Thanksgiving 2015

Since I did a series of Halloween posts, its only fitting that I blog about Thanksgiving. Unlike my ode to Halloween, this will be only commentary on several Thanksgiving-related shows. Helps that there were no Thanksgiving comics that I was aware of. Fret not, I did have some RPG-related ideas!


Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - Ever since I was a child, I'd watch the Macy's parade keeping an eye out for the Spider-Man balloon or any other comics-related float. Didn't see Spidey in this year's parade. Did see a Pikachu balloon though. That was rather neat. There was the obligatory Snoopy balloon although this particular balloon depicted Snoopy flying through the air Superman style. Absolutely loved the 50 year anniversary homage float to A Charlie Brown Christmas!


SNL Thanksgiving - a collection of Saturday Night Live Thanksgiving skits. While I found many of skits to be a chuckle at best there were a few gems. Loved Eddie Murphy in Mister Robinson's Neighborhood. Don Cheadle's (War Machine in the MCU) Ladies Man was a hoot. Akroyd-Belushi-Murray were amusing in an absurd manner. While I was familiar with Martin Short's character solely from a Saturday Morning cartoon from years ago, that was hilarious. In contrast, The Bears fans and crystal clear gravy invoked nostalgia chuckles - as did the Jordon Gordon-Levitt (third installment of the Nolan Batman trilogy and hopefully producer of the Sandman film) skit.


In contrast I found the Scream Queens Thanksgiving episode an absolute laugh riot. Watched a recording on Thanksgiving Day; and I was thankful for the smile it brought to my face. Scream Queens was a casualty of comic book show Tuesday; however, I found this episode to be fairly accessible despite not having watched in quite some time. An excellent Thanksgiving-oriented episode. A shame that shows rarely do Thanksgiving episode much nowadays - that I am aware of.  Hope they do release Screams Queens on DVD some day. Not everyone has Netflix.


Charlie Brown Thanksgiving - don't recall why I didn't watch Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown but I took advantage of the lax television schedule to watch this gem. Charlie Brown Thanksgiving still has its magical charm after all these years. Finally occurred to me how disturbing it is seeing Woodstock eating turkey. Woodstock must be a big fan of bush meat... The subsequent telling of the pilgrim story albeit Peanuts-style is a nice attempt. Probably the major achievement is that it includes Lucy in a Thanksgiving special and uses her fairly well. Gets the Miles Standish bit wrong which anyone who has seen the following show will know...


The Pilgrims: American Experience - Miles Standish was the hired muscle. The requisite fighter-type in almost any RPG. Miles Standish aside, The Pilgrims: American Experience is an outstanding documentary! I learned more about the Pilgrims than I ever did in any history class. Some interesting tidbits were the pilgrims digging through Indian graves, propping the dying up on trees with musket in hand to fool the nearby Indians, and planting corn atop the recent dead - although the latter two are more historical conjecture. I heartily recommend this documentary for any GM that runs either a historical campaign or campaign influenced heavily by history. Vampire, Wraith, Werewolf, and Call of the Cthulhu gamers may find this of particular interest. Heck, I can imagine players of the Solomon Kane setting for Savage Worlds could get some mileage out of the history of the pilgrims. On a more somber note: this was among Roger Rees's last roles. He played the Sheriff in Mel Brook's Robin Hood: Men In Tights. Rees does an excellent job portraying William Bradford's various soliloquy - based on Bradford's writings.


Secrets of the Dead: Jamestown's Dark Winter - Another excellent documentary. Whereas the Pilgrims were a success story, Jamestown was a place where one hoped they survived the experience. It became more of a charnel house during its dark winter when the surrounding Indians laid siege to the colonialist trapping them inside the walls of the fort as disease and famine runs rampant. That's just the background to the documentary! What it the documentary examines is the fate of a young girl and why her remains were found in the state they were. Quite simply, it was like a reverse zombie-ism! Instead of the dead rising to eat the living, the living grave dug to feast. Yep, a confirmed case, albeit one or three, of a cannibalism at Jamestown. I can imagine quite the RPG scenarios that a GM can devise from this! Certainly, New World of Darkness Gamers could use this an example of Morality rules. Various games such as Call of the Cthulhu could use this an example of insanity caused by more mortal hands. The old World of Darkness fan in me envisions hordes of wraiths and banes swirling around the area where the fort once stood.