Happy Thanksgivingukkah from Papa Smurf

 

 

 

Greetings to our blog-readers in Nigeria, Cyprus and Japan. We have chosen Papa Smurf as the best pop culture entity to wish everyone a Happy Tahnksgivingukkah as a large helium balloon of him is likely to be in tomorrow's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and because images of Sonic the Hedgehog, who will also be in the parade, are too darn hard to find!

 

We have put together a dream Thanksgiving dinner list, which can be found on our sister blog: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

 

Today (Thursday), we are celebrating Thanksgiving here in America, and this year the holiday overlaps with Hanukkah, so the term Thanksgivingukkah has been termed for the occasion.

 

 

Spiritual leader Kate Judd of the Shir Herharim Jewish community in Brattleboro, Vermont, told her local paper that she felt the mixture of the two holidays was a nice coincidence. Several years, we found out by chance that there is a synagogue in Waco, Tex., called the Congregation Agudath Jacob, where Rabbi Gordon Fuller is a minister.

 

http://wwwbajcvermont.org

 

http://www.aquath-waco.org

 

 

In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Hotel Strasburg in downtown Strasburg, a town of 5,000, that is an hour and half south of Washington, DC, will hosting a traditional Thanksging dinner to the public from 11:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m

 

http://www.hotelstrasburg.com

http://www.trianglevegsociety.org/

 

 

Tomorrow, in Durham, NC, the largest vegan/vegetarian Thanksgiving diner in America will take place. The event organized by the Triangle Vegetarian Society has already sold out for seating. But, the event, first organized in 1992, will presumably be taking reservations for Thanksgiving2014 soon.

Virtual Postcard from West Virginia_ The State Capitol

We took a monumental Thanksgiving week drive from Roanoke, Va., to Denver, Colo., which took us through eight states. We will be posting various images of each state throughout 'the work week."

Today, we start off with West Virginia. On Sunday, the first day of the trip, we had the following unique expericences:

1) In Roanoke, Va., less than one mile into the trip we were pulled for going 38 MPH in a 25 MPH zone; the police officer was kind enough to let us off with a warning..

2) In Pembroke, Va., a hamlet in Giles County we ate a foot-long vegeterian sub at Subway, which marked the first meal of the trip.

3) Near Princeton, W.Va., we believe we saw the first road kill of the trip, which came in the form of a dead deer.

4) In Beckley, W.Va, we noticed several far right, pro-coal industry billboards which accused President Barack Obama of being a 'jobs killer;" this seems like a waste of fnds as West Virginia was not a swing state.

5) In Charleston, W.Va., we drove by the state capitol shown above.

Well, that is all for today; we're still a bit fatigued, but we can send you a link to today's "Blondie" comic srip: http://www.blondie.com

http://www.wvtourism.com
http://www.visitwv.com

Happy Thanksgiving from Charlie Brown

As is our tradition whenever there is a holiday, we like to wish it from a cartoon character, kitschy celebrity (such as Barry Manilow) or whacko politician (ie. Michele Bachmann). And, today we go with the legendary comic strip character Charlie Brown, the brainchild of Charles Schultz (1922-2000).

When I was tutoring a student taking an English class, I actually compared Charlie Brown to Willy Loman, the character at the center of Arthur Miller's stage play "Death of a Salesman," in order to get the student to grasp the play's themes and simplify them.

Charlie Brown made his debut in "Peanuts" on Oct. 2, 1950. Snoopy came into the picture two days later. The beloved pooch also made its Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade debut as a float in 1968, a full 16 years before a float for Garfield, the comic strip cat created by Jim Davis that debuted in 1978, made his way down lower Manhattan in 1986.

Today's parade also feature a reincarnation of a float for the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog and a float created by filmmaker Tim Buron, called Character B.

Charlie Brown is noted for his rivalry with Lucy van Pelt, who pulls the football away from him as she did in the very last original "Peanuts" strip on Feb. 13, 2000.

The Little Red Head Girl is the figure of Charlie Brown's infactuation, but since he represents futility across the board, he never gets to meet her_ not even for a date at Starbucks (yes, we are aware there were no Starbucks around in 1950; it was a joke). She never actually physically appears in any of the comic strips, but her face has been shown on tv specials for "Peanuts." The character usually appears in strips that were written by Schultz around Valentine's Day.

Charlie Brown is also associated with the holidays because of both the Thanksgiving special, which first aired on Nov. 20, 1973, and the Christmas special, which premiered on Dec. 9, 1965, before folks in the United States started celebrating Christmas in September!

SIDE DISH: As we reported yesterday, my alma mater Radford University played the Univeristy of Kentucky, the #2-ranked men's basketball team, in Lexington, Ky., last night. And, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the dreaded football, the Highlanders came up very short in an 88-40 loss to the Wildcats. Terrence Jones scored 17 points for the home team; Jonathan Edwards scored 10 points and grabbed eight rebounds for RU.

SIDE DISH TWO: Yes, folks started lining some time ago for the Black Friday Sale at Target which gets underway at midnight here on the East. According to a tweet from "The Charlotte Observer," some 15 customers had started lining up at the main Charlotte, NC, Target store circa 8:00 p.m., a full hours before the madness begins.

