In Which We Play

 

Bon appetit 

My friends Drumstick and Hotfoot and I had a nice Thanksgiving dinner, really a late lunch. It was in a hotel downtown that until recently has been frumpy and teetering on the edge of shabby, but it's been all tarted up now and the dining room we were in is really very pretty. 

The Post Room

And the food was good, maybe not great, but really how much do you ever expect from Thanksgiving anyway?  Because it was a buffet, there was a greater range than the typical turkey day spread and you could broaden your culinary horizons.  In fact, I skipped the turkey (which I was told was dry, no surprise there) and had some very tender roast beef instead.  My theory is everyone wants the holiday dinners their grannies knocked out and certainly over the years and years that I cooked that is exactly what I recreated, but since that wasn't available, I was perfectly satisfied.  My main complaint was the lack of mashed potatoes.  Personally, I regard no mashed potatoes as a crime against humanity and I thought about reporting them to the FBI but I decided to just let it slide. 

Afterwards, lying around in a food induced coma (which the cat thought is the best idea ever) I was thinking about the tradition of playing games after a big dinner.  Because what else can you do?  My family always played a domino game called 42.  It is very much like the card game Spades with bidding and trumps and keeping track of score by the number of tricks you take. I believe we played dominoes because my grandmother was a very firm Southern Baptist and they had a prohibition against playing cards, but somehow dominoes were okay.  That's the kind of letter-of-the-law thinking that leads to accusations of heresy, but what the hell?

I vividly remember when I was young being lulled to sleep by the soft click of dominoes being shuffled and then when I was old enough, how thrilling it was to be allowed to play.  The game requires you to play as partners so there was considerable pressure to not fuck up.  My father's siblings were sweet and easy going right up to when it was time to play at which point the motherfucking knives came out.  They were all very good players and did not like to lose just because you were inexperienced.  My father once got so exasperated at my poor nephew Ace that he threw a domino at Ace's head.  I just watched and laughed because honestly, the kid was an idiot when it came to keeping track fo what had been played.  But it turned out I was a good player so I loved it and I miss those games.

Many years later, when I would host holiday dinners for my friends, we would end the evenings with rowdy games of Yahtzee.  They would be fueled with lots of champagne and enlivened with serious shit talking.  Channeling the spirits of my domino crazed ancestors, mrpeenee leaned into attempting to break my opponent's psyches.  If I couldn't win by rolling dice, by god I would at least imply that they had inadequate penises.  Good times.

Guys I'd like to play with: 

Whoohoo

A generous meat.

There's a lot of buttchops this week.  We give thanks.

I know I don't give enough space to daddies.  Sorry.

Asstastic

Last week, I focused on naked guys at the beach.  I don't know how I overlooked this fine, fine specimen.

Speaking of fine specimens.

Spread like a turkey getting ready to be stuffed.

Everbody's a Critic

Whilst cooking up a big pot of lentils tonight (because I am apparently a lesbian,) I was overtaken with the urge to burst into a rendition of Boogie Fever (because I am actually a fifty-something gay man.)  Who knows why?  These things are beyond a mere mortal's ken.  More annoying was my cat's annoying reaction.  He turned tail and bolted from the room, before I even got to the first chorus and way before I started shaking my groove thang.  Bitch.  We'll see how tough he is on Friday when I take him down to get his claws clipped.

Also irritating is the reappearance of the dread Blogger's Comments Spam.  I had eliminated the requirement for word verification from my commentors because I like comments and I wanted to make placing them as easy as possible.  But now that They have found me again (Here's the comment from earlier today: We [url=http://www.onlinecraps.gd]free casino bonus[/url] be suffering with a corpulent library of unqualifiedly free casino games for you to challenge opportunely here in your browser. Whether you pine for to practice a table encounter strategy or scarcely sample exposed a occasional late slots before playing for legitimate filthy lucre, we procure you covered. These are the rigid uniform games that you can with at veritable online casinos and you can play them all representing free.   Uh, thanks.) I need to go back in and crank the security level back up to Def Con Orange.

Also, I think I saw Wade Neff, porn mega star and all round hairy guy, at my coffee place this afternoon.  And I downloaded an app to play Yahtzee on my phone.

So, all in all, not a bad day.

Not that Kind of Trick

R Man and I were lunching at Chow, our favorite dining establishment here in cowtown, when I noticed two guys at the table next to us playing gin. It’s that kind of place. Or rather, one guy was playing, the other, whose I hand I could see, seem to be picking up and discarding cards randomly. A deuce here, a jack there, lah la lah la lah. By the third hand, I think R Man was concerned that he was going to have to restrain me from going over and playing his damn hand for him.

I come from serious game people. My sainted mother, god rest her, belonged to two weekly bridge clubs, a really fierce player. And by that, I do not mean the drag queen “fierce” as in “wildly stylish” but rather “fierce” as in “bloodthirsty”, as in “you lose one more trick and I’m going in the kitchen, find me a knife and cut you like bologna.” That kind of fierce. The rest of the bridge club gals were just the same, I suppose the lighter weight players dropped off or were simply kicked out of the way. Metaphorically, of course. At the same time, all of them were the epitome of southern lady suburban housewifey, making small talk about jello molds, while trying to figure out where the fuck the king of clubs had gotten to. Fierce, I tell you.

So the guy at Chow? He’s lucky I didn’t brain him with my lasagna, which would have been a shame, cause I love Chow’s lasagna. Try it the next time you’re there.

I gotta go