Witz Pickz: Catching Up

Has it been a month already?? Whew! Time flies when you have crippling writer's block. Here's a rundown of what's gone on since I last posted:

Thanksgiving:
We kept things simple this year-- my parents, my sister, and my grandma. It was much like any other family meal only this time, it was as if my mom asked, "Hey, for dinner tonight, I was thinking we could have 14 different things, how do you feel about that?"

"Can we all feel like we're gonna die afterward?"
"You bet."
"Well, then that sounds great. What's for dessert?"
"I was thinking pumpkin pie. And cheesecake."
"That sounds reasonable."
"Also, I was thinking we could have the same foods for the next five meals..."
"...I like it-- it's what I imagine homeless people would do if they finally got wealthy."

We then went and did exactly what the Pilgrims did after the first Thanksgiving-- we watched Avatar. That movie might be exactly like Ferngully and tell the most obvious, redundant lesson of all time, but I didn't get bored and the graphics WERE stunning. I could have done without the gross, maggot looking tail hook-up to achieve, ahem, "connection" with nature, but whatever. Oh, and I know I'm way behind on this one, but "unobtainium?" Shut your silly, CGI face. James Cameron definitely forgot to go back and "Find/Replace." Still, the best part was after watching the movie for three hours, we asked my Grandma what she thought. "Oh, I realllly liked it! Why was it called Avatar, though?"



So, what did I learn this Thanksgiving? That apparently, I'm the guy who, after eating a huge Thanksgiving meal at 4pm, looks around at 11pm and says, "I need dinner."


Black Friday:
My mom teaches English in an allegedly reputable middle school. Her student:

"Why do they call it 'Black Friday?' Shouldn't they call it 'African-American Friday?'"

It wasn't a joke. This is why we're all gonna die. As for myself, I spent African-American Friday doing a little shopping-- not so much because I needed anything, but because I like to remember how horrific humanity can be. "Now that we're all well fed from Thanksgiving, let's go trample each other so we can get a red Wii and fake bowl."




I hit up Best Buy because, "I can get things I ordinarily wouldn't have spent ANY money on for 45% off!!" and then went to Old Navy. With all the options out there and with limited time to shop, going to Old Navy on Black Friday really makes you stop and take a good look at yourself. Their pants are ordinarily, like, 30 bucks. Their shirts are maybe 20 bucks, and everything else tends to clock in around 10. I'm not saying it's shitty stuff, and I own more Old Navy than I'd like to divulge, but it's kind of like shopping The Salvation Army on yellow tag day. As I stood there, staring at the extremely long line, holding a 3 dollar ringer-tee (marked down from 6!) and a pair of 2 dollar boxers (marked down from 4!!), it suddenly struck me that I must have something more important to do. I put down the clothes and walked out to my car. I hopped in, started the engine, pulled out with purpose, took a deep breath of crisp New England air, and that's when it struck me: I had absolutely nothing more important to do. So, I went to Kohl's. Don't judge me.




Chanukkah:
I might not go to synogogue, I haven't been to a Passover seder in at least five years, and it may have felt weird and uncomfortable to wear a yarmulke* at my friend's wedding recently, but I spell "Chanukkah" with a "C" and two "K's" so BACK OFF, I'M JEWISH. I had told my girlfriend that for Chanukkah, we usually got seven crappy gifts and then one good gift on the last night, so, when we celebrated on the second night, she gave me a stick of Burt's Bees lip balm and a bar of chocolate. "Because you said you get crappy gifts for Chanukkah!" she explained sheepishly. The next day my sister IMed me: "For Chanukkah last night, Mom gave me a bag of chocolates and some chapstick." Amazing. Somebody owes somebody a coke.



Ironically, while the oil may have lasted eight days longer than those old men originally anticipated, our box of Chanukkah candles ran out with two days left.

*(A "ya-ma-ka" for those of you who immediately thought, "What the shit is a Yar-mul-kle!?")




Quotes-- I couldn't rob you of these gems:

"Here's a good call from Netflix: based on my interest in 30 Rock and The Office, they suggest....Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State. Second time they've suggested it. It goes: SNL, South Park, Auschwitz, Reno 911." -My Sister

...

"And to put that in perspective of how retarded I was at that age, that was the same time period when I read The Giver and it changed my fucking world. I remember being up at midnight, and I walked into my parents' bedroom and I said, 'Mom. I need to change my Life!!'...And then she asked if I wanted to play video games and I said yes, of course I did. I had the chance to make something of myself, and instead, I played the Blade Runner computer game. It was four discs and I never even got out of the apartment. Ya know what the worst part is? I hadn't even seen the movie! So, I had absolutely no context for this game!" -The Brilliant A.T.


