Thanksgiving is a pretty predictable affair each year.  A turkey is stuffed, potatoes are mashed and stomachs are filled to bursting. Hours are spent preparing and then there’s always a lot of groaning and couch-occupying afterwards.  It’s fairly textbook.  You usually know how everything’s going to go down, unless of course Aunt Jenny gets in a fight with Uncle Bob, or someone throws up.

Over lunch last week, Mina* and I started discussing we who we would invite, if we could invite any person, either living or dead, to Thanksgiving dinner, just to shake things up.  We talked about writers and musicians, the famous and the infamous, murderers, rebels and politicians…a motley crew of individuals.  Each of us developed our short list.  Instead of choosing just one, however, I decided it would be fun to mix a bunch of people together at ma dîner imaginaire, just for the fun of seeing them interact.  So here, with no further ado, are my picks for Thanksgiving Dinner, 2009.

My entire family would predict that I’d start with Jim Morrison…and they’d be right.  Number one reason, I’ve just loved him so long that he already seems like part of the family.  Number two, I’d give anything to see my sister ask him, “So Jim, you really couldn’t come up with a better rhyme to ‘Come on baby, light my fire’ than ‘Try to set the night on fire? Really?” It’s bothered her for decades.  Then, I’d like to see him down a quart of whisky and throw the turkey on the floor, just like he did in the Doors movie. Awesome.

To keep Jim company, I would invite Ayn Rand.  He probably wouldn’t want to talk architecture with her, but they’d definitely enjoy discussing the downside of collectivism as it relates to the worship of rock gods…along with a bunch of other heady crap.  They’d both be in total sync as to the importance of the individual, and then the Lizard King and the Queen of Objectivism would proceed to get individually, and collectively, trashed.

I’d invite Craig Ferguson, simply because he makes me laugh with just one look.  His wife could come too, but she might find herself seated at the kid’s table…I can’t control everything that happens in my house.  And I’d invite Cary Grant to sit next to Craig, simply because he makes me melt with just one look.  Given that they’re both witty, urbane men that got their start on the same island, I think they’d have a lot to talk about, even if it involved a lot of hand puppets and pantomime.

Since my dining room table isn’t that large, I’d have to limit myself to only two more. The options are varied:

• Jonathan Lethem & Nick Hornby?  The greatest nerdy music conversation I could ever hope to have…
• Ike & Tina Turner?  Just one nasty remark from Ike and I’d hit him myself.
• Betty Davis & Joan Crawford (the later years)?  Just because.
• Orson Welles & Alfred Hitchcock? Wouldn’t that be cool?

Clearly, as my list indicates, I’m a devotee of pop culture who would much rather lose herself in the world of entertainment than talk real world issues or politics.  It’s easier that way, especially at Thanksgiving.  Maybe my Yom Kippur dinner would be different, as we break fast and reflect on the year just completed.  For that dinner, I’d invite Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Gandhi and President Obama.  But for now, I just want to ask Jim who ended up with the infamous leather pants.  Hey, where’d Jim go? And where’s Ayn?  Guys??

I love Halloween.  I love everything about it.  I love gorging myself on little chocolate candy bars. I love plastic skeletons whose eyes light up, and fake crows that scare the shit out of me when they squawk as I walk by.  I love hot buttered rum, carving pumpkins, scaring little kids with my green witch nose, but most of all I love to dress up.

Not long after I learned to talk, I was constantly encouraged to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  This was asked to me by my grandmother, my grandfather, various aunts and uncles and, of course, my parents.

This was such a daunting question for a kid like me to answer.  Not only could I never decide, but it was always changing, and it was often impractical.  For a good many years I wanted to be a medieval princess.   I wanted to wear big pink dresses, high heels, live in a castle and ride a horse sidesaddle.  Unfortunately, I was born in the mid 1960’s instead of the mid 1660’s and there just aren’t a lot of opportunities for princessing in this day and age.

Then I thought it might be fun to be a nurse, or a flight attendant (this was back when it was still glamorous), and then there was the long fairy stage.  I thought I would grow me some wings covered in glitter and fly around the world granting wishes to people, only I would give them four and not stop at three.

Years and years and YEARS have gone by and I still can’t make up my mind as to what to be when I grow up.  But once a year on All Hallows Eve, I get to dig into my magic costume closet and become anything I want to be.

I can put on a white powdered wig and some big fake jewels and be Marie Antoinette.  “Let them eat cake,” I say.  I can tape a fake parrot onto my shoulder and pull down my eye patch and roam the neighborhood searching for trick-or-treat candy to steal.  “Aye, aye, matie,” I say.

That is the magic of Halloween.  After all, what other day of the year can a middle-aged housewife, the mother of two, slip into a white halter dress, and a platinum blonde wig, stand over a street grate and for a short time be a Hollywood screen goddess?  All this while chugging a beer and eating snickers.