For the 19th year UBS sponsored Big Balloons scurry through the corporate concrete canyons of Stamford Connecticut bringing the joy of greed and unaccountable villany through big bags of gas and vapid consumer marketing to impressionable children of all ages.

This year we have 12 bands, 6 floats, and 18 Balloons the newest of which, The Lorax, is a 40 foot tall celebration of how ‘green’ and environmentally conscious the good burghers are, represented by the 9 members of the Grand Marshal Team of first responders fresh from their contest with underwater squirrels.

Also new this year is Red from Fraggle Rock appearing with old favorites Oscar the Grouch, Clifford the Big Red Dog, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Elmo, Billy Blazes, Kermit the Frog, Hagar the Horrible, Smurfette, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, The Cat in the Hat, Mr. Potato Head, Popeye, Scooby Doo, Garfield, Fred Flintstone, and Super Grover.  The master of ceremonies is Alan Kalter of “The Late Show With David Letterman”.

There are also clowns to scare the youngest-

For the most part, the Auguste plays the fool. As Season explained, they’re the clowns that have no idea what they’re doing in their routine, blowing up a balloon backwards, or accidentally letting it go so it whizzes out of their hands. But in the end, their balloon is perfect.

…

White Face clowns know exactly what to do with their balloon, mini-bicycle or the bowling pins they’re juggling. They do everything right. But in the end, it’s a total disaster.

…

The two work together, playing off each other’s yin and yang. As the perfectionist White Face clown meticulously works with his props, the Auguste garners giggles through his trial and error. In the end, the White Face generates laughter from the audience with his failed exercise, while the Auguste rejoices in his Tada moment.

What?  You say there’s another Big Balloon Parade?

Their mascot appears to be a windblown comb over about as convincing as Sam Puckett’s lip squirrel and they have a mere 16 Balloons following the retirement of Snoopy.  The returning veterans are-

• Buzz Lightyear
• Charlie Brown
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Julius
• Kermit the Frog
• Kung Fu Panda
• Pikachu
• Pillsbury Doughboy
• Ronald McDonald
• Sailor Mickey
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Spider-Man
• SpongeBob SquarePants

with 3 new additions-

• The Elf on the Shelf
• Hello Kitty
• and Papa Smurf

They’ve also managed to find 12 bands to supplement their freezing cast of Broadway lip-syncers-

• Banda Musical Delfines, Veracruz, Mexico
• Father Ryan High School, Nashville, TN
• Kenton Ridge High School, Springfield, OH
• Macy’s Great American Marching Band, United States
• Niceville High School, Niceville, FL
• North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC
• NYPD Marching Band, New York, NY
• Oak Ridge High School, Conroe, TX
• Saratoga High School, Saratoga, CA
• United States Air Force Band & Honor Guard, Washington, DC
• University of Louisiana Lafayette, Lafayette, LA
• Wyoming All-State Marching Band, Wyoming

and 28 floats for 28 celebrities and 9 performance groups.

Plus Santa.

It’s nationally televised on CBS and NBC, I’m going to favor the CBS broadcast since NBC will repeat at 2 pm after the National Dog Show.  It used to be that you could gain an advantage by watching CBS’ uptown coverage but so much of it is pre-canned and tape delayed it’s hard to get any continuity out of either presentation.  If you want to see Broadway on Ice go with NBC’s Herald Square location.

Happy Thanksgiving all, I’ll be joining you again later for Throwball.

As opposed to night which will be coming soon enough.

Most of my regular readers know that I look on Holiday blogging as a public service.  Many times I need a distraction while I’m working or an excuse to get away from the crowd.  That’s difficult when schedules are disrupted and regular habits and outlets are unavailable.

So I put these little research projects up to inform you of special events of interest and alternatives to absent activities.

Additionally today we’ll have special coverage of Big Balloon Parades and three Throwball games and as the weekend progresses other Holiday sports including the final Formula One of the season from Interlagos.

This particular piece covers the hours from 6 am to 6 pm.  Feel free to contribute items I’ve overlooked.

Well, some people are up getting set for tomorrow and since many of them are seldom awake at this hour I thought I’d point out some background programming.

