By Michele Zipp
Columnist
I don't know about you, but I think I love the side dishes from Thanksgiving better than the turkey itself. My sister Jen agrees. Her favorite is mashed sweet potatoes.
Very yummy indeed, but it does make me think of baby food. Jen did just get married, but babies are not in her and her husband Phil’s immediate cards. However I don’t think they’ll wait as
long as fifty-six-year-old David Letterman did to put one in the oven. Harry Letterman apparently needed diapers, so daddy Dave went to Duane Reade (NYC’s answer to Miami’s Eckert’s) on
Broadway and 51st Street to buy some. I heard he asked the clerk what aisle the diapers were in and they directed him to the Depends section. Bum-mer.
This year, instead of doing the usual pilgrimage to my parent’s house in Orange County, New York (about 90 miles outside of
Manhattan), Thanksgiving will be served at Jen’s in-law’s home in Yorktown Heights. I’ve tasted leftovers from Mrs. Doucet’s stuffing last year and even though I am sad I can’t sit around
in my pajamas all day flipping the channels on the TV, thankful for not being in NYC caught up in the madness of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’ll dress up any day to have a mouthful of
her good cooking. Plus, I will be forced to head into Grand Central Terminal (above ground instead of just in the subway) to get on the Metro North to Westchester County. There I can catch
a glimpse of the main concourse’s gorgeous Holiday Light Show now on display through New Year’s Eve across its expansive dome ceiling. Because being a New Yorker, I wouldn’t venture in
there to check out holiday stuff on my own volition. The horror!
Family time is fun. Also enjoying some of it is Michael J. Fox, Tracy Pollan, and their four kids. The Fox clan went to Carnevale!
under the big top of the Big Apple Circus at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park. Good choice. Another great family excursion is A Christmas Carol, in its tenth and final year, at
Madison Square Garden. Of course there’s Rockefeller Center to see the tree and watch some ice skaters (I say watch because it is usually too crowded to slip on a pair of blades if you go
on the weekend). My parents used to take us there every year. My sister and I excited in the backseat with our matching mittens and pom-pom topped knit hats, mom in her fox fur coat and
high-heel boots, and dad in his leather driving gloves and slick leather jacket driving in from Queens in our green Chevy Nova. The smell of the street vendors’ roasted nuts filling the
air, the small leafless trees with white lights, the Salvation Army Santas ringing their bells – Manhattan knows how to capture the holiday spirit (and yes, the bone-chilling cold does
make you think of Frosty the Snowman and the North Pole). Those memories seem like a world away now. A world of department store windows with holiday dressings and lavish fashions my
sister and I dreamt of wearing, even when we were eight. How things haven’t changed. Oh, wait – she can afford it now, while I just pretend to.
Britney Spears has a younger sister too and they (along with their mom) have been hanging around New York City the past week. Britney
was signing copies of her new album, In The Zone, at Virgin Megastore in Times Square, but she also found time to take her family out to Lucky Cheng’s, the always festive and fun
“drag-queen waitressed” restaurant on First Avenue and 2nd Street.
Back at the Doucet’s dinner table, with a hot buttermilk biscuit in my mouth, chances are you’ll catch me muttering, “Could you pass
the peas, please?” I love peas. I don’t know what they do for you health-wise, but they are just so damn good when you mush them in with your stuffing and get a little gravy on there too
all in one forkful. I can assure you that there won’t be any peas left over for round two of turkey dinner, which usually happens around nine o’clock right after the infamous Thanksgiving
after-dinner nap.
Speaking of round two, the dynamic duo of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will return to the stage for seconds in The Producers in late December. Tickets
went on sale last week and with all the hype, there might not be any left until well into 2004 by the time you read this.
Mushrooms are also a delicious addition to the Thanksgiving table. Marinated with some garlic and oil, some gravy. Almost anything
would taste good with nice, brown, turkey gravy on top of it. I can just smell it now: the scent of the food rising from the stove as it is all heating up.
The race for the next Mayor of New York is also heating up. Smells good too, maybe. There’s a bunch of Democrats readying to take on Mayor
Michael Bloomberg (who really is a Democrat who basted himself in Republican to win the primary). Can’t wait to see what these contenders have to say because Vegas odds have it that
Bloomberg won’t be going for a second term. His big coup, banning cigarette smoking in bars and restaurants across the city, pissed off a lot of smokers. And, recently, the honorable threw
a catered party, which he attended. Now the Mayor holds power, but not enough power to overrule one of his very own rules, does he? Apparently he does. My sources tell me that the party
was quite smokin’ – cigarettes and cigars for all who dared – and they lit up inside, not outside in the cold. Looks like Mayor Bloomberg gets the bird from me. What a turkey!
Hopefully your turkey isn’t as dry. Happy Thanksgiving!
