Macy's parade

A disgusting spectacle. A 3-hour long ad for all manner of dreck. Lame kid pop. Various candies and other packaged goods, with Katie Couric and Al Roker reading the ad text like the variety show hosts of yore: "may melt in your mouth, but not in your hands."

Natalie liked it.

The Beach Boys played, looking for all the world like they had multiple feet in each others' graves. It was long felt the Orson Welles couldn't escape the shadow of
Charlie Kane, but that has become the fate of any of these old pop stars, who are prisoners of their old catalog, of their youthful voices played endlessly back at them. Imagine how depressing it must be to be pushing 70, stuck outside freezing on a float evoking a California long since paved over.

To say nothing of Oklahoma. Some generic blonde teen belted out a tune from the musical, a romantic evocation of a cornucopic projection of the plains that never existed, a propaganda vision intended to draw losers who couldn't make it on the East Coast out into a place where agriculture was never sustainable without substantial federal subsidies of one sort or another. The red states.

Happy Holidays to all, from Archer Daniels Midland.