My Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone but left many a story to tell. This year may have been the most remarkable Thanksgiving I have celebrated away from home. I owe it all to obese lethargic southern folk and kids with motivation to get off the couch and come to a show on a holiday. For here is why…
To get straight to the point, I had my Thanksgiving feast at a buffet called Golden Corral. It was conveniently located directly across the street from the plush $60 dollar a night hotel we boarded ourselves up in and offered endless amounts of piping hot fixins prepared with duty and passionate servitude by migrant workers in hairnets. I was in the company of individuals who came to this establishment because they were either too fat/old to cook for themselves or had no family to celebrate the holiday with. It was absolutely the best people watching experience I have ever had. There were cannonball-sized golden agers maneuvering their electric wheelchairs through the buffet lines, piling up heaping amounts of steaming buttery holiday delicacies and quickly woofing down monster-sized fork loads in anticipation of the next fresh turkey to be served. They were dressed in their comfortable and homely attire of sweat pants, XXL cotton button up shirts wielding brawny American flags flapping in the wind, and reebok sneakers worn thin from years of carrying their heavy load up and down buffet lines. I feel bad being so insulting, but there seriously could not have been a sadder batch of Thanksgiving feasters. I was there because it was my only option; they were there because it is more affordable to buffet dine than grocery shop due to their unbounded appetites. I did the best I could to get my $10 worth of savory servings and then left these people to their plates piling up and waistlines engorging. I was knocked out after the Golden Corral. I got some much-needed sleep on the feathery motel bed and then hopped into the van for the turkey bash house show we were to play. The show was seriously something straight out of a teen movie. We played in the front living room of a single story house with all the windows and doors sound proof insulated by trusty mattresses and couch cushions. We set up a mountainous wall of amplifiers and made that room vibrate and floor undulate, singing and swaying with shoulder to shoulder sweaty kids; all our bellies stuffed full of turkey and taters. The show was a blast and the kid Chris who lived there was mystified how he was able to get some of his favorite bands to play in his living room. Everything was running smoothly until someone thought it was a good idea to remove one of the mattresses smothering the loud sound from escaping the house and hoisted up on top of the crowd, sending it careening it across the heads of the congregation like a ship in a storm. The hefty mattress plowed into the chandelier above where Dr. Manhattan was performing and sent glass and light bulbs everywhere as the unit spun around like a dreidel. Soon after, amongst all the chaos and noise, an unknown culprit fire hosed pungent mustard all over the crowd and walls and repulsive stench of sweat and bitter mustard seed left everyone in the room comatose. The show was called off because the floors and walls were splattered with the dandelion yellow condiment like modern art. The police showed up and sent kids running into the shadows of the night as the front yard of the house was lit up with flashing blue and red like a disco hall. We quietly loaded the trailer with all of our equipment and shook hands with the hosts of the house, thanking them for making our Thanksgiving a memorable one. Sure beats eating and watching a football game with awkward aunts and uncles.