Thanksgiving comes around again.

I always feel bad for people who have to work on Thanksgiving, especially when I'm one of them. But hey, I'm not complaining. At least I'm working on freelance editorial stuff against hard deadlines. I'm able to be home in my sweats. I'm not opening up the stupid store to herds of Early Black Friday loons and possibly looters. I got it easy. 

And I don't feel like I'll be missing much. Sure, I would love to veg out and watch the MST3K Turkey Day Marathon via Pluto, but A) my wife isn't a fan and B) the dog knows when I'm being lazy and promptly takes steps to prevent me from enjoying it. Seriously, this guy will sleep 14 hours a day, but if I try to loaf without actually sleeping, he will demand to go for a walk, or play outside, or at least freeze on the porch. So I don't get to watch much TV anymore. 

Two of my old Thanksgiving favorites are on the Nix List. I gave up on the Macy's Parade years ago when it became little more than an advertisement to get the moneyed folks from Connecticut and Westchester to come to town to see Broadway shows that I would not watch without being paid in the mid-five figures. And football? Is Roger Goodell still ruining -- uh, running -- the NFL? No thanks. Besides, the local teams suck, which reduces my interest in what the rest of the league is doing. 

So while I will be at home, working, I will be having the traditional feast, and it is really a treat. Do not think I am not grateful, because I am. I am just very, very tired. Combine that with the turkey and I think even the dog -- spunky though he may be -- is not going to be able to dislodge me from the sofa after eats. I suppose he'll try, though.  

Maybe I'd better have seconds.

Southerners on Broadway.

Contrary to some people's reminiscences, our culture in the 1970s was not all America hating post-Vietnam Watergate-obsessed conspiracy theories.  

In fact, almost 50 years ago a musical hit the Broadway boards, based on a Civil War story and starring Southerners. It was called Shenandoah.

The musical was based on a 1965 Jimmy Stewart film, and written by Peter Udell, Philip Rose, and James Lee Barrett (who wrote the movie), with music by Gary Geld. It ran for more than a thousand performances. It told the story of a family of yeoman farmers in the Shanandoah valley, a large non-slave-owning family who wanted nothing to do with the burgeoning war but were caught up in the horror of it anyway. These were the kind of people who in real life caused West Virginia to split from the eastern side and join the Union. 

Shenandoah starred John Cullum -- familiar to many people today from his appearances on Law & Order. He had been blowing the doors off the 46th Street Theater as South Carolina's John Rutledge in 1776 a few years earlier -- a role he repeated in the 1972 film version -- and played a scheming playwright in Ira Levin's Deathtrap a few years later. A very versatile actor, who would win the Tony for Shenandoah. (It did not win Best Musical; that was the year of The Wiz. The book got Best Book of a Musical, though.) It was promoted heavily on local TV, something that didn't happen only at Christmastime in those days. 

Shenandoah was typical of the Americana that was in the air leading up to the Bicentennial. People who think of seventies culture as nothing but disco and pet rocks and cheesy sitcoms might be surprised how reflective the nation was in that era, and yet celebratory. This musical entered that spirit. The story is tough -- the large family suffers at the hands of Union soldiers and Confederate deserters, a dramatic example of Trotsky's line that “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Moreover, the patriarch, Charlie, is a man whose faith in God has been wrecked before the play begins by the loss of his wife, and his is a spiritual journey as tragedy unfolds. I can't imagine a current musical even taking religion seriously enough to make it the dramatic center of the story. Audiences now would be yelling, like Job's wife, "Curse God and die!" 

And it's hard to imagine that a play about sympathetic Southerners, even those opposed to slavery and the War Between the States, would be a hit on Broadway. It would be panned as being a musical about "nice Nazis." Because people are stupid and know nothing and just want to shout. 

