Some Thanksgiving Thoughts from Joe Frank

Thanksgiving is by far my least favorite holiday. The weather is always crappy, the subways and trains necessary for me to get to my family are packed to the gills with horrible people, and the food is wildly overrated. (Liz Berg and I agree: We'd take authentic Mexican with homemade mole sauce over turkey and stuffing in a heartbeat). Yep, there's nothing quite like honoring the first "settlers" of our great nation like waking up at the crack of dawn to put yourself through all of the above horrors, and then have to do it again on the way home that night, only now you're semi-drunk, full of food you didn't want to eat in the first place, and still mulling over the stupid argument you had with your father about the Iraq war. Oh yeah, and if you're like me, you have to get up for work the next morning. This New Yorker cover by Chris Ware (left) sums up the malaise pretty efficiently, I think.

Call me a crank (everyone else does), but I know I'm not alone when I say that Thanksgiving celebrations need a radical re-thinking. The holiday's problems can be approached from many directions -- the boring food, the travel headaches, the dubious history of the pilgrims, the fact that zillions of Americans use it as an excuse to pay lip-service to "the less fortunate" (but don't actually do anything to assist them), and dare we all forget that it gives the green light for every crappy radio station to start dropping Christmas music into rotation. Sorry Thanksgiving lovers, but there's really no argument to be had here; I've already carried out an extended internal dialog with myself and figured this all out while you were daydreaming about giblet gravy. What we need now is for someone more adept than I to put it all into real perspective. Someone with a knack for a gripping narrative. Someone with vocal timbre so arresting so as to freeze you in your tracks. And most important of all, someone for whom atmospheric trip-hop background music isn't so much a hobby as it is a lifestyle. Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Joe Frank and an excerpt from his incredible Thanksgiving treatise entitled "Pilgrim".

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More on Joe Frank here.

Comments

[Jeffersonic(JSJ)]

A Call To Arms!

Get those Halloween decorations up immediately after Thanksgiving. (especially the witches and demons)

Gen. Danzig's office has issued a memo suggesting that the decorations remain in place until 23:00 hours 31/December. This will further demoralize the tired, angry enemy as they return annoying unwanted gifts, battle for Lebenschraum, (parking space), and plan for New Year's celebrations, suffering through the haze of hangovers.

Those finding themselves in untenable situations are advised to apply nuclear devices such as ICP's "Murder City Christmas".

For the doctrinaire: Modest financial support is available for Warrior Families™ who accept the limestone statues of Cthulhu and install them in prominent locations.

[cory]

Hear Hear-
I think most holidays need a reworking. A ot of them are "guess what I want" or "win me over". I like the selfish ones like Halloween and 4th of July... is it any coincidence that those 2 have the best music of all the holidays too.

[norelpref]

Joe Frank is the man. This will certainly lighten my genocide/avicide day blues.

[Dale Hazelton]

The Christmas tunes have been piped into the stores since Halloween. No point waiting that extra month. My wife and I decided to stop the gifting and spend that money on some good food and booze for the season. It's weird, even if you don't plan on going anywhere for the holiday, you STILL get that anxiety, by association I suppose. And where would the newscasters be without twelve thousand travel updates between now and New Years?

My worst Thanksgiving was when my mother invited the man she was later discovered to be having an affair with to dinner. Makes family seem so special....

[schlep]

This was heartwarming to read, honestly, you can put all the big US holidays in a burlap sack and meet me at the riverside!

I read "(Halloween) decorations" as
" - desecrations", I think I'll keep that!

[Krys O.]

My birthday falls near Thanksgiving--it's today, in fact--so the holiday is twice as good to me. I love my sister's homemade stuffing better than the turkey. The travel does suck royally MOSTLY because of the goldarn Macy's parade bisecting my path from Port Authority to Grand Central. I prefer above ground travel but have to make do with the subways and/or Path.

[Ted]

Love the Chris Ware cover. Sums it up nicely. I particularly liked the change in the seasonal weather outside the window. (Global warming?)

[Chris G]

Thank you for the great post and the Joe Frank link.

