The long Thanksgiving weekend started like Thanksgiving weekends usually do, with a tremendously wild Wednesday night that left me hurting and hung over when it came time for the big gobbler feast. Oh well. It was worth it. Usually is.
The celebrating (i.e. drinking) started just before 5 p.m. Wednesday with a Jameson and soda at Four Green Fields, one of my favorite pubs in Tampa Bay. Maybe in the world. Co-workers Eric Snider and Wayne Garcia, plus a posse of ex-journalists, joined me. We stood on the front patio and did our best not to bitch about the slow, ugly death of newsprint and concentrated on the positive while basking in the pink glow of a gorgeous sunset. "I love this place," Garcia exclaimed as he hoisted his pint of Harp. After the second round had been slurped down, Snider and Garcia returned home to their wives, while I returned to my one-bedroom apartment — and a fresh bottle of wine. I poured myself a fat glass and enjoyed it on the back porch with my neighbor Katie while waiting for my old junior high pal Jason and his brother Micah to scoop me up. Which they did. After getting lost.
I met them in front of the Pita Pit on South Howard. Jason gave me a big, manly bear hug — he's decidedly larger than he was in high school or college — and handed me a bottle of beer from a cooler half full of empties. Yeah, he'd been pre-gaming just like me. It was going to be one of those nights.
The debauchery began in earnest at Sip Lounge on Davis Islands. That's where Jason's ex-wife met us. Kinda weird. But whatever. They behaved pretty much like any other married couple. Much excellent sake, sushi and chardonnay (me) was consumed before we returned to SoHo to visit Tommy Ortiz's relatively new nightspot The Kennedy. The charitable bad boys of Thirteen Ugly Men were throwing their Get Roasted Bash. We followed protocol and Got Roasted. Back at my apartment, we told lies about the good old days and continued to pickle our livers with Canadian Mist and Jager shots.
When I picked up the phone around noon, it was my dad. "Where you at?" he asked.
"In bed," I mumbled.
"Yeah, I figured," he said with a chuckle. "Come on over."
"Mom said the big meal isn't until 4."
"Come on over, now. We made pumpkin muffins with icing and have lots of bacon."
The thought of stuffing sweets down my throat almost made me gag. But some thick, extra crispy bacon, the way my mom makes it, well, that did sound appealing. I lumbered around my apartment, packed an extended weekend's worth of clothes, dirty laundry, music and magazines and finally made it over to my parents' place around 2. I gorged myself on so much bacon that I was pretty much full by the time the big bird, stuffing, mashed potatoes, string beans and such came out. But I ate a full plate anyway. Delicious.
I spent my four-day stay at the folks' place doing exactly what every other family does when they are together for the holidays — or at least what I imagine every other family does when forced to share close quarters.
We watched the Detroit Lions lose for the umpteenth time in a row and groused about how, despite the fact that the team invariably sucks every season, they get to play every Turkey Day. We ate massive amounts of food — well, everyone except for my younger brother Joel, who was convalescing from the mean old wisdom-teeth removal. We drank. We threw the football in the street. We tried to avoid conversation topics that would lead to arguments. We had a Scrabble battle (Pops beat me). We drank. We discussed the fate of the economy. We played with my sister Allison's and her hubby Chris's Carren terrier, the highly lovable Lucy. And we watched a shit-ton of movies, including The Big Lebowski, which we accompanied with White Russians. Many White Russians.
But my favorite part of the weekend — well, except for, y'know, giving thanks and spending quality time with the fam — was discovering the awesomeness of the Wii. Which is odd, because I have major issues with video games. In fact, a large part of me believes they are the reason this country no longer dominates the world the way we did in, say, 1956. Ever since college, I have avoided such games and am quite suspicious of gamers, especially ones over the age of 25. But bowling and playing tennis on the Wii was a blast. More importantly, it caused me to break a sweat, and, not sure if I should admit this but … made me sore the next day!
So in my book it wasn't a video game wasting my time, but a new form of exercise.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2008.