tandoori turkey

Hello fellow thankful beings. Happy belated Thanksgiving to you all! I hope you enjoyed your holiday celebration.

For Turkey Day, my family was invited out to an Indian restaurant. Not exactly your typical Thanksgiving dinner, but boy do I love Indian food. Nevertheless, turkey did make its way into our smorgasboard of curries and kebabs. Tandoori Turkey. No joke. The restaurant had a special for Thanksgiving.

I wish I could tell you that this was the recipe to best all strangely bizarre turkey recipies. No more tales of tofurkey or turkducken. Tandoori Turkey saves the day! But sadly, I cannot. It was perfectly enjoyable, but not worth the effort. I had a few bites and then went back to my luscious mango lassi and chicken tikka masala. No cultural fusion and/or assimilation here, thank you very much.

What is a group of Indian and Pakistani families to do on Thanksgiving night, when the normal post-turkey tryptophan stupor afflicts our reveling neighbors? There is only one answer: go to the movies. Note that this is the same thought process that drives us in hoards to see movies on Christmas Day. Except on that day we are joined in our actions by our friends of the Jewish faith.

We saw Alexander. You can stop reading here if you are planning on seeing it soon and do not want to be influenced by my extremely persuasive writing. I keed.

It sucked. So badly. I literally cannot think of a more appropriate or articulate way to state it. I thought the movie was disjointed and the acting was appalling. Colin Farrell certainly provides a service with his ridiculous good looks, but that's about it. He seems to think that pretending to be constipated can pass for very serious reflection.

While I can easily stare at him for about 15 minutes, doing so for the duration of the movie was a challenge. As a public service announcement, please be aware that the movie is approximately 3 hours long. Any movie of that length that does not include musical numbers with women in saris is completely unacceptable.

For the boys - and some of the girls out there - Anjelina certainly is phenomenally hot. Hotter than hellfire. She looks pretty damn good in the movie too. But that's it. It was impossible to actually believe her as Olympias (Alexander's Mom), rather than someone trying desperately hard to act the part. This woman's acting skills are worse than Donald Trump's ability to read from a teleprompter. The accent she attempted to adopt failed miserably. Where did she get the idea that not moving her jaw and rolling her r's as if she is taking a beginning French class can pass as a Macedonian accent? The last time she purred "Alexandrrr", I could have sworn I felt spittle fly across the theater.

Last petty criticism: Alexander is shown writing during one scene. It looks like Greek letters on the scroll, but when I looked closer, it was all English. The font, I suppose, was "Oliver Stone thinks this is what ancient Greek probably looked like." I mean, sure the dialogue is all in English, but give the audience some credit ... at least have the props look somewhat realistic!

The best part of the movie occurred when an unfortunate fellow decided to lay a large and noisy fart about 2 hours into the movie. The whole theather erupted in laughter - you could feel the laughter wave move from left to right as people couldn't contain themselves. Highly amusing. Even my mom giggled.

Also, why do theaters have seats in the front? Seats should not begin until about 20 rows back. Sitting anywhere closer is pure torture and a mean scam by the theater companies.

Enough about Alexander the Not-So-Great. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I am thankful for:

My family. My new life and my old friends. The metrocard reader at the subway stations that tells you how much money you have left on a metrocard before you get stuck in the turnstyle with insufficient fare. And everything in between. And I'm thankful for all of you who actually read this and give me reason to write. As dorky as it is, I do so very much enjoy keeping this blog.