Since we’re makin’ a list, you gotta lead with the Rob Gordon photo.
As you certainly already know, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. On my previous website, we used to celebrate this holiday by inviting readers to make insane choices between something they’d like to eat, someone they’d like to have sex with, and something they’d like to drive. We’d award prizes to those with the most correct answers.
On Facebook this month, many of my friends have posted something they’re thankful for each day. It’s a nice gesture, and a fun way to get to know a little bit more about your friends (even if many of the things we’re thankful for are fairly obvious – ohmigod you’re thankful for WATER?!? ME TOO!).
But that’s not really my style. And since this website IS my style, and we’re a bit off kilter around here, here are 7 sort of unusual things I’m thankful for this year. Among them: I’m thankful I don’t have to come up with a bunch of weird Food Sex or Cars? scenarios, format them, post them, publish them, and score them during a weekend where I could devote myself to eating myself derelict and watching sports while passed out with the two furry bitches. Also, my hot wife. So there you go. That’s what we’re doing here. And that one’s a bonus.
So here’s seven things I’m thankful for, here in 2013, that are sort of strange, and extraordinarily self-involved.
1. The continued ability to surprise yourself in totally pointless ways
While traveling recently, I woke up early to work out. I had traveled one time zone east, so it was even an hour earlier than I normally wake up, which is enough already to make you hate everything. I staggered down there and sweated out 40 minutes on the elliptical machine.
When I returned to my room, through some process that involved taking out my headphones, going to the bathroom, putting down my phone, stripping off my clothes, answering an email, refilling my water bottle, and prepping to get into the shower, I somehow found myself wearing my shoes and socks and nothing else.
Nothing will make you feel quite as exquisitely naked as wearing nothing but your shoes and socks. As I gazed at myself, befuddled, in the full length mirror, I wondered how I got here, and realized I don’t think I’ve ever worn solely my shoes and socks. It was an amazing and totally disorienting experience. And after 32+ years on this earth, the fact that I could find a new variation on nakedness made me oddly happy. It’s not something I’m looking to duplicate, but I’m happy it happened.
2. The ice machine at work
I never realized how important having ample access to ice was to my happiness until two things coalesced in my life. 1) I went to Europe again where there isn’t ice FUCKING ANYWHERE, and, 2) Thanks to the jagweed home flippers who re-did our house, our home ice maker makes ice at a clip of about a full tray once a fortnight. Great! That’ll be perfect in my quest to become fully European within the next year.
So, in one of the most surprising developments of the year, I’m stoked to go work because I know I’m going to gorge myself on the veritable cornucopia of ice awaiting me there. I fill my Nalgene bottle with it, pour the water over it, and I fucking go to town. I repeat this roughly four more times throughout the day, which both makes me cold, and makes me have to pee. But I don’t care, because ICE. It’s the greatest.
3. Watching people navigate the world
I’m much less angry than I used to be, and the reasons for that are much too long, boring, and esoteric to get into here, but it’s made me look at people not with hostility, as I did before, but rather amusement.
A guy next to me on the plane ordered Bloody Mary mix (no vodka), then asked to keep the can. Then finished it, and slurped out the remnants like a coke fiend. I didn’t know it was possible to love Bloody Mary mix that much.
A different guy at a conference I attended put, no joke, five sugars into a regular-sized cup of coffee.
There is someone who parks in my garage that drives a minivan that has the vanity plate “XKWIZIT.” Who drives that car? That previous sentence reads like a Mad Libs story. Working mom/dog enthusiast? Rapper who needs a practical way of hauling his kids around? Practical mom who blasts Young Jeezy?
People are fucking strange, man, and I just feel blessed I get to watch them.
4. 26th Avenue between Colorado Boulevard and York St.
There are no stoplights, nor stop signs on this stretch of road. I drive it every morning because it feels like I’m making great time, which is moronic because I drive the same way to work every day. I make no greater time than any other day. I know this, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve found a wormhole in the city that takes you to hyperspace. It’s a sad state of driving affairs when you drive what amounts to approximately 15 city blocks without interruption and you feel like you’re on the German Autobahn. Everywhere else I drive I stop approximately every 9 feet. Which also makes me happy I stopped driving a clutch.
5. Deadspin.com
Because it causes me to write things like this on Facebook, which no one, except for my one graduate school friend, commented on (who was the only one I truthfully expected to comment):
“People love to shit on Deadspin for various reasons (some deserved, most ridiculous), but it remains one of the only places where one can engage sports journalism as an exercise in semiotics as Tim Marchman does with this piece about Tim Tebow. I’ve not read the Tebow/SI piece yet, but as an outgrowth of all cultural dialogue about Tim Tebow, I suspect Marchman is dead on in his analysis.”
I have very few things in my life that inspire that level of pretentiousness in me, and although I think it’s healthy to suppress one’s pretentiousness, I’m happy there are things that cause it surface nevertheless.
6. Texts with Jason
Kristin texts with her sister frequently throughout the day. She also texts with a friend who lives in Chicago possibly just as much as her sister. I’m both thankful for unlimited texting on cell phone plans, and somewhat fearful of what our bill would be if unlimited texts never became a thing. According to my last cell phone statement, I sent and received a total of exactly 100 texts last month. And most of them were of this variety:
Me to Jason: Olaf, metal.
Jason to Me: My love for you is ticking clock. Berzerker
Technology is a miracle that is totally wasted every single day.
7. Our lord and savior (of condiments)
Finally, that American Psycho re-imagining I’ve been pushing.
Sriracha. May it forever reign.
I, of course, remain thankful for you, dear reader, for choosing to make me part of your day. If you feel so inclined (or are trapped at work on a Thursday), feel free to share something you’re weirdly thankful for down in the comments section.
Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