For years (when I was a wee lad) I tried again and again to describe just what IT was about Joe Frank to the uninitiated. He was never an easy sell (to the hoi polloi).

One day I turned on a friend who was blind, and his expression was both immediate bliss and understanding -- he got it, right away. Other people in the room started the usual kvetch: "just what IS this?" -- it's not simply music, or storytelling in the traditional sense (circa 1988).

His response made my decade:

"This IS ART!"

I finally new what to tell people about Joe Frank.

Sushi, by the way, is my traditional Thanksgiving, but I might just give the mole a try.

And kudos to Chris Ware, very thoughtful, familiar, wistful, nostalgic. That Chris can cook!

Very thoughtful post too! Happy day Mike!

[Will S.]

If you're considering a re-work, might I suggest you Yanks copy us Canucks, and move your Thanksgiving to the second Monday in October? That way, at least you get a long weekend out of the deal (yes, I know some of you already get off that day as Columbus Day that weekend, but this would allow everyone to have off that day, and get a long weekend), even if you do have to work Tuesday.

Also, the weather will be nicer.

Cheers!

[Listener James from Westwood]

What a spooky coincidence. I was thinking about Joe Frank and Alan Watts on my commute home today . . . two great talkers I associate with WFMU. While listening to both gents in my car in the past, I've arrived at destinations, only to sit in the car until the end of the hour so I could hear the whole piece. (Chris T. and The Professor, too, actually.)

Those seeking a reboot of the American holiday calendar might borrow a few from Scott Berkun's schedule of Scolidays. My faves are Letter-Writing Day (1/29) and The Day of Surprise (8/9).

Holidays are what you make of them, and I believe it's everyone's choice to celebrate and personalize them — or not to celebrate them at all — as they wish. I like the idea behind Buy Nothing Day, but I'll dub it Support Local Small Merchants Day and patronize indie coffeeshops, record stores, stationers, and booksellers within walking distance this Friday to send my dollars where they'll do some good.

[JMet]

As an expat. studying in London right now, honestly the thing me and my friends miss about the US is the good homestyle-American food. I mean, all we wanted for Halloween was a pumpkin pie but no, the UK is apparently anti-pumpkin. Well for Turkey Day we weren't gonna take it lying down! Since none of us even have the option of see/not see crazy family, we have banned together for a pot-luck style dinner( I'll provide my mom's famed chestnut stuffing). Since there's a bird-flu like pandemic on Turkeys right now (seriously, timing eh?) we're all going to chip in and buy a couple of buckets of KFC! This might just be the best Thanksgiving ever, all ya have to do is leave the country!

[Tom]

Mike - respectfully, I think you might be missing Chris Ware's point. I don't see a lot of malaise in this work (outside of the teenage girl on the phone - but when are teenage girls not in a state of malaise?) Both families are sitting together at the table, engaged in conversation or football. There's joy enough in that.

[Krys O.]

Tom-re: Malaise--Please note that the members of the modern family are not turned toward each other in engaged communication but rather towards the television, The Great White Stone dominating the room. There is no interaction at all between the people in obvious contrast to the old timey family.

[Tom]

Krys: No interaction? They're watching a football game together. How many families do you know who sit silently and watch a football game together without interacting? Can't you just hear Brother and Sis grousing about the bad call on the last play together, Grandpa comparing today's game to that same 1954 game he compares every Thanksgiving day game to? How many brothers do you know who can sit through a whole football game without running through the entire history of the game together and how that one guy...what was his name...Joey Pataglia, yeah that's it...he was good. Coulda gone pro, that guy...

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[club penguin]

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[deaf school]

all we wanted for Halloween was a pumpkin pie but no, the UK is apparently anti-pumpkin. Well for Turkey Day we weren't gonna take it lying down! Since none of us even have the option of see/not see crazy family, we have banned together for a pot-luck style dinner( I'll provide my mom's famed chestnut stuffing). Since there's a bird-flu like pandemic on Turkeys right now (seriously, timing eh?

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Thanks - interesting blog

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