Shenandoah was revived in 2019, although not on Broadway. I'm not certain it could run on the Great White Way at all, not just because it takes place in the Confederacy. Broadway musicals are ridiculously expensive to produce, far more so than in 1974, and these days there has to be a built-in audience before the thing even opens or investors won't touch it. So a musical has to be constructed like a commodity around well-known pop songs (Jersey Boys, Smokey Joe's Café, MJ, Beautiful, and on and on) (and even then it can be a disaster) or be built around a movie that has a strong following (Elf, Legally Blonde, Back to the Future, all that Disney crap, and oh so much more). Foreign performance rights are also crucial to recouping investment, and a play based on a time in American history does not sound like a layup for audiences in Europe and Asia. While revivals of past hits are a good bet, Shenandoah never reached the rarified atmosphere of a few megahits like Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, The Wiz, or Gypsy. Investors may take a flyer on something new, if it's woke enough, and take a bath on it, patting themselves on the back all the way to the tax write-off. 

As we gear up for our Semiquincentennial in 2026, I see no sign in the current culture of reflection or celebration. They revived 1776 with stunt casting -- an "All-Female, Transgender, and Non-Binary Broadway Revival," although the internal contradictions of that casting requirement will make your head spin. It makes one wonder if the John and Abigail Adams numbers are based on hot girl-on-girl action, because that's where our culture is now. Ahistorical, childish, and stupid. 

I doubt we're going to make it to the Tricentennial at this rate. 

Needing a little Christmas.

On Thanksgiving I took Izzy for a long walk around the neighborhood early in the morning. I was clearing off some room for calories, and I wanted to make sure he had enough exercise so he'd not be jumpy later. We didn't see a soul -- which can be good; at least no one threatened to sic the cops on us. But I was surprised to see that a lot of people had already started decorating for Christmas. And not just the Italians! (Sorry, people of Italian extraction, but you're always first up with the lights and you know it.)

I mean, sure, the stores have been full of lights.

Uh... not this kind. Think we'd be seeing these in Lowe's
if New York hadn't caved to the cannabis lobby? (I call it Soma Lite.) 

But why were Christmas lights coming out this early? 

It surprises me because it's been pretty chilly lately. If November had been warm, I could understand people getting the outdoor décor up early to avoid doing it in frigid temps, but that's not been the case. I think it may be warmer next week than it has been. So what's the secret?

Maybe we just need a little Christmas. 

The Swan is back!

"We Need a Little Christmas" -- undoubtedly the most famous song from the 1966 Jerry Herman musical Mame, based on the 1958 film and before that the 1954 novel Auntie Mame -- is often heard as a Christmas song, and I guess it has to be. But the point of the song is that it is too early to actually have Christmas Day (complete with gift-giving), because it's just a week past Thanksgiving. And yet we must, because everything is wrong and we're in the dumps. The wealthy Mame Dennis has lost her fortune in the Wall Street Crash of '29 and has to go to work -- something she's not accustomed to, to say the least -- and gets sacked promptly. She goes home to her nephew, who will be taken from her if she can't support him, and her loyal household staff, whom she can't pay, and she herself is staring penury in the face. So they decide that whether it's too early or not, they're going to celebrate Christmas, because what better way to find joy in the depth of darkness? Mame was a YOLO / Live in the Day type before it was popular.

It's a great moment in the show. But behind it is the genuine threat of loss, pennilessness, and separation. (Everything turns out fine -- spoiler alert! -- because a wealthy customer from the store she got fired from shows up and marries her almost immediately after the number. Because it's a Broadway comedy, not Tolstoy.)

Anyway, my point is, maybe the people in my area feel the need to get that garland up. Our taxes and living expenses have skyrocketed; our salaries, not so much. Our part of New York mostly voted to change the political and economic direction in the state, but the places where they have tons of money or live off the government think things are just dandy and they outvoted us. The news talks about idiocy and corruption at all levels of society, about violence and killers running free, about social breakdown, even about war. 

So, maybe we need a little Christmas. 

Sounds good to me. I plan on getting some decorations up during the week, if I have time. I may even get the tree started today, which I never do before December. Christmas is all about light in the darkness, and I'm sick of darkness. 

Well begun is half done.

Thanksgiv-a-lingle.

So, this was making the rounds.

And . . . yeah. It's hard to argue with it, actually. For such a popular holiday as Thanksgiving we ought to have some popular songs to celebrate it. Instead, what do we have? What comes to mind for you?

