Thanksgiving Weekend III

Thanksgiving is the best holiday. Reasons:

-Everyone's invited. Yes, even the Jews can join in on Thanksgiving.

-It doesn't involve religion. Rather, the themes include being grateful for what you have, eating, indulgence, football, family, and friends. What could be better than that? Turkeys in general are also a theme, which is just kind of amusing. (Then again, I asked a British friend of mine if she knew what Thanksgiving was, and she replied, "It's when Americans sit around and binge on food whilst congratulating themselves for wiping out an entire race of people hundreds of years ago, right?")

-There's obviously something special about the "sacredness" of other holidays like Christmas. But Thanksgiving's great with the whole "sure, invite your weird roommate and his weird family, why not?" thing. That said, Anthony Edwards' family once got stuck with me on Christmas Eve (long story), and they were immensely warm and nice about it.

-I love the four-and-a-half day weekend thing. With a week-long holiday, I feel the pressure to do something significant, like travel or lock myself in my apartment for 11 days to write an album (more on that in March). But with the extra-long weekend, everyone just comes home and hangs out for four days. Since high school ended, Thanksgiving has accounted for a large portion of my quality time with high school friends. It's also a good chance to have awkward interactions with random people you went to high school with but haven't talked to in years.

-It's a good time to make a fire. There's nothing I enjoy more than making and watching a fire. And not letting anyone else touch my fire or put a log on it under any circumstances.

-While we're here, there have been Christmas carols on the radio since Halloween. Really? Two months of Christmas spirit? A Jew though I may be, I completely enjoy Christmas spirit-- but wouldn't it be better if we held off until early-mid December and then had two hardcore Christmas weeks leading up to the 25th? Speaking of which, I booked a flight for Christmas morning. Some kind of crowd that'll be at the airport.

Some other thoughts on the week:

-Boston is cold.

-I went to Cambridge for the Harvard-Yale game the weekend before Thanksgiving. Harvard-Yale is a silly thing where everyone from the visiting school comes to the hosting school and a ton of grads come back every year. A nerd-fest of sorts. I'd like to say I'm a really passionate Harvard football fan, but I just can't do it. I gave it a real try during college, but when they went 9-0 in 2002 for the first time since 1913 and won a bunch of the games in dramatic fashion-- and it wasn't that exciting-- I said screw it and stopped caring.

-After Harvard-Yale I headed to Richmond to visit my mom's side of the family. My two Richmond cousins are married and have a total of five little kids, ages 0, 3, 5, 5, 7. Some observations:

• Nothing is more fun than hanging around with ridiculously cute little kids when they're not your problem.

• There is a vast difference between a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. I always just kind of assumed that 5-year-olds had no brain yet, but in fact, they do. They're tiny people with miniature little personalities. But they're kind of legit. Like, if I'm acting like a d-bag, the 5-year-olds are gonna be like, "Why is this dude acting like a d-bag?" On the other hand, 3-year-olds have no brain yet-- you can be mad silly and they get really into it.

• Baby heads vary. I tend to be a fan of most baby heads, but some are radder than others. This particular 0-year-old has a ridiculously awesome baby head. Check it out:

-My uncle just got a new Blackberry Storm. It's just like the iPhone. Except 450,000 times worse.

-Back to Thanksgiving, one of my earliest and happiest memories is watching the Macy's Parade every Thanksgiving morning with my dad. Because of this, I still think of watching this parade as an exciting and wonderful experience. However, after years of forgetting about it, I flipped it on on Thursday, and came to a somber realization-- the Macy's Parade...sucks.

-Three shitty football games on Thursday. A shame.

-I saw Slumdog Millionaire yesterday. It's incredibly good. Though very stressful.

-I'm currently on a JetBlue flight and the girl next to me is watching some sitcom and I can't help but be tragically in love with this actress (that's right, I googled around until I found the show and then her name).

-According to the archive numbers, this is my 200th blog post. I'm taking a shot and I expect you to as well.