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Laundry Time

We dedicate this entry to our good friends at The Wishy Wash Laundromat in Silver Spring, Md., (actually we don't know a single person who works there at all!). They are open from Monday-Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. And, on weekends, they are operating from 6:00 a.m.-11:00 p.m.

I got this idea while doing a ton of laundry at my mom's over Thanksgiving. Of course, Gizmo the cat made sure to sit on top of my clothes after they were all folded up!

Happy Thanksgiving/Black Friday from Roy Rogers

Yes, of course, we are aware that cowboy singer/actor Roy Rogers (1911-1998) is no longer with us, but why should that stop him from wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, as it is now in Mumbai!

It is still only 6:08 p.m. in San Francisco where author/blogger Christian Lander who hit it big with his first book "Stuff White People Like" will appear at Books Inc on Chestnut Street on Dec. 2. Lander then travels to nearby Berkeley, Calif., on Dec. 3 to visit Pegasus Books.

Lander is also going to visit two of my favorite bookstores in les etats unis early next year when he stops at The Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colo., on Wed., Jan. 12 at 7:30 p.m. He then ventures just outside the 303 area code (whoops! We stand corrected Denver IS in the 303 area code) to visit the Tattered Bookstore in Denver on Jan. 13, also at 7:30 p.m.

But, for you red state folks who obviously stumbled upon the wrong blog, fear not, my dear mom's home state of South Carolina which just elected one of Sarah Palin's crazed mama grizzly cubs for governor in Nikki Haley is having tax-free buy as many guns as you like day for the gun wacko Yosemite Sam-types who are eagerly going to sneak across the border from the Charlotte-metro area and stack up on some ammo.

One such place is Aim Right Guns and Ammo in the border town of Fort Mill, SC, (yes, we wondering if the name suggests a political message too) which features photos of a local kid who took out a Bambi Quentiin Tarantino-style.

If that doesn't satisfy one's gun lust, there is Nichol's Store just down the road in Rock Hill, SC, which will open on Black Friday, which is also Tax Free Day for all your glock and magnum needs, at 8:00 a.m. sharp.

However, if you're a conservative guy who prefers a night of good music to a deer-hunting trip to West Virginia, you can enjoy Roy Rogers Jr. himself (well, there are some liberals who like country and western shows, I suppose, but I imagine they have to keep wery, wery quite around their Elmer Fudd buddies) will be performing at the Mickey Gilley Theatre in Branson, Missouri, until mid-December.

But, irregardless if you're a fellow booky liberal intellectual type or if you're a right-wing maniac who likes to get his ass up at 3:30 a.m. to shoot woodpeckers, we hope you have a fun and safe Thanksgiving/Black Friday....just be sure to wear blaze orange if you're going to walk in the woods in South Carolina!

Thanksgiving Day Blog-a-Thon Starts with Shakespeare Quote

Since there is not too much going on during Thanksgiving Day here at my mom's house in gorgeous Galax, Va. (not really where I am, nor is it where mom lives), I thought I would have Thanksgiving Day Blog-a-Thon, which means that in the next 24 hours, I will attempt to have three posts up on both of my blogs.

We start with The Bard, aka William Shakespeare, because a newly remodeled version of the original Shakespeare Theatre is supposedly getting set to open in Stratford-on-Avon, England, but our intern Javier went home to Honduras for Thanksgiving so we don't have time to actually verify this.

However, we can somewhat confirm that the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va., which has been renamed at least 14 times (well, not really, but at least three times for certain) is staging the last performances of three Shakespeare plays this weekend, including "Henry IV, Part 2" (ends Nov. 26), "Taming of the Shrew" (ends Nov. 28) and "Othello" (ends Nov. 27).

The ever-gorgeous and very talented Shakespearean actress Ginna Hoben from the company is getting set to perform her one-woman show called "The Twelve Dates of Christmas," starting on Nov. 30. Hobben wrote the play as well, and it supposedly makes fun of my gender (which is male), dating and Christmas.

Due north of Staunton, in Washington, DC, The Folger Library will be performing Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors" starting on Jan.25, 2011. It will run through March 6.

And, my Facebook friend Andrew Neal may well have a comic book version of "Hamlet" or "Romeo and Juliet" at Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC, which is having a Black Friday sale on Black Friday. Featured items will include Scott Pilgrim t-shirts, Giant Microbes and Pokemon cards. They also have plenty of Archie's Comics (the above cover is an obvious satire of "Macbeth" with Jughead) on-hand. As it turns out, there is an English company called Shakespeare Comics which actually puts Shakespeare's works into comic book versions for young readers.

Here is our quote from Willy himself:

"Everyone ought to bear patiently the kindness of his own conduct."

Lastly, for those keeping track today's trending topics include Cookie Monster, Freddie Mercury, North Korea and Ugly Betty. Please, don't bother asking us why!

Silly Photo to Fill Space: Tofu Turkey

I sure hope my mom in Mount Airy, NC (not where she actually lives) does NOT opt to put tofu turkey on our table, but irregardless if you're a vegan or a right-wing nut or both, or if you live in Provo, Utah, or Provincetown, Mass., we wish you a pleasant Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

My vegan friends will be happy to know this image is of a tofu turkey. But, I am not having either tofu turkey or the real thing for Thanksgiving this year.

For details, see th entry in my sister blog Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time, available through a link from this blog.