"Over the River and Through the Woods" -- I think this old wheezer got its second legs by being sung at the end of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving by the gang riding -- in what now would be ILLEGALLY! -- in the back of the Browns' station wagon. And what is that song all about? Going to Grandma's house for a celebration in a snowy season. Sounds more like Christmas than Thanksgiving to me, unless you live in Buffalo, God help you. But indeed the poem was published under the title "The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day" in 1844, according to Dr. Wikipedia. No one knows who set it to music. 

So that's one, but I guess it doesn't count as a "banger." Neither do a lot of our popular Christmas songs, though, and I'm not sure I'd like to see a lot of them done in a modern style, let alone as Thanksgiving songs. "All I Want Stuffed for Thanksgiving Is You" may seem to have a kind of charm, but -- nah.

It's easy to say that Thanksgiving's theme of gratitude is too solemn for ribaldry, but come on. It certainly can't top the night of the birth of Christ for solemnity, and we've been celebrating that in every degree from contemplation to drunken spree for two thousand years. So let's try digging a little harder in the hit holiday mine shall we?

I have to say, it doesn't get much easier. Even Mark Steyn, the radio deejay turned political commenter, wrestled with it in his book A Song for the Season. For Thanksgiving, he chose the utterly unexpected song "Jingle Bells" -- unexpected, that is, unless you'd read his essay about it when it originally appeared on his blog.  

Just in time for Thanksgiving, here comes, er, "Jingle Bells" - which was written not for the Yuletide season but, allegedly, for Thanksgiving. In Boston, in the fall of 1857, the city's leading music publisher, Oliver Ditson, introduced the world to a new song called "The One-Horse Open Sleigh".

Steyn notes that racing about fast as possible in unprotected sleighs pulled by speedy nags -- and maybe with speedy nags, IFYKWIM(AITYD) -- was quite the pre-Civil War craze. New England certainly can get cold enough by Thanksgiving to let loose the horses. (It's 36 degrees in New York City as I write this, and you can usually subtract a few degrees and add a couple of inches of ice and snow to estimate the weather in Boston.) Steyn writes: 

...what I find oddest are the claims of Christmas Songs Made In America and many similar books that the song was written for "his father's Sunday School class on Thanksgiving 1857". I'm willing to believe that at Thanksgiving a young man's fancy turns to snow, at least in those distant days before Al Gore's global warming project sent the mercury rising. But no Massachusetts Sunday School is going to teach its charges a song whose lyrical preoccupations are racing, gambling and courting:

A day or two ago
I thought I'd take a ride
And soon Miss Fannie Bright
Was seated by my side...
Now the ground is white
Go it while you're young
Take the girls tonight...

Hmm. He's got a point.

But it's no good; all songs about snow activities are eventually sucked into the Christmas oeuvre, and "Jingle Bells" got there a long time ago. 

What are the other choices, then? "Turkey Lurkey Time" from the 1969 Broadway show Promises, Promises sounds promising, but it's A) all about Christmas and B) got a title that makes me want to Hurly Wurly. Adam Sandler did a comedy song on Thanksgiving almost 30 years ago, but we're not looking for parodies here, and if we were, we'd look for better ones. (It's no "Chanukah Song," is what I'm saying.) I applaud Ben Rector for giving it 100% on a country song:

It's fine -- it's got the usual country song lists -- goin' home, my town, families, football, love -- and maybe it's made it to the PA in your local supermarket, but it hasn't cut any ice here in the northeast as far as I can tell. It has some real heart, so thumbs-up on that, Ben.

A couple of years ago I noted that Irving Berlin took a crack at Thanksgiving for the film Holiday Inn, in which all the songs are pegged to different holidays with mixed results. The number "I've Got Plenty to Be Thankful For," is one of the better ones, but it's never become a standard -- maybe because Christmas does shove aside all Thanksgiving numbers, or maybe because it's a love song, and in the movie Bing does a rueful duet with his own recording, having a lonely Thanksgiving after his girlfriend has been stolen by Fred Astaire. As far as I can tell the song has never had a successful cover version. 

