How to Host Thanksgiving and Not Have To Cook

Everyone has one family member just itching to host a holiday dinner this time of year but seriously its too hard to try to please everyone. Who needs to worry about that, the "menu" for our brother's extremely small graduation lunch earlier this year was thrown together in 10 minutes at the market without really worrying about what people would want because being a lunch they could always eat something else in a few hours if they didn't like it. My sister has offered up her house, the setting for much of our partying in the driveway for this year's gathering and she always does a good job and is well prepared. But what if you're not so entertaining inclined, there are ways around this.

Ok so everyone is showing up at your place, don't panic. Start making calls today, you have to do this the weekend before to give the family the chance to go shopping for food before the stores get too crowded. To host and get out of cooking just call and ask if they have a favorite grain or soy based meat substitute. Explain that you've been really concerned about the family's overall health and that you think this would be the perfect opportunity to set a new tradition of healthy eating. This year's feast will not include a turkey and will focus heavily on healthy grains and strange vegetables from the east. After a few calls you're likely to receive an offer to either move the dinner to another member's house or so many offers from others to bring dishes that all you'll need to do is make sure the plates and serving spoons are clean.

You can also go with my favorite standby and threaten the family with a platter full of turkey Hot Pockets or some grande packs from Taco Bell. That's worked really well! Also living in places not big enough to host the whole family with nothing but a dodgy looking alley and a treacherous set of stairs to get down that for the children is very effective in the automatic "not it" of family party hosting.

Do Not Molest The Ducks

Yesterday we took the partying in the driveway to a national level, well sort of. As much as I love music I can't listen to it all the time and when I'm not rocking out to some kick ass Belle & Sebastian tunes I'm listening to NPR. I'll listen to just about anything they have on. During the weekends I primarily listen to KPCC because they don't play music like KCRW does. A few years ago they started airing short stories from the StoryCorps project. They were snippets of conversations from everyday people telling stories. The project travels around the country gathering these stories and archives them in the Library of Congress for anyone to look up. There's a permanent booth set up in New York City and two Airstream trailers that set up camp in a new town every few weeks. Just after Christmas I started hearing promos on KPCC about the Historias project and the Airstream coming to Los Angeles. I knew this was my chance to make it into the project.

There would only be 100 spots open to the public for the recording, they had many set aside for community leaders and people that had actually done something besides amass a pretty sizable collection of pin back badges. The morning the reservations opened was my first day back at work after a bout with strep throat. Lucky for me when you have strep throat no one really wants to come near your desk so I was left alone to secure my recording time. I was assigned a late afternoon recording time on what I'd learn later was the first day of the LA stop. Dede who is also a big fan was able to reserve a session for a couple of weeks later. I called my Dad and told him a little about the project, I didn't want to confuse him - Dad not using a computer really couldn't go look up the website and see what this was all about. After a couple of phone conversations he finally understood what we were going to do that day.

Yesterday was the appointment day. Dad arrived really early to the library and didn't notice the trailer was there and left me a message about only seeing people stealing cars and mugging old ladies - he was parked by the courthouse and this is a typical Dad message left. I left work and made my way through the horrendous LA afternoon traffic to East LA. When I arrived I found

Dad hanging out by the trailer just watching the ducks at the giant pond in the middle of the civic center complex. I came up to him and asked where his little bag of bread was then he pointed to the sign saying that the ducks are not to be fed. My Dad has everything in his truck and I'm sure he has an old bag of bread or popcorn in there for feeding birds. We still had about 10 minutes before our appointment and we went to watch a really cool duck fight that had just broken out by the edge of the pond. Just when the duck fight was ending it was our time to go inside the trailer. At first Dad seemed more impressed by the trailer then the project, he had never been in an Airstream before and told the facilitator about how the astronauts that went to the moon were quarantined in one of these after returning to earth. After his initial fascination with the trailer we sat down to record our conversation. I started out asking him about what it was like raising three kids while being an active military reservist and a police officer then we talked about him growing up and if what happened with him shaped his idea of what he wanted for our lives. As he does he did get off topic at times but brought it back to the initial point after wandering about for a few minutes. In the end I asked the most important question of all, the one that had been baffling me for some time now. That question - what is up with him and the Big Lebowski. Turns out its quite simple, Dad sees himself like The Dude. Just be yourself and let other people be what they want to be, just let everyone be. Here I thought it was Walter he liked the best, I'm glad we got that bit sorted out and the mystery will be solved for generations of Ojedas to come.