Thousands Gather For Stuffing Of
Giant Rockefeller Center Turkey
November 18, 2008 | Issue 44•47
Once again this year, dozens of happy children slipped and skidded across the ceremonial turkey fat on the ice rink.
NEW YORK—In what has become a Thanksgiving tradition, more than 10,000 locals and tourists alike braved the cold Monday to watch the annual stuffing of the Rockefeller Center Turkey.
The nationally televised event, which has rung in the holiday season for nearly 80 years, began at 5 p.m., when workers propped open the skin flaps of the 55-foot-tall bird, and pushed an 11-ton mixture of bread crumbs, onions, and other fixings into its massive trunk.
"This year's stuffing is shaping up to be the best one yet," said Mayor Mike Bloomberg, addressing the crowd from a podium next to the giant avian carcass. "Look at that beautiful glistening turkey!"
Mayor Bloomberg rings in the Thanksgiving season.
"Let Thanksgiving begin," Bloomberg added as he ceremoniously picked up a handful of salted butter and coagulated grease from the pile and threw it into the cheering crowd.
Moments after a 150-foot-tall crane stuffed the raw turkey to overflowing, ground crews fastened the bird's gargantuan legs together with nearly 200 yards of kitchen string. According to organizers, the Rockefeller Center Turkey will be basted hourly with 30,000 gallons of natural juices, pumped from industrial hoses, to prevent it from drying out.
The largest Thanksgiving centerpiece to date, the 70-foot-long turkey was personally selected by the mayor from a Maine farm and transported to Rockefeller Center on the back of a flatbed truck. Throughout its journey to the Big Apple, a record number of onlookers greeted the enormous, vacuum-sealed animal, with many a passerby scrambling to get their picture taken alongside it.
"The guidelines we use to find the perfect turkey are based not only on height, but also plumpness and just the right amount of dark meat," said David Murbach, who has helped procure Rockefeller Center's giant turkey for the past 25 years. "While this year we did opt for a commercially grown bird, in 2007 a family living in Vermont donated a 45-foot-tall turkey they had in their backyard."
Crowds reportedly started arriving before noon to watch the festive turkey-stuffing spectacle, which included live musical performances by Josh Groban and American Idol–winner David Cook. In addition, the entire cast of NBC's Chuck received the honor this year of walking inside the turkey's abdominal cavity to retrieve the 1,000-pound giblets packet.
"I knew the crowds were going to be huge, but I wanted my son to be here on the day all the stuffing went in," said Cleveland resident Dean Carlson, who was visiting New York with his family. "You should have seen the look on his face when they peeled back the skin with that giant skidder. This is something he'll remember for the rest of his life."
On Tuesday, gravy boats came up the Hudson River, while dump trucks heaped with mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and boiled corn lined Sixth Avenue for nearly a mile. Several dozen workers have also been added to the payroll to shovel congealed fat and gristle off the sidewalks until the end of December.
"You know the holidays are right around the corner when you can smell raw turkey from 50 blocks away," SoHo resident Stephen Finney said. "Thanksgiving in New York just wouldn't be the same without it."
According to historian Steve Medina, the custom of stuffing a Rockefeller Center turkey first started in 1931, when exhausted workers laying the plaza's foundation kept their spirits up by preparing a 10-foot-tall bird right on the construction site. The tradition quickly caught on, and has only grown in pomp and popularity since.
"The Rockefeller Center Turkey has given us so many wonderful memories over the years," Medina said. "From the first honey-glazed bird in 1957, to that image of Mayor LaGuardia raising those giant gizzards above his head to signal the start of another Thanksgiving season."
"Through depression, war, and even food shortages, this incredible tradition has always endured," Medina continued. "Except of course for 1951, when the enormous bird rolled off a cargo train and crushed 64 people before plunging into the East River."
The Rockefeller Center Turkey will be slow-roasted from 5:30 p.m. to midnight each day until Thanksgiving, when the red button pops out, indicating that the bird is fully cooked and ready to be served.
Officials claimed that the turkey would not be wasted this year, as its leftovers will be used to make enough sandwiches to last for the next 10 months.
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Fraternity In Danger Of Losing House Launches Harebrained Scheme To Fix Economy
November 17, 2008 | Issue 44•47
Frat members get high and talk financial instruments.
DURHAM, NC—When the residents of Sigma Alpha Theta house learned last week that the 80-year-old building they call home was under threat of foreclosure, they decided to take matters into their own hands by devising a wacky, R-rated plan to completely repair the battered American economy.
