Well, it was The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn’t! around here, since the oven died about three weeks ago, after a long and greasy life. It was so old, in fact, that the company which manufactured it was no longer in business, and any replacement parts would have had to be hand-forged by Hephaestus in the boiling caldera of Mount Etna, and even then there’s a 12 to 15 day delivery, which sounds fine, but that’s business days.
Amazingly, though, they replaced it with a brand new stove-and-oven (stoven?) combo, so the Jenni-O turkey breast in the freezer will not have been severed from a dead bird countless weeks ago in vain. It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle!
And here to deliver the invocation is Riley:
Felicitations on your Feast of Gratitude, Bipeds. You may begin by getting down on your ungainly mid-leg joints and kissing my white socks that I haven’t killed you yet. However, later today, after your gluttony has left you weak, bloated, and tempting, I issue no guarantees.
Okay. Let’s move on to Moondoggie for the Benediction:
ZZZzzzzzzzzZZZzzzZZZzzzZZzzzzzzzzz…
As long time readers know, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has a special place in my heart (specifically, the place — down and to the right — where most of America has Bristol Palin clog-dancing in their vena cava), since s.z., Mary and I all initially bonded over our shared love of the show. For which I’m thankful; because if we’d been brought together through a common interest in Hayek or Ayn Rand, then we all would have just wound up as assholes. The hundreds of cats and dogs that s.z. has saved would instead have been turned out into the snow to make their own Galtian way — perhaps by founding a freelance snow-shoveling business (and don’t give me that crap about domestic quadrupeds lacking thumbs! I’ve seen footage of Goofy mowing his own lawn); and Mary and I would be divorced by now, and giving you unsolicited advice on the sanctity of marriage.
Anyway, I never much cared for Thanksgiving a child, because it meant a series of dull undercard bouts amongst relatives who didn’t much interest me when they weren’t fighting, culminating with the main event when my parents would inevitably square off after the gallon jug of Italian-Swiss Colony Rosé was empty. Worse, it meant my grandmother’s cottage cheese and lime Jell-O salad.
Any pleasant memories I have of the holiday date to the early-mid-90s, and are due entirely to the MST3K Turkey Day Marathons, which Mary and I recreate every year with a few carefully curated DVDs. So here’s a little something to get you in the mood…
And in case I don’t say it often enough — and I don’t — I’m thankful for the many smart, funny, unbelievably kind and generous people who continue to cling to this disreputable corner of blogtopia. On behalf on Sheri, Mary, and the cats, Happy Turkey Day everyone.
And as serious students of crappy cinema know, this is the exact plot of the 1957 B-movie Untamed Youth, which was featured in the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The only difference seems to be that the teens involved were not forced to pick cotton, and did not respond by dancing around the plantation bunkhouse singing “Oobala Baby” in their underwear, like Mamie Van Doren. Mores the pity.