Gonna Thanksgiving Like It's 1993
I want you, this Thanksgiving, to find your Pauly Shore moment.
I don’t want to brag, but I went ahead and bought the butter shaped like a turkey. I think we — my husband, our kid, myself — deserve this bougie churned cream. Thanksgiving, once filled with anxiety, is now a day I love with my whole ho heart. The mashed potatoes! The mac and cheese! The crisp turkey skin! The gravy! Ending with cheesecake! Exactly zero football. No family. Just us. A small, curated, targeted audience. There’s less fuckery this way, no hurt feelings, less people I’d like to punch in the front butt or murder with my eyeballs for being the worst.
You know, when you give your family a hard pass, it kinda makes this pandemic slightly (and I do mean slightly) less debilitating. I should write that in my gratitude journal: “Nice job predicting one day your family might really kill you.”
Growing up, I was the “giving” part in other people’s Thanksgivings. My mother, a business owner, worked all day and dined in restaurants. My father, he latched onto whoever was offering, and so we went awkwardly to other people’s tables. Mainly I remember going places with Dad — an aunt’s for a number of years, this girlfriend, that girlfriend, and then my memory runs cold until I became a mother myself. But I was still a bit of wallflower trying to navigate melding into a rather large extended family that wasn’t my own. It’s one thing to function in a dysfunctional way, and an entirely other kind of nightmare to pass your plate of crazy to even crazier.
A few years back though, after our move to Atlanta and then a return to the Philadelphia suburbs, Thanksgiving really came into my heart as my favorite. I think it had a lot to do with Pauly Shore.
Let’s travel back to 1993. A time of roller blades, high-waisted denim, that other Meatloaf song, and a curly-haired MTV VJ named Pauly Shore who was a little bit Steven Tyler and a lot more Kenny G., but cool about in a way the ladies — including a pre-teen me — adored. My mother, a workaholic and hardcore Hollywood glamor stan with her subscriptions to Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly and tabloids littering her floor every Sunday morning; spent what little time she had to herself at the movies.
For some reason, and I don’t know why, in the summer of 1993 she let me pick what we were going to see, and I chose Son-In-Law. Fresh off of Encino Man with Brendan Fraser, Pauly decided his next starring vehicle was going to be about a computer nerd who doesn’t want to grow up and leave college so he becomes a resident elder to the freshman newbies. He befriends a young, midwestern straight-from-the-farm type named Becca and turns her into a beautiful, alt rock butterfly fresh from her sheltered cocoon. Hijinks ensue and Ham, from The Sandlot, is her chauvinistic brother.
I love this damn movie so much. And, because you of course don’t know this, it’s centered around Thanksgiving.
When we returned from Atlanta and I thought about what I wanted my Thanksgiving to include, it was Pauly Shore and Son-In-Law. Did it matter if my extended family sat at our table? Not really, I’d spent a lot of time making myself small so they could feel better about themselves so they didn’t catch an invite.
So I went about making a turkey dinner for the three of us with buttermilk biscuits, StoveTop (I can’t quit the boxed stuff, and I am not sorry) macaroni and cheese, creamed spinach, mashed potatoes with a smidge of sour cream, and a delicately arranged TV in front of our table with Pauly. And, you know, I felt lighter that year, a bit more thankful, like I’d rolled around in my own bad taste, loved it, and decided, from that point moving forward, I could set the course for how I wanted to celebrate things.
It’s the little stuff, folks.
Like butter shaped like turkeys and Pauly Shore movies.
I hope you stay safe this Thanksgiving — it would be nice if you were here for a really long time. Yes, Thanksgiving is going to look different, and while that may not be a welcomed endeavor, what you make of it matters. I hope your gathering is small and within your own home. I’d like you to try something new, something that’s just for you. Maybe it’s ordering, if you have the means, an expensive floral centerpiece you can ogle as you stuff your face full of turkey, or tofu, or roast pork, or fried chicken. Maybe it’s springing for the four dollar Turkey-shaped butter, like me. Maybe it’s packing freezer bags full of food for the homebound. Or, maybe it’s all paper plates so there are no dishes to clean. I want you, this Thanksgiving, to find your Pauly Shore moment.
Stay safe out there, friends.
xoxo
Please join me and Lib on Instagram Live for Celebrity Skin Book Club on Thursday, December 3rd at 8 pm est. You can follow me on IG here and Lib right here. We’ll be discussing A SONG FOR YOU: My LIFE WITH WHITNEY HOUSTON.
CURRENTLY READING, WATCHING, LISTENING & COVETING:
Currently reading:
Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well
Just added:
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
Watching:
16 New Christmas Movies to Watch on Netflix, Lifetime, and More
Podcast:
Muses // About the wives, girlfriends and groupies that inspire rockers
Coveting:
This Universal Standard cami dress in black