All I Want For Christmas Is My Ability to Write Back...or Gran Turismo 5,
Witz

Witz Pickz: Post Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I decided that the best way to celebrate Thanksgiving after the fact is for me to attempt to recall the story of Thanksgiving. Feel free to help me with the details.

A long time ago, before ipods, but after dinosaurs, a group of oppressed white people came to America to escape persecution and parking tickets. They arrived on a boat named The Mayflower, so named because everyone agreed it sounded, "too gay," for any pirates to attack it. You don't get street cred for blowing up "The Mayflower." These people were called Pilgrims and they believed very strongly in buckles. They put them on their hats, they put them on their belts, and they put them on their shoes. As my friend Turbo put it, "The Pilgrims were to buckles what Pimp My Ride is to LCD screens." I don't know why they were so into buckles, but it either had to do with keepin the Lord in or the Devil out, or maybe just to keep all their clothes on as they slowly starved to death.

Starving to death was not part of the plan, but they hadn't accounted for the extra energy they would expend being extremely racist. They knew they had arrived at the prime location because they found a really big rock to step out on. They named their town Plymouth after a shitty car company, and dubbed the rock, "Plymouth rock," thereby showing their vast creativity and love of the outdoors. Finally after much anticipation, the murdering, raping, and pillaging got into full effect and these things tire a white dude out. So they all huddled down into a house that Abraham Lincolm made out of the logs that now bare his name and prayed for the best. When praying didn't workout, they turned to the Native Americans who decided it would "Most definitely, I promise," help them in the long run to keep these intruders alive. WOW, WERE THEY WRONG!

Running Bear: I think we should save these white people.
Walks On Wind: Hmm, I have my RESERVATIONS!
Both: Ahahahahaha-- awwww :(

So the Indians showed up and taught the Pilgrims how to gorge themselves on loosely associated foods. They then read the children a book where they taught them that the english word "corn" is the same as the english word, "maize." They did have a sneaky ultierior motive-- to make the Pilgrims' intestines fill up, press against their absurdly prevalent belt-buckles, and kill them all like that one fat dude in the movie Seven (Se7en). Unfortunately, there wasn't enough food for that, but there was an act of God that day.

There was very little turkey left. Everyone was worried and so the Pilgrim leader, George Washington Carver (inventor of the Turkey Carver sandwhich at Boston Market), started making everyone trace their hands on the turkey that was left. In this way, the meat would be rationed and everyone would get one handful of turkey. He was asked to "guestimate" how many days the turkey would last and he said the answer was one day (in his best guestimation, which he was never very good at). To everyone's surprise and excitement, the turkey ended up lasting the next EIGHT days-- and it was deemed by all to be a Miracle. That is the story of Thanksgiving and that is why, to this day, we eat a haphazard assortment of obese foods on the last Thursday of November, why we eat turkey leftovers for the next week, and why Sacajawea is on the dollar coin.

Epilogue:
In the years that followed, Thanksgiving became much more of a social holiday. It became a time when families could get sneaky drunk together and inevitably learn something sexually explicit about their grandmother. Thanksgiving became a time when the line between joyous celebration and horrific obligation became thin and vague, and this was only made more true by Adam Sandler's "Thanksgiving Song." Strong unions (no, conservative Californians, I don't mean between two people of the same sex) led to getting both Thursday and Friday off of work, meaning people could stuff themselves longer, drink more, and get even more sexually explicit with their inappropriate family stories. It also meant that everyone could shop the day after Thanksgiving. They decided that nothing complements the stress of planning or attending a family get together like gathering millions of people into tiny stores with limited merchandise at ungodly hours of the morning. Thus, Post-Thanksgiving-Shopping-Day was born. The inventors decided it needed a catchier name that sounded less like work and more like a movie starring one of the Wayans brothers. Black Friday was created. The Thanksgiving story continues to unfold, each and every year, as the middle-aged earnestly embarass themselves with what they are appreciative of, and the youth come up with amusing, ironic, sarcastic examples of what they are thankful for-- just like the pilgrims did.

Throw Your Hand Turkeys In the Air, If You's A True Player,
Witz

"Thanks for killing my friends, effers!"

"Totally and completely BADASS!"

I tried to give it feathers, but it turned out to be backhair. Hm.