Surely the old-timers 100+ years ago in Tin Pan Alley coughed up a Thanksgiving song or two, right? Well, probably -- God knows they churned out songs on all kinds of topics, all day, every day, hoping one or two would stick in the public consciousness. I note there was a number called "A Thanksgiving Song" in a book of Tin Pan Alley tunes, but I can't track down whose it was and who may have recorded it. 

I admit I'm no musicologist, though. 

A search through the AllMusic site brings us many songs with Thanksgiving in the title, and I hope you'll enlighten me if any others have really made it to the big time. 

However, I do have a suggestion for an older number that really does suit the day. It's from a Broadway show, almost as old as Promises, Promises, but like that show also had a breakout hit (in the case of the former, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again"; in the latter, "Day By Day"). I'm referring to Godspell's "All Good Gifts," which hits every note in the purpose of the holiday of Thanksgiving. Yes, it's hippie music, but it's grateful hippie music. 

 And there it is -- we thank you, Lord, for all good gifts. Sounds like Thanksgiving to me. 

Seasonal song.

Long-time readers of this blog (who are all smart and good-looking) may recall that I have a penchant for amusing myself with making up songs when under duress. And surely one of those times is while standing in the frigid blasts of February on the ice, waiting for not one but two dogs to find a place to weewee. They're good boys, but I think there are two issues at play here:

1) When things are suddenly covered with ice or snow, their sense of what makes a good spot is compromised; and 

2) They're both built for cold and/or rainy weather by nature and they like being outside, and they're not above dawdling to stay there.

So I started singing them a little song. In my mind it goes like a jaunty little number from a musical, maybe mid-sixties, the kind of piece that hits the audience before they get restless, and maybe becomes a standalone hit if the rest of the production bombs. And it goes like this:

🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶

Let's go

Let's go out in the snow

Let's go out and go pee

It's good for you and it's good for me

We'll go

And yes, we won't be slow

What a happy chap you will be

Once you're relieved of all that pee

[bridge]

Call it urinate or micturate  

But don't you dawdle or diddle

It's freezing cold and I'm feeling old  

So buckle down, boys, and piddle

And you

You might even go poo

You might even go prance

Over the yard with a song and dance

[bridge]

A winterscape that you must escape 

But you're a most lucky fellow

The gals go marking their names in dark ink  

But you write 'em in yellow

And then

You'll be finished and when

You and I go inside

I'll warm my hide by the fireside

Then how happy we'll be

'Cause you'll have gone and gone pee. 

🚽🚽🚽🚽🚽🚽

Hey, if this thing could have a good run in New York, why not?

Sail some more.

I was thinking about a new project -- Sail Some More: The Columbus Musical. Doesn't that sound exciting? I've heard that historical musicals are all the rage now, and not quite so likely as other things to get canceled. 

Best of all, we can use existing songs for the show! Most musicals on Broadway no longer debut a raft of new numbers; they use songs very familiar to the audience. If we can get the rights to numbers like these, half the job is done! 

"Money (That's What I Want)" (Court of Ferdinand and Isabella)
"Come Sail Away" (Recruiting crew)
"Stuck Like Glue" (Sargasso Sea)
"Hello, I Love You" (The New World)
"Gold" (Got any dough?)
"Get Back" (Return to Spain)

And so on. 

Now, for a non-stupid take on Columbus Day, I recommend this short article by Dave Seminara in the incomparable City Journal about the destruction of Columbus statues throughout American cities, statues often paid for by proud but poor Italian immigrants of the sort who often faced discrimination here and did not think that films like Goodfellas were a how-to guide:

Columbus’s voyages to the New World did result in the decimation of Native American communities that lived under Spanish rule. But this was obviously not a premeditated genocide—neither Columbus nor anyone alive at the time understood what we now know about infectious diseases and germs. That makes no difference to the woke police, for whom no historical figure born decades or centuries ago can pass muster.

Or you can read my piece from 2017 on how America-hating Islamists have only themselves to blame for the creation of America. 

