Category Archives: Slice of Turkey

Slice of Turkey: Double Shot! 1993

While trawling through the interwebs looking for videos of yesteryear, I stumbled across this one from 1993 that said it featured comedian Elayne Boosler singing a song from Once Upon a Mattress. My first thought was, Ooh boy, do I have the nerve to click ‘play’? When I think “Elayne Boosler,” I think “1980s standup comedy boom” and “blazers with enormous shoulder pads and rolled up sleeves.” I do not think “Broadway magic.”

As evidenced by this clip, however, it turns out that Ms. Boosler has a lovely voice. Shame on me for doubting her. Nonetheless, it begs the question: Why was comedian Elayne Boosler asked to sing a song from a Broadway musical, a musical that she did not appear in, and was not even being mounted on Broadway at the time? Did she casually mention her singing chops to someone at NBC, or was it a cold call? “Looks like I picked the ‘Elayne Boosler’ card out of this hat. Guess I have to give her a ring and see if she knows any showtunes.”

It is one of the most baffling things about this parade, as I’ve said before. It’s not good enough to invite celebrities; they must be gussied up in costumes and belting out a song. Keep in mind, this clip comes from the same year that Laugh In alums JoAnne Worley and Ruth Buzzi had to do much the same thing. In Little Bo Peep costumes no less, the poor bastards.

Maybe the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is just an elaborate, expensive session of celebrity karaoke. But instead of a dark bar serving overpriced Sapporo, they get to do it on national TV while donning frilly dresses.

Elayne Boosler’s song stylings were not a disaster, but the 1993 parade had plenty of other ones. That year, winds whipped at 20 mph and wreaked havoc with handlers’ abilities to control the balloons. In this clip, you’ll see a dinosaur balloon violently bite the dust when he collides with a lamppost and splits down the seam. You will also see the vinyl corpse of Sonic the Hedgehog slumped on the pavement, covered with a large sheet to maintain a modicum of dignity. Oh, the inflated humanity!

Slice of Turkey: Ed McMahon and Regis Philbin, 1981

Most of my youth, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was hosted by preternaturally gleeful souls like Willard Scott or Matt Lauer. Morning people, through and through, with orange juice and low-octane coffee running through their veins.

Apparently, t’was not always so. In this clip from the 1981 parade, Ed McMahon is your host. You know, Johnny Carson’s affable sidekick. Ed was more of a night owl, if you catch my drift, and boy does he show it here.

McMahon looks woefully ill equipped to be awake and outside at this early hour. He was supposed to arrive on the back of a rollerskating elephant from the Big Apple Circus (!), but after five minutes on the beast’s shaky back he could take no more. So he stumbles out from behind a red curtain, trembling and breathing heavily, and literally pushes his way past two lines of Rockettes to begin his opening monologue. And if you can follow that monologue, you and Ed must speak a special sidekick twin language. Individually, all of his words make sense, but they don’t quite add up to a cohesive whole. It’s like a verbal clearance bin.

McMahon eventually throws things over to “NBC’s newest morning talk show host,” Regis Philbin. Reeg engages Ed with his usual rapid-fire Regis-isms, then switches gears to wax nostalgic over the Thanksgiving parades of his youth and his alma mater, Cardinal Hayes High School. It’s weird to hear a somewhat solemn, subdued Regis Philbin, since I don’t think he’s been able to lower his voice below Shout Level for the last 20 years or so. My theory is, at some point he became confused over where Dana Carvey’s impression of himself ended and the real him began.

After a brief commercial break (McDonalds and an awesome windup motorcycle I kinda want right now), things end on a sour note, as we get a glimpse of the rollerskating elephant. The poor thing totters unsteady on the pavement, moving gingerly. It looks like the unhappiest animal on the planet. Good thing PETA didn’t exist back then, or the Big Apple Circus would’ve gotten a big bucket of red paint in their faces.

UPDATE, 11/19/2012: The original video I shared here has been removed from YouTube by people who hate our freedom. You can, however, get a brief glimpse of what was described above from the clip now posted below, which includes the very beginning of NBC’s 1981 parade coverage. The quality of this video is not fantastic and you will only hear a tiny piece of Ed McMahon’s rambling monologue. However, you will still see Ed almost run over a couple of Rockettes.

Just for laughs, here’s the old link, on the off chance it is restored some day. Courage!

Slice of Turkey: ABC News, 1980

I’ve written before about how terrifying I found the local news when I was a kid. In the 1980s, local NYC newscasts were catalogs of horror. Race riots. Crack. Serial killers. Bernie Goetz. Rock and roller cola wars, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE! (tips over burning table)

That’s why I find feature on the 1980 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade done by the local ABC affiliate so endearing. Not one mention of an elderly woman beaten to death or a kid stabbed for his sneakers! In it, anchorman Roger Sharpe and his adorable two year old son (I assume?) take in the parade together. There’s a buffet of greatness packed into these two and a half minutes. We get some nostalgia-riffic shots of the balloons and paraders. A clown terrorizes Sharpe’s young child. Sharpe notes that Smokey the Bear can’t quite float straight because “he was out with Grimsby last night.” Roger Grimsby was another ABC anchor with a rep as a lush. That must have made the end of this segment awkward, since it throws back to Grimsby in the ABC News studio. (Ooops).

But the best part comes at 1:50, when Sharpe asks a bunch of kids what their favorite part of the parade was, and one highly advanced 11-year-old says “the women.” This would be funny enough, but Sharpe’s attempts to get this young man to explain himself compound the hilarity. That’s why Sharpe got paid the big bucks, to ask the tough questions.