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In This Issue

• Todurken: Hot Poultry Threesome
• New York City Hates The Homeless (Surprise!)
• Pope Lives It Up In Final Days
• Letters to the Feditrix: We Want Orangutans!
• Columbia's Investments Are Really Shady (Another Surprise!)
• Italian Neo-Fascism: Sexier than Ever
• Hidden Origins of your Favorite Holidays
• Macy's Parade Unites Jaded New Yorkers in Disgust
• Slow Motion Gunfight Saves Christmas
• Barnard Feminists Full of It (You Guessed It!)
• Reality TV to follow Nike's Lead, Exploit Third World Women
• Fed Staffer Admits Inappropriate Santa Fantasies
• Family Time Blows (Got you Again!)
• The Obligatory Vegan Option: Tofurky
• Why Holiday Diversity Scares Me
• A Paris Hilton Holiday Comic
• Your Retirement Fund
• Silent Vengeance: Book II
• Wacky Fun Whitey
• Robot Ninjas vs. Zombie Vikings

Somebody on your floor is planning an expedition to Macy's 77th Annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. There is someone like that on every floor, no matter how small, ostracized, retarded and anti-social a floor it happens to be. This person wants you to come with them. Don't. (If you are having a problem identifying this person, play it on the safe side and avoid anyone from the Midwest.)

I will acknowledge that there are certain charming things about the Parade. It is, after all, a grand spectacle put on for no reason other than the public amusement. It inspires at least four parts kindness and good will for every seven parts brand loyalty. New Yorkers line the streets breast to breast, and there is usually only a little bit of shoving. A few years ago, in high winds, a balloon crashed into a lamppost, and no one was even killed in the ensuing panic. The homeless- well, yeah, they get kicked off the street and still have nowhere else to turn. So what?

Being at the parade, though, is not half as awesome as watching it on TV for a couple of important reasons. First of all, separated by hundreds of miles, on a one-way communication system, you can make fun of and even throw feces at Al Roker for his fashionably offensive hat, scarf and mittens set without risking arrest and imprisonment. But if you did this in person, he'd start crying (it's a well known fact that all fat people are cry babies). It would be really funny at first, but then you'd start feeling like a real big meanie.

Especially since if Al's tears did start falling they'd immediately turn to ice, and his face might have to get amputated to remove them. This is because everything at the Thanksgiving Day parade turns to ice. Even your privates. Because it's that cold, every year, without fail. The short people who cluster near the barricades, who appear to be children wearing heavy coats on TV, are actually Eskimos, imported by Macy's for publicity purposes. Actual children who are taken to the Parade generally break down psychologically by the fifth minute of cold or the second consecutive block of walking without stopping at a candy store. Then, since Mummy wants the little brat to stop crying, she forgets about the parade, gives him a Happy Meal, and lets him spend the rest of the holiday playing in the ball pit at McDonald's so he won't have to see Uncle Lester, who never forgets to give him creepy attention and those inappropriate gifts.

Besides, there's a big difference between what you see happening on TV and what you see happening from the streets. On TV, there are glamorous celebrities singing songs in festive costumes. On the street, there are briskly moving barges containing shadowy characters cloaked from head to feet in an approximation of winter wear that would pass for trendy in Miami. On TV, they show Spiderman for a majestic hour, towering above trees in his fearsome spider pose. From the sidewalk, you see Spiderman for about a majestic minute, and from the bottom, so you get a majestic view of his naughty bits. It's so much less super that way.

Seeing the parade live you also discover that there are actually only a couple of the really big awesome balloons that you came to see. On TV they just make it seem like there's a lot by using camera tricks in conjunction with propaganda tactics up to and including sociopolitical brainwashing. When you're really at the parade, though, you're usually just watching these advertising theme pieces go by that are kind of like third-grade dioramas except very large and attached to a flatbed vehicle. Some, though not all, claim to have B-list celebrities on board. There are also tons of marching bands, which, unfortunately, the other kids in junior high were right about: not only do they "totally suck", but they're "super gay."

The crowd at the Thanksgiving Day Parade can get pretty rowdy towards the bands that screw up; remember that 71% view it as an "off-season warm-up for St. Patrick's Day" and 44% admit to being "frequent" or "habitual" users of amphetamines or crack cocaine (according to a recent Fox News poll.) And it's not even a good place to hook up; even in liberal New York, a meager 12 percent agree with the statement "Public orgies are an acceptable means of celebrating our nation's history." So, this Thanksgiving, rather than going to the parade, put on a pair of pajamas (for god's sake), fill your bowl of cereal with beer, roll up a Philly, turn on the TV, and feel free to marvel at just how phenomenally excited Big Al is about the weather, even when it's thirty degrees below zero.