Man Up! (14 page)

Yeah, she fell. And it wasn’t pretty. I suggest you look this performance up on YouTube, which I occasionally do when I’m in the mood to pair a nice Chardonnay with a freshly reopened wound. As you watch that fateful moment, listen closely and—I swear to Kwan—you can hear my horrified shriek piercing the otherwise muted gasps of the stunned crowd.

Michelle, of course, handled the fall gracefully and finished her routine like a consummate professional. I, on the other hand, completely lost my shit. The ramifications of this fall were huge. Insult to injury, the following and final skater (the aptly named Irina SLUTskaya) executed a nearly flawless performance, simultaneously securing Sarah Hughes’s gold medal win, and knocking poor Michelle down to third. Bronze?
Bronze?
Do you know how hard it is to coordinate an outfit with
bronze
? This was shocking. This was soul-crushing. This was hands-down the worst thing that had happened to me since Shannen Doherty left
Beverly Hills 90210
.

For the remainder of the Olympics, I was completely inconsolable. My crew tried in vain to cheer me up. The last night of the games was the worst. Not only had I not met Michelle, but her dreams of Olympic gold had been crushed.

To mark the end of the Olympics, the
Tonight Show
crew had a celebratory dinner at the fanciest restaurant in all of Salt Lake City. I halfheartedly mustered up the will to put together an outfit for the occasion: black from head to toe—I was, after all, in mourning. Not even a gallon of Diet Coke and an entire basket of bread could pull me out of my funk. My chicken parmesan tasted a little saltier than I would’ve liked, undoubtedly because it was seasoned with my tears.

Toward the end of the meal, our waiter approached the table, no doubt to tell us about the dessert selection. Thank God. I couldn’t wait to emotionally munch the bejeezus out of a piece of carrot cake. Instead, however, he leaned down to me and whispered, “Mr. Mathews, there’s someone in the back who would love to meet you.”

Oh, that’s nice,
I thought.
I guess one of those cute busboys recognizes me from TV.

I followed the waiter through the kitchen, down a maze of long hallways, and through the double doors of what appeared to be an enormous private party in a fancy, exclusive dining room.

Before I could process what was happening, all eyes turned to me, and the large crowd rose from their tables and burst into thunderous applause. In a total stupor, I looked around the room and began clapping along with everyone else, having no clue what was going on. Little by little, it dawned on me that
I
was the reason everyone was clapping. The moment that realization sank in, the crowd parted and I saw
her
. As if in slow motion, she walked toward me, her ponytail swaying from side to side. She was carrying a single rose. It was Michelle Kwan.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” she said with a humongous smile. She handed me the rose. “This is for you, Ross.”

Holy fucking shit. Was this actually happening? Was I dreaming?

I took the rose. “Hi, I’m Ross.”

Laughing, she replied, “I know, I heard you were here and I had to say hi. Thank you so much for all your support.”

Then she hugged me, and as quickly as that magical moment began, it was over. I was whisked back to my table, back to the real world, and the next day back home to Los Angeles, clutching my rose the entire flight.

Who needs a stinkin’ gold medal, anyway? Sure, my Michelle never won the Olympics. Big whoop. To me, she’ll always be number one. I wouldn’t give up the memory of that night—or the rose—for all the gold medals in the world. Most importantly, Michelle taught me a valuable lesson: Winning isn’t everything. That is, of course, unless you’re my future daughter and you’re competing in a beauty pageant. Honey, don’t embarrass Daddy. Second Place is First Loser. I’ll settle for nothing less than Grand Supreme, and I’m not talking about a Taco Bell burrito.

I
think you guys know by now that I would never ever say anything bad about anyone, but if you’re not totally 100 percent into the undeniable magic, wonder, and goodwill of the holiday season like I am, then, frankly, you should probably rot in hell. And if you don’t like it, you can just suck my candy cane.

Damn right, I’m holly jolly. I’m straight up Ho-Jo. I’m Ho-Jo like a Mo-Fo. I’m a Ho-Jo Mo-Fo Homo! Watch out—I could do this all night!

