Oh, goodie, goodie it is Thanksgiving! My name is Tucker, and I am a Maltese. I just saw a television show my novelist adores and the episode showed you could drop turkeys out of helicopters! They fall to the ground and then you can catch them and eat them…!

You idiot! Turkeys cannot fly…Good afternoon and Happy Thanksgiving. Gigi the parti poodle here to introduce my novelist…

Yes, you can drop turkeys out of helicopters and then chase them and eat them for Thanksgiving dinner. It is like an Easter egg hunt with turkeys.

It is most definitely not like an Easter egg hunt! It is shocking and horrible! Did you even watch the same show I did?!

Pretty turkeys drop out of the sky and you chase them and…

Without further ado, here is my novelist. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was delighted to find out the Peanuts specials are being aired by PBS, the heroes of the holiday season. Sometimes thinking different translates to signify evil, greedy, sanctimonious, narcissistic, über-scum who take pleasure in robbing children of the cinematic joy they look forward to during the holiday season. Not to mention A Charlie Brown Christmas is a story that focuses on anti-commercialism.

When I first started this blog, one of the things I talked about was how I like to take long walks. I find they helped me think. I also mentioned that I liked to walk outside instead of inside. Apparently, there is science to back me up. The Psychology Today article, Surprising Benefits of Taking Your Creative Mind for a Walk from December 28, 2018 discusses the importance of walking and aerobic exercise to boost creativity and build a better brain. You can also find this article renamed as Your Brain Was Made For Walking in the Reader’s Digest November 2020 issue as well as online under the title Need To Spark Creativity? Go For A Walk. And yet another short article called Want To Maintain Total Cerebral Brain Volume? Keep Walking from Psychology Today April 19, 2019 continues to emphasize the benefits of walking.

Now I must admit my history of walking has been a little insane. When I was in college, I had a job working at a hospital gift shop on the weekends. I would walk all the way from the University of Washington campus on both Saturday and Sunday mornings up to pill hill and take the bus home at the end of my shift. I kid you not. It was almost a three-hour walk. You could not do something like that now because it could be dangerous. But at that time when the Pacific Northwest was a less violent place you could, and I did it almost every weekend for a year. A couple of times I walked from the University of Washington campus to Northgate Mall. It took me just about as long.

One of my daily routines in college was to walk from my dorm down the Burke-Gilman Trail to HEC Edmundson Pavilion to work out and then back again. This was much shorter than my near three-hour walks mentioned above. This was fifteen minutes each way. But it was consistent day to day walking with a workout in between.  

Nowadays I walk for about an hour a day when I go for a walk which I do on days when I am not doing other exercise and I of course walk Gigi and Tucker as a separate walk. I exercise almost every day.

Now I am not advocating that writers should do a three hour walk five times a week. But I do think it is good for writers to walk regularly, as in an average of thirty minutes a day not just to think but for the sake of boosting their creativity, their health, and their sanity. My experience with writers is every one of them could use all these assets. So, after you’ve wolfed down all that turkey, ham, tofurky, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, vegetables, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie or whatever you had for dessert get off your duff and go for a walk so your brain doesn’t shrivel up and turn to dust.  

My Books

You can check out my books Chicane and the first two books in my Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby! and Musicology: Volume Two, Kid! on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will will Musicology!!!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: COLD TURKEY (1971) ScreenPix

If you thought convincing people to wear a mask was hard check out this little gem. Written and directed by Norman Lear (All in The Family) this satire centers around the town of Eagle Rock, Iowa where almost all the residents except the Reverend Clayton Brooks (Dick Van Dyke) and his bedraggled wife Natalie (Pippa Scott) smoke…although they used to, and a few politically extreme whack jobs. Looking to help the tobacco industry get some cheery publicity evil and eccentric PR man Merwin Wren (daffily played by Bob Newhart) suggests awarding a prize of $25,000,000 to the town that can quit smoking for thirty days. Wanting to escape his bankrupt municipality and move to a larger parish Reverend Brooks campaigns for the town to take on the bet and even starts smoking again to reestablish his addiction so he can go through the same withdrawals as his flock. He finally gets everyone to sign a pledge to stop smoking and Eagle Rock ends up being the only town eligible to compete for the prize, but nefarious works are in play to thwart their efforts.   

SMART MOVIES FOR SMART KIDS-THE PEANUTS MOVIE (2015)-FXM

After you watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving head on over to FXM and check out The Peanuts Movie, a 2015 stop-motion/computer-animated flick with the whole Peanuts gang. This film was inexplicably snubbed for the Oscar and instead the dreary, near unwatchable, blatantly sexist Anomalisa secured a nod and for some reason the grossly over rated and possibly worst Pixar movie ever made Inside Out beat out the superior Shaun The Sheep Movie for the win. That said The Peanuts Movie is a charming and delightful film and the first 3-D outing for the Peanuts movies. The story has The Little Red-Haired girl moving into the house across the street from Charlie Brown. With the help of his wildly imaginative beagle Snoopy, his sister Sally and his friends Linus, Marcie, Peppermint Patty, Schroder and a skeptical Lucy, Charlie Brown uses his sweetness and honesty to try and find ways to impress his beloved neighbor. A side-story penned by Snoopy featuring Woodstock and his bird buddies, parallels though the tale.  

SCREENWRITINGU FREE CLASS FRIDAY

ScreenwritingU is doing a free class today, Friday, 11/27/2020 at 2:00 pm PST. Usually their classes are at noon but today it is at 2:00pm. It will be an analysis of The Queen’s Gambit. You can sign up for the class HERE. It will be a teleconference as most of their classes are.