I’m a little behind myself so this is an appetizer.

midnight

• CBS– David Letterman (Amy Poehler, Josh Hutcherson, Tegan and Sara)
• A&E– Duck Dynasty (marathon until 4 am)
• BBCA– The Man With The Golden Gun
• Discovery– Moonshiners (marathon until 3 am)
• Food– Restaurant: Impossible (marathon until 4 am)
• History– American Restoration (marathon until 4 am)
• H2– How the Earth Was Made (marathon until 4 am)
• SciFi– For Your Eyes Only
• TLC– Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (marathon until 3 am)

12:30 am

• CBS– The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson

1 am

• AMC– Gone With The Wind
• Animal Planet– River Monsters (marathon until 6 am)
• TBS– Conan

2 am

• BBCA– Luther (marathon until 6 am)
• Hub– Facts of Life (marathon until 4 am)
• Turner Classic– Wise Blood

2:30 am

• Comedy– Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
• SciFi– Dr. No

3 am

• ESPN– Hoopies, Clippers @ Thunder
• ESPN2– Sports Center (until 6 am)
• Nat Geo– Ultimate Factories (marathon until 6 am)

4 am

• Turner Classic– The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

One Interesting Thing About Paula Broadwell’s Petraeus Biography

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

POSTED: November 21, 1:50 PM ET

The book is so one-sided that it is almost supernaturally dull, and I was forgetting about it just minutes after I put it down.

Then it hit me – it was an interesting book, after all! Because if you read All In carefully, the book’s tone will remind you of pretty much any other authorized bio of any major figure in business or politics (particularly in business), and it will most particularly remind you of almost any Time or Newsweek famous-statesperson profile.

Which means: it’s impossible to tell the difference between the tone of a reporter who we now know was literally sucking the dick of her subject and the tone of just about any other modern American reporter who is given access to a powerful person for a biography or feature-length profile.

…

The real scandal in the Petraeus episode isn’t that a would-be journalist was sleeping with her subject, it’s that lots and lots of other journalists are doing the same thing – metaphorically, anyway.

Decades ago, when people like Sy Hersh were the go-to-profilers of influential people, journalists reflexively distrusted power, and any reporter, male or female, who wrote a blowjob profile (that’s what we call them) of a politician or tycoon was looked down upon as a hack and a traitor. But these days, you can’t tell the difference between your average profile of a Senator or CEO or a four-star general and an ESPN feature about a day in the life of Lebron James.

Us Scandinavian Bachelor Chefs (h/t CompoundF) frequently find ourselves in the position of needing a last minute substitute for real food because planning ahead is not one of our strengths (if it were we probably wouldn’t be Bachelors anymore).

Here’s a recipe that is not too fussy and can be thrown together at the last minute and great expense as a cheap imitation of inferior quality.

You will need-

• Ground Turkey
• Dried Cranberries
• Onion (chopped coarse)
• Bread
• Butter
• Garlic Powder
• Bell’s Poultry Seasoning
• An Egg

• Dry Packaged Instant Turkey Gravy

Optional (of course the more you add the better it will taste)-

• Walnuts (chopped coarse)
• Canned Mushrooms (stems and pieces, chopped coarse)

The goal is simple, to create a reasonable taste facsimile of a Turkey dinner with stuffing and gravy without days of defrosting and hours of cooking time.  It is somewhat pricey as ground Turkey often costs as much as ground beef or more.

The primary problems to overcome are cohesion and dryness.  I’m going to recommend what seems like a lot of fat but Turkey is quite a lean meat.  I’ll be working with approximately 2 pounds of Turkey as a base (that’s how much the local Super Market puts in a package), you adjust the other ingredients for taste and volume.

The most labor intensive part of preparation is chopping the onion(s).  Depending on how strong the flavor (in decreasing order- yellow, red, sweet) you’ll want to prepare about half the volume of your meat.  If you use yellow and are sensitive to onions (I am) you may want to saute them a little to take some of the harshness out.

