Report From the Front Lines

I'm layered up on my couch, alone in my freezing apartment, watching "West Side Story." I'm not totally alone. I am staring down the neck of a bottle of Penny Lane Cabernet Sauvignon. I cleaned my room earlier to the tune of some of my favorite show tunes (I'm so sick of the mix on my i-Pod I'll listen to anything) and somehow half of it has disappeared. Half-blogging, half-watching the movie, I forgot how adorable Tony (Richard Beymer) was in the 1961 original Hollywood production. And how have I been in musicals, studied musical theater and thought "West Side Story" took place in Los Angeles? God, I'm an idiot. This just goes to show, until you live in Manhattan, you don't fully appreciate or realize the influence of your hometown on film.

I planned on going out tonight to celebrate everybody else's Friday. My logic was working on Thanksgiving Day (and Friday) was going to be miserable enough, I might as well be miserably hungover after a fun night. Instead I ended up going on a cathartic evening run in Central Park and coming straight home. Mom, Dad and T- are waiting for me to join them in Conn. tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it. T- flew in from Calif. and I can't wait to enjoy the few hours left of Thanksgiving with him after work. It's his first Thanksgiving home on the right coast in several years. I'm dreading being on the train with drunk parade-goers, but I'll find my own poison to celebrate with.

Over the past couple of days, I've been hearing live reports from the kitchen. Though awful sounding, I can't help but wish I had been there to witness the mishaps firsthand.

Exhibit A:

My dad makes an award-winning apple pie -- it's just one of his many fields of expertise in the kitchen -- though yesterday his masterpiece turned to a disaster. What makes it worse is he worked a half day to get started on it. The heart-filled process was going swell until the timer beaped "Ready!" When he went to take the pie out of the oven, the glass pan it was sitting in crumbled in his hands like a dry sandcastle. The pan was brand new and I believe he brought the remnants and the receipt back to the store for a refund. I think the store should have paid for the ingredients that went to waste as well, but that's neither here nor there. I told Mom to save the mush so I could have some apple sauce and she said adamantly, "No way!" Until this afternoon. She must have had a change of heart because our next conversation she said we'd be eating crustless apple pie, the bottom half anyway. I cracked up. And with a glass half full attitude, I say less crust means less calories and I'm perfectly OK with that.

Exhibit B:

T- and Dad were trying to make amaretti biscuits this afternoon. Stubborn T-, as we like to call him, used some wax paper for the cookies, despite fair warnings from Dad to NOT use the paper. Well, half the cookies they made ended up on T-'s wondrous wax paper and they liked the comfy paper so much they wouldn't come off the paper once they left the oven. So, half the cookies had to be thrown out.

Man, between broken pies and stuck cookies, I'm not sure what's left in store for the war zone that is my family kitchen. At least the ovens haven't busted halfway through the day like they did one year, knock on wood.

What are your Thanksgiving cooking bloopers?

TCM is having a musical medley tonight, but it's time for me to go (to sleep).

"The air is humming ... and something great is coming! Who knows? ... Maybe tonight . . . "