Here in New York, Governor Andrew "Evil Eyes" Cuomo, the biggest embarrassment to American Italians since Sacco and Venzetti, is unveiling a new statue not of Columbus but of Mother Frances Cabrini in Battery Park. Of course, this being New York, the reason Cuomo got involved is that the literally sainted nun was snubbed by the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm, mayor of New York, when she was putting together a program to honor prominent city women with statues. Cuomo used state funds to add Mother Cabrini. 

It's one of the few moves made by Cuomo that I think is acceptable. It's always worth raising another martini to Mother Cabrini. By doing it on Columbus Day, he also allows Italians to have something to celebrate that is not Columbus, so it is a clever move. Of course, he'd like to have some good press for anything at the moment, if you know what I mean. De Blasio doesn't seem to care anymore, though.

Manhattan has at least not yet lost its famous statue of the bold navigator in Columbus Circle on Central Park West. It helps that it's on the National Register of Historic Places -- also that it's 76 feet above a busy traffic circle and hard for the wokeistas to get at.

Not to mention that the city is still full of Italians who would probably be ready to kick some Antifass if they threatened it. 

Christopher Columbus was no saint, but he suffered plenty for his sins in this life, and most of the things he's hated for by the politically correct were things he didn't even intend to do. Keep alert up there, Chris; let us know if you see them coming for you. 

Fred!: The Musical.

As we know, major boffo Broadway and movie musicals have been written about famous people. People like Founding Father Al Hamilton (Hamilton), stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (Gypsy), gangster Legs Diamond (Legs Diamond), dictatorial wife Eva Perron (Evita), and guy who played Legs, Peter Allen (The Boy from Oz). Well, I got to thinking that my life has all the drama, pathos, comedy, and intrigue one could want to be a terrific musical. Can't you just see it?

Sure you can!

Now, you might quibble that all those other people are dead, and I am not. A mere technicality. Also, all these people are famous, and I am not. Aha! I reply. I will be famous when this musical opens and takes the Great White Way by storm!

I don't have a script yet, I confess. Nor do I have any songs. Nor can I choreograph, nor dance, nor do I even like dancing. But by God, I have song titles, titles that tell the tale of woe and triumph that means Fred! The Musical. Here's how it will look in the Playbill:

Act I

"Born in a Typewriter Case"
"Drive Ev'ry Expressway"
"There's No Business Like Publishing"
"Red Pencils in the Sunset"
"Another Hundred People (Just Got Onto My Bus)"
"Ol' Man Deadline"
"Suddenly Stupid"

 Act II

"Fugue for Ink-Stained Wretches"
"A Boy and His Blog"
"Gonna Wash That Hair Right Off of My Head"
"We Have Enough Clowns (Send No More)"
"The Improbable Dream"
"Make 'Em Smile Wryly and Say ISWYDT"
"Don't Cry for Me, Staten Island"

 If you have any suggestions for other showstoppers, feel free to leave them in comments. My people will call your people, when I get people.

The plan is to open it in two weeks, when all the other musicals are still closed from the Chinese death virus. We'll be the only show in town! And if The Man tries to close us down? Publicity! Call me, Broadway personages! Let's put on a show!

Why can't a man be more like a woman?

I had an idea to do a modern update of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, the beloved musical based on grumpy ol' George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.

In my modern version, manly and rugged fishmonger Eric Doolittle one day self-identifies as the dainty Eliza, upon which he (with full beard) stomps around London's West End in high heels and a bad wig. Etiquette expert Henry "Hank" Higgins makes fun of this Doolittle character's gruff voice and poor dressing skills. Shortly thereafter, Eric shows up at Higgins's office, demanding his help.

ERIC: I'm come to 'ave lessons, I 'ave, and pay for 'em too no mistake.

HANK: Well!!!! What shall we do with this baggage, Dickering?

ERIC: I want to be a lady in a flower shop 'stead of selling smelly fish in a rubber apron. But no one believes I'm a lady 'cause I ain't genteel-like. You said you could pass me off as a duchess, you did!

HANK: Oh, well, why didn't you say so? To the shaving mirror, my lad! We'll make a lady of you yet!