The most time consuming part is the bread.  Toast it a bit (hey, if you have enough time to stale it you most likely don’t need this recipe), smear generously with butter and shake quite a bit of garlic powder on top.  Cube.  You need about 3/4 of the volume of your meat (6 slices or a little more).  Crusty European breads work much better than Balloon breads because the goal (as with meat balls) is to lighten the texture of your finished dish.

Mixing–

I put the other ingredients in the bottom of the bowl with the meat on top but I don’t think it makes any difference.  The important thing is not to over mix because the loaf will get gummy and dense.

A cup or more of Dried Cranberries (I like them), Onion, Garlic Toast, 4 Tbls Butter (chopped), Ground Turkey, 1 – 3 Tbls Bell’s Poultry Seasoning (the primary flavor is Sage in case you can’t find it), an Egg or 2 to bind.

Mix gently, completely, and not too long with your fingers.  Now is the time to add your optional ingredients, if using Mushrooms include the liquid too.

Cooking–

I like loaf pans, others mound on a sheet.  Grease for clean release.  It leaks a bit so you’ll want a lip to catch the drip.  In any event at least an hour at 325 – 350 until the internal temperature reaches the recommended level for poultry or brown on the top and gray through the thickest part.

Rest 5 – 10 minutes while you prepare the gravy, slice and serve.

Thanksgiving on a stick.

Gobble, gobble.

Too soon?

Now I’ll admit that most of what drives this particular post is my New England skin flintiness and it’s  hard to find meat cheaper than Turkey even when it’s not on special.  Indeed the problem for most people is its abundance as in, what do you do with the 15 pounds of it you’re too sleepy to eat?

I have an easy and tasty solution that will tide you over until the briskets of spring are available.

Pulled Turkey (sometimes called Turkey Hash) is easy to prepare and freezes well.  Basically you take all the bits and scraps you can pull off the bone (or shred larger pieces by hand) and remove all the tendons and cartilage and fat and uncrispy skin so that you’re left with a pile of pure stringy meat.

Now you can freeze it right at this point in individual recipe size portions in case you’re a big fan of Turkey salad or other treatments that don’t require visually attractive slices.  I do it to save freezer space.

My ultimate destination is a pot of gravy which I make in my typical fashion from a dried mix heated and whisked for a few minutes before dumping the meat (frosted or defrosted) into it for warming to serving temperature.

If it is shortly after Thanksgiving there is usually some leftover stuffing around but it works equally well over egg noodles or rice.  In a pinch or a hurry just a slice of bread will do and you can call it an open face Turkey sandwich.

The simplicity belies the taste (if you happen to like Turkey) and last time I checked 2 cups of gravy mix (prepared) went for $1.50.

Hard to beat.

Tomorrow- Turkey Loaf.

Andrew Cuomo, fake Democrat

By Alex Pareene, Salon

Monday, Nov 19, 2012 07:45 AM EST

If the New York state Senate remains controlled by the Republican Party, it won’t be because of the voters. Democrats have 30 seats, with 32 required for a majority. They’re also ahead in two races currently being recounted. … One guy who’s staying conspicuously out of the fight: Democratic governor and 2016 presidential contender Andrew Cuomo.

…

(I)t’s not just that Cuomo’s not trying to help his party win a majority that voters actually voted for. He has at times actively hindered their chances. Cuomo signed off on gerrymandered state Senate districts and did not demand independent, nonpartisan redrawing. In doing so he intended to preserve the status quo – Republicans in charge of the state Senate, Democrats in charge of the more representative assembly – but voters in New York pretty clearly decided that they preferred Democrats in charge of both houses, even with districts drawn specifically to make that nearly impossible.

And if Republicans get their majority, with the tacit support of Cuomo, the governor will have once again shown that he is not the progressive figure he will likely try to sell himself as if he runs for president. His tenure so far has been marked by flashy liberal victories on issues like gay marriage, along with a quietly conservative economic agenda: A property tax cap, total neglect of mass transit, and (partial) support for fracking. Even on economic issues where Cuomo has more liberal priorities, he rarely pushes his Republican friends particularly hard. (A Republican-controlled state Senate will almost certainly block a minimum wage increase Cuomo ostensibly supports.) There’s a reason, in other words, that the National Review loves him.

