brainsplotch

'Tis the season when Thanksgiving ends and we, at the very least, pretend to be festive and joyous until January 1, 2023 and then fall off the ledge for the inevitable post-holiday blahs.  Okay, sorry to start the post with such a downer statement.  Anyway, Thanksgiving is sort of like "opening day" for the holiday "festive season" that lasts about five weeks. To use another sports metaphor, Thanksgiving is like the "exhibition game" that prepares us for the "regular season" of Christmas (and Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's Eve/Day). Thanksgiving is also the "Rodney Dangerfield" of holidays: no respect. And in recent years, Thanksgiving is taking much more of a beating for being racist and an anachronism. It's hard to dispute this, certainly when it comes to Thanksgiving origins. Even if one ignores Thanksgiving's roots in European extermination of the native people of North America and tries to treat it as a day in w...

I will be off to my sister-in-law's house in East Lansing for some great food, family, and those exasperating Detroit Lions. Can they pull of the upset against the Patriots? Highly doubtful even if Brian Hoyer has to play for Tom Brady. Anyway, I wish all my millions of readers a wonderful Thanksgiving.

It's typically chaotic at my house this morning, so I don't have much time to write. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there in cyberspace. I will be heading over to my sister-in-law's house for turkey, sweets, drinks, and football. I am thankful for my health (knock on wood!) and the good health of all my family members. I am thankful that I have a full-time job in this dreadful Michigan economy. Let's all take some time today to reflect on the good things we have in our lives.

I've heard rumblings that the NFL should no longer allow the Detroit Lions to have a monopoly on the Thanksgiving day football game and should rotate it amongst all the league's teams. As much as I realize how much of a drag it must be for the rest of the country to suffer through the Lions every Turkey Day, as a born and bred Michiganian, I'd really miss this tradition. From a purely objective standpoint, it makes perfect sense to rotate the game, but my heart says "No! Leave the poor Lions alone!" Some of my most permanent Thanksgiving memories have to do with the Lions. There was the 1980 game against Chicago when the Bears' David Wiliams ran back the kickoff in overtime to beat the "Lie-downs." I can vividly remember sitting in front of my grandma's TV, the rest of the family watching with a combination of horror and humor, as the Lions let another one go in typically inimitable Lions fashion. There was the game against the Steelers a f...