This year Thanksgiving got off to a rocky start. The older I get, the more I become a creature of habit and ritual. And for as long as I can remember, my start-of-the-holiday-season ceremony for Thanksgiving morning was getting the turkey prepped and shoved into the oven.
However, this year we decided not to cook a turkey. Though this robbed me of one of my favorite holiday rituals, it will allow me to avoid choosing between two less popular observances: the Vespers Sunday Disposal of Half a Rotten Turkey Carcass or the Easter Sunday Disposal of Two or Three Ziploc Bags of Freezer-Burned Turkey.
Fortunately, I still have the Macy’s Day Parade to comfort me. This year I turned up the sound for part of it. I also recorded it on the DVR so I could fast-forward through the ads and the marching bands (and while we’re on the subject of marching bands, honestly Blue Springs, where does any Kansas City area school district get the money for this kind of nonsense?).
Normally I wouldn’t even bother noting any of the ads, but this year one campaign proved to be a step below the rest. Dear Target, your Amy Sedaris knock-off spokeswoman comes across as dangerously insane, not cute and quirky. Thus you’re the sole recipient of this year’s Worst Ad. All the other categories are two-way ties.
I don’t follow Broadway’s doing closely enough to know if this was something from a musical or just one of our nation’s many cover bands, but whatever led CBS’s coverage off with a Beatles act became an early co-recipient of the Worst Musical Number award. “McCartney” was mouthing the lyrics so dramatically that I recognized “Get Back” without even turning the sound up.
Despite dominating out of the gate, the faux fab four ended up sharing the prize with whoever decided to make a musical out of Elf. I turned up the sound briefly just to see what kind of song they’d make out of the store decoration scene and was instantly sorry.
More than usual this year I found myself distracted by things going on in the background. For example, the talking heads weren’t anywhere near as interesting as the video billboards behind them. Sometimes the ad messages were instantly apparent, but in other cases a funny camera angle transformed a board into a colorful bit of surreal imagery.
That would have been the Biggest Distraction except for one part of the parade itself: the clowns. They help hold down the balloons. They hand out candy. They generally meander around the parade route. For the most part they seemed to be typical specimens, merrily capering or at least smiling their way through temporary employment. But every once in awhile if you look really closely you can see someone who just doesn’t quite have the clown spirit, someone a little too sullen or surly or otherwise New Yorky to be worthy of the greasepaint. My particular favorite was the clown with a bucket of glitter who waited until he was on camera, walked up and threw a big wad of it right in another clown’s face. Happy holidays!
Oddly, the tie for Most Annoying Moment didn’t involve anything inherently wrong with a float or balloon. The first came courtesy of a float promoting the upcoming video release of Despicable Me. The float itself was inoffensive, but it kept making the most annoying chuckling noise. After 30 seconds I was reminded of my pledge to keep the sound off. I can only imagine what state of raving madness it would provoke for anyone who had to ride the float from the beginning of the parade route to the end.
The other why-did-I-turn-the-sound-on moment involved the Build-A-Bear Workshop promo float. It provoked an unbearable barrage of bear-related puns from the broadcast booth.
One thing I always wondered about the balloons is if they wouldn’t be scary for kids, these huge monster things seeming more menacing than fun. In general I hope that isn’t the case. But the folks who came up with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid balloon decided to push things a bit. The thing looked alternately terrified or homicidal, depending on what angle the wind blew its free-floating right arm into. Thus it shared the Most Frightening Moment honor with the mummified corpse of Joan Rivers astride the Snow Queen float.
Even back in my grad school days I wasn’t exactly a connoisseur of controlled substances. Every once in awhile something comes along and reaffirms the value of this life choice, supplying a Moment That Made Me Grateful I Wasn’t Stoned at the Time. Two such moments cropped up during the parade: a pizza dough twirling drill team and The Young Americans, an Up-With-People-esque group that did a dance in disturbing penguin costumes.
Finally, any pursuit of a cherished childhood experience has the unavoidable side-effect of producing at least a couple of Most Painful “I’m Getting Old” Moments. The Sesame Street float inevitably has this effect. At least a few of the original cast members always show up. But what really does the trick are the Muppets. They’re a changing. I recognized Big Bird, the Cookie Monster and Grover. None of the rest of them were on the show when I watched them as a kid.
But that was a birthday present compared to the Ocean Spray float. For starters, the float itself featured a gathering of oversized animals enjoying Thanksgiving dinner. The float-riding folks interspersed among these giant woodland creatures suggested a Food of the Gods holiday feast. Semi Home Made Sandra Lee didn’t help matters much.
The real oh-I’m-so-old feature, however, was Arlo Guthrie riding a platform and singing “This Land Is Your Land.” To his credit, he’s aging well. But his appearance brought me mindful of listening to his music – both recorded and in concert – in my younger years. A dump closed on Thanksgiving indeed.
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