…

Democrats ought to know what sort of Democrat he is. If Cuomo allows Republicans to subvert the will of the voters of New York, so that he has an easier time cutting taxes and rolling back regulations, he shouldn’t be allowed to sell himself to future primary voters as a progressive.

As Atrios says- Zombie Liberal Bloggers Can Still Eat Brains.

Well, where is here exactly?

It’s the penultimate race of the year and the Driver’s and (arguably) Constructor’s Championships are still up for grabs.  Actually I should classify the Driver’s Championship as arguable too since it’s not really as close as the 10 point gap between Vettel and Alonso would indicate.

What happened?  It’s not so much that Red Bull is all that much better than the rest but that the other teams suck so bad.

Jenson Button says 2012 McLaren car is worst since he joined F1 team

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Monday 5 November 2012 17.30 EST

“Since I’ve been here this has been the worst year. It’s been tricky, even on good weekends. We’ve had a problem pretty much every weekend, lately. We need to stop it. I don’t get it.”

Button has been just as frustrated as his departing team-mate Lewis Hamilton as McLaren have failed to match the performances of Red Bull – or even Ferrari, who now look likely to relegate the British team to third place in the constructors’ championship.

…

Hamilton has often been outstanding this season but has been frustrated by pit-lane mistakes and, more recently, poor reliability.

He dominated the weekend in Abu Dhabi and stormed away from his 25th pole position into a comfortable lead, only to pull out before the halfway stage because of an electrical problem, evoking memories of his gearbox failure in Singapore, when again he was running away with the race.

“It’s twice in the last five races,” he said. “And the cars, apart from India, have had problems in all five. In Singapore we had the gearbox failure, at Suzuka a rear rollbar malfunction, before qualifying and in the race, and in Korea a rear rollbar failure. Then we had India, which was fine, and then here. So that’s four hardcore difficult weekends.”

Hamilton added: “I’ve been on pole position seven times this year. I have only won three times. In the other ones we’ve had failures and issues with pit stops and so on. If my car was as reliable as Sebastian’s or Fernando’s I would be right up with them now.”

Crisis of confidence as Ferrari pull out stops for Fernando Alonso

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Friday 16 November 2012 12.24 EST

In a move so late it was positively posthumous Jules Bianchi, the Ferrari test driver, took the car for a spin at Spain’s Idiada Circuit last Saturday. The work he did there concentrated on the car’s aerodynamics, for this has long been diagnosed as the car’s failing; and yet it was a classic case of closing the garage door after the Red Bull has bolted.

Fernando Alonso goes into the penultimate race of the season here on Sunday only 10 points behind Sebastian Vettel. While Alonso has said he is confident and trusts his team, his chances of winning his third world championship were best summed up by one beleaguered member of the tifosi who said on Friday, shrugging: “For Fernando to win Vettel needs to crash. Twice.”

In reality it should never have been this close. Ferrari still have a slim chance because of Alonso’s dogged ability to make the best of a bad job while his and the team’s position have been promoted by McLaren’s habit of not only shooting themselves in the foot but using a sawn-off shotgun to do it.

…

There are many technical reasons for Ferrari’s troubles. They have had wind tunnel problems. They have also had difficulties – perhaps most crucial of all – in qualifying. Alonso has not been better than fourth on the grid in the past eight races and is normally about sixth. He is stronger in race mode when he is not hindered by the car’s poor DRS system, which is used more freely in qualifying.

But there are deeper problems at Ferrari. There are questions over Fry in his role as technical director, which he took on for the first time at Ferrari. The team were more competitive two years ago, when Alonso almost won the title, and when Aldo Costa, the man Fry replaced, was in charge. Ferrari have not been innovative enough. They have been too content to close the gap on their more inventive rivals at Red Bull and McLaren. They have not challenged, intellectually.

…

The journalist Beppe Severgnini said: “Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis.” There have not been many Botticellis from Ferrari recently.

