Thanksgiving, the mark of the beginning of the Holiday season. Families get together, food is cooked, fights are fought, and football is watched.

Thanksgiving is a pure American Holiday. It celebrates a commerce driven exchange between a weakened horde of white invaders that were given clemency by kind and peace loving Indians, only for the whites to gain strength so that they could make efforts to pillage, rape, murder, and steal.

Ironically, there is no word for irony in Wampanoag?

Nonetheless, the American tradition was born over a table of cornucopias filled with squash and fruits, deer steaks, and, most of all, the majestic American wild turkey. No other animal or food is so closely related a single American holiday such as the turkey is to Thanksgiving.

According to the National Turkey Federation 736 million pounds of turkey are eaten every Thanksgiving, which translates to a full twenty percent of all turkeys eaten in a given year (if you throw in Christmas and Easter, that number jumps to thirty-eight percent of all turkey eaten in only three days!). This means a fifth of all turkeys are eaten in one day.

The National Basketball Association’s lockout has reached Day 151 (as of Oct. 30), and is stretching its way into the beginning of the season. Commissioner David Stern rubs his Troll fingers together after canceling a month’s worth of games, and counts the bars of gold he hides under his bed (totally not politically correct to compare a Jewish man to a gold hungry troll). Union Reps feel like the Three Billy Goats Gruff, asking to pass Stern’s toll bridge, while promising a fatter meal in the future. Yet everything stays status quo, and no resolutions are made.

While some superstars play All-Star events, make commercials mocking the stupid things that come out of their mouths, or sign fake contracts to play in Italy, there’s still the 400 or so other players twiddling their thumbs figuratively staring at the walls but actually spending lots and lots of time in strip clubs. I suppose the more disciplined players will spend their time in gyms trying to stay in peak athletic condition, but a lot of players are going to have to find ways to fund their addictions to Cristal, impregnating white women, and buying the newest Bentley in all 8 different colors.

So, before they have to declare bankruptcy and play in the Israeli Basketball Leagues, here is a short list of money making opportunities that put basketball player’s best assets to work:

Cleaning Services
Unfortunately for Home Depot, the NBA lockout will lead to a significant drop in step ladder sales. These guys can get to anything, I’ve seen it happen. Cabinet tops, ceiling moldings, or that corner of your living you can’t quite reach with a broom and there’s been a spider living there for three years and you’ve gotten used to him, even gave him a name, but now that the little guy is gone you’re pretty grateful.

Check out more of Ric’s brilliance on Hot Dogs and Hellfire.

In 1993, a masterpiece was born. Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, and Sandra Bullock, is a science fiction film based in Utopian San Angeles (a mega city of Southern California), which is about to experience some…problems.

Basic plot summary: John Spartan (Stallone) is cryogenically frozen as part of a punishment for killing a bunch of innocent hostages of Simon Phoenix (Snipes), who also gets frozen as part of a punishment in the near future of 1996, while frozen Southern California transforms into a Utopian land led by omniscient ruler Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorn).

After 36 years, Phoenix is up for parole, and after he is defrosted from his icey prison, murders a bunch of motherfuckers. Later we find out that Cocteau revived Phoenix to hunt down a man named Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary), who is the leader of a group of subversive rebels called the Wastelanders, who only want to return to a normal, non-Utopian way of life.

Spartan is then revived from his frozen slumber to capture Phoenix, which he eventually does in a very awesome frozen-head-exploding sort of way, has cyber sex with his sidekick Lenina Huxley (Bullock), and hams up the entire movie in a blaze of fireworks, explosives, and anti-cursing-machine paper-expelling expletives.

And, of course, there’s the whole thing with the 3 sea shells.

That’s Demolition Man on the surface, but is that where the story ends? No way, and call me crazy, but I think there’s a whole 2,600 word essay that I can pull out of this seemingly nonsensical movie.