Top 10: A documentary of my Thanksgiving holiday

1) The Thanksgiving Party and Dinner\nThanksgiving in my parents' house was spent in some ulterior time frame. A large portion of my family was there, and I avoided eye contact all night. Questions like, "So, when are you graduating?," etc...\n2) Faith Hill Special on ABC, Thursday Night\nAs Thanksgiving dinner broke and the fam exited to the living room, the television was turned on to this moronic schlock-fest. It was a surreal experience, in a way. I thought about how it might be funny to gut myself while sitting on the couch, replacing order with chaos and finally giving everyone a purpose.\n3-4) Eminem's "Lose Yourself," and Robert Christgau's "Consumer Guide"\nI bought the "8 Mile" soundtrack on the strength of Em's new single, which might just be his most successful ever. It is a moral tale, accessible to mom and dad as well as that racist rocker in your circle. The rest of the soundtrack was a profound disappointment, and I'm sure that Obie Trice is the dumbest person on the face of the planet.\nVillage Voice pop critic Christgau wrote in his monthly "Consumer Guide," "The worst thing I know about Eminem is the African Americans he chooses to hang with. And at least Dr. Dre serves a commercial function - these ill jockeys are just a two-inch ruler for Marshall Mathers to measure his dick against."\n5) Old Friends and Neighbors\nEventually, Thanksgiving break leads me to the local bars of my hometown. I had to mingle with the same people I've been saying I'll never see again for four years. One nice element of it was that I could use up some of my new material in my quasi-intellectual standup routine. I explained my theories of the reduction of all things to sex and death (borrowed from writer Nick Tosches), being dignified and old (confiscated from the Modern Lovers) and my personal colloquialisms on the Bible, fire and brimstone (stolen from Jerry Lee Lewis).\n6) The Roots - Phrenology (MCA)\nEmbarrassed to say, besides Jay-Z's "Unplugged" show on MTV, this is my introduction to the Roots. The album sounds like pure genius to someone who may not know any better, a combination of Afrocentricity, free jazz, psychedelic and post-punk rock music, with some hard funk-rap. It's kept me calm over the break, but I have no idea what this is about yet. Phrenology is a study of the shape of the skull as an indication of mental abilities and character traits, which I suppose implies some sort of racial dividing line, or at least it does to me. But the CD is mysterious like the best music is, like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, the music of Isaac Albéniz or any Pavement album. It's like part of the air of another country. It will always be unfamiliar, and yet it becomes comfortable. It can become home, but there is always that distance and the other.\n7) DMT\nFrom writer Terence McKenna, who proposed the theory that the birth of human consciousness came when the monkeys started to eat psychedelic mushrooms, comes the book "True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise." He talks about the drug DMT, which apparently puts you in touch with the elves that run the machine of the universe. If you're going to do drugs, why not meet the people who run the universe?\n8) Football\nI swear this is the most idiotic sport man has ever created, and Thanksgiving is usually a time when I must be forced to watch said monstrosity. Somehow I avoided it this year, though, which is no small feat and a cause for a meal and celebration itself.\n9) The Ridgewood Tap\nThe Homewood, Ill., bar I spent three nights in a row at. A cavernous place indeed, no windows, smoke clouds that reach to the floor and a few of my old high school teachers sitting drunk at the bar. It's the kind of burnout place that is marvelous in one way, but in another, back-to-reality way, it is a bad movie on a continuous loop. \n10.) DJ Shadow, "You Can't Go Home Again," from The Private Press (MCA)\nAs a melancholy, Asian guitar gives way to an announcement ("and now here's a story about being free"), the track turns into a bouncy lament. It suggests the drive away from your old home more than the actual visit, appreciative yet sad. Certainly, it is freedom.