It really roasts my chestnuts how some people get depressed around the holidays. I’ve got so much Christmas cheer, I feel it’s my duty to pay it forward. In fact, I’m thinking of starting a hotline that bummed-out bah-humbugs and gloomy Grinches can call to get a heapin’ helpin of holiday happiness.

A recording of my angelic voice would pull them from the depths of their December despair. “Ho Ho Ho, this is Ross! Thanks for calling! Press 1 if you’re experiencing seasonal depression. Press 2 if your family is driving you crazy. Press 3 if you’re freaking out because you just ate a six-pound box of See’s Candies while watching Melissa Joan Hart in a very special ABC Family Christmas Movie about a homeless girl with a heart of gold who discovers that the Santa in the mall is her real father.”

I would watch the hell out of that movie, by the way.

I’m telling you, I love the holidays so much that if I were in charge of things, they would be celebrated all year long. You could totally observe Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or whatever jingles your bell.

I just adore the holiday season. Why? Because giving gifts makes me happy, receiving gifts makes me even happier, and good old-fashioned stick-to-your-ribs kinda holiday home cookin’ makes me the hap-hap-happiest of all!

That’s why I start celebrating Christmas at 12:01 a.m. the morning after Halloween. Sure, there’s still Thanksgiving to get through, but let’s be honest—that’s kind of a faux holiday. Where are the gifts? Where are the twinkle lights? Where are the shiny decorations? I’m sorry, but a cut-out construction paper handmade into a turkey does not a centerpiece make. It just ain’t gonna cut it.

Sure, Thanksgiving food is yummy. I always spend Thanksgiving in Los Angeles and celebrate the traditional way—you know, with a turkey. The only difference is that in California, we get a free-range fair-trade fat-free turkey that was raised on an organic farm and fed the Zone Diet by biracial yoga-instructing Wiccan lesbians. Delish!

However, my favorite Thanksgiving food-related tradition is absolutely sinful. Every year I make my favorite dish in the history of the entire world, my Nana’s Famous Potatoes. Nana was my great-grandma, and believe you me, the woman knew her way around a potato. She could really take a spud for a spin! I swore on a stack of pecan pancakes that I’d never divulge the supersecret family recipe, but like the plot twist in
Citizen Kane
, the plot twist in
The Crying Game
, and the plot twist in
The Sixth Sense
, it’s a secret that I just can’t seem to keep (Rosebud’s a sled, she’s a he, and Bruce Willis is dead. Oops, I did it again!).

Nana’s Famous Potatoes dish is a great go-to meal that you can bust out when you want to impress your friends and family. They’re gonna love it! It’s an irresistible cheesy, potatoey, Corn Flake-y dream come true. They’re beyond addictive. If I ever end up “guest-starring” on
Intervention
, it’ll be because I found a way to mainline Nana’s delicious taters straight into my bloodstream. I mean, it’s not like I have a real problem, man. I could quit it anytime I want, I just don’t wanna. And once you try ’em, neither will you.

So here, available to the public for the very first time ever, is the top-secret recipe for my Nana’s Famous Potatoes on the actual recipe card my mom sent me when I wanted to make it for my friends in 2002 at my first grown-up Easter (another worthwhile holiday):

It’s good hot, it’s good cold, and it’s even better on the second day. Normally, this recipe serves eight to ten people, but if you’re going through a particularly bad break-up, it just serves one. Enjoy!

So, yes, Nana’s Famous Potatoes are a Thanksgiving highlight. But as undeniably good as the food is during Thanksgiving, you know as well as I do that, bless its well-meaning little heart, Thanksgiving is just an opening act, a pit stop on the way to the main event on December 25.

It may sound harsh, but Thanksgiving shmankshmiving. I mean, for a holiday with the word
giving
right in its name, there really isn’t a lot of giving going on at all. Unless, of course, you count
giving
yourself heartburn by eating one too many helpings of Aunt Marjorie’s greasy green bean casserole or
giving
your cousin Barry the stink-eye for eating the last of the pumpkin pie before you got to taste any.

