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Zombie Keeping
Yee-Haw Industries has been on the zombie bandwagon for a while. I saw their “Danger Zombies Run” t-shirts at a few events, including the International Biscuit Festival this past summer. Recently I spotted a cardboard sign with the slogan in the window of a liquor store on Gay Street. Please note that I avoided using the phrase “Gay street liquors.” I especially liked the placement of the sign, directly under a photograph of the late moonshiner Popcorn Sutton. I assume it means they will be selling the legal version of Popcorn’s recipe.
Zombies are on the cover of the most recent Entertainment Weekly. The six-episode first season of “The Walking Dead” ends this coming Sunday. The show is amazing. I am looking forward to watching it again via On Demand with my kids during their Christmas break. In this clip from the finale, the survivors have sought refuge in the CDC in Atlanta, where they learn about the virus that turns people into zombies.
Scanned in Avia
The Southwest Airlines greeter must have thought our son was an unaccompanied minor. She suggested that my wife and I should get gate passes. I briefly imagined myself going through the TSA body scanner but was soon told that Frank Jr. was too old to have Mom and Dad go with him. The ticket clerk could see on his license that he was over 18.
I had heard a news report that morning about who gets the scans and pat downs. The reporter said that people who trigger the metal detectors get the extra screening. Frank Jr. made sure to have no metal on him. He even chose a sweatshirt with a plastic zipper. Needless to say, he breezed through the checkpoint without being scanned or patted.
The last time I took him to Nashville International Airport, a guitarist was playing in the lounge near Starbucks. We made plans to meet in that same spot next month when he comes home for Christmas.
Veni-vidi-vici-son
Traffic was bad in several places on I-40 as my wife and I took our son to Nashville International Airport on Sunday. We made it there and halfway back to Knoxville before we got stuck in bumper-to-bumper delays.
After the airport, we planned to stop at the first Pilot Travel Center along the way. I wanted to redeem a Facebook coupon for free coffee that I had printed at home. I saw a billboard for a Pilot as we were passed by a white pickup truck with three dead deer in the back. I wanted to get a picture but the truck gained some ground on us. My wife kept pace while I got the camera ready, which meant that we missed the exit for the Pilot. The coffee could wait.
We passed a minivan that had just been passed by the pickup. A woman in the passenger seat of the minivan had her hands on her face in horror. The deer hunters slowed enough that we could catch up and see a rivulet of blood that had run down the tailgate. My wife said it was a bad choice for them to have a white truck.
After I snapped several “dash cam” style photos, we dropped back. The pickup continued ahead and was about to pass a red truck. However the driver rode alongside, like a rolling roadblock, while someone in the back seat of the red vehicle held their camera out the window. Apparently we weren’t the only ones inclined to take a picture of the deer carcasses.
Mall-elujah!
Which Hallelujah Chorus flash mob is better, Philadelphia or Niagara Falls? Videos of both have gone viral and are probably posted somewhere on your Facebook newsfeed.
My wife likes the performance by the Opera Company of Philadelphia at the old John Wanamaker’s (now Macy’s) because it starts properly with a multitude of voices. I like the the one at Seaway Mall in Welland, Ontario, because it starts with one crazy person and keeps doubling in size. It was organized and recorded by professional photographers, which is an added plus.
As a non-singer, it’s easy for me to say that somebody ought to get the Knoxville Choral Society or the Living Christmas Tree choir to stage a flash mob before Christmas. It must be a big undertaking. How would you even get started?
Sign of the Carb
When she hosted Thanksgiving dinners at our house, my mother would put chestnuts in the stuffing and a couple of strips of bacon atop the turkey. My wife’s mother used ground beef and raisins in her stuffing recipe. My wife generally uses ground turkey meat and raisins. Last year we didn’t have any ground turkey on hand so she had to improvise. Our son had stopped at Jack’s Bar-B-Que in Nashville on his way home. My wife put some of the leftover pulled pork in the stuffing and it was amazing. We did it again this year, also adding a diced apple but fewer raisins. This year, she made maple cranberry sauce, using a bag of fresh cranberries.
We cooked the bird using Alton Brown’s popular recipe, which requires a thermometer similar to the fancy digital wireless one my sister gave me several years ago. For simplicity, we bought a jar of The Spice Hunter Turkey Brine at Food City. The strips of bacon we put on top left tan lines on the turkey skin.
We had intended to cook rice inside a sugar pumpkin, which was something our friends in Burbank did every year. When our son requested snow-capped broccoli and roasted garlic mashed potatoes as side items, we decided to skip the rice pumpkin. There were already enough starches on the menu. Snow-capped broccoli is a recipe we got from fellow parishioners in Knoxville. The “snow” is made from meringue and Parmesan cheese, as opposed to the miniature marshmallows on top of the sweet potato casserole.
