The reason they do it is not for thanks. It's for something else...
And what I'm here to do now is say thanks, for the opportunity to follow a creative path in life. Please use this opportunity to do the same, k?
I think of today, Thanksgiving, as the only real American holiday. When I was a kid of 5 and 10 years old, the crew I rolled with -- if you'd call it that -- was heterodox to the point of Little Rascals-like absurdity, well, a sort of dark absurdity. There was an Italian kid who got beat by his father; a Sikh Indian kid, turban and all; another white ethnic kid of uncertain derivation whose dad worked on an assembly line and blew his money gambling in Atlantic City; and an African-American Jahovah's Witness kid named Clifton.
As I recall, even Clifton got to celebrate Thanksgiving. (Halloween & birthdays he sat out.) And there's something very wonderful about that.
This post dedicated to Tuli Kuperferberg, JD & Rowland S. Howard all of whom passed this year and, all of whom, in one sad way or another, showed that it's all about the long haul.
Finally, because he's taken over the internet, this is also dedicated to the awesomeness of the new Kanye West record (though, yeah, that Chris Rock bit's kind of superfluous (and though, yeah, it's also pretty cool how Kanye saves face a second later with the Bon Iver cameo)).