I spent my Thanksgiving replacing the giant concrete washtub in our basement with a smaller, plastic one that actually drains.  After getting all the plumbing hooked up, I stood for a good half hour, admiring my handiwork.  Then, my wife did the first load of laundry, and we immediately realized the tub was too small to hold the discharge from the washer, sending gallons of water on to my basement floor.  Back to square one.

We also spent the morning watching the Macy’s Day Parade with my kids, who seemed enthralled by the whole thing.  I got shivers when my daughter pointed at Miley Cyrus and said “Hey, it’s Hanna Montana.”  We have tried our best to shield them from overtly commercial junk like that, but it appears the force is just too great.  The seal has been broken.  The toothpaste is out of the tube.  The racoon is doing origami.  (I don’t know what that means.)

My kids also enjoyed the Rockettes quite a bit.  My 3 year-old son jumped up and started doing the high leg kicks and everything.  But when you get older, you begin to realize what a sham the Rockettes really are.  I mean, there are probably a million women in America that can do what they do (beaten out slightly my the 1.2 million women who have refused to give me their phone number.)  The appeal of the Rockettes, as I see it, is not that they are great dancers, but that they all dance in unison.  The dance moves are pretty boilerplate – the hard part is syncing the kicking and spinning up with 30 other women.

But should we really give them all that much credit for doing things at the same time?  Aren’t there other things that, if people did them simultaneously, we’d be better off?  Like, paying child support?

I also noticed that there was one African-American Rockette, which got me thinking.  If the whole aesthetic goal of the Rockettes is to provide a visual demonstration of similar women doing the same thing, doesn’t that kind of argue against having a Rockette of a different color?  Wouldn’t she stand out and break the whole continuity of the visual?  If not, why do they exclude other people with differences?  I’d love to see the first wheelchair-bound Rockette.

This actually became an issue later in the parade, when some high school dance team was doing their routine.  They were wearing skimpy uniforms, but since it was cold outside, they all had the flesh-colored long sleeves on.  But they showed one black girl on the dance team, and the flesh-colored shirts clearly weren’t the color of her flesh – they were made for white girls.  So either she had some horrible pigmentation problem, or she was forced to be white from the neck down for a day.  Really bizarre.

The highlight of the parade had to be when America got Rickrolled.  Some puppet float interrupted their kids song, bringing Rick Astley out to perform “Never Gonna Give You Up.”  A brilliant move on their part, cashing in on the Rickrolling cultural phenomenon sweeping the nation.  Had to be weird for Astley, lip-syncing to a song that he recorded 20 years ago.

Now, for your aural pleasure:

Since there’s no real official Thanksgiving song, I’d like to nominate “Thanksgiving Waves,” from Eef Barzelay’s album “Bitter Honey.”

This suggestion is slightly tongue-in-cheek, as the lyrics are darkly disturbing and may give you nightmares.  Here, listen.

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As a side note, I never really understood what the term “tongue-in-cheek” means.  If someone tries to tell you something while they have their tongue planted in their cheek, are they not to be trusted?  Have you actually tried to say something while poking your cheek with your tongue?  It’s impossible – and seems like it would be a tip off that you are saying something that might not be fully true.  Unless the term means something you say while planting your tongue in the cheek of the person you’re talking to, which is usually followed by a restraining order.