For those of us who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving or live in the Land of the Free, a little context is in order: Black Friday is the day after, and traditionally the official start of the Holiday shopping season.

It’s the busiest day for retail stores and fights break out over the hottest commodity as people do insane things to save a few bucks or get the Xbox 360 in time to spend the extended weekend indoors.

We were in Miami where we had spent Thxgvg with the Queen Mother (who cooks up a damn fine turkey, by the way) and the Boy King called from Paraguay to ask if we could buy a laptop for him on Black Friday cuz Best Buy had a deal if you were the ten first in line at 5am when they opened the store.

Right, Jorge, we’ll just skip the pumpkim pie and go stand in line starting at midnite.

sheesh, in-laws…

Anyway, the Queen Mother bought a laptop online with a store pickup, and we went that afternoon. Got a little lost on the way back, decided to stop for a burger, and when we came back out an hour later, the car had been broken into and the laptop was gone from the trunk.

The cop who filled out the paperwork for the insurance claim told us (with an eloquent roll of the eyes) that we shoulda gone straight home, dropped off the box and then gone for dinner. The crooks follow you from the store and apparently, they’d had dozens of these all day.

Thank you, CNN, for all that coverage on fisticuffs at K-Mart and people camping out the nite before. A little practical advise to us dumbasses about being followed to the burger joint would have been too much, really…

Was in Miami for Thxgvg, am now in Napa Valley for the next few days, working from a little Motel in St Helena and tasting wines in the evening.

I’ll toast your health with each glass of bubbly (about 6 of which 3 millesimes yesterday) I get my grubby little paws on.

Will post about Black Friday later.

Say you are the only remaining superpower on the planet, would you let a little problem like autumn leaves slow you down?

Of course not!

You have homeowners blow the leaves into neat piles the size of small cars on the streets and then show up with two pieces of large diesel machinery and a truck. One holds a backstop while the other scoops the stuff up to unload it into the dumpster.

Oh, and don’t forget to ignore the Frenchie snapping pictures from the second storey window… he’s just worried they won’t believe him without pictures back home.

In other news, we rented Saving Face Sunday night.

Kinduva snap decision, just decided to trust the Sundance Festival selection committee on this one, not that’s always been a good strategy.

This is Director Alice Wu‘s first movie, most of the dialogue is in Mandarin, and it’s about a gay chinese daughter (already not an easy proposition) who’s widowed mother suddenly shows up on her doorstep, pregnant and reviled by the family patriarch. By that point (aside from a couple unexpected plot twists), you already know what’s going to happen : mother and daughter get to know each other, accept each other, and learn from each other, and end up following their hearts to happiness.

What makes it work is Ms Wu’s beautiful script, with dialogue that just flows naturally (the English bits for sure, I’m taking this on faith on the Mandarin bits), and stellar acting in support of the daughter and mother roles.

Alice Wu’s characters will stay with you, I think, at least for a few days.

Rent it if you can, and I’ll be waiting for Ms Wu’s next opus.

There comes a time in any relationship when the guy hasn’t offered his main squeeze a rose in a good long while, and the gal is wondering why.

Should he bring home the token of his devotion too early, she may not have had time to miss it, but if he waits too long, well, she may have had time to reflect on what to do about it. In any case, I was enjoying a solo walk on Main Street (and huffin’ ‘n’a puffin’, ‘cuz our Main Street is steep) when I saw a red rose in a shop window whispering “Lo, human, it has come to pass that the moment is ripe.”

And verily, the vegetable sexual organ was right, it was time to put another coin in the meter of our relationship.

Yes, sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re buying furniture together to garnish the nest, or planning the next wine trip, or about to fly to Miami to spend Thanksgiving with the Queen Mother. Sometimes the Coin of the Realm is still a single red rose proudly standing watch over the kitchen table and the carrot cake gently cooling on the rack.

Carrot cake? mmmm…

Princess knows what’s legal tender with her Frenchie

You know how you used to tell your parents that you’d be missing out on the nation’s culture if you didn’t have cable?

Well, it didn’t work with my parents either. We never had cable, let alone MTV, growing up, and altho I did manage to sneak a peak at some Aeon Flux episodes (I am so psyched that the movie version is coming out!), I completely missed out on Beavis and Butt-Head.

I know, I know, the shame and ridicule is hard to bear, but I had to come clean.

Anyway, last night Spike TV aired the B&BH movie, and the Princess morphed into the Grand Cornholio, sniggering and sniffling and asking for TP for her bunghole when she wasn’t headbanging.

In a flash I realized that she’s been quoting B&BH or making that chittering sound as long as I’ve known her, I’d just never caught the reference. Imagine the shock on both sides of the couch.

Now we just need to find a gray AC/DC shirt for me and a blue Metallica shirt for her…