From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XVI

Introduction

This is the sixteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, and Volume XIV is here, and Volume XV is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in numerical order, alphabetical order, in birth order, or in whatever order your Ouija Board advises.)

What are Bits & Bobs, in the context of this blog? They’re like little literary snacks … brief passages from old emails or essays, or things I’d have scrawled on a bathroom wall if I were a vandal. Though generally written to a friend or family member, they’re tidbits I figure my albertnet audience might get a chuckle, snort, chortle, or at least a smirk out of. Read these aloud to your friends, family, colleagues, or a stranger on the phone, ideally a telemarketer. Or copy them onto Post-its and stick them all over your house for inspiration!

January 17, 2005

Welcome to Gmail! I’m glad my special exclusive invitation hit its mark. I hope you consider me kind of elite to have made this new platform possible for you. Of course, it’s hard for me to feel superior when you got a cooler address than I did. Alas, dana.albert is always taken when a new email platform sprouts up. Anyway, as you start using Gmail I entreat you to never click on any of the Adsense “sponsored links” (i.e., ads), lest you help launch a new way to advertise, which is the last thing this country and world need.

Gosh, that’s a less-than-cheery paragraph, I now realize. I’m pretty fed up, I guess. We took the kids to San Francisco today for a nice stroll along the new waterfront, where they’ve restored a wetland. It was absolutely frigid, with a howling cold wind. L— cried continuously. A— had a blast, though: she saw her first helicopter, her first container ship, her first motorboat, and her best (if not first) view of a seagull, quasi-hovering not 10 feet away. Then we went to House of Nanking, where A— pronounced most of the food (scallops excluded) “too spicy,” and L— tore up the place, even flinging food at the couple at the next table. We had to take turns walking her outside. We got home and put both kids to bed, and tried to get a nap ourselves (I’m fighting some bug), but the phone rang every 20 minutes, and no handset was near. So I have half-napped, which is a recipe for grogginess and a sour disposition. So, have a better one!

December 3, 2006

What do I mean by “damn fritjes?” Why, I’m glad you asked! “Fritjes” is a Dutch word, the diminutive of “frites,” which needless to say are fries, as in French fries. There’s a story behind this. When my mom was married to the man who had formerly been her landlord, and whom we thus always called The Landlord, or more precisely The Landlo’, they traveled quite a bit. This was fun for my mom except that the Landlo’ was, well, a total dick. I doubt you could find a single living human who would describe him in any other way. I suppose if he’d met a nun somewhere along the line she’d choose a different description, like “sinfully cruel and unredeemable,” but you get the idea. Anyway, he didn’t really “tour” places, he “did” them. As in, “Do you think we can do the Sorbonne in under twenty minutes?” Travel, to him, was a way to check off all the “been-there” lists. He was terribly impatient in general and I think travel just exacerbated the trait. Anyway, G—, when showing them his adopted country, went for the slow-absorption style that reasonable people tend to favor. The Landlo’ was having none of that. If there wasn’t a famous landmark to be checked off and mentioned later to some disinterested, and doubtless uninterested, third party back home, he wasn’t interested. About the only specific thing on G—’s list was fritjes. He really loves the fritjes in Holland, and for good reason. They really do them right. There are stands all over the place. As far as he (and thus I) know, everybody in the country always orders “frites mit.” That means “fries with.” You’ll be happy to know that there’s no need to specify with what; of course “mit” means “with mayonnaise.” They don’t skimp, either. As far as I can tell, frites mit is about the only luxury that the temperance-addicted Dutch allow themselves, unless you count raw herring.

Anyway, as the Landlo’ dragged my mom and my brother around at his breakneck pace, cussing and looking at his watch every five seconds, poor G— decided to cut his losses and forget every single local attraction he’d planned to show them, except fritjes, since that at least still seemed possible. He reminded the Landlo and our Mom to keep an eye out for a fritjes stand. Finally the Landlo’ decided he (and thus they) were done with Holland and started to drag them back to G—’s place. G— meekly protested that they hadn’t had any fritjes yet, and the Landlo’ blew sky high and gave the poor guy a blistering diatribe about “you and your damn fritjes!” From that moment forward, G— has never called them anything but damn fritjes, and neither has our mom, and once the rest of us heard the story, the name has stuck with all us brothers, kids, nieces, and nephews as well. It’s gradually spreading from there (e.g., to my friends and colleagues). Needless to say, if you ask one of my daughters if she’d like some damn fritjes, she’ll know exactly what you’re talking about. “French fries” might throw her, though.

February 29, 2009

[I sent the following email to a mass audience of family and friends.]

I am pleased to introduce my web log, or as they say in the Internet space, my “blog.” (It is with great trembling thrill I use these élite modern words like “space” and “blog.”) Please stop whatever you’re doing and go—right now!—to www.albertnet.us, and check out my Intro post and my first (real, non-intro) post, “Wrecking the Car.” While you’re there, click the “Follow” button and become an official albertnet follower. To the first person who does this, I will send a spanking new patch kit from biketiresdirect.com, postage-paid. I’ll bet you’re wondering, “What’s in it for me, a man or woman of acclaimed Command Presence, to become a mere follower?” Well, for one thing, when you do this something will be enhanced about your “dashboard.” I was reading about this somewhere but I can’t remember where. Think of being a follower as social and/or intellectual Armor All for your dash. (If you happen to know what a “dashboard” even means in this context, please drop me a note and explain it to me.)

Anyway, the main benefit of following my blog is that you’ll help me gain other followers. Right now I don’t have a single one, and it’s kind of embarrassing. I had hoped that before I turned forty I’d have scores of minions, not just followers, but as so often happens I’m needing to adjust my expectations. By clicking that little button, you’ll be seeding my future success. (Think of me as a virtual busker who doesn’t yet have a single coin in his violin case.) Oh, and please leave comments for me on the page as well. If you don’t have anything nice to say, say something arch.

