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The balloons are by far the biggest attraction of any Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I know I can't speak for us all even if I often try to, but I just can't imagine that most parade viewers haven't shared my sense of wonder as giant-sized versions of our childhood icons strolled down very familiar streets, navigating through the skyscrapers with the help of some heavy duty strings and fifty freezing volunteers. That said, it's more of a minute sense of wonder. They'll often give the balloons four or five solid minutes of television coverage, but the reality is, once you've seen 'em bop and turn a corner, you really don't have much interest in seeing 'em bop and turn five more corners. I say this halfheartedly and more in appreciation for what ALF brought to the table. Usually, it's up to someone like Willard Scott to keep things interesting. The human hosts do their best, but when ALF gets the nod to provide the big balloon play-by-play, your eyes and ears are glued, and your brain doesn't hate your eyes and ears for it one bit.
In fact, one of the very heights of the 1989 parade was ALF's lustful coverage of the classic Garfield balloon, which was and will always be my favorite of the many balloons. I guess it's because it's the only balloon that I can firmly recollect from every Macy's Parade I've ever watched on television or been to in person; either that, or I'm really striving to keep up a good poker face and not just come out and admit that I like Garfield. As soon as the Garfield balloon appears, ALF pops up in this totally obscene video window, salivating over what surely must the dream meal for any Melmacian. The puns are terrible and the forced "I'm gonna EAT THAT CAT" comments are equally terrible, but I only say that when I put myself in the shoes of someone who didn't grow up considering ALF the James Dean of their generation. Truth is, at the time, this was just fall down fucking funny. Even in the shoes I wear today, it's impossible not to cackle like a witch at how long and drawn out the sequence is, with even ALF himself -- a god damned puppet -- seeming genuinely bored and waiting for some off-camera producer to make whatever hand motion they'd previously decided upon to denote the proper time to throw to a commercial. God, I love this clip.
 Press play for ALF's fifteen-minute Garfield rant. (10.18 MB)
Press play to see ALF's take on the Pink Panther balloon. (5.82 MB)
 
The 1989 parade was full of bad luck for the folks at Warner Brothers. You heard about the misfortune of the then-new Bugs Bunny balloon on the previous page, but what I didn't mention is that the balloon was meant to celebrate the wascally wabbit's 50th anniversary. On the sheets, this parade was supposed to be 90% Bugs, 10% Thanksgiving. Everything went to Hell when that balloon went down, and if you think that the Warner Bros. float was going to salvage even a little bit of the lost glory, think again. Even as a kid, I knew this thing was a big rolling hunk of shitty cheese. Everyone did. Willard did. That blonde co-host of his did. ALF did. Everyone at my school knew it, too. It was just an absolute laughingstock -- one of the world's premiere instances of a company going way too far to create a sense of friendly family entertainment.
In theory, loosely, there was nothing wrong with the float idea. It was a big huge structure filled with various Looney Tunes icons, including enough costumed characters to start a meet-and-greet branch at a theme park. The costumed characters shared the stage with various teenagers of all ethnicities, singing and dancing in a huge tribute to everything Bugs Bunny stood for. Problem was, the song is just so damned dopey and saccharine that only kids who weren't allowed to play video games could've digested it without throwing up and/or killing their pets in unholy rebellion. And, as you'll see in the clip, the "teenagers" used in the song and dance routine were so exaggerated in movement and expression that there was truly no choice but to absolutely hate them. We've seen many attempts from Warner to "hip up" Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes characters. For me, it can't happen. I've seen the 1989 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and there's just no going back from that. If Jeffy started using four letter words in tomorrow's Family Circus, it'd be awesome, but it'd still be stuck in the atmospheric trap of sweet-to-the-point-of-wretched. Same thing here.
