Eat This Video

We admit that most of the staff here at One Day In Culture grew up loving the Thanksgiving traditions at our homes. All the hours of Turkey basting, cranberry sauce slicing, pie making and stuffing stuffing were simply the prelude to the tryptophan inducing coma on the other side of the feast. Our editor-in-chief has fond memories of fighting over who was going to eat the last of his Uncle's oyster dressing. Research Editor Tina S. was just reminding us how her best memories of childhood developed around her trips to her Grandmother's house in Boca Raton where members of her family would gather to eat, drink and be merry. "It was never in that order," she explained between forkfulls of microwaved lasagna. "Our record number of bottles of wine consumed is well over 12..."

There has been a lot of talk this year about tradition. The tried and true American ritual of family members gathering around the table to eat a 22lb turkey is under attack, perhaps this year more than ever before. The PETA ad at the top of the page is just one of the many ways animal activists and vegan enthusiasts are out to stop YOUR family tradition. Novelists like Johnathan Safran Foer and high-profile celebrities (Natalie Portman and Alec Baldwin) have joined the PETA's cause to help spread the idea that a Vegan (or at least Vegitarian) Thanksgiving holiday is a holiday worth having. The fact that NBC rejected paid advertising in order to stop animal activists from telling their Macy's Day Parade viewers the truth regarding how your 25lb Thanksgiving turkey makes its way to your table is emblematic of a very larger state of American denial. It also explains why this year in particular, PETA and other animal rights organizations are challenging tradition in an unprecedented way. They can sense cracks in our American fundamentals and are striking while the iron is hot.

But you know what? Those activists are right.

It is now well documented that there were no turkey dinners when the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth (a quick Wikipedia check will teach that) and we should all be well beyond the notion that what transpired after the white man first arrived was harmless and that the tradition we continue to observe on the last Thursday of November is steeped in morality. It should also be noted that the gluttonous over-consumption of American poultry in this country goes way beyond the tradition of your Thanksgiving Thursday. But think about how much turkey is consumed on Thanksgiving and what Thanksgiving itself was originally supposed to be. Our holiday began as a day of giving thanks, of praising God and his bountiful blessings. The holiday was also a way to bolster American unity in the aftermath of the Civil War. What was torn apart was brought back together at the dinner table, but where the central figure of the Turkey came from, no one seems to know.

Every year the National Turkey Association presents the president with two turkeys to pardon, in a show of some sort of solidarity with the animal kingdom. The NTA will choose a two "healthy" turkeys to parade out before the media, the President will smile, pardon them, and then those turkeys will be boxed back up and shipped off to Disneyland. Meanwhile, those turkeys not pardoned will wind up on our dinner tables. Yet, its what happens before that turkey gets to our table that animal rights groups are concerned with.

We could go into excruciating detail as to the horrors within factory farms. We could explain how your 30lb Butterball is drugged, bred, and genetically mutated to grow to be so fat, that many of them can't walk properly, if at all. Because of their obesity, modern-day turkeys can't reproduce by themselves. Or how their beaks are cut off without anesthetic to stop them from pecking one another. Or how every year, 3 Million turkeys are killed in the United States, most of which will never see their first year on Earth (most factory farmed turkeys are killed by the time they are 6 months old)...or any number of other horrific facts that surround our factory farmed 35lb turkeys. But those types of stats aren't necessary because you watched the PETA video at the beginning of this piece (You did, didn't you?). The little girl told you everything you needed to know regarding the Thanksgiving Turkey industry. However, millions of people watching NBC this Thanksgiving morning won't. They'll go on believing that the turkey sitting as the centerpiece to the entire meal either lived a life of dignity, or isn't a being worth living in dignity at all. They'll go on turning a blind eye to the horrors of America's current agricultural system, which is exactly what the factory farming industry needs them to do in order to survive. And, if we as a omnivorous culture can't begin to accept the realities of where are food comes from, is there really any reason to be giving thanks?

We here at ODC don't wish to damn your holiday tradition or condemn anyone into eating Tofurkey. Remember, those holiday traditions, regardless of how fabricated, are bred within us all. We enjoy stuffing our faces just as much as the next American...shit, one of our staffers just baked a pumpkin pie while we were typing. Rather, what we hope to do is begin a call to help actively change your traditions from those of ignorance and abundance to ones of compassion and caring. The first step to changing the global epidemic of factory farming is to educate yourself and those you love to the harsh realities you support when you buy a 40lb turkey for $.69 per pound at the grocery store. That turkey was once a living, breathing animal. It is a life, no matter how cheap the pound.

For more information on where your Thanksgiving turkey comes from, visit PETA here. Read more!

