Thinking about Thanksgiving leads me to ruminate on one of my least-favorite holiday traditions: parades.

It's not that I have anything about parades per se. I love a good Fourth of July parade. But I've never been much of a fan of the parades we get this time of year, starting with the Macy's parade and winding up with the Tournament of Roses parade.

The Macy's parade seems especially stupid, given its interpretation that we should give thanks by looking at giant Garfield-shaped balloons and hitting the stores at our earliest convenience. TV coverage doesn't help, as every nitwit morning show person gets in the booth to provide pointless commentary about what is clearly visible on the screen. Adding in all the actors to flog whatever show they're on doesn't help, either.

There was a brief time when the Hollywood Christmas parade was shown out here, but we've been spared for the most part. My fear is that we'll get some sort of Disney electric holiday fun parade instead.

For New Year's Day, I can remember a time when it wasn't 14 channels all doing coverage of the Rose Bowl parade. Many was the morning we watched the Cotton Bowl parade, with my dad adding his own pre-DVD commentary track based on his growing up in Dallas. The highlight of this parade were the Kilgore Rangerettes, a cross between the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and the Rockettes.

Now, with the lack of any variety, morning programming on January 1 takes on this either-or situation where every channel is either showing the carnage from Pasadena or is trying to sell you something. Nothing like ringing in the new year with infomercials.

Thankfully, we'll be out of the country for the new year, and thus spared the parade (though I imagine there's some sattelite channel that will probably have it, showing Britons from Land's End to John O'Groats just how silly we Yanks are). Not sure how I'll dodge tomorrow's event, but I'm planning on a combination of sleeping in and reading which will hopefully go the distance.

With Thanksgiving coming, time to consider what's on the menu.

Turkey I really like turkey, so sad to say we won't be having any this year. We'll be making another round with capon this holiday, after the one at Christmas went so well. In some ways, poultry is poultry, but there's little I enjoy more than picking over the caracss the day after.

I would highly recommend either the brining method that Alton Brown displays on Good Eats, or the deep fried turkey.

Potato Mashed regular potato is the traditional choice, but there are a ton of options, especially if you include the sweet potato here. I don't care for the sweet potato much, so I'll pass on the varieties available there (unless you include them in the mashed root vegetable concoction that Emeril had on one of his shows, which I've made a couple of times and like.

Sarah's mom makes roasted potatoes, and I really like those. They pretty much drive the idea of mashed right out of my head.

Veggies It's pretty much all good here, from the green bean casserole straight out of the 1950s to plain old boiled carrots. I'm not much of a squash fan (outside of the yellow summer squash), but can work through it if it's savory (sweetly spiced ones don't go down well).

Given my druthers I'd go with the casserole and baby peas. Carrots are fine, regular green beans too. Corn would be traditional, of course. Even some less traditional veggies, like broccoli, brussels sprouts, or asparagus would be fine. Some of the more regional veggies, like okra, maybe not. Unless you fried it with the turkey.

Sarah's mom will usually roast some onions with the potatoes. That's very good.

Stuffing Of course. As long as it doesn't have oysters I'm on board. Sarah's mom makes a wet stuffing using sausage meat (the British thing), and while it's very good it gets its name of "deadly stuffing" for a reason.

Breads Rolls favored to loaf, both favored to cornbread, which I've started to relegate to the barbecue ghetto. But I'd eat whichever appears on my plate.

Relish tray When we ate at my grandmother's, she always had a relish tray set out with a variety of goodies, including deviled eggs, celery and cream cheese, olives, gherkins, pickled tomatoes, etc. It worked as both appetizers and palate cleansers. I've never cared for sweet pickles, but otherwise was open to any of this.

Dessert I'm not big on pumpkin pie. I have one piece every 3 or 4 years and it pretty much takes care of things. I favor fruit pies more often than not. My mom was a mincemeat fan, the only one in the family, so she had that pie all to herself (which generally meant she ate one piece and the rest of the pie disappeared somehow, probably by being tossed or brought to the nursing home she worked at to share).