"The moment we got the bad news, we knew there was only one thing we could do," said Theta president Peter "Cool Pete" Barrow. "Sneak into the Federal Reserve Bank with two cans of Barbasol and a giant fishing net in order to adjust the overnight lending rate while no one is looking."
"We're not going to take this decline in investor confidence coupled with the suffocating effect of unregulated derivatives-trading lying down," Barrow added, belching.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reconsiders adjusting the overnight lending rate.
While Theta House is closely guarding the details of its laugh-a-minute economy-rebuilding scheme, Barrow admitted that it involves a 50-gallon drum of Crisco, the U.S. Senate, five Russian exchange students in bikinis, incentives designed to provoke a massive injection of capital from the private sector over the next three fiscal quarters, and a dead horse.
If all goes according to plan, fraternity members said, the scheme to prop up the U.S. economy will be completed just in time to throw the fall formal dance into total chaos.
The Theta Plan, as it is known, has drawn mixed reviews from economists. While most agree that the financial theory behind the scheme is "crazy," others counter that the idea of flying a hot-air balloon filled with dry ice over Wall Street is so outside the realm of conventional thinking that, paradoxically, it just might work.
"We never should have allowed Noodleman to refinance our house," Theta brother Tater said. "He flunked Econ six semesters in a row! Now we have no choice but to pump confidence back into the system and reinvigorate the stock market ourselves, so we can save our house and get [longtime Sigma Alpha Theta mascot] Barfy the Goat back."
The crazy plot originated when two officials from Bank of America arrived at the fraternity's beer-can-littered front door to deliver the news that they had 30 days to come up with $237,498 in back payments, or the house would be repossessed. Most of the members claimed to have had no idea that their house was so deeply leveraged, which was reportedly due to the fact that Fat Billy Bower had just baked a batch of marijuana brownies, two of which were mistakenly offered to the bankers with hijinks-inducing results.
Still, the sobering news cast a pall on the Theta House members. Most sat on their hands and stared glumly into space until they were rallied to action by a normally quiet, newly initiated figure known as Slingshot.
"Were we down when the dean threatened to revoke our charter unless we cleaned up our act?" Slingshot asked. "No! Were we down when the still in the basement exploded, knocked the house off its foundation, and nearly blinded Prescott? No! Are we going to let the complete collapse of the global economy get us down now?"
After a rousing chorus of "Heck no!" the misfit fraternity quickly concocted the scheme, with which it hopes to eliminate the sprawling and complex credit-default-swaps market, stabilize the dollar, and create the world's largest beer bong.
Some elements of the plan are reportedly already in place, including convincing the girls from their sister sorority to remove their tops to distract security guards at the mansion of NYSE Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer, and the construction of the Recoverybot—a profanity-spewing, stock-trading automaton designed by horny Japanese exchange student Shibusawa "The Brain" Shigenobu.
But Sigma Alpha Theta's plan has met fierce opposition from stodgy authority figure and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who vowed to stop the collegiate scheme.
"We are at a tenuous point in the [Troubled Assets Recovery Plan] enacted by Congress, and any outside interference could damage the good we've already done," Bernanke said. "I'll do whatever it takes to stop those roughnecks of Theta house. No one saves the economy but me. Especially not a bunch of grimy low-lifes who have no respect for traditional economic policy."
While it remains to be seen whether the plan will go awry or will somehow all come magically together at the last minute, fraternity members were confident that they will ultimately succeed in both saving the economy and getting everyone laid.
"How hard can it be?" SAT brother Jeffrey "Tank" Worthen asked. "Last year we discovered cold fusion in order to keep Geezer from getting kicked out of his grad program. And just last semester we launched a space shuttle in order to win back our girls from the creeps at ZBT."
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Crocodile Bites Off Bush's Arm
HOMESTEAD, FL—A 14-foot crocodile bit off President Bush's left arm at the shoulder Monday, a White House memo reported. Bush, who was reportedly standing waist-deep in a swamp at Everglades National Park when the crocodile struck, also sustained severe puncture wounds and torn flesh in his hip and upper thigh. According to witnesses, Bush attempted to fend off the large reptile with his left arm, but the crocodile latched onto it above the elbow, dragged the president underwater, and ripped his arm from its socket. Bush's severed arm was unable to be recovered. Doctors confirmed that he will be fitted with a prosthetic limb in a procedure Friday, and that he is currently being treated for sepsis. Bush is resting comfortably in Annapolis Naval Hospital.
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CREDIT!?! We don't need no stinkin credit!!!
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