On Too Much Food and Too Much TV. 11/24/23

By the time you read this, it’ll be the day after Thanksgiving, but Happy Thanksgiving anyway. Too much turkey, stuffing, pies and football. Here’s an issue. What do you do if you get invited to one of your children’s homes and you’re one of only two people out of eight who want to watch football? Easy. You watch it with the volume so low that you can barely hear it. But what about Marv and Rachel’s situation? What if you have grown up kids who are married or in serious relationships and they all decide to go to the spouse’s house instead? And it’s too far away so you don’t go? It happened to wife and me a couple years ago. Our son was living in Denver. Our daughter went with her husband and child to visit his parents in North Carolina. Sigh. It was just the two of us. Why bother cooking? Turns out any number of local restaurants offered “5-course Thanksgiving Meals To Go!” We ordered the meal for 2 (if you were alone you were out of luck, no option for one person, which is kind of sad when you think about it). Truth be told, the lasagna and Caesar salad looked more inviting to me, but I couldn’t get my wife to agree so we ordered the Thanksgiving special. And I have to admit it was pretty good. It just seemed wrong not to cook it ourselves. And by the way, my wife hates football so we watched a movie afterwards. That made me think that Thanksgiving should be with a large and somewhat rowdy crowd who laughs, loves, argues about politics and watches at least some football. Heck, this year even the Detroit Lions game is good. And now that I think about it, maybe ixnay on the politics. The only thing I don’t like is having relatives who pinch your cheek, (I’m looking at you Uncle Steven) but now that I’m 70 instead of 7, there’s little chance of that happening. And I would not pinch my granddaughter’s cheek ever, but I will repeat some of the dumb cliches like “You’re so cute,” and “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown,” even though I can believe it since I just saw her a week ago.

Our other comic is about politically incorrect jingles. And I must say, it was a fun one to come up with. Sometimes words have meanings that change, like the Flintstones’ “We’ll have a gay old time.” I don’t think Fred and Barney were getting it on. And I’m pretty sure Wilma and Betty were “just friends.” And who can forget Archie Bunker’s “Goils were goils and men were men?” As we’ve noted multiple times before, both John and I spent our careers in advertising. There were some old ads that seem unbelievable today. Like a doctor in a white lab coat endorsing Camel cigarettes as he puffed away. Or, and this is the absolute truth, a woman in pearls ala June Cleaver is bent over her husband’s lap and he is actually spanking her because she didn’t get his shirt collar clean enough!!!!!! Thank God they invented Wisk. No more dirty collars OR domestic violence. In today’s parlance, a win-win. I often wonder, what will look ridiculous about the jingles and ads we see today, when viewed by people 30 years from now. And I’m pretty sure the ones featuring someone pantomiming playing a tennis match in his living room while wearing virtual reality glasses, will be among them.

That’s all for this week, and we’ll see you next week with two new ones, as soon as we come out of our food comas.

Andy and John