Pranxgiving

A lot of people sum up the holiday of Thanksgiving in the meal. For others, its meaning comes in the form of seeing loved ones. Another sizeable portion of the population will say their favorite memories revolve around football. For me, however, a much simpler joy epitomizes my most memorable Thanksgivings: sitting around, doing nothing, watching others slave in the kitchen. When you're in a country that doesn't celebrate the introduction of small pox to New England in late November, you don't get to reap the benefits of the four day weekend. Thus, my holiday has been spent in the concrete classrooms of University College Dublin. Save for a "formal" dinner last night.

Now when they told me that I had to dress formally, they reinfoced it, very strongly, that I should wear a suit. Whenever they told the group that we should look nice, because they we're going to take a group photo, they always looked at me. The director would say something, like: "You know, this picture will be hanging up for years to come, so you might want to look your best (staring at my unkempt hair), and might I add that khaki pants are not considered formal." Since I couldn't wear my best pair of chinos and was strongly encouraged to wear a suit, I thought I would stick it to the man by wearing my Oscar Madison suit that I used during the Odd Couple. It's not every day that you can go to a fancy dinner at a 5 star hotel and say your whole outfit cost $12 and came from Goodwill. It still fits well. Funny story: I was watching the 1964 Criterion Classic The Killers the other night, and I noticed that one point in the movie, Lee Marvin wears the exact same suit.Who knows? Maybe this one came straight from the set. I remember when I bought the suit, I only had a $50 bill, and the Goodwill store only had about $15 in change in the register, so I had to wait around for someone to buy something else. When I walked out of the store, I felt like a big man. Oh, and the movie the is definitely worth a look. It features Ronald Reagan in his only role as a villain:

Before dinner, people put on an Irish Dance performance. I'm no Fred Astaire, so I can't criticize or compliment what went on, but the whole thing reminded me of the old Letterman bit, "Is This Anything?" It consisted of people holding hands and moving around in a circle. It was "something," I just didn't know if it was any good. When I think of Irish dancing, I think of heavy metal music. It doesn't really matter if you're any good at it, you just have to perform really fast and make a lot of noise (with your shoes). This way you can cover up any lack of talent. Maybe it's more like punk in that way. I once saw a documentary about the punk rock movement and in the end they pointed out that it only lasted about 6 months because everyone soon learned how to actually play a guitar.

After Riverdance, we had mass. Why is it that whenever you get more than five Notre Dame people in the same room, you have to have mass? Of course, we had to end it with the Alma Mater. I'm probably the one person who doesn't sing it, because I don't know the words. That, and I have a big hang-up about putting my arms around people and swaying back and forth. The whole thing reminds me of a cult, or worse, the opening scene of White Zombie. Well, we then went to the Merrion Hotel, which is owned by an old man who gave Notre Dame a lot of money, so we had to grease him for more money and reassure him that he isn't wasting it. I don't think we fooled him. The dinner was alright, except for two problems: No mashed potatoes and no pumpkin pie. That and the assigned seating. I guess they have to make us feel like real well-to-dos by making it seem more formal than it was, but if you ask me, I'd rather be eating the turkey roll at the Courtesy Diner than sipping cream of pumpkin soup in an "elegant" hotel. To me, it doesn't hold a candle to the Best Western in Moab, Utah, but that's not really fair, because that Best Western is pretty good.

Dinner was followed by a video presentation to these generous people. The format of the video was a fake news segment, that someone's cousin put together. It was actually pretty funny, but I don;t know if it was supposed to be. Like, "This just in Notre Dame celebrates Thanksgiving in Dublin!" During the film, I was admonished because for my commentary. One part consisted of someone reading a cue card thank you, but you couldn't really tell what he was saying and the resolution was really poor. With his head moving back and forth, reading the message, I said, "this reminds me of something you'd find on Al-Jazeera." Looks of disgust followed.

Following this award winning documentary, apparently someone thought this entrpreneur who was throwing the banquet enjoyed a "good singalong." At first, all of the females were forced to a dance they had supposedly been preparing for the entire semester, no doubt by our fearless program coordinator. Then, she said, "I'm sure the guys think they can do better!" and made us get in fron of everyone. As I was being pushed up to the fron of the room, I was saying, "no, no, i'm pretty sure no one thinks we can do better." So she puts on "Cecilia" and expects all the males to sing and dance, entertaining everyone, without any notice. Huh? It reminded me of a parent forcing their child to sing the "Oscar Meyer" song to make all the other guests gag on their food. At least the toddler expects being used. Well, no one did anything. We just stood there for the duration of the song. They made us get up there again for another song, same thing. What was the point of this? It wasn't karaoke. Karaoke would have been passable. The rest of the "performances" were stranger. The whole mix cd our coordinator made consisted of Disney Songs, to which people imitated the movements of animated characters. And when i say imitate, I really mean, move around, flailing their hands up in the air. And as for the tycoon's love of singing, for the most part his mouth was agape with confusion. So, I suppose the humiliation of everyone was all for Naught-on. (That's a pun. His last name is Naughton.)

Thanksgiving just wasn't the same. No one got drunk and made a fool of themselves by telling everyone how they disappointed them in the past year. I only had three months of grudges built up on these people, so I think my tirade lacked a little.

Note: I just got an email complimenting the group for "our good behavior." I always love it when people compliment me for behaving. What did they expect? Yeah, I'm really glad I was told to behave, otherwise I wouldn't have used utensils, grunted when I met Mr. Naughton, and in the middle of Grace, stood on my chair and yelled, "Foodfight!" You have no idea how hard it was to contain myself.