Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

Thanksgiving is a holiday best suited for large families.

Usually the O family spends our Thanksgiving at my in-laws. Due to the disproportionate number of ministers in my family, we also tend to celebrate Christmas at Thanksgiving as well, and sometimes even my birthday gets thrown into the mix.

This year was unusual. My mother-in-law is battling an illness and didn’t feel up to hosting the festivities, and by the time this situation developed, it was too late to really plan much of anything else. So, it was just the four of us.

Four is a dangerously small number.

First, cooking TD for four takes only slightly less work than cooking TD for forty (which we have done–I know what I’m talking about). So my wife will probably be sleeping in until noon. Maybe noon today, maybe noon tomorrow. Probably around the time I finish cleaning all the pots and pans.

Second, due to the local ordinances that mandate a certain diversity among desserts, there were times yesterday when pies outnumbered humans in the household. We managed to level the playing field last night, and I inflicted heavy casualties on them this morning during a daring pre-dawn raid. (I slipped into their encampment, armed with only a dessert fork, while they were nestled in their aluminum foil beds. Some of them never even woke up.)

The turkey is no longer a threat to anyone. It has been reduced to broth. However, if the pies and the tubers (there are still mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes unaccounted for) form an alliance, it could be a long day.

Third, if there’s only four people at dinner, and two of them are tots, and the third doesn’t like red wine, but the fourth one opens a bottle anyway (the last of the 2007 Beaujolais Nouveau–the perfect wine for turkey!) then there will be bad jokes and silly things posted to blogs later.

Anyway, I hope you all have wonderful stories to tell, when you get back from stimulating the economy or whatever it is you’re doing this morning.

OK, everyone has been chiming in about what they’re thankful about, etc, on a dozen threads here there and everywhere. I don’t feel like I have anything to add to the solid work done in this area by my peers who have already established threads on those topics (in some cases, jumping the gun by several weeks).

If you want to be thankful, go right ahead–we’re here for you.

And if you’re in a situation where you don’t feel that you have much of anything to be thankful about, we’re even more here for you. Seriously.

But if you’ve already been thankful elsewhere, no need to repeat yourself.

But I would like to reflect on something else, at least for a moment. I believe that this year is the inflection point of our culture. This is the year when millions of Americans saw the world in a new way. This is the year when the internet finally proved its worth.

This is the year when lolcats achieved ubiquity.

So, which lolcat is your favorite?

References:

• http://roflcats.com/
• http://lolcats.com/
• http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118798557326508182.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jDfSqtG2E4

If you’re like me — and I don’t mean that as an insult — you’ve probably got two or three long-running daydreams or fantasies that you spend at least a little bit of time maintaining every day.

For example, I have a daydream about being a leader in my field of endeavor. I have a big office with a window and nice furniture and lighting, and spend my time developing clever strategies for developing more business and inventing clever solutions to long-standing problems. Because this is a daydream, issues of budgeting, staffing, and contract disputes never come up.

I also have a daydream about quiting my job and becoming a writer, and finally finishing my 1,400-page novel about life in second-century China. Then the novel is well-reviewed, people line up to buy book, and I am inspired to write more books, and become rich, famous, and respected. There might even be movies. Because this is a daydream, issues of advance money, budgeting, writers block, and contract disputes never come up.

And then there’s the most intricate and elaborate fantasy, which is the world described in the penultimate fantasy. The characters have taken on a life of their own, in some sense. I need to check in with them every so often, or they tend to wander off-script.

All this daydreaming takes time. Nothing is static. For example, when I’m rich and famous, what kind of cool car should I drive? There are always new cars, so the answer changes.

In one of my favorite books, Gravity’s Rainbow, there is a character, Pirate Prentice (no relation to Spuff, AFAIK) who has the unique gift of being able to take over and have other people’s daydreams. This is very handy in times of crisis — if you need the undivided attention of some cabinet member, for example, you can call in Pirate Prentice, and he’ll take care of maintaining his or her fantasy worlds for as long as necessary.

It’s an intriguing gift.

Anyone out there have any daydreams they’d like to outsource because they take up too much time? Let’s hear them. Maybe we all have the same dreams. Maybe we can amortize the work of maintaining them? Or at least we can steal each others good ideas…

(It’s not a sentence, so I can end it with a preposition, right?)

Yesterday someone asked whether I had a song lodged in my head. And a few days ago someone asked what I would do if I had access to a time machine. It turns out that the two answers are related. I’d go back to 1973 or 1974 and watch The Faces perform live. (well, first I’d save the world and pile up enormous wealth, but if the time machine still had anything left in the tank, 1974 would be my next stop)

The Faces are the best group nobody seems to know. (I’m sure this well-versed and erudite crowd will contain many exceptions, but on average, they’re pretty obscure.) But everyone knows the members:

• Rod Stewart (’nuff said)
• Ronnie Wood (carried the Rolling Stones later)
• Ronnie Lane (longtime Pete Townsend collaborator)
• Kenney Jones (took over Keith Moon’s job for The Who)
• Ian McLagan (session keyboardist par excellence, and, oddly enough, second husband to Keith Moon’s widow).

You can hardly turn on the radio without hearing these folks, but you rarely hear The Faces (and often when you do, they are mis-introduced as Rod Stewart).

They were probably doomed to obscurity because they were a concert band first and foremost, and somewhat underproduced. It was obvious to the audience that the band was having a great time up on stage (in a professional way) and that the audience was welcome to come along. No deep, angst-filled lyrics, just love songs and boogie-woogie.

Go ahead and see for yourself. Turn it up. Start around 6:00 if you want to skip the slow stuff and get rocking. Watch Ronnie Wood (in the red pants) grab the reins at 6:25. By 6:50, if you’re not playing air guitar, well, I don’t really know what to say. If you play this all the way through, this lick will be in your head all day.

Anyway, enough about me.

What groups/performers do you love, and can’t figure out why nobody else seems to have heard of them?