Thanksgiving Ramblings

-There was a bit of controversy yesterday when some former "American Idol" contestant was singing in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and was way off with his lip-syncing from one of the parade floats. Now, I wasn't watching it and it is no secret that people lip-sync their performances during the parade (what I can't answer is why they are there in the first place), but from all accounts it was extremely bad, even by normal standards. People are giving him a fair amount of crap for it, but the only thing is that I'm not so sure it's a bad thing. When you think about it, doesn't the fact that you are a terrible lip-syncer mean that you haven't spent much time practicing it? That has to make you feel good if you wanted to see that person in concert - it means they usually perform live. I think is it is the equivalent of someone locking their keys in their car: you want them to be able to get back in, but you don't want them to do it with world record timing. That would raise more questions than it answers.

-There was another bit of controversy surrounding another former "American Idol" contestant yesterday. This time it was a girl (and no, I don't remember her name and won't go looking it up out of principle), who took a pause in the middle of the National Anthem before the Packers and Lions game, making it abundantly clear she had forgotten the words for a second. First off, this is exactly why I don't watch "American Idol" - all it has done is given us a bunch of bland singers to perform the National Anthem before sporting events on Fox, each one completely indistinguishable from the next. But secondly, I keep hearing from musicians how hard the National Anthem is and I want to call bullshit. While I'm certainly not about to give it a try, I don't think it is as hard as they want us to believe. Thirdly, this is exactly why Christina Aguilera shouldn't be the judge on any singing competitions: she's clearly a bad influence.

-Whenever I see news stories concerning Black Friday, they always interview someone who has been waiting outside a store since 3 AM. And all I can think when I see these stories is that clearly those people don't have a comfy bed. Seriously, after a day of turkey, beer and sitting on a couch it practically takes a stick of dynamite to get me out of bed the next morning. I don't care how much televisions are being discounted, my bed is simply not going to let me go. Now, admittedly I'm not a napper so my tryptophan slumber builds all day and then really kicks my ass at night. Still, I think instead of getting in line in the middle of the night to get a good price on a GPS, some of those people should see if the local mattress store is having a big sale they need to know about.

-I make no secret of the fact that geography is not my thing, even local locations. I'm really terrible at knowing where towns are located, especially when it comes to the North Shore of Massachusetts. Anything north of Wakefield or west of Framingham and I'm pretty much guessing. But even with that admission I assume it's especially bad (even for me) that I seem to learn most of my Massachusetts geography by seeing which high schools play each other on Thanksgiving. ("Oh, Grafton is out by Millbury. Now, if only I knew where Millbury was...") It's ok, I've just lived in this state my whole life. I'm bound to figure out where everything is at some point.