happy Thanksgiving, Eve

The day before Thanksgiving was full of great anticipation during my childhood in the New York suburbs. We would wait for my father to get home from work with a copy of the New York Times, which had a full page Macy's ad featuring the line of march for the Thanksgiving Day parade. The list of bands, floats and balloons was printed in two text boxes approximately 4 by 6 inches each. We would cut out the list and paste it on the front and back of a piece of cardboard. The next day, while my mother started cooking, my father would take my sisters and me downtown to watch the parade. After he parked the car, we would walk through Central Park and get a good viewing spot near the start of the parade somewhere around 74th Street.

We took tons of photos but they were all developed as slides. They still sit in a Kodak carousel in my mother's basement. Someday when I have the money, I would like to have those photos turned into digital images. I've made it a new annual tradition to spend some time today searching the Internet for photos of the giant balloons. I found some good ones on WNBC-TV's site and the NYCTourist site.

Tonight WNBC will air a half hour show about the balloon inflation. The people at Macy's insist that you say "inflate" rather than "blow up." I will channel surf tonight looking for any coverage I can find on the news networks. This year's lineup features several new balloons and some old favorites.

Tomorrow morning I will flip between the coverage on NBC and CBS. NBC usually features corny scripted comments from the Today Show crew. CBS will once again have some ad-libbing by comedian Gary Valentine. I don't understand why they are using him again. For the past two years his man-on-the-street interviews have been terrible. He was on the Tony Danza Show today and wasn't funny there either.

What is your all-time favorite parade balloon? Mine is Underdog and it has been since long before that "Friends" episode.