Thanks
the holiday season begins
Last Saturday’s New York Times Cooking email started out with one of the best sentences I’ve read in a long time:
This is going to be a long week, even if you love Thanksgiving unreservedly.
-Sam Sifton, NYT
At least I thought it was one of the best sentences I’ve read in a while until I realized I’d misread unreservedly as undeservedly. That would have been a much better sentence.
From this intro, you can probably surmise I’m not a huge fan of this week’s holiday. When I was a kid, Thanksgiving meant me and my mom eating bratwurst and potato dumplings, or sometimes we’d go to her brother’s house, where my aunt and I would sneak off and do fun things while the siblings argued.
When I worked for Barnes and Noble after college, Thanksgiving was actually sort of an exciting time of year. The store was packed full of books (this was back in the day when we really only sold books and maybe a few of those now-foreign objects known as CDs) and the day after Thanksgiving was always a mad rush of lines at the registers and a lot of extra employees on hand. I found it exhilarating. Maybe that was my naïve sense of joy at sharing more books with more people.
When I worked for Sabre hand-coding airline reservation rules, our department had to be covered 24/7 and I often volunteered to work on holidays because the pay was so good. I would have rather been there with my work friends than on my own, which was was how my life was going around that time.
A sense of jadedness set in that’s never really left.
These days Thanksgiving is an opportunity for me to miss my family—the ones who are no longer around and the ones who are off doing their own thing. And I question the premise of the whole thing anyway. Or if not the premise, I definitely question what this week has become. I don’t know about you, but I’ve already been inundated with PRE-BLACK FRIDAY DEALS!
I read a quote recently by Abraham Hicks, suggesting that we should make the best of whatever situation we’re in. If we make the best of where we are, things start to improve, perhaps for no other reason than we have a better attitude about what’s happening. I know, you can come up with all sorts of philosophical arguments against this, and lots of examples of where you feel it would be impossible to do this. I’m just telling you about the quote I read.
This week I find myself in a situation that is less than ideal for me and my quiet life and my routine and my nice little bubble of relaxing vibes I’ve created in my house. So I figure I should take the advice of the above quote.
The one from Abraham Hicks, not the one from Sam Sifton.
So, if you need some help making the best of things right now, whether or not you celebrate Mass Consumerism Capitalist Extravaganza Week, how about a comfort movie? Here are a few of my favorites, which I’ve been making my way through as the season progresses.
You’ve Got Mail: Charming, intelligent owner of soulless bookstore giant woos idealistic snappy dresser after putting her family-owned bookshop out of business, and also learns Parker Posey shouldn’t drink so much espresso
As Good As It Gets: OCD and clearly autistic curmudgeonly romance writer guy falls for jaded yet over-idealistic waitress and learns how to walk on cobblestones
10 Things I Hate About You: Anti-everything grrrrl falls for misunderstood bad boy with a sexy accent and lets him think he tamed her when really it was the other way around, while learning that Letters to Cleo’s version of “I Want You to Want Me” is pretty kick-ass.
Lost in Translation: Midlife crisis-suffering film star rediscovers youth and vitality by hanging out with a sexy college girl who just realized she made a big mistake marrying Giovanni Ribisi, and they both leave Japan with fierce karaoke skills and a new appreciation for insomnia
If you want me to write your logline for you, DM me and I’ll let you know my rates.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Andrea