Put me in charge of the Thanksgiving parade
How to punch up our most surreal holiday tradition
It’s almost time for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, that hallowed holiday tradition when we drink coffee while Hoda Kotb feigns interest in 28 different clown troupes and probably your high school’s drill team.
The parade ushers in the season like nothing else. For a couple hours every year, it pushes holiday cheer to its most rabid, Adult Swim-like form. This is the closest thing America has to Eurovision. It rules.
Concerned about the commercialization of Christmas? Here, have a whimsical dinosaur balloon sponsored by an oil company. They look so excited about their liquified skeletons combusting inside an F-150.
Rolling your eyes every time a pop artist cashes in with a holiday album? Enjoy performances by luminaries like Idina Menzel, the lady who wrote the Hillary Clinton campaign jingle, and American actress/singer Kylie Cantrall. Did I make that person up? Find out on Nov. 28!
I feel deeply reverent toward the parade. It should be a matter of national concern that one of our most enduring cultural institutions is tied to the survival of a department store. America, buy as many Spode plates as needed to keep Macy’s solvent. If it goes under, then the government should bail out Dillard’s so they can pick up the torch. You don’t want to live in a world with the Temu Thanksgiving Day Parade.
You might say, “Eric, the march of time has made both the parade and the store irrelevant.” I would then throw a Spode gravy boat at your dome. The glittering sheen of moribund Americana warms the cockles like nothing else.
Honestly, the human entertainment is superfluous. See, I’m in it for the balloons. I eagerly await the arrival of each inflatable behemoth as it lazily drifts through the rat-strewn avenues of New York City. I am a primeval forager, emerging from my crude shelter to behold something vast and terrible beyond my feeble comprehension. “Bless our harvest,” I cry out to a 3-story polyurethane Minion.
The balloons also look hilarious when they’re in various states of deflation, like this Kermit from the early ’90s. If our far-future descendants found one of these in the ruins of Manhattan, there would be 1,000 History Channel specials about it. (Or they would eat it, depending on how things are going.)
Looking through this year’s balloon lineup, though, I’m underwhelmed. There’s a new Spider-Man balloon. Nice, nice. I’m always happy to see SpongeBob and Gary. But the Elf on the Shelf? And what the hell is an “Extraordinary Noorah”?
I have ideas. Imagine these are accompanied by fun illustrations. This isn’t The New Yorker.
Psyduck from “Pokémon”
No disrespect to Pikachu for his long service, but Psyduck’s zaftig figure lends itself to the helium arts. Bonus: empowering mental health representation from my anxious king. Just look at the material.
Trixie and Katya
In or out of drag. Maybe both.
The concept of ‘brat’
You could go a lot of different directions with this. A biblically accurate angel, but the faces are Kamala Harris and Julia Fox. A giant cigarette. An ominous chartreuse cube.
Garfield
He used to have a balloon, and it’s bullshit that he doesn’t anymore.
While we’re at it, a classic balloon from the pre-WWII era
I vote for Morton the Nantucket Sea Monster or Boob McNutt, which is my new “cellar door.”
Dixie Carter as Julia Sugarbaker from ‘Designing Women’
A marching band follows her, playing “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.”
Sufjan Stevens
He’s done more for the holiday season than fucking “Paw Patrol.”
The annual Williams-Sonoma holiday catalog
Not like a Le Creuset or peppermint bark featured inside. I mean the actual catalog.
Colin Farrell from ‘The Penguin’
It’s both a celebration of the most beloved Irish actor of his generation and a commentary on the continued use of fat suits in Hollywood.
Adam Brody
I just think it would be neat.
Mighty Max
Remember those toys? I lost mine, but I’ve started to think my mom threw it away because it looked demonic.
“I eagerly await the arrival of each inflatable behemoth as it lazily drifts through the rat-strewn avenues of New York City. I am a primeval forager, emerging from my crude shelter to behold something vast and terrible beyond my feeble comprehension. ‘Bless our harvest,’ I cry out to a 3-story polyurethane Minion.”
Elphaba from ‘Wicked’
But not the Cynthia Erivo version … I want to see how she reacts.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
This balloon will be actual size. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to play with proportion in the parade lineup.
Isabella Rossellini
Again, creative directions abound with this — her characters from “Blue Velvet” or “Death Becomes Her,” maybe, but if we want awards season #synergy, you can’t go wrong with Sister Agnes from “Conclave.”
RFK Jr.’s worm
And then it’s pulled by handlers dressed like various kinds of roadkill.
Anora
From the film “Anora.” Think of the longest hair tinsel in the world. The Guinness Book of World Records is shaking.
Charlie Brown
Another parade alum, but now with an inflatable Patti Harrison sewn into his pants, like in that “I Think You Should Leave” sketch. Or the actual Patti Harrison, if she’s available. Not sure what her calendar looks like.
Shaq
This started as a joke, but it actually seems possible the more I think about it.
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe
As seen on the cover of “Just Kids.”
Tiffany ‘New York’ Pollard
It’s the least we can do for an enduring cultural icon.
Tom of Finland
They could do the Brawny paper towel man if Macy’s corporate gets nervous.
Lorde, specifically from her episode of ‘Hot Ones’
I like the idea of representing historical moments in the parade. Makes it educational for the children.
The peach from ‘Call Me By Your Name’
It does technically count as a holiday movie.
Al Roker
Not a balloon that looks like him; I mean the actual Al Roker, filled with helium, soaring triumphantly into Herald Square.
One rad thing
Catch me giggling and kicking my feet to this supercut of Miss Piggy interacting with Martha Stewart over the years.
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I saw this video on TikTok and was immediately awed by the unique dynamic between two icons through years of collaboration. Martha talks to Piggy like a parent might talk to a child, full of patience and gentle encouragement. Piggy talks to Martha like Don Rickles doing a set in the Catskills.
My favorite Miss Piggy line: It’s a tie between “Oh, how obsessive” and “Close the door, she broke a Necco wafer.” Honorable mention to the way Piggy pronounces “sugar cookie.”
Outbound message
If there’s something playing on my TV, the captions are on. I don’t remember when I started doing this. Raw-dogging dialogue now leaves me feeling unmoored.
I’m not the only one. Apparently, the pandemic created an army of caption fiends. Letterboxd Journal published an interesting read about the wild world of film and TV captioning. Rafa Sales Ross covers the phenomenon, expanding into what the rise in at-home use means for accessibility.
One angle that piqued my interest: how human translators are increasingly eschewed in favor of A.I., which auto-generates subtitles for foreign films with insufficient regard for linguistic nuance. While screening for my film programming gig, I notice this a lot a lot.
Even when humans are involved, subtitles often use English as the “pivot language” for translations, according to Letterboxd Journal, “which means that all text to be subtitled first gets translated into English and then retranslated into the language used for captioning.” Kinda like that one episode of “NewsRadio” where Stephen Root’s character translates his memoir from English to Japanese and back into English.
The piece also throws in some handy definitions of different industry terms, like “creative captioning.” Check it out.