Other desserts would work, too. Like many of the foods here, I'm not one to turn down dessert unless it's something I really don't care for (maple walnut ice cream, for example).

I only remember eating out for Thanksgiving once, and even then it was at the restaurant of a family friend who closed for the day to have family and friends in. I was very young (under 10), and don't remember too much about it. Which is probably why I consider eating out on Thanksgiving kind of a cop out, within limits (you're alone and don't want to fire up an 18 pound bird, etc.).

Football Duh. We used to listen to local coverage of high school games while driving over to my grandmother's, watch NFl over there, and finish up with scores and highlights at home.

We only played one Thanksgiving day game during my time on the team. We went down to Holbrook to play them, and it wound up being my first varsity start (regular starter suspended for a game after being goaded into a fight by a player on our arch-rivals, Georgetown High School). I didn't do too much; it was pouring rain and the Holbrook offense ran behind the one guy on their offensive line who weighed over 160. I was at defensive tackle on the other side, and they ran about 3 plays my way. They all ended with gang tackling by the mighty Manchester Hornets defense, so not much business. Still, it was fun. Until I got to dinner and bit the inside of my lip three or four times because I was tired.

They've since moved the Manchester-Georgetown game to Thanksgiving, which is where it should have been all along. Should the Hornets win this year they'd be off to their second state title game in three years, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

Had a little more fun with the baby names, notably a couple of iconic '90s names:

Dawson: in 1997, it was at 744. In 1998, it was up to 198, and remains in the top 200.
Mariah: number 268 in 1990, but in the top 100 from 1991 on.
Britney: 446 in 1998, 206 in 1999. Still in and around the top 200
Christina: A slow decline over the decade, from 26 in 1990 to 81 in 2001. Ms. Aguilera's skankiness isn't helping.

Sadly for some of the Creekers, neither Pacey or Joey made the top 1000 (well, Joey did for guys; Josephine is in the top 1000 for women).

I'm slightly more famous!

After years of sending in questions to The Straight Dope, they finally got around to answering one. And, in what I like to think as true fashion, it was a question of great import. See the intellectual exchange here.

The good folks over at TeeVee ran a piece today that used the Social Security Administration's list of the 1000 most popular baby names to try to explain the sudden popularity of the girl's name Madison. They posited it had to do with Daryl Hannah's character in Splash (one hopes it isn't related to the porn star of the same name). Which, of course, got me thinking about how other names wound up. To wit:

Shaquille: first appeared in 1991 at 743rd, peaked in 1993 at 185, fell off the chart completely after 1996.
Kobe: debuted at 567 in 1997, and hasn't been out of the top quarter since.

Wonder if that'll change now that it's been shown that Bryant can't get the Lakers wins.

Mia: at 353 in 1990, now in the top 100 at 77.
Nomar: not in the top 1000 at all since 1990.

Soccer moms are apparently more rabid than Sox fans. I'm actually not surprised.

The Simpsons: Homer, Marge, and Bart are nowhere to be found (even when using proper names). Lisa is slowly fading, while Maggie is slowly climbing. Many supporting characters aren't there, either. Supporting characters whose first names do rank in the top 1000 (aside from obvious ones like John Frink and Carl Carlson): Jasper, Edna, Waylon, Nelson, Abraham, Julius, Kodos (OK, I'm kidding about the last one).

Venus: not in the top 1000 ever
Serena: in the top quarter, in the top 1000 the entire decade.

Richard Williams is more powerful than we ever expected.

Randy: slipping towards 300, currently at 285.
Curt: not listed, but Curtis is in, and just ahead at 275.

I suppose I'd take the Cy Young over this.

Al: not there, but Albert is in and around the top quarter
George: slowly sliding towards 150 after spending most of the decade in the top 100.
Ralph: bottom half, consistently so
Pat: top 100 all decade, though falling.

