Thanksgiving Isn't a Holiday

Thanksgiving to me means getting up at nine in the morning, chugging black coffee mixed with Kahlua, and watching perhaps the greatest annual television event ever: the Macy's Parade. No, I'm serious, fuck you if you don't like the parade, especially since it's the only thing that validates the bullshit packaged with this meaningless day. For three hours, the last place network blows the wad it saved by defunding its other shows all over your screen. While you sit on your ass and enjoy, those hard working men and women (mostly men) brave the elements head on to bring you the absolute best in entertainment.

 Fucking American heroes. They might as well be in Iraq.

Thanksgiving means nothing. Not even, "Thanksgiving is stupid", or "Thanksgiving used to mean something". Thanksgiving means nothing at all, and it meant even less than that until Macy's bought it in 1924. Since then, we have all had a reason to gain consciousness on the last Thursday of November, and up until that point in time the day would have been better used as a full work day. At least then something other than asinine rituals that further materialistic ends and immense personal greed would come out of it.

Thanksgiving is a twenty-four hour window into vacuous needs and vapid solutions for those needs. Thanksgiving is a tailgate party to Christmas, hanging out in the parking lot of the arena, passing out beers to sixteen-year-olds, promising them a great time at Christmas, but hey, let's chill for a bit, listen to my stories about seeing the Scorpions in '88. Thanksgiving should be abolished, as it truly serves no purpose.

But keep the parade. I love the balloons, and David Alan Grier's commentary, and figuring out who's lip syncing and who's trying to keep from passing out due to exposure. I especially like how every year they stroll out a Native American-themed float, just as a way of saying, "hey, water under the bridge, white people". If they made the parade a full twenty-four hours long and called that Thanksgiving, I would fully support it. The parade represents a sense of unity and camaraderie between Americans as we celebrate walking down the street in the cold. That's what this day is really about; turning up your collar, facing the icy winds that herald winter's approach and saying, "fuck yes". The pilgrims can suck a high hard one.

I mean, does anyone ever stop and think about what we're all being commanded to celebrate by big-box retailers and our own federal government? White douchebags sailing to someone else's country, forcing their religious beliefs down the throats of the locals, and deciding then and there that this was a day to be remembered. You know, when you say it out loud, like really spit it into your Grandpa's face, Thanksgiving  makes you feel like an asshole for celebrating it.

Plus, in what way is that event significant to our history, or to that of the world at large? We have about as much in common with the pilgrims as we do with Leif Ericsson or Christopher Columbus, two people who did exactly what the pilgrims did, albeit centuries before and with much greater success. Why are we supposed to get the whole family together to celebrate a group of people who failed collectively in their only historic enterprise? Fuck the pilgrims.

Lastly, there seems to be a minority of Americans who find spiritual significance in Thanksgiving, saying that because the pilgrims were of puritan-protestant faith, the day should be a commemoration of God helping his followers find a new home. That's a load of shit-dick, because the writings that catalog the events of the First Thanksgiving don't appear until 1850, a scant nineteen years after Abraham Lincoln decided God liked us enough for us to have a pre-Christmas in November. No, really. So Lincoln just so happened to pick a day of significance to the Christian God, thus sealing our nation's allegiance to a bronze-age education for centuries to come. Great job, beardo.

Mourt's Relation is the only publication of the era that could possibly have included an honest account of the First Thanksgiving, except it was written by a man who didn't live in Plymouth colony at the time, and was only ever affiliated with Thanksgiving in 1841, so no dice there either.

Thanksgiving has no meaning whatsoever, except as a free day off to watch the awesomest thing ever forever on television. Though I suppose by the measure of our time, that's more than enough to consider Thanksgiving a religious holiday.

Old People: A New Genre in Film

A few nights ago, I went to the movies to catch a late-night showing of Gravity, because I really wanted to watch Sandra bullock die in space. I left the theatre disappointed, but that's a story for another time. The movie was bland and forgettable, but one thing that did stick out in my mind was a trailer for the latest Stallone picture: Old Guys Boxing.

I know what you're thinking: another fucking Rocky movie. Actually, Stallone isn't portraying Balboa in this movie (for some reason), but rather a completely different old Italian boxer who wants to fight his way out of retirement. Who could possibly think this was a re-hash of other Stallone movies, or that DeNiro was thrown in to make people say, "they were good together in Cop Land, so logically this movie will be even better"?

But that's not the only unoriginal old-person-movie slated to hit theatres soon; take a look at Last Vegas, starring three old white guys and Morgan Freeman as their black friend.

Aside from also featuring De Niro not even bothering to act anymore, the movie boasts four male friends who journey to Vegas for a bachelor party and wind up in a series of zany misunderstandings and yuk-filled hijinkery. Sounds a lot like a movie I've seen three times already.

Compare these two surefire shitstorms to movies like Red, It's Complicated, and Hope Springs. Old people are invading our cinemas and remaking our films, presumably to take out all the rap music and sass-back.

Aside from being pandering drivel, these movies are just not entertaining. I mean, who decided old people needed their own movies anyway? Most of the old people I know are dead, and the ones who are alive sleep through every movie they watch. Plus, a lot of these old-people-films (I'm going to call them OPFs from now on) feature sex and violence as predominant themes. Who decided our old people should be having sex with each other? Senior pregnancy rates are at an all-time low; let's keep it there. The violent content doesn't really bother me personally, but if your target audience wore pacemakers and struggled to breath while eating, would you litter your films with explosions and dismemberments? Unless you wanted the aisles of the local CineMagic to be a writhing mass of coronary episodes, you'd tone it down a shade.

To recap, these movies are poorly written, poorly acted, poorly planned, and poorly reviewed. So why do we keep seeing them pop into theatres? I mean, I like The Expendables as much as anyone, but that doesn't mean I wanna see old dudes in every movie. Also, why is it that whenever Hollywood needs an old black man, Morgan Freeman is immediately given the part? It's like no one even considers Delroy Lindo anymore.

Did you motherfuckers even see Crooklyn?!

 

The madness must stop. Old people, stop making movies. And if you insist on watching these shitty movies, keep them to yourselves. I imagine all the world's old people being kept in prisons, but instead of like barred windows and armed guards, because everyone in the prison is old and all, I picture like satin drapes and really nice comforters on all the beds. In these prisons, the old people can live as they please, complaining about the temperature of their bath water, accusing the ethnic staff of stealing, and watching these dreadful films in solace. We'll say we'll come to visit but we never will. And eventually the prisons will stop medicating those who have overstayed their mortal welcomes, and the unmedicated will be left to wander into the wilds to be taken by the elements. We'll call them 'retirement homes', and all of them will be in Florida.

Until my glorious transmission comes to pass, I suggest we turn the tactics of the elderly against them. I want everyone who reads this post to write an angry, poorly spelled, directionless letter of disgust to any movie studio; bonus points if you accuse the studio execs of indoctrinating viewers into the Jewish agenda. Eventually, the studios will relent, as a letter-writing campaign is legally binding in California. Let's stop the Gray Menace before they come out with a remake of Sex & the City.