Red Bull’s F1 dominance is talking point of US Grand Prix paddock

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Friday 16 November 2012 14.22 EST

The BBC commentator David Coulthard drove not only for Red Bull but for two of the other three teams to achieve this feat (a hat-trick of Formula One Constructors’ Championships), McLaren and Williams (Ferrari, twice, were the others). Coulthard said from the paddock here on Friday: “I’m totally unsurprised. Because Red Bull are the only one of the major teams totally focused on Formula One.

“McLaren have electronics, road cars and other things and I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve never been successful at giving 100% to more than one thing.

“At various times McLaren have been the class of the field. At no time have Ferrari been able to say that, although they’ve had a great package. But Red Bull [whose soft drinks empire is run completely separately] have an ability to find solutions to the problems that they find during the course of a season. It is a really good formula.”

So this is 3 years in a row now of Vettel grabbing the pole and driving out of range and Formula One is just as boring as it was under Schumacher/Marlboro UPC.  What has to happen for it to get interesting again is for the other teams to get better and only Lotus/Renault shows any sign of improvement.

Good luck with Mercedes Lewis.  You’ll need it.

Austin

• New York Times History
• The Guardian History
• Perry’s Pit
• United States Grand Prix
• Perry’s Pit Qualifying

Interactive Track

• Formula One
• The Guardian

Official Sites

• Formula One Official Website
• Speed Racecast

Pretty tables below.

A Towering Landmark for Formula One Track

By FRED A. BERNSTEIN, The New York Times

November 15, 2012, 3:35 pm

Mr. Miró and Miguel Rivera, partners in Austin’s Miró Rivera Architects, got to design more than grandstands and ticket booths; their work includes a 250-foot observation tower made of thousands of steel pipes, painted red, as if to mimic the streaks of lights trailing racecars at night. The tower, with two winding stairways and a high-speed elevator, culminates in a beaklike protrusion that extends over the track, offering views of the action below through its glass floor.

…

Bobby Epstein, co-founder of Circuit of the Americas, said he hoped the tower would become a landmark, making the track instantly recognizable to TV viewers. He declined to give the price of the tower, except to say that the steel alone “cost two or three million dollars” and that he expected it to become a revenue-producing tourist attraction.

Texas Taxpayers Finance Formula One Auto Races as Schools Dismiss Teachers

By Darrell Preston and Aaron Kuriloff, Bloomberg News

May 11, 2011 12:43 PM ET

It’s as easy as ABC.  It’s as simple as 123.

1. Pay Bernie Ecclestone a $250 Million bribe
2. ???
3. Profit!

Texas Billionaires Bet on Austin F1 Track Backed by Taxpayers

David Mildenberg, Bloomberg News

Friday, November 16, 2012

Subsidies for the Austin race, backed by Governor Rick Perry and Comptroller Susan Combs, will depend partly on the effect the first event has on tax receipts. With just days to go before the start, more than 115 hotels in Austin had vacancies, Priceline.com and other travel websites show. That may signal that forecasts of a Super Bowl-caliber boost won’t pan out.

“The economic studies said every hotel would be completely filled all the way down to San Antonio,” a 90-minute drive from Austin, said Danielle Crespo, who runs two websites that link Formula One visitors to lodging. “That isn’t the case.”

…

Fewer fans are coming to Austin from Europe and Canada than hoteliers expected, and they’re booking three nights instead of the projected five or six, said Randy McCaslin, a vice president of PKF Consulting who tracks the Texas hotel market from Houston. In a normally slow month, the race may boost occupancy rates as much as 2 percent, he said.

Perry, a Republican, called the event “a great opportunity to showcase our state” at a Nov. 8 news briefing in Austin, the capital. Some of the more than 20,000 visitors expected from other countries will include corporate chief executives who may be interested in expanding in Texas, the governor said.

The state’s support has drawn criticism from lawmakers and raised fairness concerns among other motorsports leaders.

“It’s caused a lot of questions and there has not been a reasonable explanation so far,” said Eddie Gossage, the president of Texas Motor Speedway, a NASCAR venue in Fort Worth. More than 700,000 fans in the past two years have attended six NASCAR and Indy Racing League events there, yet it has received a far smaller subsidy, $5.7 million, a state report shows.