March 2, 2009

No, I didn’t get a Prius [to replace my 1984 Volvo wagon]. Fuel economy be damned: I’m tired of Priuses. They’re kind dorky and far, far too common. (I used to call Albany the Volvo Belt, but now it’s clearly the Prius Belt.) What we bought is a newer Volvo wagon, about which Robert Frost would write:

Whose car this is I think I know;
It’s not his old grey Volvo, though.
This fly-ass ride is newer, so
I’d have to guess he’s pimpin’ ho’s.

Okay, that was lame, but at least it rhymed. Anyway, the Volvo we have now is a barely used (pre-depreciated, I like to say) V70. I couldn’t get a stick shift model without going to like Miami, which was, alas, out of the question. It’s my first automatic transmission but surely not my last <sniff>.

March 15, 2009

I have a couple of household items I no longer need, that I hereby offer “free to a good home,” as they say.

Item #1 is a Silca floor pump (they call it a “track pump” for some reason), black. It’s less than fourteen years old. It’s made of a Columbus tube (Cromor, their cold-drawn seamless chromium molybdenum tube, in this case non-butted for obvious reasons). The brass chuck is only a few years old. It works okay on presta but shraeder is a pain in the neck. The gauge sort of works, sometimes; its clear cover is gone and the needle does its own thing. The hose leaks at both ends so you have to pump really fast and there’s a constant hissing. It’s possible to repair this pump by cutting off the stretched-out ends of the hose and crimping a fresh, tight section over the chuck and pump base with the little wire doodad. I did this repair a number of times before something in me just died and I couldn’t do it anymore.

I also have a microwave oven by Sharp, and it is. Works great, and you can turn off the beeping. Carousel. Dedicated Hot Dog button (like a macro). Popcorn button (though microwave popcorn should be illegal because it’s gross, and air-poppers work so well). Compu-defrost. Auto-sense. Interactive help menus. It’s eleven years old. The catch? It’s pretty disgusting in there. It’s rusting. There’s an accumulation of food shrapnel on the ceiling and walls that we’ve given up trying to remove. In the heady dot-com days we’d probably have just pitched it, but times have changed and who knows, maybe you belong to a nursery school co-op that wants a dedicated microwave for defrosting mice for its snake. Or for your home. Yours if you want it.

March 16, 2009

You’ve probably read about the shocking revelation that cyclists tend to have poor bone density, because we don’t carry enough weight around on our skeletons. For some reason cyclists, among other very lean athletes, are singled out by these studies. It is true that, statistically speaking, runners suffer far fewer broken collarbones than cyclists do. But some researchers have proposed that this is because runners almost never get driven into the pavement at 30 or 40 mph. I would like to propose a follow-up study comprising a control group of typical runners plus a test group who are subjected to high-speed impacts with asphalt to test their collarbone strength. I think YouTube would be the ideal way to showcase the results.

In light of this disconcerting stuff, I want to share some good news for a change. We’ve all known for a long time that ice cream and cheese are chock-full of calcium. But that’s not the only way forward for bone health. New studies are showing that alcohol suppresses bone-weakening hormones, so we should be including more of that in our diet. Meanwhile, there are minerals such as boron and silicon that occur naturally in beer (more so than in wine) and that also promote bone health.

Below are some links on the great news about beer.

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-385602/Drink-beer-beat-crumbling-bones.html
•  http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/490673

Meanwhile, running is hard on the joints, plus I’m no good at it, and it doesn’t give you great belches like beer does. So stop worrying about your bones. Ride your bike and drink your beer (though not at the same time). That’s my 0.71 rubles, anyway…

November 18, 2008

Thanks for the email! Gosh, so much to reply to there. To start: the way you describe the dread you felt when you moved that furniture, worrying that it would crush you? I had to chuckle because that’s how I’ve felt my whole life! At least you have an upper body. “Gosh, I wish I had a cyclist’s body,” said nobody ever. Swimming has been good to you, even if you haven’t done it in years and years. You’ve still got the muscle memory there (literally hundreds of miles of muscle-feeding capillaries that dudes like me lack) so you’ll get it back the moment you go back to the pool or get a rowing machine or whatever. I’m trying to rehabilitate my shoulder still, and I want to add some muscle there to hold everything together now that the ligaments are permanently severed. Maybe when you’re here for Thanksgiving, we can do my little circuit training regimen together (barbells, this weird sport-cord thing, a soccer ball, and a big exercise ball—you’ll see).

But what’s this about cigarettes? You literally smoked a whole pack in one day? What’s up with that? Don’t punish your body, dude, it’s done nothing to deserve that. I assume you’re not planning on smoking during your visit (not in front of my kids, or I’ll stub the cigarette out on your arm!). I’d recommend you quit right now, so if there’s any withdrawal it won’t be distracting you during your vacation.

Wow, I just picked this big booger and flicked it away, and I heard it hit the window. It’s like that sucker had wings.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here . For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XIII

Introduction

This is the thirteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, and Volume XII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in any order, or underwater, or not at all.)

The Bits & Bobs series is the reason I’ve been called “a master of the short, short form” by … nobody! These are excerpts from emails, letters, etc. that I wrote to friends and family before I started this blog and channeled all my literary compulsion into this single endeavor. Read on if it’s bedtime and you’re jittery, or even better, read this aloud from your phone to some rando on the bus.

October 13, 1995

Thanks for offering me the TV, but no thanks, I’m good. I don’t miss having one, and when someone asks something like, “Did you see ‘Friends’ last night?” I kind of enjoy replying, “No, I don’t have a TV.” No matter how offhandedly I deliver this message, I probably come off sounding sanctimonious and superior, which causes my interlocutor to judge and despise me, which of course everyone enjoys doing, so I can feel good about doing someone a favor in giving him that pleasure. Often, I’ll be asked, “No TV?! How do you keep up with the news?” The answer is, I mostly don’t, since we don’t get a newspaper either. I figure if something’s important, I’ll hear about it one way or the other. I get enough news by reading the headline thru the window of the newspaper vending machine while I’m waiting for the bus. What’s the point of being more informed than that? What am I going to do about anything? Is there a cautionary tale in the OJ Simpson murder case? As long as I understand that 1) our country is a vicious planet-plundering machine, and 2) people are dying all over the world and I have it so good, and 3) we won’t know how the Raiders will stack up this season until we see them play Dallas, then I think I’m informed enough.

