The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

To no one's surprise, things turned quite feisty at my family's Thanksgiving dinner this year.  After several rounds of turkey and pleasantries, the conversation started popping.  Here is a slice of dialogue with an extra helping of sauce.

"I'm soooooo over that show Lost."

"Yeah, totally.  Look at me!  I turned a giant wheel and the island disappeared!  I hate that show."

"I hate your sweater."

"No one wears rolled neck sweaters anymore."

I'd say it's a decent idea, Thanksgiving, even if it's one of those old, decent ideas that means almost nothing anymore. Still, it does strike me as a worthwhile thing, the notion of taking time out of your life to give thanks for whatever the hell you have to give thanks for. And surely you have something to be thankful for --come on, pull your face away from that bong for a moment and think about it.

Tradition hasn't rooted so firmly in my kitchen that I cook the Thanksgiving meal every year. Sometimes I am a guest at the feast, like the mjority of people, an eater. It's a beautiful thing, for a cook to be cooked for, and I never take that invitation lightly.

It should be one of the first rules of life that you never show up to a feast empty-handed, and I'm not talking about pot-luck. A little gift, a little prize, a little special something that will make the host smile ... it's a small price for a full belly.

That being said here are some peccadilloes to avoid:

The bird is the word.

It's go time.

“Lincoln’s deathbed physician said he had the body of a Moses. What do I look like, Bill?”

The doctor, who had just finished examining my father, dropped the covers. He said, “You can’t put off that quadruple forever.”

“Isn’t that where you take strips from my ass and sew them to my heart? You keep chopping bits off me, Bill. Christ, what am I going to have left, one nut and my elbow?”

The doctor smiled coldly and put his hat on. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, and left.

Right here where we're standing used to be a proper god-damned street before those sons of bitches down in the state capital decided to run the interstate highway through the godforsaken middle of nowhere forty miles south of here.

Everyone has a Great Aunt Tootie they haul out for the holidays. She sits in the corner calling everyone by the wrong name and talking about the turkey she had back in ’29 that was really made out of dirt. Someone thought it was a great idea to bring her, but now nobody knows what to do with her. She sits at the holiday table and you wonder how she’s related to you, and why she only comes out every ten months or so. At odd intervals, she may laugh loudly or simply stare at the table, eyes glazing over.