THANKSGIVING DAY EXTRAVAGANZA!

Yes my friends it’s that time of year when American’s across this Nation get together with their friends and families to stuff themselves past the point of comfort. We watch parades on the TV and marvel at the great technology that allows us to make enormous replicas of our favorite cartoon characters and then fill them with hot air and drag them around our favorite major metropolis. There are many traditions on this day but none of them do I like more than explaining what we’re thankful for.

I’m sure your family does something similar: Everyone is sitting around the table covered in gravy and the remains of some helpless bird when the head of the family (in my case it was Mom who would always start) looks around and asks, “So, what is everyone thankful for this year?”

Since this is my first year far enough away from my family that i can’t drive home for the holiday I figured I’d still play along at home. So, Mom, if you read this, print it out and read the following when you go around the table this year:

What am I thankful for? There’s actually a lot but when I start to go over it all in my head I realized that all the things I have to be thankful for came down to two people, my parents. Without them I wouldn’t exist. I’m not just talking about them doin’ it and having Baby Shawn. I’m talking about their unending support and unconditional love. I think I was a good kid but I know I wasn’t easy. I never took the path of least resistance with anything I’ve done. If it was a mountain to climb I somehow found myself at the bottom of it. I picked a career that makes no promises. Sure, potentially i could make it big as a writer/creator and live the good life but let us be honest, those chances are slim. Still, my parents never stop encouraging me to follow my dream. They continuously give me emotional and monetary support whenever I need it. The latter being a big deal because they are by no means rich. I tell them how much they mean to me as often as I can but still feel it’s not enough. Without them I don’t think I would be the person I am. I wouldn’t have the confidence it takes to face daily rejection as a writer. I wouldn’t have the sense of humor it takes to stay light even when faced with the insurmountable debt I face because I’m out of work. I wouldn’t have made it though some of the dark times in my life over the past two years without the foundation they built within me. Maybe it’s because I’m so far away that I’m feeling so mushy (and I apologize if this isn’t the silly diatribe you were expecting to read)but I needed to get this out there. My parents, and I think ALL parents, are crucial to who I am. A lot of my friends have nice parents and a lot of them don’t but no one has parents like mine. They are one of a kind and I wouldn’t trade them in for anything. I’d say that 60% of my will to survive and make a place for myself out here in LA-LA Land comes from my desire to finally be able to show them it was all worth it. To thank them in front of the world for being the greatest two people to ever fuck and make a baby would make me just about as happy as i could ever imagine feeling. Since I haven’t made it to that level yet this blog will have to suffice. So, one last time, thanks Mom and Dad for literally everything I have and will get in this life.

As for the rest of you I’m thankful to have any readers at all let alone the support that I’ve gotten over the last few months. My new friends on twitter, my Reel Big Fish friends who came for that article but have stuck around and my facebook friends who put up with my stream of conscious updates and constant shilling of my blog I owe you all a ton of gratitude. It really means a lot to me that you care and that I can provide you with some kind of semi-entertaining content.

On that note I’ll urge you all to go eat a shit load of food, get really sleepy and, right before your eyes roll up in your head and you drift off into a tryptophan-induced coma, find the person (or people) who mean the most to you and thank them from the bottom of your heart for being there.

Also try not to get killed on Black Friday. :)

 

I’ll be back Monday with the usual chicanery and nonsense or as my buddy Dave recently said, “To blog the fuck out of shit.”

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.