I'M GOING TO HUG YOU AND WE'RE GOING TO DO ARTS AND CRAFTS. (18.10 MB)
I've reviewed the infamous Peanuts float before; it was a temporary standard of Macy's Parades throughout the `80s and early `90s. Starring Jill Schultz and a bunch of really ugly costumed character versions of her father's beloved comic strip cast, this float was always all-business. No stupid songs, no funny business -- just an instrumental loop from A Charlie Brown Christmas and Jill's totally crushworthy legs. The costumed characters are inarguably hideous, with Charlie Brown especially looking like one of the sights high schoolers see when they first drop acid and hit the point in the trip where they start feeling all yucky and loss-of-innocencenty. It's really about his legs. A Charlie Brown costume obviously comes with the territory of oversized heads and a somewhat puffy torso area, but you really can't get away with giving the dude long, skinny legs -- and certainly not the longest, skinniest legs on any human being ever featured on television. The worst part is, Jill's legs keep your eyes focused on the section of the screen most likely to display Charlie Brown's legs, and it's this constant mental tug-of-war that never resolves and almost always results in the death of loved ones.
Charlie Brown's legs are a big, big problem. (24.47 MB)
There's always some version of a Barbie float in these parades, and in 1989, everything was all fucked up. They repurposed an older Barbie & The Rockers float for the new Dance Club Barbie line, even though it didn't match the theme at all. To hide the fact that they dogged it with the float, the entire screen swarms with terrible special effects throughout the song number, with everything from four dust-trailing video screens floating around to fourteen dust-trailing video screens floating around. Total epilepsy stuff. By the time they tried to give each of the two dozen dancing extras their own star wipes, my eyes were as black as Ken's heart when he dumped the bitch in `04.
Press play for SPECIAL EFFECTS! (14.31 MB)
I didn't grow up as any kind of major Batman fan. Liked him, loved the Adam West series, that was about it. But when Burton's Batman arrived in 1989, I bought a movie ticket on no less than seven different occasions and became absolutely obsessed. It was mostly because of the Joker. I LOVED the Joker. The Joker was, up to that point, the coolest motherfucker I'd ever seen. I wanted to be the Joker. I still have the purple suit -- the real purple suit that I wore to every family function that called for suit-wearing, no matter how ridiculous I looked or how many people pointed at me in the same way I point to my cat whenever I catch it chasing its tail or eating its ass like so much chocolate pudding. When I heard that the Joker was going to appear at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, I was fully ready to shut out the rest of the world on Thanksgiving morning and situate myself in front of the television with eyes that were trained to never blink. This was going to ROCK.
Alas, it didn't rock. Foolishly, I'd believed that the "real" Jack Nicholson version was going to be there. I figured they'd use the same parade float from the film and have him throwing money around and shit. Instead, we got...well, we got whatever you'd call this. The Joker indeed appeared, and wow, he really did throw money to the audience. All similarities to the film ended there. Opening with a heartfelt message -- "Hey America! Happy Thanksgiving!" -- I quickly realized that this wasn't the Joker, but rather just a Joker, which is to say, someone dressed like the film version, but certainly not Jack Nicholson, and certainly not anyone who even nearly came close to the film version's cool factor. Before all of that bad information had a chance to settle, the Joker broke into what is quite assuredly the worst song a person could ever hope to write or sing or do both of those terrible things. In the list of live action realizations of the Joker character, this one was by far the swishiest.
Willard dared us to guess who was portraying the Joker before the big number, and towards the end of the skit by way of previously recorded footage, Fred Travelena reveals himself to be the culprit. At the time, my reaction was simple enough: "Who the fuck is Fred fucking Travalena?"
No, seriously, who is Fred Travalena?
HE STOLE MY BALLOONS! (21.64 MB)
As is tradition, the arrival of Santa Claus was the parade finale, and I guess Santa looks his part more than the Joker did. This all ties back to what I mentioned on the first page -- Thanksgiving is the official kickoff of the Christmas season, and that's a heck of a lot more engaging than all of that Plymouth Rock bullshit. There's only so many stories about the white man breaking bread with Indians people can take before they flip the channel, but I'd never pick a Roseanne rerun over Santa Claus. I ended up being a little busier than I would've liked these past few weeks, and thus, I'm writing this review on Thanksgiving Eve. Earlier tonight I stopped by Mom's to visit with my brother's family, and we spent the evening stuffing mushrooms and listening to 106.7's All-Christmas radio. By the time we were through, I almost forgot that it wasn't Christmas. I'm not trying to pull down Thanksgiving's own worth, but I'd much rather consider tomorrow a mini-Christmas before the real one. That's a kickass month of happy times. Also should mention that I've been watching these parades since birth, and every time they roll out a new Santa, I can't help waiting for the guy playing him to sneak obscenities into his audible "ho ho" chants. You know it's gonna happen someday. I'm sure every Santa in every Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has at least thought about doing it.