…

“You have a fund that is going to pay them much more for not nearly as large of a crowd as we have,” Gossage said of the Austin group, called Circuit of the Americas LLC.

U.S. Goes From F1 Wasteland to Land of Promise

By REUTERS

Published: November 16, 2012 at 7:19 PM ET

With the newly constructed $400 million Circuit of the Americas providing the spectacular beach head, a successful race in the Texas capital could pave the way for even more grands prix in the U.S. with possible races in New York and Los Angeles.

F1 teams up and down the Austin paddock could not hide their delight at being back in the U.S. while Ecclestone gushed a new found enthusiasm for a market he had once dismissed.

“The Americas are probably big enough to have five or six grands prix,” Ecclestone told reporters. “We’re trying to get something sorted out in New Jersey/New York, we’ve had a lot of requests.”

Tavo Hellmund’s United States Grand Prix joy will be shrouded in pain

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Thursday 15 November 2012 17.34 EST

The man who transformed the United States Grand Prix in Austin from personal fantasy into vivid reality will watch Sunday’s race with a mixture of pride and sadness.

…

(T)he bigger it is the more painful it is for Hellmund, who will have no official role to play this weekend after an unhappy and unsuccessful power struggle. He says: “This is, after all, my baby. And to see Formula One cars tear down the straightway on Sunday will be the fulfilment of a project I worked on for more than a decade.”

Hellmund had announced in July 2010, that he had signed a deal to bring Formula One back to America. But after realising he needed more backing, he fell out with his fellow investors, Bobby Epstein and Red McCombs, with the former having stepped in to rescue the venture with some last-ditch deal making after Ecclestone had cancelled the contract. Hellmund filed a suit against the other investors, ultimately lost control and then was squeezed out.

Formula One Hoping for Happy U.S. Return

By REUTERS

Published: November 14, 2012 at 3:06 AM ET

The penultimate race in a title chase that has taken the glamour series to the four corners of the globe could well be decided in the distinctly unglamorous scrublands of south Texas, as Formula One tries again to establish a presence in the U.S. following a five-year absence.

…

While Sunday’s race could be the pinnacle of the F1 season, Americans motor sports fans do not view the U.S. Grand Prix with as much anticipation.

Formula One Romance Lost on Americans

By REUTERS

Published: November 14, 2012 at 7:02 PM ET

In the United States, however, the appeal of motor racing’s glamour circuit has somehow been lost on the country that sells more Ferraris and Porsches than any other and it is likely more eyeballs will be focused on Homestead, Florida on Sunday where NASCAR’s Chase championship will be decided.

“The truth is we find that there is no crossover,” Eddie Gossage, the president of Texas Motor Speedway near Dallas, which hosts two of NASCAR’s biggest races, told Reuters.

“NASCAR fans tend to look down their nose at Formula One fans and Formula One fans tend to look down their nose at NASCAR.”

“It’s apples and sausages, it’s not even apples and oranges they are so unlike each other.”

Taking Another Shot at a New Frontier With U.S. Grand Prix

By BRAD SPURGEON, The New York Times

Published: November 16, 2012

To capture the American imagination, however, many ingredients must be present in – or added to – a series that differs greatly from the numerous local motor-sports offerings, such as Nascar, sprint car, drag and IndyCar racing.

A major problem is that most Formula One races in the United States are run either late at night or early in the morning because of the global audience, which means they attract only the most devoted U.S. fans.

…

Also, there is little done to entertain fans beyond the track action at a Formula One race. Any entertainment is provided by local promoters, such as variety acts performing on stages outside the grandstands and activities for children at the Bahrain race.

In fact, Formula One is not much of a family affair, unlike most American sports, as tickets for the race are usually much more expensive than those for other sporting events. In Austin, the tickets are among the series’ cheapest: Three-day general admission is $159, but a seat in the grandstands costs $269 to $499.

Austin

• New York Times History
• Perry’s Pit
• United States Grand Prix

Interactive Track

• Formula One
• The Guardian

Official Sites

• Formula One Official Website
• Speed Racecast

Tires are Hards and Mediums.  The track is brand new and slippery.

Any surprises below.