Foodstuff Friday: let's go to the Lowes or AMCs house for the holidays

This year Thanksgiving falls in November. Whatever. There is a rumor I will be sharing a meal with two relatives, though it was the younger relative who told me her mother was going to be on the east coast. Since I'm pretty darned sure no one I'm related to reads my blog I'm not poking or suggesting. Just telling you the news.

Sure I like a bird, stuffing, mashed potatoes--what's not to like; but what the Turkey Scrooge recommends this Foodstuff Friday is: Mr. Movie Snack. Theaters open early most places. Holiday movies are happy, glossy, tear-jerky.

Not to digress but have I told you about the Christmas Day my family saw Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers? I was eleven or twelve. "The pivotal scene in the film comes when Simone rapes Nadia in front of Rocco . . . " (copied and pasted from Answers.com).  Good times! If I knew available resources back then as youngsters do today, I would have reported my family to Children's Protective Services.  (Adult me recommends Visconti's The Damned, but not on Christmas, Thanksgiving or Mother's Day.)

Back to Mr. Movie Snack.  Such foodstuffs are easy to dress up with a buttery coating that shines like morning dew on Dow Chemical Corp. Who can pass up orange dye added to Elmer's glue glooped over nachos? I can, but apparently they're popular. 

Alice Waters followers might prefer a simple, unadorned box of Milk Duds.  Or combine the Thrill of the Sweet with the body's need for iron and roughage by choosing Raisenets.  We're hardwired to pass the box to members of our tribe, shake out a handful and offer a tribute to Mr. Movie Snack by messing up the already sticky floor.  

A suggestion for classicists is boxed--but now is available in a small tub!--bon bons.  Oh the feel of that exquisite crunch into a cold chocolate-like coating over vanilla-like ice cream-like substance.

I confess I no longer eat candy while at the movies though I could be tempted by famously unhealthy Mr. Movie Snack popcorn.  And keep this between me and you but I have no problem if you smuggle in candy. Times are hard and that stuff costs. A close "friend" has been known to smuggle in nuts, frozen yogurt and coffee.

Here's a list of poetry or lit-related movies to rent: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/195 (in which case, all bets are off, snacking wise and on wise snacking). But nothing goes with Denzel Washington or Jennifer Lopez like a rise in blood sugar.

Wherein the Poet is told: Go to Burning Man, and responds, "Why?"

I understand Chicken Noodle Soup as the first food group in my mouth after 3 days of a flu which had me sleep and sweat. It feels safe and oddly sexy. But why it hit me: Now is the time to me to write the following, well, I'm not sure.

Thanksgiving I attended a sprawling meal served to many guests, delightful and all younger than I am. The food was fabulous, my hostess truly kind and generous. As the table was cleared, guests rambled and I got the opportunity to meet new people, an event always of anthropological interest.

Of greater anthropological interest to them is me, but I'm not going to cast myself in that light (negative) again. Let's talk about one couple. I met the husband and wife separately.

Nice people. Part of some Brooklyn couples-with-kids scene. With the husband I talked tech. He worked with a company that creates cell phone applications. Don't know if he knew I was a poet or assumed it was so because of our hostess, a poet, but he showed me one app--a mini-anthology, but not before talking with great enthusiasm about music and ring tones (I think music was his background).

I wasn't unaware that the poetry was the usual past-copyright--Tennyson and Longfellow and Donne--and so the tradition continues--but it looked nifty enough. I met up with his wife by the sink as I was helping stack dishes. She had been to Burning Man recently and planned on going back.

A weekend at Burning Man was her passion, and I questioned her, intrigued. I'm not a big crowd person, but it was Burning Man, man. I can't remember if she said Yes or No to drugs, but she dealt with the crowd, and beautiful desert and resultant exhiliration induced a sense of creativity.

Awesome.

Then she said: "You should go." "Why?" "To become creative." (Hadn't I mentioned my book?) And I responded: "I don't need much help with that."

I didn't allow her her moment. I've made this mistake before: It's the Sarah has to be right mistake--combined with integrity. What I currently do to lead out poems does involve other people but is so low key and sacred I keep mum. A storm on her face, she went to another level of the apt., one above me, I should say.

Campbell's Soup in. Suggestions from people who don't know me, or really care to get to know me, out. Back to health.