Press play for a little bit of ho ho ho. (6.76 MB)
Willard, Lady Blonde Somebody and ALF wrap things up, and that's all she wrote for the 1989 Macy's Parade -- a really good one that I shamefully admit to have not done much justice for with this review. Whatever, we'll all live. I've checked the lineup for the 2005 parade, and was surprised to find at least a dozen different attractions that totally seemed watch-worthy. Maybe I've just been pissy for stupid reasons. Maybe the parades haven't lost any steam at all. I've got the VCR set to record and the Chex Mix mixed, and ALF or no ALF, I will plop my ass on the couch tomorrow morning and kick off mini-Christmas right. If you're able, I suggest you do the same. There's gonna be a Pikachu balloon and everything!
Press play to have a happy Thanksgiving. (3.47 MB)
Reviewing my VHS copies of old Macy's Parades is fun, but for me, the various commercials that aired during the parades are always the best part. Nothing sends us back in time quicker than a firm recollection of everything we wanted for Christmas, or in this case, all of the fast foods that were new, or all of the movies that were coming out, or all of other stuff that could be summed up and messaged out in thirty seconds. Here's a few advertising gems that aired during the `89 parade...
 
McDonald's McRib: Oh you damn right, it was that time of year again -- the McReturn of the McRib! Okay, so if I'm being honest, I'm no huge fan of the McRib. Plucked rib meat reshaped like ribs on the bone kind of disgusts me, but I've nonetheless enjoyed the McRib phenomenon, and how millions of people who eat food across the globe go absolutely berserk for the opportunity to chow down on it every year. It hasn't been as big of a deal in recent times, but in its heyday, the McRib far outclassed that annoyingly additive Monopoly game in the realm of Annual McDonald's-Related Stupid Shit To Lose Your Mind Over. Chomp.
Press play to download the McDonald's "McRib" commercial!
 
NBC's Saturday Night Lineup: I'm sure this commercial meant absolutely zilch to me when it originally aired. Now it means a whole lot. It's just a simple teaser for the upcoming Saturday night sitcom lineup, that being 227, Amen, The Golden Girls and Empty Nest. And it's a fine ad -- it did its job and it told some jokes. It went in one ear and out an eye when I watched it then, but looking back on all the times I watched that very lineup in my parents' bedroom on a tiny television, playing with whatever dumb toy I'd most recently weaseled my way into owning, I've no choice but to sit here replaying the video file over and over and over again until my computer explodes.
Press play to download the NBC Saturday Night commercial!
 
McDonald's Little Mermaid Ornaments: Because of their sponsorship of a large portion of the parades, McDonald's always got plenty of commercial time, and they really knew how to use it. Every year, they would debut some special promotion during the parade, and as a child, I'd subsequently want to skip the turkey feast for, I dunno, a McRib. In 1989, Disney's The Little Mermaid was hot stuff, and in this hot team-up, McDonald's offered plushy holiday ornaments based on some the film's beloved characters. More noteworthy is an animated Ariel swimming up to a family at a real McDonald's, a sight that makes me cheer but still feels somehow wrong and illegal. I guess I'm worried that Ariel's giving her stamp of approval of cheeseburgers, and it's not that I'm against cheeseburgers, but I don't think it should be up to Ariel to tell us that it's okay to eat them.
Press play to download the McDonald's Little Mermaid commercial!
As I sit here dog tired next to a pine-scented green candle, I am thankful. Over the past year or so especially, I've been given a lot to be thankful for. I'm usually too busy and too predisposed to be stressed out to notice or admit it, but it's Thanksgiving, and I can. Life's been good to me, and when the other shoe drops, at least it'll be from a good, high shelf. I hope you all feel thankful for things too, and if you don't, I hope you at least get to eat some good food today.
-- Matt (11/23/05)
Click here to discuss this article in the blog, and see some more commercial clips!
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