November 12, 1996

Since I’m not hosting Thanksgiving, I guess it’s really not my call as to whether you invite B—. But since you asked, my personal opinion is ABSOLUTELY NOT. First of all, in the best of scenarios, the guy is a jerk, a pain in the ass to have around, he’s ugly, and he stinks. I know that it’s customary that one’s parent is automatically entitled to bring his or her spouse to a holiday gathering, but with a divorce pending it really seems like we ought to have some wiggle room here. Of additional consideration are the specific facts of the case: B— has zero tact, zero hygiene, and zero sense of humor, and he has shown rising resentment at the fact that we Albert boys are typically kind, tactful, humorous, fun to have around, inoffensive visually, and known either for no odor at all, or for a swarthy, masculine sweat smell that isn’t unpleasant (lacking, as it does, that strange and somehow non-human scent element that makes you want to hurl, that afflicts certain men perhaps at random, or perhaps as a form of punishment). If you said you were considering inviting Charles Manson, I would be more ambivalent; after all, he would at least be interesting company. We could interview him and gain insight into the life of a sociopathic, psychotic killer. But with B—, we’d just have a whining, complaining, jittery, humorless little pot-bellied man lashing out against everything and everyone in his environment, wishing he could be somewhere else—playing bridge, perhaps, accumulating the points necessary to be an All-Time Grand Master Great King and Grand Poobah of that discipline. Finally, I offer you one additional consideration: if B— were to attend (and I don’t know why he’d even accept other than to deliberately be a pain in the ass, in addition to having nowhere else to go), I might be tempted to tell him what I really think of him, without the extraordinary tact and restraint I’ve demonstrated here. But of course, it’s all up to you as you’re the host. So please do feel free to invite him, in which case I will simply cancel my flight and make other arrangements, such as biking over to McDonalds on Thanksgiving, even if I can’t be sure it’ll even be open.

December 12, 1996

Did you hear about this woman who sued DEC for her carpal tunnel syndrome? It’s kind of odd. The reason she won her case is that DEC had done employee training on ergonomics & stress-injuries, but didn’t give the same training to its customers, and didn’t post a carpal tunnel syndrome warning label on the keyboards they manufactured for sale. Flagrant disregard for health and safety! So why didn’t this woman sue her own employer for not giving her ergonomics training? Probably because DEC has deeper pockets. So I’m going to sue UPS (both because I hate them and because I like money). The way I figure it, there’s no way they don’t train their employees to lift heavy objects with bent knees, using the leg muscles and not the back muscles. And yet I’ve received many a heavy box from UPS without a warning label of any kind. I’m also considering a lawsuit against the novelist Danielle Steele because her novels are famously “impossible to put down,” are usually well over an inch thick, and come out a couple of times a year. That’s a lot of reading, and it’s a known fact that too much reading causes myopia (heck, John Milton went blind from it), and yet not one of Ms. Steele’s books (so far as I know) has a warning label about too much reading causing eye strain. Ms. Steele is loaded (her Pacific Heights home is right next to a member of Metallica’s) so she’ll probably settle out of court and I can quickly make some pretty good money.

December 17, 1996

Well, our office holiday party just finished. It was at this place called MacArthur Park, a restaurant with a large lobby area that my company rented. E— wasn’t able to come because she had a city council meeting to go to. Because of my injured foot I spent most of the time sitting down instead of milling about. There were these “crab” cakes that tasted kind of like tuna salad—they were definitely stretched. There were also these ribs that were remarkably bland given that MacArthur Park is famous for its ribs. There were also these sautéed mushroom sandwiches, open-faced, which were startlingly good. Finally, there were these half-baked apples with bacon around them that were okay. You’ve never seen such a sober bunch, not in terms of spirits but . . . boy, it’s hard not to commit double-entendres here. Let’s just say that nobody was even one sheet to the wind. Very non-drunk, and therefore non-rude and non-embarrassing, which I like. Still, it’s not quite as festive as when you have a sit-down dinner and people get up and make sentimental, half-clocked, maudlin speeches like at my old work, where people were desperate to eat as much food and drink as much booze on the company’s dime as possible, out of spite. Anyway, I behaved myself as well; that is, I managed to keep from eating so many mushroom sandwiches that I became gassy or hurled or something. The only problem is that now my best suit smells a bit like cigarette & cigar smoke. But I’m back in the office and it’s not even 7:00 p.m. (And what am I doing in the office? That’s a very good question and I’m afraid I have no answer other than I decided to walk home and it’s on the way.)

Undated, ca. 2004

We are up visiting Mom. When we arrived here, I was surprised by two things. First, she was not here to greet us—turns out she’d been called in to work at the hospital. Second, there was something really wrong with S— [her cat]. His entire body was trembling, and he struggled to stand up. There was a frightening jerkiness to his movements, like early Hollywood animatronics or first-generation CGI. He had a wild, feral look in his eyes and was emitting low, metallic yowls. He was like half cat, half Terminator, and it seemed he could be capable of anything.

E— led the kids to safety while I called Mom at work. She told me S— had been recently diagnosed as diabetic and put on new medication, and given the crisis she’d come right home. In the meantime I called the veterinarian, who determined that the cat’s blood sugar had crashed and that he probably wouldn’t survive the trip to her clinic. She told me to try rubbing corn syrup into the cat’s gums with a Q-tip. It was his only chance, she advised. Corn syrup? Seriously?

Hoo boy. This wasn’t going to be easy because as you know, S— is a bit of a tricky cat to begin with, having that strange tendency to occasionally turn on you. Like, he’ll be contentedly sitting in your lap, relaxed as could be, and then will suddenly try to bite you. And that’s when he’s behaving normally, not when he’s having a life-threatening blood sugar issue. Heck, if my own life were in danger I might try to bite people, too.

I set out the Q-tips, poured corn syrup from the jug into the cap, and steeled myself for the ordeal.