Following are various scenes of Hank teaching "Eliza" how to dress like a lady, including sashaying in high heels without looking like stilt-walking gorilla on training day; how to talk like a lady and not drop F-bombs all over the scenery; how to be genteel at tea and clever at conversation; all the sorts of thing Eliza wants to know.

Mind you, this is not a comedy. It's a deadly serious drama. What, are you crazy? This isn't Benny Hill or Milton Berle, you know! There's nothing funny about a burly man in a dress! NOTHING! Please don't burn down my theater!

The big twist comes in Act Two, where Eliza is exposed to society and finds out that these days all the wealthy toffs go swanning around in ripped-up jeans and trackies, like a glossy magazine image of working-class heroes, swearing like, well, fishmongers, acting like the oiks that they still despise. Crushed, Eliza returns to Higgins, who takes him in.

Now, I must confess that this story just seems to be sitting there for the grabbing, and for all I know it's the plot of every musical currently running on Broadway and the West End that is not based on the work of a Boomer band or a movie. I wouldn't know; I gave up on theater years ago. If not, and someone wants to pay me a million dollars for the rights, I would not put up a fight.

I think Shaw would like this idea, though. Like a lot of modern love stories, it has a ton of hate, and Shaw seemed to hate nearly everybody.

Beasts are bestial.

A buddy of mine took his family to the city to see the Broadway musical King Kong. It came as a surprise to me that there even was a musical based on the classic 1933 film. That almost sounds like an old MAD magazine parody of the current vogue for adapting dopey movies into Broadway shows (Legally Blonde, Elf, Hairspray, School of Rock, Rocky, Mean Girls, and so on).

The songs would seem to write themselves: "Skull Island Girl," "Gorilla My Dreams, It's You," "Oe'r the Rampage We Watched," "Take the El Train," "Shock the Huge Monkey," "There's a Broken Bone for Every Light on Broadway," "I'm on an Empire State of Building," and so on.

But sadly, they seem to have taken the idea seriously, with musical numbers like "Kong's Capture" and "Broadway Nightmare" (the latter of which sounds like me having to pay for show tickets).

To be fair, my buddy and his family enjoyed the show, calling it brisk and exciting, with amazing puppet work and other special effects to bring the big hairy title star to life. Hey, spectacle sells, which is kind of the whole point of the original movie -- bringing back the world's most amazing mammal to show him off to the New York crowds.

However, I take issue with the way the play sells itself in its PR materials:

"To her surprise, Ann finds an unexpected kindred spirit in this magnificent, untameable creature. But when Carl hatches a plan to capture Kong and display him to the New York masses, she’s faced with a terrible choice. Will Ann follow the call of her own ambition? Or can she find the strength to stand up for what’s right? Roaring with heart-pounding action, KING KONG is a gripping and spectacular story of unlikely friendship, unshakable courage, and breaking free from the cages others put us in."

So a monstrous, gigantic monkey with poor anger management skills is exactly the same as some guy whose dad wanted him to join the accounting firm or some teen girl whose mom didn't want her to get nose ring.

Kong, having broken free from the cages other put him in.

I know it wasn't Kong's fault that he was brought to the city; unlike Godzilla, he didn't up and decide to go to town one day. But according to the well-researched Killcounts page, King Kong kills 49 human beings in the original movie. White, black, native, urbanite, pagan, Jew, doesn't matter, Kong kills them all. If this is the guy Ann feels simpatico with, I'm never taking her out to lunch. "I eat soup with my hands! You can't keep me in your cage!"

I guess what irks me the most is that this sympathy and sentimentalism for wild animals has really reached a fever pitch. Not that I think we ought to shoot 'em, but I think we ought to realize that they are just fine with killing us, and we should not get too attached. That's how people wind up getting mauled by bears or jumping into jaguar pens. You may make pals with a pack of wolves or a grizzly bear, but try that when they're hungry or defending their turf and see how far you get.

And definitely don't try it with King Kong. He didn't get to be king by holding elections.

Wildebeestial.

