Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Non-Wikipedia: Thanksgiving TV Specials

The overlooked Fall holiday, Thanksgiving. Here is a collection of some of the lame nonsense they put on the televisual airwaves to celebrate this bit of Americana.



Garfield's Thanksgiving (1989). This appeared on CBS the same year the Saturday morning Garfield and Friends show premiered. Lorenzo Music was still voicing the title character, with Thom Huge continuing to voice Jon Arbuckle, Garfield's "owner." Gregg Berger, who had been voicing Odie the dog since 1984 (Garfield in the Rough, the "let's go camping" special), also voices him here. It says a lot that the Garfield Thanksgiving special came out after Halloween and Christmas.  



The Hoboken Chicken Emergency (1984). This is a VHS rip from a PBS tape, The Hoboken Chicken Emergency have never appeared on DVD or BluRay. Peter Billingsley from A Christmas Story (1983) plays Arthur Bobowicz, a kid sent out to get a Thanksgiving turkey in Hoboken, NJ. He comes back with a 266-pound (121 kg.) chicken named Henrietta. She escapes and hijinks ensue. Benny Baker, Hamiliton Camp, Dick van Patton, and Gabe Kaplan star in this 58 minute epic.



Like with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, you cannot watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973) in any complete form on YouTube because the Schultz people went to Apple+. So there are bits and pieces left in Google's video wasteland.



Not really a Thanksgiving special but shot during the Bicentennial Thanksgiving of 1976 at Bill Grahan's Winterland Ballroom, The Last Waltz (1978) is The Band (Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, and Levon Helm) giving their "final" performance with guests Van Morrison, Bob Dylan (ex-employer), Ronnie Hawkins (ex-employer), Joni Mitchell, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood, and many others. They gave the audience a turkey dinner and then the acts hit the stage. Martin Scorsese and Van Morrison were possibly coked out of their minds.


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That's all I have for this holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving in spite of all of it.


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