Well, it's 2:37 a.m., and I can't sleep. So I'm cooking noodles.
Yes, noodles. There is apparently a 25th Floor tradition at The Firm that we have our own Thanksgiving feast on the Friday before Thanksgiving, and I signed up to bring noodles. I looked through my recipe books, I called my mother, I looked at epicurious.com, and at 9:30 tonight, I stopped at the store and bought six packages of Lipton Parmesan Noodles & Sauce and I am cooking them at... 2:44 in the morning.
The whole idea of the pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving just confounds me, really. We're having everything, two whole turkeys, and five kinds of stuffing and eight kinds of potatoes and three kinds of green bean casseroles and God knows how many desserts, six days before everyone goes home and eats all of it all over again, although, admittedly, without as much variety. But still, I try to avoid eating anything Thanksgiving-related during the whole month of November, much less the Friday before.
And, the busybodies who organize it keep reminding us that there's going to be 40 people, so make sure you bring enough. Now, I suck at math, but if 40 people each bring enough food for 40 people, you could actually feed a lot more than 40 people, right?
Whatever. I bought six packages of noodles, which is 12 servings, so I guess there will be 28 people who will be just a little bit hungry, and they can blame me.
I've decided that my individual score of any given episode of The West Wing is directly proportional to the amount of screen time Josh gets and inversely proportional to the amount of screen time Stockard Channing gets, which is to say, Wednesday's episode may have been my least favorite ever. Don't get me wrong, I will always adore Rizzo, but I have to say that she looks weird now, and her acting on this show is bizarre and stilted and not at all natural. I'd bet you a million dollars that the script that corresponds to her main-title montage shot says "Dr. Bartlet looks up with defiant hostility." Maybe something went haywire with her facelift. Who knows. But I can barely stand to watch her.
In other television-related news, I think the only new show added to my personal viewing schedule is 24, which I was amused to discover was created and is produced by some old Cannell people. Just goes to show you what a small town Hollywood really is, when I actually recognize names.
And a couple of old shows have dropped out of competition for my couch time, namely Survivor and The X-Files. As far as the latter is concerned, I tried to watch the season premiere. I already knew that no one at 1013 cared enough to come up with any kind of interesting reason for Mulder leaving, so I was prepared for that. (Scully: "He's just gone." Doggett: "Oh. Okay.") But Doggett and Reyes bore me to absolute death, and Cary Elwes needs to decide, once and for all, whether he's English or American, because that in-between accent grates my very last nerve. Anyway, when I finally realized that I didn't care what was happening (two or three seasons after everyone else), I turned it off.
As for Survivor, I have a theory on why it is no longer interesting, and I do believe you're about to hear it! Remember the very first Real World, and how cool and different it was? And then remember the second one, where it wasn't so much? And then remember every one after that, where it was all about who's gay or the party animal or the flirt or the bitch or the moody creative genius, and catfights and drunkenness and doing whatever you could to stretch your fifteen minutes into sixteen? Survivor is boring now because everyone who is on it has already seen it, so they know how it works, and they know what they need to do to give us "good television." The first time around, the concept itself was new and interesting in that rubbernecking sort of way, and none of the players knew whether anyone back home was going to care about what they were doing, so it was as real as it is ever going to get. Now that everyone knows how it works, well, the honeymoon is just over.
Oh, I lied up there. I am watching another new show. It's The Education of Max Bickford. I know, I know, my mother likes it too, and she told me that my 88-year-old grandmother watches it, which made me want to weep, but I can't help it. I've always been a sucker for the fictional world of academia, and suckered I have been. Besides which, I think I may have a bit of an older-man thing for Richard Dreyfuss.
Yeah, I know. Me and my grandmother.
So I'm going to see some movie tomorrow night, I'm not really sure what it's about, some kid who goes to wizard school or something? Not like I've had my tickets for two weeks, or plan to shove small children out of my way once they open the theater doors, or anything of the sort.
And I'm leaving on Tuesday to go have Thanksgiving at my brother's house in Hilton Head, which means that I will be escaping this bitterly cold mid-November 70-degree weather we've been having for... oh.
But I'll update before I leave, I swear. I will not let another month go by with only three entries, as that is pathetic. And I'll try not to write the next one at 3:30 in the morning, because who knows if I'm making any sense whatsoever.
The noodles are done and the stove is turned off (not as regular an occurrence as you might expect, that) so I'm going to bed, so I can get up in four hours and go have Thanksgiving dinner, woo-hoo.
I hope I don't forget all these damn noodles.