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Thursday, November 25. 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is the day we express our continuing gratitude for the bountiful goodness of our lives. And for us, many of us anyway, there is a lot to be thankful for today.

One thing to be thankful for today: the James Bond Marathon on the SyFi Channel! Right now they are showing Thunderball, my first Bond experience! I was so in love with Domino, former Miss France Claudine Auger! That French accent! Sadly, the equally lovely Paula (Martine Beswicke) gets killed. She was Bond’s assistant. Actually, she was way hotter than Domino!

Thunderball is how I picture James Bond; an exotic, somewhat tropical setting (The Bahamas), Sean Connery — suave, sophisticated and sexually irresistible to all the ladies! Even the lesbian, Pussy Galore, in Goldfinger. No woman can resist James Bond! He’s my idol.
 Everyone considers Goldfinger to be the best Bond film, but I disagree. Thunderball is the best!

What kid doesn’t want to grow up to be the world’s greatest secret agent? I would bet even gay man would like to be James Bond. Ever wonder what a gay James Bond would be like? Me neither. It was a fleeting thought.

The dialogue is half the fun of a James Bond movie. In Thunderball the bad Bond Girl, Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) gets shot instead of Bond. He sits her down at a stranger’s table and asks, “Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She’s just dead.”

Some of Bond’s best dialogue in Thunderball is with Fiona:
 They are commenting on Fiona’s Spectre ring and she says she likes wearing it. “Vanity has its dangers,” Bond replies.
 And then, after Fiona and the henchman capture Bond in the hotel, they have their tete-te-tete about the night before, when they had exquisitely good sex. Love it when he tells Fiona, “What I did was for queen and country. You don’t think I enjoyed it, do you?” You know he’s lying. He loved every minute of it!

But enough about the James Bond Marathon and Thunderball. We also get three football games today! Maybe more if there are college games being played. And then basketball, if you’re a Lakers Fan.
 My lovely friend Claudia is a Lakers Fan. This is my excuse to post one of her photos!
 What??!!? No Lakers game today? C’est encroyable! I’m keeping Claudia’s photo in! The Clippers are playing the Kings! Eh … a game meant to put us to sleep.

Let’s see … the Lions host the Patriots. I wouldn’t say this is a gimme for the Patriots. The Lions have started playing better. Then the Saints at the Cowboys; this would have been a gimme for the Saints, but now that Jerry Jones shitcanned Wade Phillips the Cowboys have picked up their game. Last NFL game of the day will be Jets hosting the Bengals. Eh … I guess this is another game meant to put all of us to sleep.

Thanksgiving is meant for football! Lots of yummy food and football! Sitting around, watching James Bond and football and eating the family feast.

This year, like the four years previous, my “family” will be my circle of friends. We will gather together at our meeting place and host a Thanksgiving party and feast for many. This year my contribution will be mashed taters and gravy. Both of which I’ll need to start preparing soon.

I used to buy those prepared potatoes, cooked (with the skin), cubed and bagged, in the produce section. That was the plan. Get about four pounds of them, heat them up, mash’em with some garlic, chives and butter and voila! Homemade mashed potatoes! But, two stores didn’t have them, two stores that in the past, always had them! What’s up with that?

So, I asked about them and the clerk stared at me with the quizzical look, “What the fuck is he talking about?” So, this year I went complètement moderne and got the prepared mashed potatoes in the tubs. Eh, not so Thanksgivingly romantic, but, getting lazy is a twist of aging. So, I am thankful we can buy prepared mashed potatoes in the tub. Takes some of the elbow grease out of Thanksgiving preparations. Don’t even ask about the gravy.

Ultimately, Thanksgiving is a family holiday. Back in the day, our wayward brothers and sisters would gather at the family homestead at 6254 West Idaho St. in Milwaukee, WI with Mom and Dad. Mom didn’t have the luxury of prepared mashed potatoes, she did everything from scratch, including the cranberries.

One of our last get-togethers on Thanksgiving our oldest brother Carl dropped thee bomb.

Okay, this story goes back many decades. Rick was about eight maybe, don’t really remember that minor detail. Anyway, Carl was still living at home and was out one night. Rick was coyly brushing his curls in the mirror in the sisters’ bedroom. Why? I don’t know. I was fast asleep in the boys’ room.

So anyway, Rick is brushing his hair, late at night in the girls’ room, which faces out on the back yard. The drapes were open and window was right behind the mirror. Well, up in the window a ghostly visage appeared. Rick turned around to get a better look and let out a scream that woke up the entire Southside of Milwaukee, including yours truly.

Mom tried getting into the girls’ room, but Rick was trying so hard to get out, neither could budge the door. By this point the ghostly visage had disappeared and once Mom got into the room Rick jumped into her like a leech refusing to let go, screaming, “Don’t go in! Don’t go in!” Or something like that.

Dad and the neighborhood men scoured the area for hours, looking for the culprit or clues, but nothing was found. It was the mystery of all mysteries for years. What was it — who was it — that scared the bejesus out of Rick all those years ago. For years we talked about the incident with reverence and fear, knowing that at any moment, some crazed person would be peeking in the windows.
 Years later when Rick and I had Milwaukee Sentinel routes, delivered in the wee hours of the morning, we were crazed persons … so to speak.

What I remember best about that night was that it was the first time I got to drink an entire bottle of Coca-Cola by myself! Up until that night I always had to share. Ah yes! Soon there after I actually ordered a cheeseburger from McDonald’s and shortly after that, a double cheeseburger! Bet you didn’t Coca-Cola was a gateway drug!

So, back to the Thanksgiving Dinner at Mom and Dad’s on Idaho St. This was about 1972 and once again the story of Rick’s Big Scare came up as a topic of conversation. Carl’s relatively new wife was dining with us so she had to hear the story.

As the story unfolded from Mom’s lips, quivering with fear at the appropriate moments, Carl smiled, and then began to giggle — and then laugh out loud!

“What the Hell is so funny??!!??”

And Carl told us his side of the story. He was coming home from wherever the fuck he was at that night, and stopped in the backyard to have one more smoke before entering the house. He wasn’t old enough to smoke so he did it on the sly.

Well, while having a smoke, Carl saw Rick coyly brushing his hair in the mirror and was overcome with a great idea! Finding a baby carriage with a white sheet, on the patio, Carl grabbed the sheet and crept up to the window. Carl was sneaky in his youth. He put the sheet over his head, raised himself up and tapped on the glass: tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap, until Rick turned around to look. And the rest, as they say, is family folklore.

You should have heard Mom shriek when she found out who was responsible for the terrible night over a decade earlier. I seriously thought Carl was going to die that Thanksgiving, but Mom didn’t kill him. I guess having Allida (Carl’s wife) there, a possible witness for the prosecution, saved Carl’s life.

After that initial unveiling of the secret of the Terrible Night of Terror, the story was told with humor and laughs. Hell, we still laugh at it when we tell it in family circles. That story never goes out of style and most likely won’t, even though two of the principles are no longer with us.

Yeah, there are those who are no longer with us and we remember them fondly, affectionately, on Thanksgiving and express our gratitude for having them in our lives and the continued life of their memories.

My family and my friends, I am quite thankful to have them in my life today, whether here in San Diego, around the country or in my memories. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your lives.

Posted by Tim Forkes in HOLIDAYS at 12:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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