The Thanksgiving Thirteen

My sis suggested I do a Thanksgiving-themed Thirteen: Thirteen Ways to Mitigate the Suckitude of Thanksgiving. (My spin. I love the combination of ‘mitigate’ and ‘suckitude’ in one sentence.) I like the idea, but I’m going to up the ante.

Thirteen Paths to a Memorable Thanksgiving: a feast which will have your family and guests talking for decades to come.

Yes, it’s not quite Thursday, but some of these suggestions require a modicum of preparation. Get shopping, people.

In the spirit of Graham Greene’s Dr. Fischer of Geneva, follow me below the fold . . .

1. The Thomas Covenant Memorial Feast. Dust your hands and face with baby powder and leave a few patient brochures lying about in conspicuous places: Living With Leprosy, Lepers are People, Too, etc. Assure your guests you are minimally contagious.

2. Career Suicide Supper. Your family needs to be in on this one for maximal effect. Invite your boss and his wife to Thanksgiving Dinner. After you’ve all had a few drinks, burst into tears, telling your boss’s wife, “We can’t keep our love a secret any longer.” This is your spouse’s cue to rail against you, screaming, “You swore you wouldn’t do this to me,” whereupon your youngest child tugs on your spouse’s sleeve, saying, “Mommy, has Daddy done it again?”

3. Naked Prey Party. This one is a fun project for the whole family. Using heavy chicken wire, make a papier mâchè form in the shape of a large, adult human. Before sealing the form with newspaper strips and white clay, place a raw turkey into its abdominal cavity. Don’t forget to put some sort of tube into the form’s “mouth” to allow it to “breathe.” Next, tie the form to a spit and roast it over a huge bonfire until done.

Tell your guests you’ve done something special for Thanksgiving — barbecue! Invite them into your backyard. Carefully take down the spit-roasted “person” and slice into its abdominal cavity, where your turkey should be just as juicy as can be. Ask your guests if they would like a big helping of the other white meat.

4. The Best-Served-Cold Platter. Know all those relatives you despise seeing once a year at Thanksgiving? Here is a special meal just for them.

After serving up a perfect feast, offer those relatives some Rohypnol-laced beverages. Once they are unconscious, remove their clothing, and place them in suggestive poses with compliant farm animals. Take pictures.

When your relatives revive, show them the pictures and assure them the negatives are safely hidden. Tell them that next Thanksgiving and every Thanksgiving thereafter, either they or the pictures will be in the company of their loved ones many thousands of miles away. Their choice.

5. The Eraserhead Special. For this treat, you’ll need the assistance of your friendly neighborhood animatronics engineer. Have him (or her) rig up a mechanism whereby your roasted turkey will, when you cut into it, move its legs and wings. Squid ink packets work well for “black blood” effects. Although not strictly true to the movie Eraserhead, an ear-splitting shriek would work well here, too.

I guarantee you, your special turkey will be the talk o’ the town.

6. A Turduckenalien Extravaganza. If you think turducken is the ultimate Thanksgiving Day feast food, don’t miss the turduckenalien. You’ll need the animatronics whiz for this one, too, but the concept is simplicity itself: at the dinner table, a fully cooked chicken will burst out of the turkey, much to the delight of all. When your guests have finished laughing and congratulating you on your brilliance, press the little button which makes a fully cooked duck erupt from the chicken!

Press the final button and a vicious little alien will launch itself out of the duck and execute a perfect face-plant into the candied yams. Et voilà!

7. Letting Him Down Easy. Need a way to let him know You’re Just Not That Into Him? Roast a turkey according to your usual recipe. Let it cool to room temperature, then stuff it full of live Madagascar hissing cockroaches. (Um, click at your own risk.) Sew up the cavity.

That special someone gets to carve the turkey, of course.

8. Junior Wingnut Turkey Surprise. You know all those twenty-something friends and relatives who wholeheartedly endorse the Iraq War but are, oddly enough, too preoccupied by their own lives to enlist? Invite them to your next Thanksgiving Day feast and ask them to bring all their Young Republican friends. If they look suspicious, reassure them with the eldritch words of power, “Free beer!”

Well ahead of time, brine your turkey in a solution of salt and turmeric until the meat is a deep yellow. Roast it according to your favorite recipe.

Oh — the surprise? Invite your local Army recruiters to dinner, too. Serve the turkey. While the recruiters are busy doing their thing, you and your family can go to Denny’s for a delightful Turkey Dinner.

9. Sin City Sensation. You’ll need to butcher your own turkey for this one.

Remember what Miho did to Jackie Boy? She doesn’t quite cut his head off. She turns him into a Pez dispenser.

If this presentation isn’t exciting enough for you, let your guests take turns carving the turkey with Miho’s katana. (Yeah, I watch too many movies.)

10. The Keith Olbermann Fantasy Feast. Have a locksmith rig your doors so you can lock them from outside. Now invite Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin, George W. Bush, Ann Coulter, and Michael Savage to dinner. Set the table with very sharp cutlery but no food. When your guests arrive, leave, locking the door behind you.

11. Stiffing the Stiffer. This one’s for my sis. She knows who I’m talking about.

Some families prefer to eat Thanksgiving Dinner at a restaurant. Inevitably, the relative who orders the most expensive dish will put five dollars toward the tip and call it even.

Next time: after everyone has had drinks, dinner, and dessert, have the eldest member of the party stage a seizure. A small water balloon concealed in his trousers and punctured at a timely moment will effectively simulate a loss of bladder control. Before he “passes out,” he should make a mess of everything, breaking dishes and wine glasses with abandon.

“Help me get him to the car!” his wife will say, asking everyone BUT the deadbeat for assistance. The goal, of course, is to leave the cheapskate holding the check.

What do you think, Sis? Will Daddy play along?

12. Hospitality Hostess. Make them feel as comfortable eating a meal in your home as you do in theirs. Invite your uncle and his wife to dinner. You know the one — the guy who makes you all join hands, then proceeds to read a ten-minute passage from The Purpose Driven Life. This time, however, you insist on saying grace.

“Let us all join hands, and please repeat after me:

I proclaim Satan Lucifer as my one and only God. I promise to recognize and honor him in all things, without reservation, desiring in return, his manifold assistance in the successful completion of my endeavors.”

Now point out the pentacle inscribed in sulfur on the floor and tell him it would not be wise to step outside of it.

Last but not least . . .

13. Stuffing Instead of Potatoes. Here’s one for the man of the household. Leave the front door slightly ajar. When you hear your guests arriving, remove all your clothes, and pleasure yourself within the turkey’s pleasantly warm cavity. In response to your guests’ dumbstruck expressions, tell them, “I thought it would be a nice change of pace to serve a boned bird.”

There you go. Do any of one of these and I’m sure folks will be talking about you for years to come.

thursday thirteen

D.