Worse yet? Unlike Christmas, Thanksgiving doesn’t even have
one
traditional song. I dare you to name a single example off the top of your head. Mmm-hmm, I didn’t think so, Pilgrim.

I rest my case. Christmastime is awesome, no matter what you celebrate. That’s why, if I had only three wishes, along with world peace and a
Friends
reunion (not necessarily in that order), I would decree that all citizens of Earth celebrate the holidays every single day of the year.

Now, I know all you Scrooges are scrunching up your noses and scoffing, “Christmas year-round? Ho Ho
No!
That would get
really
old
really
quick. Fa-la-la-lame!”

Well, I’ve got as many arguments in favor of my mandatory Year-Round Yuletide as I have twinkle lights on my tree. So, get ready for your snow globe to be shaken
and
stirred, ’cuz I’m about to stuff your stocking with some festive facts!

First, until recently, the holidays were the only time of the year when Starbucks offered their famously addictive sugar-free peppermint syrup. Now, I don’t know about you, but I go frappin’ crazy for a holiday drink. I used to get so angry every January when my barista would break the news to me, “So sorry, Ross. We don’t have sugar-free peppermint anymore. As I told you last year…and the year before…we only have it during the holidays.”

What a joke! I was irate. I wanted to personally punch the party pooper who prevented the public from perpetually purchasing pumps of peppermint! Why shouldn’t I be able to guzzle a guilt-free drink of my choice 365 days a year? But, luckily for us all, Starbucks saw the “lite,” and it now offers not only sugar-free peppermint, but many other holiday-inspired sugar-free syrups year round (including vanilla, hazelnut, and cinnamon dolce). God bless Starbucks for their sugar-free, calorie-free syrups. Seriously, they should get the Nobel Treats Prize for inventing those.

Secondly, Christmas has the very best holiday mascot of them all. Yep, it’s undeniable that Santa Claus towers over all the others, both figuratively and literally. I mean, who’s his competition: an Easter Bunny, the St. Paddy’s Day leprechaun, Cupid, and a freakin’
groundhog
? Puh-lease. Sure, Santa may be pushing about four hundred pounds, but he could run laps around those lazy bums!

Think about it! Santa has given us bikes, dollhouses, train sets, and Cabbage Patch Kids. The least we could do is return the favor and give him a little more respect. I mean, seriously, after all these years, he still just has a part-time job?!? Imagine the joy he could bring to girls and boys on a daily basis. The cookie-and-milk industry would benefit as well!

But, truthfully, the main reason I’m such a sucker for celebrating this particular season is that it brings back so many wonderful memories. Growing up in the Mathews family, Christmas wasn’t necessarily about the meaning of giving or celebrating baby Jesus’ birthday. Instead, Christmas was an excuse for my parents to get festively shit-faced with their friends, neighbors, and coworkers while my brother and I watched in sheer horror.

Absolutely everyone who was anyone in my small town made a point to stop by our open house for Christmas Eve. Why? Because my dad knew how to party. He’d put on his one and only red sweater, splash on enough Brut aftershave to drown an elf, and put away about a half a bottle of generic-brand whiskey before Mom had even put out the Lit’l Smokies and nut-covered cheese ball.

He’d have a nice buzz going on by the time people started showing up, and in an effort to really kick the party up a notch, he would put on his favorite cheesy Christmas music, sung by a Scandinavian artist named Stan Boreson (“Oh, I yust go nuts at Christmas, da best time of da year…”).

I remember being absolutely mortified when my English teacher (and my mom’s best friend) would, for one night, set aside her painstakingly precise enunciation and begin slurring and swearing like a sloshed sailor. And I remember hiding in shame when my dad’s friends from the school board all knocked back shot after shot of vodka chased with a hot buttered rum and began to arm-wrestle.

