NEW YORK, 12:39 PM, TUE MAY 13 | 62 POSTS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS | tips@gawker.com | SUBMIT A TIP | RSS
« next »

A Gawker Thanksgiving

Every year Gawker commenter and ad sales guy (and the best argument for abolishing the divide between editorial and advertising) LolCait has a super special Thanksgiving in his mind. There all of his and your favorite characters meet and dreams come true. This year Laurel Touby hosts.

Like it or not, the holidays are upon us. I'm sure when you were stumbling home in the wee morning hours of November 1st in your slutty Madeline Albright costume, you saw the shopkeepers ripping down witches and vampires and putting up pictures of a fat old man who breaks into your house and tries to woo your children with toys. But there's also that other holiday in between, that one dedicated to an afternoon spent face-down on the shag carpet, woozy from tryptophan and big-bottle wine. A time when you listen to and look at your family and wonder "Who are these people??" I was thinking about this the other day and, in the immortal words of Mr. Ed: later that night, I got to thinking. I've decided we'll have a new Thanksgiving. A Gawker Thanksgiving. It's so corny! I know! But, I get sentimental this time of year.

So. How will this work? I think we'll start with the location. Naturally Laurel Touby, founder of MediaArby's, will be our "cyber hostess." (Ugh.) We'll all meet sometime around noon. Julia Allison will bring her darling dog Lilly and Jakob Lodwick will bring his darling fashion lenses. Tinsley Mortimer will arrive wearing an old, soiled Santa suit and just blink confusedly at everyone. (She'll disappear for much of the night, only to be found in the backyard, stuck in a bear trap.) Kristian Laliberte will arrive with his new boyfriend, Elijah Pollack. They'll be so in love! (Later, during dinner, Anna Wintour will lean in close, her breath reeking of gin and clamato juice, purring into your ear "Aren't they just divine together? They're like Paul Newman and Katherine Ross in Butch Cassidy. Except, you know, gay and, um, young.") John Fitzgerald Page will come crashing through the foyer in his Beemer, Eiffel 65's "Blue" blasting loudly, and shove a sweaty bucket of fried chicken into Laurel's hands. Then, just as we think all the guests have arrived, we'll hear a strange hum, a demonic orchestra tuning. As the whole house rumbles, Sean Hannity will shriek, jumping up and down and clapping his hands, "Rupey is here!" Mr. Murdoch will disembark his flaming humpback whale nuclear stagecoach and shove a sweaty Judith Regan into Laurel's feather boa.

James Lipton will utter a dinner bell clarion call from deep within his diaphragm, and all the guests will be seated at the long oak table. There will be a beautiful centerpiece fashioned out of the rawhide remains of Jocelyn Wildenstein's face. The feast will consist of many bottles of Coppola Vineyards wine, PinkBerry soufflés, and turducken. Robert Olen Butler will be the first to get drunk and hurl recriminations at people. "Elizabeth!!" he'll shout across the table at Jann Wenner, "No one poops in South America! It wasn't a sign! It was nature!!" Chris Crocker will defuse the awkward situation by stripping down to his skivvies and doing an old-style fan dance/Britney Spears hyper-sexual mash-up that erotically incorporates Janet Robinson's famous green bean casserole. ("It's the fried onions that really make it work," he'll say in a post-performance YouTube interview with himself.)

Once all are sated and sufficiently boozed up, plates will be cleared by Laurel's faithful butler, Neel Shah. Then, it's on to charades! Mandy Stadtmiller will start. She will pantomime long walks on beaches and summers spent murmuring on porch swings about the big, bright future. In mere seconds team partner Alyssa Shelasky will shriek "SuperPreppy!!" Commenter KarenUhOh, who has been quietly assessing the legal ramifications of all this, will dryly deadpan: "I thought the category was real people." Mandy will run out of the room weeping and farting, having had her hideous secret revealed. Graydon Carter will be next. He will act out a strange series of lilts and affectations, and Lizzie Grubman will yell with delight "Spike! Spike! It's your little fey creature of a son!" A few more rounds will come and go, and of course it will end in a tie and all will be smugly satisfied with their own accomplishments.

The rest of the evening will be devoted to that most revered and corny of Thanksgiving traditions, the actual giving of thanks. The list of thanks will be long and varied. Selected highlights will be:

Tionna Tee Smalls: The film Ishtar
NewToJezebel: Jewish people.
Jeffrey Epstein: Those High School Musical: The Ice Tour tickets he managed to score.
Christopher Hitchens: Religion and Bic razors.
Atoosa Rubenstein: The well-meaning gypsies who style her and, in a bold extension of an olive branch, the Omega Kitties.
Senator Larry Craig: Feet, and a willful spirit.
Josh Schwartz and the rest of the Gossip Girl team: Blacks and Asians.

And, finally, the yoga stick of thanks will be passed to yours truly. And your friend LolCait will say this:

"I find the word 'thanks' inadequate, or even inappropriate. 'Thanks' implies expectation, a resigned 'Phew! Of course these good things were coming after all.' So I'm not thankful, I'm grateful. Things of late seem pretty awful and, truth is, I've Done Nothing During The War, and yet some good things keep coming to me. Six months into my participation in this bizarre social experiment, it is quite baffling to have found both silly entertainment and keen insight on this most cold and unfeeling internet. So I am grateful for a strange new home, for precarious new friendships."

All will be quiet for a moment, and then I will fall down, completely drunk. I will be scooped up by the ever-friendly Josh Ferris (swoon!) and taken from the room.

The night will end as nights do, with sloppy hugs and prolonged, slurred goodbyes. Dear James Kurisunkal will be passed out in the broom closet, spooning a snoring Spencer Pratt, who will still be in his 'Vincent from the Beauty and the Beast television series' Halloween costume. (Or is it a costume??) Ira Glass will dejectedly try to coax Merry Miller into his cab. The Gawker editors will wander off into the night, a bottle of champagne shared between them (with a pour to the sidewalk, remembering Balks, Shafrirs, Spiers, Oxfelds, and others long gone.) Nick Denton will open his umbrella and float whimsically away into the purple night sky. And I will ramble off, thinking of puns and light bulb jokes for the next week. But, before I turn the corner, I will feel a tap on my shoulder. "Don't be alarmed," a voice will say. "It's only me, Douglas." I'll messily grin at him, this most famous of Queens landlords, and say "Oh Douglas. I'm not alarmed. I'm just grateful... Just wonderfully, queasily grateful."

Douglas will shrug his shoulders and walk away, headed off to yuk it up with Michelle and Emily, happy to have been included at all.

"Who are all those strange people?" Patrick Moberg will ask as he stands on the stoop and watches this all unfold. "I don't know," his new wife Camille will respond, robotically petting his arm.

"I've only just met them."

5:00 PM on Wed Nov 21 2007
By Joshua Stein
7,504 views
159 comments

Comments