The Un-Thanksgiving

This year my partner Jerry and I were too exhausted to do anything for Thanksgiving, even cook. He had major surgery five weeks ago and is just now getting back to his old self. Plus I seemed to have more than the usual amount of stuff to do at work such as interviewing the stars of The King's Speech, putting together a panel of casting directors for Back Stage and the SAG Foundation, and covering a lot of shows. (There were more than usual for this time of year.) Jerry had spent that time recuperating, and we haven't even thought about the usual holiday stuff like what kind of turkey to get or should we invite anyone over. We finally decided to come up to our country place in upstate NY and do nothing for the whole weekend. We drove up on Tues. night.

The only work involved doing a phone interview with Guy Pearce to complete the King's Speech article (see previous blog on the interviews with Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth; I had spoken to Geoffrey Rush on the phone from Australia already). It was difficult to arrange, but the only time he could give me was the day before Thanksgiving. Pearce called my cellphone from Serbia where he is filming a sci-fi action picture with an international crew.

On Thanksgiving Day itself, our plan was to eat out and see a movie. We didn't even have the energy to cook our own meal. The day was overcast, we just relaxed and watched the Macy's Parade which was interesting because this year they seemed to consciously include more multicultural entertainment including an Indian dance troupe doing a salute to Bollywood and a Latino troupe doing a wild extravangza. The rest of the day I put in the storm windows for our enclosed porch and sealed the air conditioner so the back room wouldn't be drafty, then read Supergirl comics and playscripts--I'm on a committee to chose the best new play produced outside of NYC. It was strange not to be smelling cranberries or stuffing, but it was also nice to just be and not have to make an effort for the holiday.

The plan was to eat at the local Chinese restaurant and go to Unstoppable with Denzel Washington which had received good reviews for an action picture. We figured they would be open--but no, they were closed along with every other eatery around. If he had stayed in the city, we would have found something open, but up here there was nothing. I wasn't so much worried about not having a nice dinner in a restaraunt, but not getting any dinner at all. Finally, we settled on buying some sandwiches at Walmart. Yes, Walmart, the only establishment open. It was kinda weird being in the deli section of the half-empty super Walmart with employees there away from their families and a handful of customers getting a head start on their Christmas shopping. I had a ham and cheese sandwich with potato salad while Jerry had a turkey wrap. BTW, I ate a frozen turkey dinner for lunch so it wasn't totally untraditional. We eat our makeshift dinner along with potato chips and diet coke in the car and then drove to the movie. I wasn't upset or depressed we had such a non-holiday meal, it was fine. The important thing was we were together. We both were just so tired it was easier not to observe the holiday and regard it as a nice day off from all responsibilities.