The beast must have known that his life was in danger but without understanding why. His reaction was to mount a strong defense. In other words, he was in full kill mode. As I approached him, he lunged, narrowly missing, his teeth snapping audibly together. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll bite you?” E— asked. Um, yeah. Of course.

I wrestled the poor creature onto my lap, trying to pin down his windmilling hind legs. S— was making good headway on my forearms with his barbed-wire claws. My base impulse was to hurl him away from me, but with great resolve I stayed at it. When I was able to overpower the animal and hold him still, I felt less panicky. A human, I reminded himself, is stronger than a cat.

A long moment passed, S— straining uselessly. Still pinning him down, I inspected the deep scratches he’d made on my arms and considered the etymology of “cat-o’-nine-tails.” Eventually S—, exhausted, went limp and I set about rubbing the corn syrup into his gums with the Q-tip. I worked quickly, carefully pulling back his lips with one hand and working the Q-tip with the other.

Suddenly the stricken creature came back to life, as though hit with a thousand volts, snarling and trying again to bite his tormentor. I got a good grip on his body. I could feel the knobby bones across his back. His front legs were a blur as he flailed, and I jerked myself back to keep my face out of biting range. This attack, too, petered out and he slumped again. I pried his jaws open and rubbed some more syrup in. He still trembled, and periodically he weakly tried to bite, but he was too weak to fight anymore. Eventually, amazingly, as I continued rubbing the syrup into his upper and lower gums, the treatment began to work. S—’s shaking stopped, and in time he seemed to relax. By the time Mom arrived, he seemed stable, and he survived the trip to the animal hospital. They gave him some basic treatment and now he’s sound as a pound. It seems he had developed some kind of fleeting diabetes, and when it went away, the medication he was still on messed up his (now non-diabetic) blood sugar. Wacky!

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Bell’s Seasoning & The Key to Thanksgiving

Introduction

Can any interesting new sentence be formed using the words “holiday” and “tradition?”  Probably not, so I’m going to chuck the junior high writing guidelines, skip the topic sentence, and just dive right in.

Eye-rolling

In my family, the run-up to Thanksgiving always involves some eye-rolling by my wife.  She almost never rolls her eyes at my utterances, with a few notable exceptions.  If I use certain automotive terms (e.g., “synchromesh,” “constant-velocity joint”) she rolls her eyes … or when I start going on about Bell’s Seasoning.

If you’re not familiar with Bell’s Seasoning, your mother probably doesn’t love you.  I’m sorry to be so harsh, but it needs to be said.  There is only one use for this product, and that’s as an ingredient in stuffing.  (If your mom calls stuffing “dressing,” she probably hates you and you’re at some risk for Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.)  I say Bell’s Seasoning is “an ingredient” but really it’s the ingredient (although it’s also critical that your mom bake fresh cornbread, which she then cubes and sets out to get just the right degree of stale, to mix with other stale bread for the stuffing).

If your mom doesn’t cook your Thanksgiving dinner, things get much more complicated.  More on that later.

How crucial is Bell’s Seasoning?

Bell’s Seasoning is easy to find in New England and the Northeast, but elsewhere it can be tricky.  My mom can’t find it in Oregon, where she lives now, though she never had any trouble when we lived in Boulder (where I grew up).  I had to really hunt for it when I lived in San Francisco, but it’s not too hard in the Berkeley area.  Still, I get a little nervous every year when I need to buy it.

A few nights ago my wife and kids joined me for a Post-Prandial Promenade^TM to Andronico’s Park & Shop, the store that had Bell’s last year.  This place is so expensive I cannot normally go in there.  (I once encountered this hippy-dippy woman there who was buying a foil pan of grilled asparagus that cost over $70.)

During the walk I fielded the inevitable question, this time from my daughter, “Is this seasoning really that important?”  I said, “Suppose you were an astronaut about to go on a spacewalk.  Would you think of going out there without your space suit?  Would you get bored of the same old space suit routine, and say, ‘You know what?  I’m just going out with a SCUBA mask this time.  I’ll probably be fine’?”  Before I had a chance to finish my little analogy, I realized that nobody was listening.

My wife has either heard it all before, or feels like she has.  It’s become something of a holiday tradition for her to grouse good-naturedly about how much dialogue surrounds this Bell’s Seasoning.  She has a point; in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving I always have several phone calls with my mom about Bell’s.  A typical call might go something like this:

            I’ll say, “So, I don’t have the Bell’s Seasoning yet—Safeway doesn’t have it anymore—but I’m sure I’ll be able to get it.”

            My mom will respond, “Well, I actually have two half-boxes of it in the freezer.  So if you can’t find it that’s no big deal … I think these will work.”

            “No, no, I don’t want to risk it.  Don’t worry, I’ll be able to find it.”

            “I think it does okay in the freezer.  I think I’ve done that before.”

            “You know what?  I just discovered have a box of it here, but it’s only half-full and it’s been in the spice rack, not the freezer.  No, I just smelled it and it’s no good.  I think it’s from last time we hosted Thanksgiving here.  Don’t worry, I’ll be able to find a fresh box.  I’ll definitely bring one.”

Perhaps I derive excessive pleasure from this subject because procuring Bell’s is basically the only thing I do to help out with the Thanksgiving meal.  As a modern husband/father who does a lot of the housework (and even a modest amount of the cooking), I take great pleasure in being almost useless on Thanksgiving Day.

The secret of Bell’s

So what’s Bell’s’ secret?  That’s a tough question, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I’m not at all sure about the apostrophes I’ve just used.  I could have put “Bells’” but the mere act of suggesting it has caused another problem, that of running an apostrophe right up against a quotation mark, which is grammatically fine, but which (at my age) I realize lots of people have trouble with, due to spotty eyesight, so I try to go easy.  The other problem with “Bells’” is that it connotes “belonging to or associated with the Bells,” which isn’t at all what I mean.  And “Bell’s” connotes “belonging to or associated with Bell,” which is probably worse.  I need to convey “belonging to or associated with Bell’s [seasoning].”