Good thing this doesn't decide things. We've already had one President Buchanan, and wasn't that enough?

Annika: just got on the list at 990 in 1995, now at 357 after rising every year.

She's just not a power in the LPGA, apparently.

Adolph: no
Sadaam: no
Osama: no
Leona: no (think about it)
Benito: barely in at 985, a slow decline over the decade.

If you make the trains run on time, you're apparently forgiven your psychotic excesses.

Scientists have revised their estimates on hazardous asteroid impact, saying that the Earth would only suffer a strike at that level every 1000 years rather than every 200 to 300 years. Why does this not make me feel any better?

It reminds me of those people who rebuild on a 100 year flood plain after a flood only to get put underwater the following year, who then ask where their 99 year grace period went. Just because there's a nice big number that describes the average risk, don't think you can't get hit next year or next week. Don't take things like this for granted; to quote Toby Ziegler: "You wanna tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?".

The Montreal Expos: NAFTA's Team!

I claim this catch-phrase as my own! I know, big deal.

So MLB announced the scheduled dates where the Expos would play in San Juan, but I can't get the tentative schedule for the team off their website. I suppose they had to wait until this was a done deal.

This may help out the master plan of attending opening day in Montreal, if the April series in P.R. is early enough. I did notice on the Red Sox tentative schedule that they have games in March. March! Don't know if they're exhibitions or we're getting to the point where baseball is sliding towards a March 15 to October 1 operating schedule.

In any case, watch this spot for future Expos opener information!

Whatever else you do today, please look at this site. You may have already gotten to it through the Bruce, but if you haven't, it's worth the click.

Did I mention that I've been getting jerked around by AT&T Broadband?

We'd been pondering upgrading to digital cable for a while, nothing too fancy, just the basic package to get some of the channels we'd enjoyed back in the days of the dish (BBC America, National Geographic, etc.). I finally got off my ass and went to AT&T Broadband website, and discovered that you could order service on-line. I tend to favor any method of purchasing goods or services that doesn't require me to talk to anyone, so I filled out the form and sent it in. I was promised a response with an appointment time within 24 hours.

To this day it still hasn't arrived.

I waited about a week, and then called in when I discovered that a co-worker who also lives on campus was getting digital cable. We were both scheduled for last Friday. She got hers hooked up - after getting a call from the techs that they'd gone to Wellesley College and needed some help finding us over here at Babson. And after discovering that it didn't work - they had to come back out some number of days later to fix what they'd just put in.

They never arrived at my place. No phone calls, nothing.

So I went into work in the afternoon, called, rescheduled, and got a credit. They were now scheduled to show on Tuesday morning between 9-11.

They never arrived at my place. No phone calls, nothing.

So I went into work in the afternoon, called, rescheduled, and got a credit. I also got in touch with Babson's contact with AT&T Broadband to try to get some support there. They were now scheduled to show on Thursday morning between 9-11.

They never arrived at my place. No phone calls, nothing.

Our contact did do some calling around, but in the end the result was the same. I have no digital cable. At this point, if I ever do get it, I have two free months. I am now supposed to call the field manager to set up an appointment.

I suppose some of this may come from being on a college campus. The billing address I had to give for my account is one that AT&T's software recognizes as a USPS-approved valid address. My box on campus doesn't fit the bill. Instead, I have to use the street address and put Wellesley Hills as the town.

This strikes me as automation run amok. If I can't give the address that best assures that I get mail on time, there's something wrong with the program.

At the same time, it's not like my phone number and email address (assuming my on-line order is still kicking around somewhere on an AT&T server) don't work.

I've been thinking about my time as a subscriber to DirecTV a lot lately, and while I'm probably biased by recent events, it makes me think that, once I have my own place, I may never deal with a cable company again.

