Gobble Gobble

The Macy’s parade was something else yesterday. Lofty had never experienced it firsthand and boy was he impressed.















Perhaps the true excitement of the parade is the sense of terror one feels when a 50 meter long inflated cartoon is hurtling towards you.
The feeling is similar to being on a rollercoaster; rationally you know it’s probably not going to kill you, but all of the precious instincts handed down from your ancestors are telling you to get the hell out of there. Turns out that a young lady in a wheelchair and her younger sister should have listened to those instincts as the M&M’s balloon knocked a streetlamp down on them. It was a balloon depicting M&M’s trying to hold onto a haywire balloon: Lofty can’t help but think: How Meta.











Today was Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when all craziness ensues in the mad consumer frenzy officially opening the Christmas shopping season. Rumor has it 'Black Friday' is so called because it’s the first day of the year that retailer’s books are out of the red and into the black. Lofty was on the scene to witness approximately one gazillion shoppers and tourists hitting the midtown retail district.





This lineup for the empire state building stretched a block and a half – almost all the way to Macy’s which Lofty guesses is the desired effect of the whole parade.

On another gobble gobble related note, as usual during post turkey dinner conversation, Lofty was asked some questions about Tryptophan. Wikipedia, that open-source font of all that is good and brainy, came to the rescue yet again. Turns out that Tryptophan is found in all sorts of foods: milk, cottage cheese, peanuts, bananas, and more. The common argument that it’s the Tryptophan which makes you sleepy after eating your thanksgiving dinner (rather than the 3/4 bottle of merlot your drank) doesn’t really hold water since, according to Wikipedia, turkey and beef have about the same amount of Tryptophan.