The other problem is, I’m not a chef.  I know enough to say, “This food would taste better with more salt,” but when we’re talking about what to add to a bunch of dried out bread to achieve that amazing apotheosis into a food as uncannily delicious as stuffing, I’m completely out of my depth.  And yet, I think I do have one theory about why Bell’s is crucial.

The fact is, Bell’s imparts a flavor that is not only pleasant, but totally unique.  Stuffing itself doesn’t taste like anything else we eat, and my mom’s stuffing doesn’t taste like any other stuffing I’ve ever had.  (Don’t take this for granted.   Consider those ten-page Chinese menus where the same sauce is presented in the poultry, seafood, beef, and pork sections.)  This morning I waved the open box of Bell’s in front of my daughter’s nose and she said, “Mmmmm, that so smells like stuffing.”

So, had my mom used Mrs. Dash in her stuffing since I was a kid, would I be blogging about that product instead?  Of course not.  That stuff is a) inferior, and b) used in various foods, not just stuffing (at least, by those who use it, whoever they are).

What is at stake

Okay, Bell’s makes stuffing yummier and more familiar.  So what?  Well, there may be people in this country who can tinker with the Thanksgiving formula every year and haphazardly try some new recipe or introduce some new side dish, or allow guests to bring a dish, but I’m not one of them … I’ve been through too much tumult for that.  It’s bad enough that a divorce ripped my family in half, but on top of that, I’ve had to deal with a stepfather and two different stepmothers.  Throw a neighbor’s stepmother onto the pile and you’ve got some hard times.

Pre-stepparent, Thanksgiving was hard enough because my parents would fight over who got my brothers and me for the holiday.  They never communicated directly with each other on this; my brothers and I were used as arbitrators.  This is a horrible task to take on, so more often than not we’d just lie, and tell both parents they’d won out.  This only worked because each parent (for some reason) wanted to serve the meal at a different time.  So we’d dual-dinner, which took the traditional gut-busting Thanksgiving tradition to a new level that might have actually been physically dangerous.

Did my dad use Bell’s seasoning?  Nope.  He either didn’t know about it, or refused to turn his culinary effort into facsimile of my mom’s.  I can respect that.  (Adopting her formula would be like a new rock band doing nothing but covers.)  There was nothing unpleasantly foreign or alien about my dad’s Thanksgiving dinners because they captured his odd, sometimes scientific approach to cooking.  He had occasionally cooked dinner for us pre-divorce and it was usually something he invented; he tinkered at length over this wacky savory skillet-fried concoction halfway between an omelet and a pancake which he called a “doormat.”  For Thanksgiving he put the turkey in an oven-cooking bag which he called the “Buzzard Bag.”  It did come out more tender, though it tended to fall completely apart, like a gastronomic embodiment of deconstruction.

Stepparents hugely complicate this holiday meal tradition.  There was the stepfather who thought the turkey should be carved in the kitchen and served buffet-style, and the stepmother who actually served the meal without any f’ing gravy!  Can you believe that?  For all the grisly detail on these two meals, click here.

The other stepmother experience wasn’t as jarring, but still unhinged my brothers and me a bit.  This stepmother was (and is) actually a very cool lady.  My brothers and I liked her just fine, which is saying something given the unavoidably difficult dynamic of these bolted-on, imposter-ish fake parents, whose very existence creates a situation which cannot exist anywhere else in the animal kingdom except perhaps in brood parasitism (click here and search on “brood parasitism” for details).

This stepmother’s Thanksgiving dinners were basically okay except that she served these weird onion balls.  I don’t know the real name, but they were silvery onions, the diameter of a quarter, in this strange pearl-colored sauce with the exact viscosity of human saliva.  This was an important enough side dish to our stepmother that she had two platters of onion balls going around, and since we tended to pass them along pretty quickly (not really wanting to engage), they seemed to be constantly bobbing up in front of us, like there was no escape.  They didn’t taste bad or smell bad or anything, but they were just weird, like if James Bond’s suit had epaulettes, or Natalie Portman had a tail.  I thought I was the only one vaguely creeped out by this side dish until after the meal when one of my brothers said, “What the hell were those onion balls?” and we all immediately joined in, puzzling over them and bonding in our mutual bemusement.

The wilderness years

During my college years, it wasn’t always possible to make it home for Thanksgiving, and that’s where things got really rough.  One year, when my brother and I were renting an apartment in San Luis Obispo, our friend in the apartment next door came to our rescue.  Knowing we had nowhere to go, he invited us home with him.  Problem was, his home was broken, too, and this was his first Thanksgiving with his new stepmother.  She really couldn’t cook worth a damn—I think her stuffing was made with Wonder bread (that weird plastic-y white bread from the Rainbo Baking Company).  I mean, I’m not a fascist about good cooking or anything, and if a master chef who was not my mom made a great Thanksgiving meal, I could probably enjoy it, but this was pretty foul.  Even worse, the dad, whom my dad would certainly have labeled a “knuckle-dragging cretin” (or “KDC” for short) was watching football on TV the whole time, even during the meal.  I’m aware that millions of Americans do this every year, but that doesn’t make it okay.  I’d rather have a street mime performing in the dining room … at least they’re quiet.  The worst part was that our friend was in agony, between being ignored by his silent father and unctuously doted on by his stepmother, whom he clearly despised.

The next year, another neighbor friend—a guy old enough to be our father—promised to take us out for a gourmet Thanksgiving feast at The Cliffs At Shell Beach, a fancy resort.  His treat!  The idea of eating this family meal at a restaurant seemed a bit off, but at least (we figured) the food would be good.  Well, the afternoon dragged on as we all waited for this other kid our neighbor had invited, who had the car.  When it became apparent that this friend wasn’t going to show, we had to punt and head over to the nearby Sizzler Steakhouse.  They had a “special” buffet meal that did feature traditional Thanksgiving foods, but with a special Sizzler twist:  all the foods were loaded up with staggering amounts of salt.  On top of the bad food we suffered a low-grade bitterness:  the neighbor was bitter that his friend had flaked, and my brother and I were bitter at our friend, whom we suspected of hatching a half-baked scheme without getting actual buy-in from this (perhaps mythical) car-equipped friend.

