160over90 Employee Endures His Most Depressing Thanksgiving to Date

November 29, 2010 • 4:02 pm • POSTED BY Kyle Arango

PHILADELPHIA—Designer Mike Burton started the Thanksgiving holiday week on a high. Fresh off an above-mediocre performance at the annual Art Director’s Club Foosball Tournament in NYC and with only a three-day week ahead, all seemed right in the world for the 28-year old Kent State graduate.

Come Wednesday evening things began to change.

It started with the post-five-pitchers-of-margaritas decision not to catch his 8 a.m. flight back to Ohio to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Instead, he rationalized the four-day weekend would be better spent catching up on things.

When questioned what things he had to catch up on, the cherub-faced Burton said, “Uh you know, projects: like updating my website, sprucing up the pad and coming up with new facial hair configurations.”

To Burton’s dismay, these projects didn’t take as much time as he expected. He then spent the majority of the day watching TBS, starting with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, followed by Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, The Mask and the first half hour of The Truman Show. “That movie was a little too emotional for me, so I switched to the History Channel’s all-day marathon—Happy Tanksgiving. It was about tanks, which was pretty sweet.”

Mealtime was equally as depressing for the Com Arts winner. Instead of the traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, Burton opted for a mostly liquid meal of good beer, decent beer, not-so-good beer, wine and a half of a bottle of Root.

After a run to 7-11 for some bacon taquitos and a bag of Muchos, Burton returned home just in time to catch the last half of Bruce Almighty. At which point he admitted that sometimes he wished Morgan Freeman really was God.

Burton spent the remainder of the weekend mostly bottomless pacing between his computer and the couch. Friends of Burton quickly became aware that something was awry by his numerous and increasingly disturbing Twitter posts over the weekend, which included “Pizza Flags of the World,” “I am Sir Lord Baltimore” and “Ron Swanson Breakfast Buffet.”

Friend/co-worker/antagonist Daniel Blackman planned to meet up with Burton later in the weekend but was unable as he was still recovering from his own holiday experience, which included 16 hours in a rental car with a busted radio and an OutKast CD jammed in the player.