My wife had just taken her chocolate pecan pie out of the oven when we saw Chef Marcel Cocit make the exact same thing on TV. His cooking segments were used as filler during the CBS telecast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Marcel said the chocolate chips were a “secret ingredient.” My wife got the recipe from our Burbank friends over ten years ago, so somebody must have blabbed.
For the Winokur
CBS discovered some exciting new technology called “high definition” for their broadcast of the 2010 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Yes, 2010. NBC has been showing the parade in high-def since at least 2007. The HD picture lets me see details like the “Macy’s 84th Thanksgiving Day Parade Talent” buttons that lesser-known performers have to wear to get past the security guards. I noticed them when Victoria Justice lip-synced her song.
Maggie Rodriguez and Dave Price from “The Early Show” returned as hosts on CBS. Perhaps the best line came from street correspondent Marissa Jaret Winokur. She said, “You know who’s coming up behind Spider-Man is Kanye West. Kanye, I’m gonna let you finish and you’re a great float but Spider-Man here is the greatest float of all time, Kanye. The greatest float.” I was going to cut her a little slack for saying that a balloon was a float because she was spoofing Kanye West, who probably would have made the same mistake. If she hadn’t continued to do so when the next balloons came by, I wouldn’t have called her out on Twitter. She graciously responded, which made me very happy.
The float/balloon mistake has been a recurring problem on CBS for the five years I’ve been griping about reviewing the parade coverage on my website. Winokur was ten times funnier than comedian Gary Valentine, who struggled with the same task. His performance made such an indelible impression on me that I was surprised to realize it’s been five years since his last appearance.
The CBS crew failed to mention that Alton Brown was seated atop the Tom Turkey float. Nor did they mention that singer Eric Hutchinson was on the float too. I never heard of Eric but I could read the banner with his name, thanks to their high-def cameras. Hutchinson shouldn’t feel bad. Maggie and Dave let Arlo Guthrie ride by on the Ocean Spray float without noticing. Yet they described each and every animal figure surrounding Guthrie. Ironically, one of the few float-riding celebrities that CBS did announce was Jimmy Fallon, whose show airs on NBC. Over on his own network, Fallon and The Roots sang “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” I thought he could have impersonated all the voices on the original recording but he played it straight.
Over on NBC, Al Roker walked backwards while the Seminole High School Warhawk Band marched toward him. Although it made me think that somebody at the network saw the weatherman in “Morning Glory” and decided to make Al do something more exciting than just interviewing stars of NBC series in the bleachers, the segment wasn’t bad. What made it work was the concentration of the band members who would have crashed into Roker had he not moved.
The first hour of NBC’s telecast is mostly Broadway filler. Performances by the casts of “American Idiot” and “Million Dollar Quartet” were good but not as ambitious as the scene from “Elf.” I was surprised by how good it was. The music and dancing reminded me of the old-school musicals that my parents loved.
As usual, Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer stuck to the script, which sounded like a long-form version of the banter written by presenters at Hollywood award shows. NBC’s telecast is must-see for the camera angles, not so much for the audio. It would be great if Vieira and Lauer lost their binders and had to ad-lib. And if they were forbidden from using “world’s most” or “world’s largest” to describe anything in the parade. According to them, the world’s most famous big red shoe car was carrying the world’s most famous clown with his world famous pals, the talented McKids. The Ronald McDonald balloon that followed was wearing the world’s largest pair of ice skates. The lameness of the script was most apparent as Matt & Meredith slogged their way through their “reaction” to the attempt by the “Despicable Me” minions to steal the Statue of Liberty float. To me, it looked like nothing happened.
The script failed Lauer again when he introduced the Grants Pass Marching Band: “Director Jason Garcia and his band, which is the first in decades to come to us from Oregon, play a patriotic piece called ‘A Fantasmic March.’” Patriotic? Maybe if you live in the Magic Kingdom. If ABC covered the parade, you can bet they would have recognized Mickey’s dream music. A bit later, an NBC camera focused on one of the Buzz Lightyear balloon handlers. Nothing was said about him but I thought he looked suspiciously like John Lasseter. Did anyone else notice him?
Gingerbread Mania
A friend from Canada asked me to explain the Fantasy of Trees to her. She and her date had approached me as I looked at the gingerbread houses. Volunteers decorate and donate the trees, which are sold to benefit East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. Like last year, I was more interested in the gingerbread than the titular trees. There are so many trees so close together that they run together in a big blur. In fairness, I was there during the preview gala when the lighting is meant for socializing, not for tree shopping.
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