OFF-BROADWAY TURKEY

Hope everybody is having a joyous, yummy Thanksgiving! In honor of the day...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...the nod goes to the murderous, foul-mouthed turkey from ThanksKilling the Musical...

...the stage version of the notorious low-budget 2009 horror indie. It's had productions in Seattle, New York, Atlanta, Columbus and Orlando, and a cast recording is available on Amazon, too, with cuts like "Gobble, Gobble, Motherf***er" and "The Jock and the Hick and the Nerd and the Slut (and Me)." The perfect stocking stuffer!

BIG BIRD

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

In observance of the holiday…

Monster-of-the-Week: …our honoree is this Brobdingnagian turkey…

…that towered over Kurt Kasznar, Deanna Lund and the gang in “The Golden Cage,” a 1968 episode of Land of the Giants. Of all the sci-fi stories made for television about attempts to catch giant turkeys, this is arguably one of the better ones in color.

FRANKENBIRD

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Monster-of-the-Week: Frankie, fussing for family!

FEAST/BEAST

The advice of Baymax from Big Hero 6 is well taken, I suppose…

Happy Thanxgiving everybody! On the staggeringly long list of that for which I’m thankful is the pet microchip. Here’s why:

This past Sunday morning I was coming home with some fast-food breakfast when I saw this sweet lab-pit-bull mix (I’d guess)…

…no collar no tags, wandering in the street a block or so from the house. When I stopped the car she came right up to it and put her paws on the rim of my window. I gave her some bacon, then went home, but after breakfast I went back over in the car and she was still poking around aimlessly. I invited her into the back seat, and amazingly she jumped right in, so I went home, got The Kid, and we took her to Maricopa County Animal Control (AZ Humane Society no longer takes healthy strays; I guess now by law they have to go the Pound).

By the time we got her there The Kid’s face was streaked with tears; they’d totally bonded. Anyway, we took her in there, and sure enough, she had a chip! Then an hour and a half or so after we got back home I got call from the Pound saying that her people were there picking her up. So if you ever wonder if those chips are worthwhile, there’s my testimonial.

Even higher up on my thankful list are my superb nephews and their superb significant others, and on the list of that for which one of my nephews and his wife are thankful is their cat, Miles Davis…

Miles disappeared a few weeks ago, leaving them, it need hardly be said, sick with worry. But after he was gone more than a week, Miles reappeared, visibly thinner but not otherwise noticeably worse for the wear.

So, in honor of Miles…

Monster-of-the-Week: …our Thanxgiving Day MOTW is the Wampus Cat, a cat monster from American folklore sometimes depicted, as in the case of the mascot of Conway High School in Conway, Arkansas, as six-legged…

Go Wampus Cats!

BEAGLE RAMIFICATIONS

Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving.

The Kid and I had a celebrity encounter—my friend’s nephew’s beagle appears for a second or two in this “digital video” sketch from Saturday Night Live. She was visiting my friend for the holiday, so yesterday The Kid and I got to meet her.

She has a lovely, musical howl, which we were assured means she’s happy…

SNOW COUNTRY FOR COLD MEN

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

On the long list of that for which I’m thankful—down the list a ways, I admit—is the good fortune to have grown up with Peabody’s Improbable History, one of the features on the marvelous Bullwinkle shows. Mr. Peabody remains one of my role models (unattainable, of course); a tiny Peabody stands on my desk staring at me as I type these words. How well the feature version of Mr. Peabody & Sherman, due out next year, will live up to the great original cartoons remains to be seen…

Now in theaters is Disney’s animated musical Frozen, “inspired” by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. It’s an origin story for Andersen’s title character, a young sovereign under a magical curse who can freeze things with her hands . It has an ice palace, trolls, fiords and other Norwegian motifs, but the story here concerns the tempestuous relationship between the Queen, Elsa, and her lonely, love-hungry younger sister Anna.

The filmmakers seem to be trying for a sort of junior league Wicked, however the score isn’t as memorable as some of the other Disney musicals. But it is, at least, superbly sung, especially by Wicked’s great Idina Menzel, as Elsa.

Its real crowd-pleasers, however, are its two sentient snowmen. First there’s sweet-natured Olaf, voiced by Josh Gad, who has the misfortune to crave “warm hugs.” Then there’s…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week’s honoree, a pretty cool snow giant named "Marshmallow"...

HORNING IN

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

In honor of that holiday…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s turn to classical mythology for this week’s honoree, the river god Achelous, sometimes depicted as a sort of snake or fish monster, as in this pottery…

…or in Francois Joseph Bosio’s sculpture in the Louvre…

…and sometimes depicted as a giant bull, as in this mural by Thomas Hart Benton…

But what does Achelous have to do with Turkey Day, you may ask? Well, while scrapping with Hercules, Achelous got one of his horns ripped off, and, according to Ovid at least, said appendage became the Cornucopia, or Horn of Plenty. May it shower bounty upon us all.