Finished my TV catching up from last year by watching the last two hours of 24 last night (rented the final DVD rather than tried to find our tape, as it's probably buried or been recorded over). In some ways the promos for this season set us up a bit - Hey, where's Teri Bauer?- and I had a vague understanding of how things ended, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I will say that Sarah was much more irate at the ending than I was, though I felt it was kind of a cheap shot. There was an alternate ending with producer commentary, in which it was explained that the ending they used felt right to them, and underscored the idea that there's no predicting what'll happen on the show. As if the previous 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 48 seconds didn't get that point across.

Then again, it was better than another bout of amnesia.

I'd like to make special note of Penny Johnson Jerald, who played Sherry Palmer. She was like a mix of Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and Lady Macbeth, but without the charm. You may also remember her from her recurring role as frieghter captain Cassidy Yates on Deep Space 9. And, of course, I'd be remiss to not give props to Homicide alum Zeljko Ivanek, who played Andre Drazen. I'll never look at Ed Danvers in quite the same way again.

Took some time last night to catch up with some TV. Got reasonably caught up with both The West Wing and Ed, and was reasonably happy with both.

There's a lot of talk about how The West Wing is slipping this year (to go on top of you all who complain about the show given its politics). I will say that it seems less focused this season, which may be from trying to maintain both the election and Qumar plots at the same time. Either would be fine, but together you get the sense that each one is big enough to drain the other a bit. Kind of a division of forces, but with creative energy rather than infantry. It's not a good idea on the battlefield, and perhaps isn't such a swell idea with a TV show, either.

One thing I do like is the prospect of trading Rob Lowe for Josh Malina and Danica McKellar. Malina is known to many as Jeremy Goodwin from Sports Night, while Danica McKellar will, for better or worse, always be Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years to a generation of TV viewers. While neither bring the Brat Pack cred or dashing good looks that Lowe supposedly gives the show, Malina gives a good energy, his character here being less frantic but as equally committed to the job. McKellar would increase the female presence on the show and go younger to boot.

Malina also brings with him the honor of being the first actor to hit for the cycle and be in A Few Good Men, The American President, Sports Night, and The West Wing. A number of people hit two of these (including Sorkin himself), but I don't even think there's someone in three of the four. I'd have to check more comprehensively.

I don't know what the plan is with this (from the business end), and I've not watched the election episode to see if the set-up is executed there or not. Anyway, it'd be cool.

For Ed, the show is showing more promise than last season, but still seems stuck a little. The last episode I watched had Ed and Carol get over the strain in their relationship casued by her marrying Dennis. They were helped to that point by the break-up of a local DJ team played by Chris Parnell and Horatio Sanz. Their roles were funnier than 97 percent of everything they've done on SNL, by the way.

The episode was also refreshingly Cheswick-free. That gave a nice feeling to things... until I stopped to watch a bit of Galaxy Quest on ABC and found Justin Long playing some show-obsessed teen. He's like that bit of toilet paper that gets stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

Not much going on lately, lots of little things that have taken up time.

Participated in a "How to Host a Murder Mystery" dinner on Saturday night. I was not the killer. Boo! It was a lot of fun, and I have to wonder if the drinking enhanced or detracted from the experience. Probably enhanced.

Watched most of Notre Dame's loss. Can we now put the green jerseys to pasture?

Did almost nothing of note on Sunday other than watch football and The Simpsons season opener. Pats managed to further confound me, and the promos for the opener gave away a lot of good stuff. Still, not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

Caught a backhandedly entertaining moment on Lingo last night Lingo is a game show on the Game Show Network where teams try to guess five letter words, and is more entertaining than it sounds from my feeble description). The team that made the bonus round didn't perform all that well, but managed to win by pulling the right numbered balls (you win by making a "Lingo," which is pretty much like bingo). The women, who were pretty demonstrative anyway, start jumping around.

Only to have one woman sock her teammate in the eye.

Chuck Woolery almost couldn't end the show properly as he was trying not to bust out laughing. It was funny in a "OK, you've not been blinded" sort of way.