1. I associate cooking on Thanksgiving Day here in my childhood home with high anxiety. I might be wrong, but my memory is that Thanksgiving preparations were never relaxed in the past here.
Consequently, I prefer cooking for Thanksgiving Day on Thanksgiving Eve.
It's much more relaxing and I give myself plenty of time to recover if something goes haywire.
Christy assigned Debbie and me to prepare a sweet potato or squash dish and a cranberry side.
Since I prepared dishes unlike any we've ever had on Thanksgiving before, I want what I made to be surprise to Christy, Carol, and any other family member who might read this blog.
I'll go into what I did tomorrow when I write a post about Thanksgiving Day.
I will say this: I had fun preparing food today and didn't not experience one moment of anxiety, just as I hoped I wouldn't.
2. I also had fun watching Arizona and Creighton face off in the Maui Jim tournament championship game.
Arizona led much of the game, but Creighton kept coming back, coming back, falling back, and coming back. Creighton put on a heroic push in the games last couple of minutes, but that final comeback fell short.
Arizona prevailed, 81-79.
For me, the most compelling aspect of this game was watching Oumar Ballo. Ballo originally committed to play at Gonzaga and was seventeen years old when he was redshirted and sat our a season in Spokane.
He played infrequently for Gonzaga his freshman year. Ballo was tall and took up a lot of space, but he was not very mobile.
He left Gonzaga after the 20-21 when Tommy Lloyd left the Gonzaga staff and became the head coach at Arizona.
Ballo played more his sophomore year, averaging about fifteen minutes a game, and showed signs of maturing physically (slimming down) and of becoming more agile.
Today (and earlier in the Maui Jim tournament), Ballo was an astonishingly improved player.
He looks more sleek, he's very physically strong, and his agility has increased a lot.
He's no longer a big teenager, but at twenty years old, is growing into a mature adult and did it ever show today.
He scored thirty points, pulled down thirteen rebounds, and was a nearly unstoppable force inside.
It was easy, just two seasons ago, to joke about Ballo being a big galoof, but not now.
Watching players grow and mature is one of the aspects of college basketball I enjoy most and although I was pulling for Creighton to win this afternoon, I loved seeing all the progress Ballo has made and look forward to watching him continue to improve and give Arizona great strength in the paint this season.
3. This evening, I switched gears and watched D.O.A. (1949-50). On Facebook, Jay G. recently posted that a remake of D.O.A. has recently been completed, featuring John Doe as Frank Bigelow -- John Doe of the punk band X.
I really want to see John Doe in this role, but first I wanted to watch the original movie featuring Edmund O'Brien as Frank Bigelow.
What a dark, nihilistic plot.
If you don't know, Frank Bigelow is small town accountant who takes a vacation to San Francisco only to discover he's been poisoned and, in the short amount of time he has to live, works feverishly to uncover who poisoned him and why.
The movie's many dark streets, labyrinths of stairways and hallways, and ever looming shadows correlate perfectly with the movie's convoluted plot and its many twists and turns as Frank Bigelow plunges deeper into the dark details of how and why he was singled out to be murdered.
I'll leave it at that.
Film noir expert Eddie Muller claims that this movie, because of its frenzied pace and loopy story line is not to be taken seriously.
I think I understand his point, but I, being who I am, took it very seriously and experienced it as an existential exploration of how Frank Bigelow is almost energized by knowing he's going to die and lives his last days not only doggedly searching for truth, but relishing much in life he had been taking for granted.
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