The next year after that, another San Luis Obispo pal invited us home for Thanksgiving, and even drove down to pick me up from UC Santa Barbara.  Though I don’t remember anything about the food—which probably reflects well on it, under the circumstances—my brother and I experienced a new kind of pain.  Not only was the host family still intact, but they’d invited another unbroken family.  After the meal we all sat in the living room talking, and everybody was so convivial and non-dysfunctional, it kind of rubbed Geoff’s and my noses in the fact that our own family would never be together again.  (Even at gatherings of all the brothers plus one parent, there was no escaping the shadow of who was missing.)

So, the next year I said screw it and made a meal for my two UCSB roommates.  This was okay except the food sucked.  I wasn’t about to roast an entire turkey, so I did some chicken legs with canned cranberry sauce dumped over them.  I made Stove-top stuffing and used canned gravy, which I thought would be edgy and ironic but turned out just salty and MSG-y, taking me right back to that awful Sizzler’s meal.  On top of that, one roommate realized to his horror that he’d lost the ability to eat an entire meal in one sitting.  All his body could handle anymore was little snacks.  (He seemed to subsist almost entirely on sunflower seeds, which he ate like a little bird, flinging the shells everywhere until I trained him to store the seeds in one margarine tub and drop the shells into another.)

Return to normalcy

Now that I have a family of my own, I’m determined to get it right, and to build up traditions and institutions that provide the supreme comfort of predictability and reliability.  There’s a wonderful continuity in having my mom make the meal, the old way, not just to close up old wounds but because she’s such an awesome cook.  (Has my wife ever cooked the Thanksgiving meal on her own?  Yes, but she had the kindness and good sense to consult at length with my mom on the phone.  She completely nailed it, even the stuffing with its perfect blend of stale bread, stale homemade cornbread, celery, nuts, and—of course—Bell’s seasoning.)

So will I tolerate any innovations at all when it comes to this special meal?  Sure, as long as they’re introduced gradually and by an authorized family member.  Some years ago my mom introduced a relish tray which includes pickled herring in sour cream, and I now consider it non-optional.  And more recently she took to complementing her own homemade cranberry sauce and raw cranberry relish (both mandatory) with one little saucer of canned cranberry sauce, slid right out of the can so the corrugations of the can remain intact.  I don’t know how or why this innovation was adopted, but I’m completely okay with it, as long as I can wave an open box of Bell’s Seasoning in front of my daughter’s nose and have her say, “Mmmmm … that so smells like Thanksgiving.”

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Thanksgiving Tales

Introduction

I’m having a bunch of relatives here for Thanksgiving: my brother Bryan and his family, and my mom. Some years we get all four brothers together, which is obviously the best-case scenario for this holiday, but the planets didn’t line up this year. Still, it’s going to be a blast. For one thing, our kids haven’t yet heard all the Albert stories, so we have ample excuse to trot out our old standbys. I enjoy watching the storyteller wring fresh life out these tales, and I like to try to track the embellishments.

One story in particular—the Baskin Robbins Simulated Vehicular Manslaughter Incident—has been told with great relish by both Geoff and Bryan, despite the fact that neither of them actually saw it, much less participated. They insist that they were there—“I remember it like it was yesterday!”—but Max and I are certain they were not. By the way, here’s a photo of the four of us, from December 1985, which we sent around as a Christmas card:

From left to right, that's me, Max, Geoff, and Bryan. But I digress. You won’t get the Baskin Robbins Simulated Vehicular Manslaughter tale in this post, because this is actually a From The Archives deal (I don’t have time for too much writing today, my relatives being on their way here as I assemble this). I have three stories to share. Two of them are good background for anybody trying to understand half of the comments that come out of our mouths every Thanksgiving. Following those is the tale of my most memorable Thanksgiving bike ride to date.

Thanksgiving Archives Tale #1 – The Gravy Incident

[This excerpt is from an e-mail I wrote to a cousin, who had asked for some background on all the gravy-related captions in a Thanksgiving photo album I’d sent around.]

The gravy-related captions relate to a Thanksgiving dinner back in the early nineties at our then-stepmother’s house. All the brothers were there. Once my plate was full I started looking around for the gravy. It can take awhile for the gravy to make its way around the table, and I try to be patient, but of course you can’t even begin eating until you’ve properly lubricated your food. I finally realized the gravy simply wasn’t on the table, so I headed into the kitchen. “I’ll get the gravy,” I said. I looked all around in the kitchen and still couldn’t find it. It was weird. Finally I asked my stepmother, “What does the gravy vessel look like?”

She just sat there at the table, silent, looking awkward. Finally my dad cleared his throat and said, grimly, “There isn’t any gravy.” There was a long silence. You could have heard a cat’s whisker twitch. “Wow, that’s funny,” I said. “For a second there I thought you said there wasn’t any gravy!” Actually, I only thought that. (This is the kind of embellishment I might allow in an oral retelling of the story, as an acknowledged fictional touch that enhances the dramatic effect.) In fact I was literally struck dumb. My brothers and I waited silently for a long while, to give Dad the opportunity to say, “Just kidding!” and burst out laughing, but he didn’t, so finally, without a word, we all filed silently out of the room, out the front door, and far away from that terrible place.

Actually, we didn’t. Of course we wanted to, but we couldn’t. We soldiered bravely on, trying to eat a turkey dinner with no gravy, but the meal was a very dour affair after that. I mean, how could they? What were they thinking? I can’t blame my dad, as (especially back in those days) he was a creature of appetites and would happily have eaten gravy by the quart like a normal person. I guess his wife had decided gravy is bad for you. Man, what a blow. She might has well have started off the meal by telling us a close friend or relative had just been killed in a gruesome accident and right after dinner we had to go try to ID the body.

Ever since that day, it’s become a family tradition, as Thanksgiving plans are made, to try to convincingly announce that for one reason or another you’re not serving gravy this year. Of course nobody has fooled anybody else for a second, no matter how perfect the poker-face and deadpan style.

