Overeating, Catalytic Converters, and Other Thanksgiving Weirdness

)))The Holiday Season(((

The "holiday season" in the US is the Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year's quartet.

Of these Thanksgiving has usually been my favorite. This dates back to the relative recent past of living in San Luis Obispo when none of the five of us living at Oceanaire could either leave town or get off work.

We would hang out, Marc not heading back to upstate New York, Corrie not heading to Oklahoma, Tony and Ryan and I all not heading north...Tony and I usually had to work as well, as are the sad days working in the food industry.

We would make an obscene amount of food for those of us who stayed behind. One year we had a 37 pound turkey and two trays of Tony's lasagna. The next year Ryan bought all the fixings for a turducken, and Corrie and I built it.

It's not about candy or dressing up. It's not about consumerist exchanges of goods. It's celebrating what the earth gives you and not the turning of an arbitrary day.

Lately we've been heading to my mom's in Scottsdale and doing it up there. I like turkey (they, not so much), hanging out with my mother, and it offers an opportunity to see my grandfather.

It's the overlooked middle holiday that I like the best, the underdog of the season.

)))One Hand Holding the Door Shut, One Hand Stuffing a Mouth Full(((

Syrian refugees are being turned away at the gate. Right? Is this an accurate statement? I'm off living under a rock, trying to help the youth of this country get on the proper road to being a productive adult, so current news events usually zoom over my head. 

We don't watch the news, no longer receive the newspaper, and don't roam Twitter for anything. I listen to NPR occasionally, to and from school, but I never get long passages of news events. 

The impression I've been getting is that the Syrian conflict has created millions of orphans and single-moms---always two of the scariest things to republicans---that have few places to go. Can't come here, because...why again? I was told recently it was because they were all Muslim and that the Qur'an teaches them to kill Christians. This was not a television, but an actual republican.

I told them that since I wasn't a Christian I'd be safe. They didn't think that was as funny as I did.

Anyway, as a country America celebrates Thanksgiving, a holiday that has as a large portion of its basis the traditional pagan harvest feast, where we as the people are given gifts from the earth. In the recent past, as in the turn of the 21st century, the celebration has become about gluttony.

I know that we're not turning away Syrian refugees (who're starving to death because there isn't enough grass-soup to go around) because of lack of food. This entire country goes ballistic for a major feast, we eat so much food we begin to feel sick, and then we have too much leftover to be able to eat it all before it goes bad.

And I'm not even talking about "them," you know, other people in the country---I'm talking about myself. Corrie and I tried to reign in the copious amounts of food this year: small turkey, no dressing, twice-roasted new potatoes, green salad, no rolls, no cooked greens, one type of pie. Still, there was plenty left over, and I was uncomfortably full more than once.

I understand that the issue of refugees and what to do with them is more complicated than people want to admit, but I can't see how this posturing is a good look.

How do we convince young people the value of compassion when they're regularly exposed to wild hypocrisies like these?

)))Special Forces(((

I found myself listening to the Old Man. We were having conversations like two fellas, and I think he was enjoying himself. He seemed like he was. I surely was.

This Old Man is my grandfather, the mythical Grandpa Tom from my youth, and his presence has loomed over my family for generations. My mother's father even had, at one point, my own father working for him. In one of many former lives, my grandfather had been a lobbyist for the trucking industry.

Those are some facts. The stories that surround those facts are the clouds and breezes that define the myth and the legend. Separating the facts from the stories, or vice versa, has been the cause of enjoyable moments by my maternal family members, always outside the presence of the man himself.

On this particular trip, I found myself just rapping with him as he told stories. Some of his opinions bled into the stories, and they are what you'd expect from an 88 year old republican living on the outskirts of Phoenix. Of course I almost never agreed, but I never took the bait and we just kept rapping.

Sometimes I see myself as reinforcements, swooping in from Southern California to come to my mom's rescue. I deflect the attention. I generally enjoy myself, and this trip was more fun than most. I like ordering beer with lunch, especially with my elder grandfather. This year I taught him about micheladas. He didn't try mine---the acidity of the tomato juice gets his acid reflux up.

One story during our conversation was about his time in the military. Having grown up on a ranch, or in the country at least, he was pretty handy with a rifle. At one point during his service, he'd made a wager with his commanding officer attesting to his prowess as a sharpshooter. "They didn't have 'snipers' back then like today," he explained.