The 37th Annual AMAs

Every year, the American Music Awards reminds us here at One Day In Culture of some essential facts regarding American popular music that we seem to forget sometime between January and November:

A) Great performers (Jay-Z, Eminem, and especially Whitney Houston) get better with age
B) Awful performers (Adam (F)Lambert, Rhianna, Lady Gaga, and the Black Eyed Peas) will always pick the most horrible clothes - or at least their overpaid stylists will...
C) We can never remember how many children Jermaine Jackson has. However, I will now never forget Jermagesty, or Jumanji, or Jereimiahwasabullfrog...
D) And, at the AMAs, it never fails that the worst of the worst (Taylor Swift we're talking to you) will be highly rewarded. At least we have those Teen-Career-Ending 20's to look forward to (Taylor Swift's vagina, this time we're talking to you).

That being said (a big shout out to Larry David and the Curb crew for that intro), the 37th annual American Music Awards should be considered a success if for no other reason than it made this progressive-metrosexual-journalist blush on at least three separate occasions. This year's AMA's was the highest rated show since 2002, showcased not one, not two, but three legendary-comeback performances (Janet, J-Lo, and Whitney. Rhianna, we're sorry but you don't count), and a host of shameless appearances that may just set the civil rights movements of both African Americans and homosexuals back a few dozen years. Yes, most importantly, the 2009 AMA's were a highly entertaining mix of the usual attention-deprived celebrities and disheartened divas that we've come to know and love.

There is just too much to talk about for one unemployed blogger sitting at his kitchen table drinking coffee on a Monday afternoon, so we're going to have to narrow an analysis down to the bare boned essentials. By bare-boned, we do not mean Lady Gaga's ridiculous outfit, but instead mean our own little AMA awards, the ODC Golden Donkeys, given to those memorable moments that never completely leave one's brain. And now, Mr. Seacrest, the envelope please!

The Anti-Genre-Busting Award:
This award goes to Mr. American Idol, Adam Flambert, who told Entertainment Weekly's Whitney Pastorek during rehersals for Sunday night's show: "Genres are old news. Genres are a thing of the past. I don’t believe in genres." I'm sorry to say that you, Mr. Flambert are a hypocrite. Not only did his performance Sunday night — complete with mock-fellatio, pelvic thrusts, and make-out-sessions — reinforce every gay stereotype held by the religious right, it was simply a horrific display by a media-fueled wannabe whose talent has been reduced to makeup, hair gel, and homoeroticism. Perhaps the only good thing to come out of this performance was the discovery of Flambert's irrelevance. We'll see you on ABC's Dancing With the Stars. Oh, and your song? It sucks.

Runners Up: Country Music Performers Pretending to be Pop-Stars (Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban, congrats) and the Black Eyed Peas for continually referring to themselves as Hip-Hop. You're not.

The Don't-Call-It-A-Comeback Award: This is a two-way tie between Whitney Houston and Jennifer Lopez. Sure, neither of these women displayed the full-breath of talent the good lord gave them on Sunday night, but both divas made statements with their performances that included tears from some of the ODC staffers during Houston's performance and at least one areal hand pump when J-Lo asked, "Ya miss me?"

We here at ODC can't understand the backlash J-Lo's "Louboutins." She's J-Lo, why wouldn't she sing a song giving props to her favorite shoes? And what in the hell does everyone expect from America's dance-machine? The hook, "I'm throwin' on my Louboutins" will be stuck in our heads for the next month-and-a-half, she rocked her dance solo after her 40-year-old butt hit the ground, and made her way from her boxer introduction to a corset covered exit over the course of 4 minutes. It was exciting, fresh, and completely J-Lo. Quit over-expecting.

And Whitney...what can we say? We were in tears by the end of her song "I Didn't Know My Own Strength." A friend of ours said during the performance, "I just don't particularly like that she sang this song as her comeback song." We ask, "What would an international diva of Houston's proportions who lost her career to crack sing instead? 'I Will Always Love You?'" The moment was a perfect addition to television history and for that, we applaud.

Runner Up: Michael Jackson's diamond-studded glove.

The What-The-Fuck? Award: This one is gonna go to Alicia Keys, whose ally-rape choreography during her performance of "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" made me cringe. Yes Alicia, I know its hard to sleep with a broken heart, but try sleeping after you witness a black man dressed up like a hobo jump down off of a brick wall and attack Alicia Keys. NO ALICIA! Didn't your mom ever tell you that an alley is no place for a woman to perform?

Runners Up: Jermaine Jackson's children's names...I mean seriously, WTF? And Perez Hilton, who's ability to sing the words to "Empire State" while making me want to slap his face with Lady Gaga's balls is unprecidented. PS, whoever gave Mr. Hilton a microphone should be slapped with the rest of Gaga's manhood.

And finally, the I'm Not Buying Your BS Award goes to: Taylor Swift...your doe eyed shock at winning multiple times may be fooling 90% of the viewing audience, but not me. Deep down inside of you is a Lindsay Lohan, I just know it.


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