Thanksgiving Archives Tale #2 – The Near-Buffet Incident

[Whenever I host the Thanksgiving meal, my mom struggles with the question of who should carve the turkey. On the one hand, it’s my house, but on the other hand, Bryan is the firstborn son. I’m happy to let him do it, because a) he has more kids, b) he’s bigger and stronger, and c) I’m not very good at poultry carving anyway. But one thing that is never questioned is that the bird gets carved at the table. The following was an explanation to my cousin of the photo caption, “Bryan, elder statesman of our generation, did the carving. AT THE TABLE, as a man should!” Note in the photo below the glowing eyes of our banished cat, visible through the kitchen-nook window in the background. Also note that in the following tale, “the Landlo’” refers to my mom’s second husband, who had previously been her landlord, and which name stuck. Note, finally, that this photo has nothing to do with the story that follows it.]

That caption about carving the turkey at the table goes back to our first Thanksgiving dinner at the Landlo’s house, around a decade ago. We’d never met the Landlo’s kids before. They were a bit on the shy side, and I felt kind of bad for them, thrust into the din of five loud Alberts talking over each other with great relish. It was an oddly early Thanksgiving meal; the Landlo’ had wanted to have the meal at some insanely early hour, like 1 or 2, whereas our family tradition was to have it around the normal dinnertime. Our mom conceded that point (which we boys were all happy to do, because we probably had to dual-dinner that night, having accepted dueling invitations in order to prevent a battle royale between our parents over who got the kids on Thanksgiving. In fact, it’s possible that this particular meal took place on the very same day as the no-gravy travesty recounted above).

Mom was less inclined to give in on the Landlo’s other tradition, which was to carve the turkey in the kitchen long before the meal and have people parade through buffet-style like we were at a Sizzler or something. Our family had always carved the turkey at the table, but the Landlo’ wasn’t having any of it. As the Landlo’s kids and my brothers and I waited nervously around the dining room table, the argument in the kitchen became more and more heated until pretty soon Mom and the Landlo’ were yelling good and loud at each other. Finally, the Landlo’ gave in and grabbed the turkey out of the oven to bring it to the table. There was no obvious place to set it down—he was acting very impulsively—but that didn't end up being a problem because the turkey never even made it to the table. He dropped it! Right on the floor of the kitchen!

Now, Mark Twain might have done a nice job with some really artistic swearing at that point. I’d have liked to hear that. I’d like to think in the same situation I might have offered up a splendid mosaic of creative profanities. (Geoff and I fancy ourselves innovators of the form, and when we land on a particularly satisfying profane phrase we’ll even share it, like people trade recipes.) But the Landlo’s cussing fit had nothing to offer but volume and bile. It certainly could have drowned out just about anything, a jackhammer even, but actually everybody else was completely silent. The tension at the dinner table was complete. All of this seemed to last a long while, but in fact it was probably only a second or two before Stepbrother #1 leapt to his feet and yelled, “DAD!” as though his father were in great danger, like he was being dragged away by a bear or something.

As Stepbrother#1 raced into the kitchen, leaving Stepbrother #2 behind, my brothers and I completely lost it, becoming nearly hysterical with laughter. The harder we laughed, the harder we laughed. Geoff has this vein in his forehead that comes out at such times—we call it the pleasure vein—and I thought it might actually burst. The more we laughed, the more awkward it became for the stepbrothers. Poor Stepbrother #2: he was alone with us at the table had nowhere to go. His sister-in-law was there, but couldn’t support him as they themselves had only just met. We rocked in our chairs, just spazzing out with laughter.

I can’t remember anything more after that. Surely the turkey was resurrected, served, and eaten, but I have no memory of it. In the years that remained of that marriage, it was a long while before we invited back to the Landlo’s house, and never again with his kids, which was a huge relief for everybody I’m sure. Now, Mom makes a point before every Thanksgiving dinner to say, as nonchalantly as possible, “Hey, what do you think about just carving the bird beforehand, and people can help themselves?” Naturally, her chances of getting anybody to take her seriously for even a nanosecond are exactly zero.

Thanksgiving Archives Tale #3 – The Pre-Feast Bike Ride

[When my family gets together for Thanksgiving, we usually try to do a big ride on the big day, to work up a proper appetite. Here’s a photo of my brothers and me, along with Bryan’s daughter Rachel, before the ride up Dead Indian Memorial Road in Oregon that we did on Thanksgiving Day 2008. This photo has nothing to do with the story that follows it, for which I have no photos.]

[On years that my family doesn’t get together for Thanksgiving, I try to find a group ride to join. These rides are often impromptu and aren’t always easy to discover. Such was the case in 2005 when I went out with a group of local riders. This story is taken from an e-mail I sent my brothers right after it happened. I’ve edited it a bit to remove references that you wouldn’t get.]

My goal for this ride was simple: simply survive, riding with the boys, after the previous day’s grueling effort [a four-hour ride with 7,500 feet of climbing]. To my surprise, I didn’t feel completely awful as I hammered (late, as usual) to the impromptu bagel shop rendezvous. It’s a good thing my legs weren’t terrible, because of all the various Thanksgiving Day group rides, it seemed I’d stumbled on a pretty elite one. Several of them were guys I raced with at Cal in ’91, a couple of whom had later gone pro. There were a few other guys I didn’t know, but they looked plenty fit. I’d say the group totaled between fifteen and twenty guys.

It was a pretty mellow pace, until we reached the bumpy, winding downhill leading to the long, flat, straight stretch with the pedestrian crossing sign at its far end: site of the famous “Walking Man” sprint, which is always hotly contested, any day of the year, practically any time you have more than two guys in a group. When I ride this stretch of road by myself, I’m tempted to sprint anyway, just to see if I can still kick my own ass. (As sprints go, Walking Man actually suits my slow-twitch abilities pretty well, because it’s so long. My poor jump isn’t that big a problem on such a long sprint, and there’s plenty of time to get my 53x12 turning well and try to make the right tactical moves.)

