Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 164: Joe

Prompt: "The least appropriate song to play at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade"

Selected by Joe

"Turkey Vultures"

Wednesday

Rat Saw God, 2023

I had to google "are turkey vultures similar to turkeys" in order to confirm that this was going to work. They are not, so it does. Turkey vultures can fly, as one example of the many differences between the two species. They also probably don't taste very good. This blog post is not about turkeys or turkey vultures, but I'm imagining that a song about turkey vultures would be inappropriate for a parade on a day that is symbolized by the turkey.

Having to google that made me think once again about how much there is that I just don't know. How vast the world and all its stores of knowledge are, and how I'm not yet privy to most of it. It's a little overwhelming at times, but honestly, all we can do is be patient and google that shit one day at a time. This reminds me that, when we were at the diner last night, my kids asked me why the game the were playing on their paper placemats was called "tic-tac-toe." I admitted that I didn't know. This blog post is not about the origins of the name tic-tac-toe, but I should probably get home from work today armed with that answer, or else they aren't going to respect me.

So yeah, we went to a diner on a Saturday night. Pam was going out, and she was surprised that I had decided to take three daughters out for dinner by myself. That's the reaction I'm going for when it comes to that kinda stuff. I like walking through a crowded diner and hearing the senior citizens not-so-subtly say something like "wow, three girls, god bless him!" Their tone one of admiration that I am the type of dad who can handle this kind of thing. It helped that they were relatively well-behaved. A few tense moments, but nothing that spiraled out of control. I saw it like a challenge too. Let's spend 45 minutes out in public, just dad and the kids and a meal, and see if I can handle it. I could. Barely, but yes. We had a lot of laughs. This blog post is not about parenting, but I don't think it was a bad way to spend a Saturday night.

And I don't want to paint myself as some kinda fuckin' Father of the Year or some such bullshit, because it's not true. Witness when we get home, and there is nothing I can do to calm the kids down, even though it's close to bedtime and it's well past the time when they should be calming down. I resort to pettily ignoring them and saying shit like "I'm ignoring you because you're ignoring me" as I passive-aggressively look at my phone. And then, when those little shits take advantage of my pettiness by pouring real water into their fake tea set and then spilling the water all over the fucking floor, and I flip out. This blog post is not about how I'm a bad parent either, but a case could be made in either direction, I think.

On Thursday morning, we'll all be watching the 6ABC Dunkin Donuts Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade, and NOT whatever fucking bullshit parade is happening elsewhere in the country. The celebrities are a lot smaller in cultural stature, but that's okay. It's a good opportunity to bask in the local pride. This a losers' parade for losers, but still, they are our losers. We are losers. We live in Philadelphia. Fuck those fancy-pancy highfalutin holier-than-thou egotistical fucking New Yorkers. This blog post is not about the age-old little-brother complex regarding my city versus that other city, especially since I recently had a new friend-of-a-friend discover the blog, and was told that PoYB was "very anti-New York," and it made me think about whether he stumbled upon a specific blog post, or that my hatred of NY just seeps into everything I write at this point.

Let's assume that the prompt had namechecked the correct parade. Then I think that, sonically speaking, "Turkey Vultures" would still be appropriately inappropriate. It's an interesting song—very tense, all build-up, not really any sort of chorus to speak of. It is the opposite of the bright shiny boilerplate pop music and overproduced lip-synched Christmas standards that G-level pop stars are belting out atop the Acme Celebrates America float featuring Smurfette and the Kensington CAPA step team. I cannot imagine what Allentown native Carson Kressley would say if Wednesday showed up in tattered flannel and banged out a weird-ass song about the wrong kind of turkey. This blog post is not about my musical tastes and the 6ABC Dunkin Donuts Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade's musical tastes do not align, mainly since I've already written about that.

I've already written about a lot of things on this blog. I'm not referring to quality, but simply quantity. I've written a lot and a lot of it is either referential or even repetition of previously written blog posts. It's nice to know that the thoughts I have don't die when they are enshrined in words on a website, that they still live and breathe and occasionally evolve. But it's also a bit anxiety-inducing to know that most of these blog posts are not summaries of how I feel and will always feel but are instead just snapshots of moments in time, covering how I feel in that single moment only, but that future audiences might look back and hold me to those previously held thoughts and beliefs, some of which are like glaciers and melt very slowly, but some of which are like flames on matches, burning small and bright for ten seconds tops and then extinguished and flushed down the toilet drain. Do I really wanna be the anti-New York guy? Is this the wound I'm choosing to reopen today, even after previously admitting that it's all an act, a ruse? This blog post is not about other blog posts.

But I don't know what this blog post is about. It doesn't have to be about anything, honestly. We're just fucking around down here on some fucking blog. We're just sharing music and playing with words and shooting the shit. This is a good way to while away the hours as we wait for the inevitable end of it all. But this blog post is not about death. It's about life. It's about being thankful for life and all its little intricacies, all the small moments throughout the week both good and bad. Including this one. This tiny little speck of a blog post that you might read or might not. It doesn't matter. It exists, it is real, and it's about something.