Issue #171: On Treating Yourself Like a Guest Over the Holidays

Plus a no-frills Thanksgiving plan.

📺 “Interior Chinatown” on Hulu: On the one hand, it makes perfect sense to adapt a novel written in screenplay format into a mini-series. And yet, there are clear changes from the original novel by Charles Yu to this Taika Waititi adaptation on Hulu—many of the meta allegories in the book were lost, but what remains is a still-entertaining procedural, suffused with Waititi’s signature humor.

🎧 ‘Mahashmashana’ by Father John Misty: The opening song on this new album by Father John Misty, which, like the title, comes from the Sanskirt word for “burial ground,” begins with the kind of build you’d expect at the end of a song or even movie. It’s an indication of what’s to come: an album that jumps immediately into the deep end, with existential reckonings, examinations of the mundane and the sublime, and reflections on humanity. You know, the small stuff.

🎥 ‘Buy Now!’ on Netflix: This documentary is to shopping what ‘The Social Dilemma’ was to social media, drawing attention to the ways in which over-consumption has taken over our lives, and been normalized by brands, along with the tools marketers use to keep us buying more—truly a horror movie for the times, that may also serve as a valuable conversation-starter with family. Another wonderful documentary is ‘Bread & Roses’ on AppleTV+, which follows three women in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

P.S. I also saw ‘Wicked’ and, while I enjoyed it, it also felt a bit like when I saw Dead & Co. at the Sphere earlier this year. I love the music and the performers, but the visuals took away from the original magic, rather than adding to it. I’m also a bit irked that they divided it into two parts, which I feel detracts from the original message of the show.

To this day, my favorite Thanksgiving memory is of sliced pineapple. The year was 2010, and I was a freshman at a college I had spent all of high school trying to get into. My first semester was magical in some ways—I attended seminars in ivy-clad buildings around tables that had probably been there since the college’s foundation, illuminated by stained glass windows—but incredibly lonely in others, as I struggled to make friends. I was desperate to go home for Thanksgiving, to see my family, boyfriend, and friends, but the cost of a cross-country flight, from Boston to Reno, remained out of the question.

Instead, my dad phoned a former colleague whose wife picked me up from my dorm on Tuesday evening to bring me to their home one town over. As soon as we pulled up, their house struck me as something out of a Christmas movie: dormer windows that framed the porch-covered, wreath-bedecked front door. They set me up in their son’s childhood bedroom, a preppy ‘90s time capsule of high school English books on dark wood shelves, movie posters, baseball trophies, and flannel plaid sheets, under which I got my first full night’s sleep in months.

I can buy myself flowerrsss, holiday edition

The next morning, after a blissful shower without flip-flops, I went into the kitchen as my hosts got ready for work. They paused mid-flurry to show me an abundance of breakfast options—a fresh loaf of oat porridge bread and jam, granola from a nearby coffee shop, fancy yogurt, pints of fresh berries, and a glass container of sliced pineapple in the refrigerator; the type of things you’d only buy if you had a guest in town. It was clear that they had gone out of their way to make me feel happy and comfortable during my first holiday away from home, and their generosity is something I appreciate to this day.

Over the course of the next decade, I bopped between friends’ homes and witnessed a wide breadth of Thanksgiving traditions and family dynamics, but when it came to creating my own traditions, I always returned to that simple, thoughtful gesture of the granola and pineapple. This Thanksgiving, I’m hosting my parents and two friends. I’ll be making the full turkey dinner (see my menu below), but the elements I’m most excited about are the little kindnesses I can show myself and my guests throughout this week. Read on for ten small ideas for making this week just a touch more special, whether you’re hosting a big group, spending the day solo, or traveling to visit family…