Uh, hi. My name is Robby Jonson, that's Jonson with no H, and I'm a wildebeest. I was hoping to talk to you today about a problem that's been concerning me and the other guys for many years, and we were talking about it down at the union hall, and we decided it was time to speak out. The guys all took a vote and I, uh, got elected.

We're pretty sore about that stupid Disney Lion King movie. I know, I know, it's old, but wildebeest are very forgiving, and at first we thought it would flop and go away. Then it became this huge monster hit, and we said, well, it'll be gone soon enough from the theaters. Then the DVD, and that Broadway musical, and the ding-dong thing is still running! Pardon my French, there. I just get a little worked up.

We wildebeest are very angry about how the story makes us look. First of all, we're apparently too stupid to talk, unlike most of the other animals in the movie. Well, heck, I'm talking to you right now, amn't I? See, not so dumb. Second, we're shown like this plague of mindlessness that sweeps down over the veld and tramples everyone. We don't do that! Almost never!

Look at that picture! What are supposed to be, like, Spider-Man? Come on, Disney.

All this supposedly makes us accessories to murder, tools used by Scar to kill the king. Nothing could be further from the truth! We're peaceful, fun-loving folks, not brainless maniacs running amok to be used by evildoers. This is all wrong, Disney.

The worst thing of all is not even the unfair portrayal. The worst is the Circle of Life. And I'm speaking for the antelope here too. They asked us to put in a word about this.

Let's look at this heartless quote from the movie:

Mufasa: Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope. 

Young Simba: But, Dad, don't we eat the antelope? 

Mufasa: Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life. 

Now, what do you see here? That's right: The lion gets to live a full life and die of natural causes, and then turn into grass. The antelope dies in agony with the lion's teeth ripping off his hinder parts!

Sorry about the language, but this is cruelty, plain and simple.

So this is what we herd guys are up against, us, the antelope, the zebras, all the gang. We not only get killed by the lions and stuff, but we're supposed to bow down to this "king" like he's doing something helpful for us, and we're dying with lion teeth in our butts. And it's the so-called Circle of Life. Does this sound like a fair arrangement to you? Doesn't it sound more like the Circle of  Fattening Up the Lions?

Well, we're not taking it anymore. We're all boycotting Disney and we ask you to do the same. Stop the cycle of cruelty! Pray for prey! Herd lives matter!

Thank you.

Family friendly Thanksgiving Day parade.

After last year's preposterously awkward appearance by the cast of the musical Kinky Boots in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, parents are concerned about what garbage is going to come down the pike next. Sorry, prudes! You'll just have to accept the fact that there's no such thing as family-friendly anything anymore. Oh, sure, you got the Lena Dunham-inspired incest scene in Frozen cut from the DVD release*, but that's a rearguard action. You bluenoses had just better get used to having to explain things about sex to the kiddies before they're ready.

Really, people, relax. Your man Fred is on the scene to make sure everything will be family friendly this year. I mean, yes, I did go down to Macy's in Herald Square last year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to check things out, as seen in this photo.

And yet somehow this Kinky Boots thing escaped my notice. But I'll be more vigilant this time.

You're wondering if this year's telecast will feature the bloody torture song from the stage production of Criminal Minds, the naked sex scene from Hair: The Darker, Grittier Reboot, or the head-hacking scene from ISIS: The Musical Review**.

Well, relax. No way. For one thing, the forecast for Thursday is 43F, and SAG-AFTRA rules prohibit naked performance copulation in public when the temperature is below 60.

Also, NBC was embarrassed by the coverage last year, and this year has insisted that musical acts with explicit lyrics tailor their numbers for the home audience, maybe using a holiday twist***. So Meghan Trainor will be doing a cooking number called "All About That Baste"; Izzy Azalea will be crooning about dining with "Fork Love"; and there'll be a classic post-turkey lament from rap star Eminem called "Gas Like That." So we have a lot to look forward to this year.

After all, we spend a lot of time teaching the children the difference between "appropriate" and "inappropriate," so this Thanksgiving we're going to demonstrate that adults know the difference too****.


* Kidding.

** Still kidding.

 ***Yeah, that too.

****Nah. It'll be more inappropriate trash, probably worse than last year.