Ponytail Picks #16 - Thanksgiving
We sure are thankful for you, dear readers, and a few other things, too. We’d love to know what you’re thankful for. If you’d care to share, leave a note in the comments below.
LISTEN
Two Canadian Thank-Yous
With Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, I figured I’d highlight two wildly different songs of thanks from two classic Canadian artists. Thanks for reading, eh?
Shania Twain - “Thank You Baby! (For Makin’ Someday Come So Soon)”
Glittery and grand with its bouncy beat and orchestral strings, this slightly less successful single of Shania’s floats on the ninth story clouds of love without letting any bloated poetry weigh it down. Her past failures in finding love are breezily acknowledged in brief, casual couplets, one for each verse (“I didn’t like dating and trying to find someone / I gave up waiting for love to come along” and “So many numbers, so many guys to call / Is it any wonder I got nowhere at all”) before she plunges into the heart of the matter, which is her heart’s pitter patter, which is sung over a moody minor-to-major-and-back chord progression that adds a dose of pathos to the simple lyrics and makes me think that her thanksgiving chorus is one that celebrates what she has without forgetting what it’s like to have without:
Thank you baby
For making someday come so soon
Yeah, thank you baby
For loving me the way you do
Simple Plan - “Thank You”
Emo rockers Simple Plan bring Shania’s dreamy floating lover vibes crashing down to earth in this passive-aggressive pop punk song of “thanks but no thanks, you backstabber”:
So thank you for showing me
That best friends can not be trusted
And thank you for lying to me
Your friendship and good times we had, you can have them back
As a privileged straight white guy, I know that there are always things in my life to actually be thankful for, and I know that expressing that thanksgiving in tangible ways by giving back to others is important, but at the same time, I think there’s something to be said for expressing the sort of raw bitterness on display here. Sometimes things happen that just really suck, you know? And culture’s pressure to be positive and thankful and nothing else around the Thanksgiving holiday can sometimes make those things feel worse as they fester inside without any outlet.
Author and academic Kate Bowler has a great quote: “Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.” Whichever one you’re feeling more this Thanksgiving weekend, feel free to let it out, whether it be through a sultry country-pop ballad or an angry emo rant.
-JB
WATCH
8 Feast Scenes with Different Takes on Food
To get you hungry enough for this weekend, take a look at the many ways a large meal can be used in a scene through these eight great examples. Gobble, gobble!
Hook - “Use Your Imagination”
Food can be fun.
“Hurt” - Johnny Cash (Nine Inch Nails Cover)
Food can be serious.
Goodfellas - “Dinner in Prison”
Food can make us feel safe.
Stranger Things 4 - “The Russians’ Last Dinner”
Food can make us feel safe.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone - “Let the Feast Begin”
Food can look delicious.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - “Denethor Eats”
Food can look gross.
Pan’s Labyrinth - “The Pale Man”
Food can be bad.
The Bear - Season 1, Episode 8, “Sydney Returns”
SPOILER ALERT: food can be good.
-AK
READ
A Reminder of What’s Important in Short Story Form
“Master and Man” by Leo Tolstoy
I’m an avid reader and participant of Goerge Saunder’s Story Club here on Substack. If you don’t know who that is, don’t feel bad. Contemporary literary figures are like metal bands. If you’re not deeply submerged in the genre, you probably won’t cross paths with too many names.
Basically, George made a name for himself as a short story writer before his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, came out in 2017. He’s the slightly younger, male Alice Munro of the U.S.A. (Alice Munro is the Margaret Atwood of short stories). One of his works is the basis of this year’s Netflix movie Spiderhead, if that helps.
Anyway, as a newly minted fan of the guy, I went out and bought a few books, one being his non-fiction title A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In it, Saunders disects a few classic short stories written by Russians in the late 19th Century. One such tale is Leo Tolstoy’s “Master and Man.”
“Master and Man” takes place during a holiday much like Thanksgiving (well, more like Christmas, but we’ll let that slide). Honestly, I don’t want to tell you much more about it. All I really want for you—if you have an hour to spare this weekend—is to read the thing. If you’re having a little trouble knowing what to be thankful for right now, “Master and Man” will help jog your memory. I guarantee it.
-AK
For a couple more Russia-themed recommendations, check out these past Ponytail Picks.
Thank you for getting to the bottom of this email. If you’re brave enough, tune in next time as we face our culture’s take on