Yes, I was utterly mortified back then. But what I didn’t understand is that Christmas parties are like a weekend in Las Vegas—what happens there stays there. And now, to be completely honest with you, my parents’ holiday parties sound like they would’ve been a total freaking blast. It’s been nearly a decade since my dad died, but I would give absolutely anything to experience the holidays as a grown-up with him. I picture us arm in arm and drunk as skunks as we sing Stan Boreson songs at the top of our lungs. Just thinking about it, I can almost smell his aftershave.

Perhaps the dream of creating my own holiday traditions is why I’m so adamant about making a big deal of celebrating the holidays. Year after year, I find myself more and more insistent on starting traditions and forcing all those around me to follow through. For example, it is essential that my friends gather at our house before December 1 each year to assist in putting up our Christmas tree. As we hang ornaments, string lights, and get drunk on hot toddies, we
will
listen to Mariah Carey’s Christmas album on repeat whether they like it or not.

And I don’t just have one tree. What do you think I am, some kind of beginner? No! I simply must have one tree in the living room and one tree in the back of the house. It’s essential, not because I’m a fancy person who thinks he deserves two trees, but because I have some very, um, special ornaments that can’t be displayed for everyone to see. Let me explain…

The year was 2002. It was my first Christmas since graduating college and my first Christmas in my very own apartment, a two-bedroom cockroach-infested shithole I shared with my best friend, Taya. Located in one of Los Angeles’s less desirable neighborhoods, our apartment was on Normal Avenue. No joke. Normal Avenue. I can’t make this shit up.

Taya and I were determined to make our first official grown-up Christmas an event to remember, even if our combined total income that month was less than what most people spend on toothpaste. Sure, we were flat broke, but our holiday spirit could not be broken.

In order to decorate appropriately, yet within our nonexistent budget, we had to get creative. Instead of buying an expensive Christmas tree, we ventured out onto the rough streets of East Los Angeles, found a green pinelike tree (quite a feat in LA), cut off a branch, brought it home, and stuck it in an old coffee can. Viola! Insta-tree.

Our real creativity came out when it was time for us to decorate the tree. Fancy store-bought ornaments were a luxury we simply could not afford, but neither one of us was going to let our tree be naked for the duration of the holidays. Not in our household!

The idea hit us while we were walking to the coffee shop. It was our routine to grab a free newspaper on our route and read it while we sipped our coffee. You know those weird newspapers with “scandalous personal ads” and advertisements for “massage therapists” in the back? The borderline pornographic ones with naked women and men looking all sensual and sexy and ready to do things that are illegal in every state but Nevada? Taya and I loved reading those.

It was while we were reading the ads and laughing that it hit us both, almost simultaneously: we could use these sexy newspaper massage ads on our tree!

We grabbed a few more free newspapers and rushed home. Next, we found an old shoebox and cut out small ornament-sized circles and squares that we wrapped tightly in tinfoil. Finally, we cut out our favorite sensual massage ads and taped them to the tinfoil circles and squares, attached them to a string, and hung them on our tree.

We stepped back to admire our handiwork. It was a Christmas Miracle. The Miracle on Normal Avenue, you could say. Not only had we decorated our makeshift tree, we had done the unthinkable—we had created a new kind of holiday decoration. When we couldn’t afford an ornament, we created the Pornament. Talk about a “happy ending.”

And the real topper? We sacrificed an old
People
magazine, cut out a picture of Oprah—the Universe’s brightest, most angelic star—and placed her at her rightful spot atop our tree. You may now feel free to applaud.

So you see, the holiday season, specifically Christmas, has always been a beautiful time for me—a time of family, food, and fun, no matter how much money we had. It’s unlike any other time in the year. So humor me for a while, dear reader, and open your mind to the possibility of celebrating the holiday spirit 365 days a year. If you concentrate closely enough, you might just hear sugar plums dancing. You also might hear Suga’ Plumm dancing—she was one of the exotic dancers on our Pornaments. God bless us, every one.