At the top of the winding downhill toward the sprint, a guy on my bike club, Mike Ceely, said something about a lead-out and went to the front. I jumped on his wheel. Somebody said, “Is Freddie on?” which is kind of like saying, to a motorist who has just whizzed by you, “Easy there, Mario.” As you may have guessed, “Freddie” in this Mario context refers to Fred Rodriguez, the US Pro champion, kind of the Mario Andretti of American pro cycling. So now I was worried that somebody might expect some rider among us to be like Freddie in this sprint. Of course I couldn’t be up for a really fast sprint, given how hard I’d ridden the previous two days and my iffy sprinting skillz anyway. But Mike seemed to want to lead me out, so I let him. I (facetiously) gave him instructions to drop me off fifty meters from the line.

Ceely did a fine job for a long time, hammering away and keeping the speed well over 30 mph on the pancake-flat road. But he’d taken it up from really far out, and I knew he’d falter well before the line. He was really suffering, practically lying on the top tube to be more aero. I knew he wanted me to come by so he could finally sit up, but I was way too far from the finish to bring ‘er in, probably 350-400 meters out. So I stayed on, waiting for somebody to come up the side. Finally Ceely actually waved me past, and I knew he was blown. So I took off as fast as I could, keeping my speed as high as possible and hoping that whoever came by me jumped hard enough that he he’d open a gap behind him, so that maybe I could slip in and catch his wheel. (Of course, if the guy jumped too hard, I wouldn't be able to latch on.) I reckoned that maybe—just maybe—I could grab the guy’s wheel, whoever he was, sit on it for just long enough to recover a bit, and then try to come back around him. It’s worked before and, my back to the wall, I was just crazy enough to try it.

Well, sure enough, some guy came by, and his wheel was open, but he was absolutely flying. Getting that wheel would be about like a hitchhiker trying to climb into a car that was still traveling at highway speed. I gave it my all, but the guy was just gone. I did manage to hold on to second, at least six or eight bike lengths out of first but pretty far ahead of third. I rode up to the guy—nobody I knew—and said, “Nicely done!” He looked up and I realized, to my astonishment, that it was none other than Freddie Rodriguez! I couldn’t believe it! Suddenly, second place didn't look so bad. I’d only just lost to the fastest sprinter in America!

I’d had no idea he was in the group. I’d seen him, but he was just some guy in a Lotto jersey. When you see an American in a Lotto jersey you just assume he bought it from Trashbar or something, and it’s usually the sign of just another moneyed novice. Now it all made sense. The question “Is Freddie on?” was asked by somebody who wanted to make darn sure that Fast Freddie was in position for a sprint, because the guys wanted a show!

Man, what a cool sport. What other sport gives a guy like me the opportunity to go head-to-head with the best in the business? The last time I’d seen Freddie was at a bike race, and I asked for his autograph. Needless to say this was much, much cooler. I could be both an adoring fan (because he was Freddie and I was just Dana) but also something not totally unlike a peer, since we were on the same ride and had just contested a sprint in which, for lack of anybody better, I was the guy to beat. “Man, your teammate led out a little early,” Freddie observed. “Kind of hung you out to dry.”

Later I learned that another of my teammates, Eric Zaltas, had been on my wheel and was just about to come around me when he saw Freddie blow past at such a speed that, his hopes shattered, he just sat up. If he hadn’t, I’m sure he’d have beaten me. It’s a good thing he didn’t, because of course being beaten in a sprint by Fast Freddie is an honor that has given me a proud memory. Glorious.

Epilogue to Tale #3

This last story is one of those ones that isn’t any good unless it’s true. A fictional account of a nobody being beaten in a sprint by a star would be pretty lame, I think. Thus, I made every effort to tell it is accurately as possible in the e-mail to my brothers. If honesty wasn’t a goal, I might have suggested that I was part of two-stage lead-out that didn’t quite work out. In fact it probably was supposed to be a two-stage lead-out, with me going earlier and swinging off for Eric to come by, but if so I was ignorant of this, blindly pursuing my own ambition. In that context, the truth of the story is actually kind of embarrassing.

So imagine my shock when I was recounting this tale to another teammate a week or so after the fact and another guy, who had been there, denied not just some detail of my tale, but the very fact of the sprint itself! He said to me, incredulously, “Dude, we didn’t sprint!” I didn’t know what to say. The guy was so firm in his conviction, I started to doubt myself: could I have been completely deluded about what went down?

In fact, no. I had uploaded the ride data from that ride to my PC, and still have it. Along that stretch of road, my top speed was 37 mph, with my max heart rate at 165. (My bike computer takes data samples every 20 seconds, so in a sprint scenario chances are it won’t catch the highest speed, nor the highest heart rate, for that interval.) So, how would this ride-denier explain a speed of somewhere near 40 on a flat road? Did we have some kickass tailwind? And my heart rate: was I just really excited about the tailwind, or was I on drugs? And I distinctly remember that Freddie was out of the saddle when he came by. What, was he just stretching out his back? At 40? I’ll have to send this post to Ceely and Eric and ask if they remember the sprint. If I hear something back, perhaps I’ll attach it here, in the Comments section below.

Gratitude

I hope your own Thanksgiving plans are grand, whoever you are. Be thankful for your gravy, unless there isn’t any, in which case I suppose you can feel thankful that you’re not clogging up your arteries. If your turkey is carved at the table, be thankful for the observance of that fine tradition; if it’s cut up in the kitchen and served buffet-style, be thankful that you’re laid-back and reasonable enough to enjoy that, and don’t have to share the meal with a fascist like me.

And if you don’t have big plans at all, be thankful that you’re not participating in a bizarre celebration of ersatz gratitude for a people who, after they saved our ancestors’ lives, were driven onto reservations and subsequently turned into scavengers of human misery via casinos. And if you don’t have big plans but wish you did, keep your chin up, as other years are sure to be better. I’ve had Thanksgiving at Sizzler before; another time I made a mini-feast at my tiny apartment (chicken legs, canned cranberry sauce, powdered mashed potatoes, Stove-Top™ stuffing, gravy from a mix); and my brother once had to go by himself to McDonald’s, only to find it closed. But that’s another story.

dana albert blog