It was because of the force with which he made his point---he was indeed an excellent marksman---that they pushed him along into the Special Forces unit.

He even collected the $20 from his CO.

"Damn!" I marveled, eyes wide, "I bet you bought drinks for everybody that night!"

I could easily check the veracity of such claims, but that's not what buddies do. I understand that this person is my grandfather and not a buddy, but on that afternoon we were just buddies swapping stories, and buddies bullshit each other. And, of course, grandpas bullshit their grandbabies.

But, mortal coils being what they are and with that edge is approaching faster than ever before, I've decided to shuffle along with the beat...a couple of bullshitting buddies...

)))Comic Hiatus and Relevance to Current Narrative(((

I am a book guy. I maintain a pretty serious library and have multiple blogs dedicated to books and writers. I try to celebrate books in all forms with all people. Comic books included.

I've found myself excited about the recent resurrection of a comic book universe with Valiant. Back in the '90s, when I was younger and into comics, Valiant was the only independent universe, complete with a stable of interesting characters and connections and conflicts. This was the first real rival to DC and Marvel. Two of the hottest selling copies on the market were consecutive issues of one of their most popular characters, Bloodshot. This guy is part Wolverine, part JCVD from Universal Soldier. A man with amnesia wakes up to find himself a trained killing machine with microscopic robot-nanites infecting his blood, making him mostly indestructible. At that time the two books were Bloodshot #6:

And  #7:

Because Valiant was small at the time, both issues had small print runs, and because the company was highly regarded by readers, the books came into high demand. Reason? Issue 6 had the first appearance of Colin King, Valiant's new ultra-cool James Bond/Bruce Wayne ninja spy-assassin. This was the Sonic the Hedgehog of the early 90's comics, seemingly conceived in a boardroom out of coolness molecules. Issue 7 saw for the first time King in costume as Ninjak.

He would eventually star in one of the greatest comic covers in history:

For some reason I was deep in a rabbit hole on eBay when I came across #s 6 and 7 of Valiant's original run of Bloodshot. I am a fan of Ninjak, and the opportunity to own Bloodshot 6 and 7 for that price was irresistible. I bid, sure I would never win, not for fear of being outbid, rather that the minimum bid would never be reached.

But I won the bid and they've since arrived. The winning of the bid with its accompanying emails and texts transpired while I was in Scottsdale, and it was all very surreal. Two comics that were legendary from my youth but could never get my hands on, two comics I hadn't really thought about in decades, were suddenly on their way to my house. And now in my shelf. Awesome.

In related news, Sony has paid actual BUCKS to Valiant in a move to join Warner Brothers with DC and Disney with Marvel as getting into the business of making cohesive comic book movie universes.

Both Bloodshot and Ninjak are back in comics. Bloodshot is the first planned movie from Sony, so we'll how that turns out.

Ninjak doesn't have any planned movies yet, but...come on:

)))Catalytic Converter Blows with 160 Miles To Go(((

Zooming along I-10, the high-speed roam home, Corrie keeping Trixie---her blue VW wagon---aimed at LA at a hundred miles an hour, we heard a sound. Then the Check Engine light started blinking. Blinking.

We'd seen this before, on a trip to a local brewery. The manual says that the blinking check engine light means the catalytic converter could have blown. The car will still run, just with reduced performance, and that you should get it looked at ASAP, but you should still be able to get places.

That last time, listening to the car go from regular sounding and feeling to lawn-mower sound combined with busted out diesel rattle, was scary. We were only in Wilmington, which is a few miles away from home. We turned around, went home, switched cars and went about our day.

This time, we'd been in California for only a few minutes, with a few hours to go.

We switched drivers around Morongo Casino, hit traffic, and unfortunately I wasn't able to guide Trixie at the century mark very often.

It turned out it wasn't the catalytic converter, but instead an engine coil. I know what an engine is, and what a coil is, but I have no idea what an engine coil is. Oh well, she's back to normal, and for less money that the catalytic converter costs, so...victory?

This begs the question: Should travelers in their mid-thirties be driving an 11 year old car with 180k+ miles at speeds nearing a hundred miles an hour for extended time periods?