they noticed the show.  Which most of them didn't.  Which is a great comment on how much human drama is going on around us all the time, and how oblivious we often are to the emotional struggles and triumphs of our fellow human beings.

Not everyone, of course.  You could see that too:  every so often, someone in the crowd would happen upon the actors and totally notice them.  Go up to them.  Maybe even try to talk to them.

There's a word for these kind of people.

Homeless.

That was my biggest epiphany while watching the play:  we middle class people spend a lot of the time that we are in public space trying to keep our focus as narrow as possible.  Trying not to notice anything that seems a little weird.  Definitely not stopping to soak it up or communicate with the person involved.   Anything too weird might sully us. Or sully our sense of safety.  Or our sense of entitlement.

Homeless people, by contrast, keep their eyes open for anything that might be going down. Might be a boon to them.  Might be a threat to them.  Might just be an animal print-decorated amusement to them.  That's why they're voted Mostly Likely to Notice My Bike.

My second biggest epiphany while watching the play is that their is a reason paper hats have not caught on as a long-term millinery medium.  And it's not just that it's hard to adorn them with cat ears.