The Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in December of 1620 had a hard life ahead of them. Their first winter was devastating, and by the following fall they had lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower. Few expected to see 1622.

But then Governor William Bradford sent four men fowling after wild ducks, and the party stumbled across a remarkable discovery. Just over a mountain that none had yet crossed they found the Emerald Falls Casino, featuring the loosest slots in the greater Massachusetts region. Soon all the colonists were experiencing the thrill and excitement of high action table games, including Let It Ride, Pai Gow Poker, and even Caribbean Stud. The huge payouts enabled the Pilgrims to not only survive but flourish in subsequent years.

To thank the Native Americans who owned the casino, the Pilgrims invited the entire tribe to an all-you-could-eat buffet, complete with $1 shrimp cocktails. Afterwards everyone went to see Air Supply, live and in concert. And that’s the true story of Thanksgiving.

Old poster I found online vs. A.P. photo from today.

• [Friday After Next] “Dumb and Dumber ‘n The Hood.” Rick Groen, THE GLOBE AND MAIL
• [I-Spy] “Has all the raging excitement of continental drift.” — Marc Savlov, AUSTIN CHRONICLE
• [Femme Fatal] “De Palma spends an hour setting a fancy table and then serves Macaroni and Cheese.” Josh Larsen, SUN PUBLICATIONS
• [Jackass] “A movie in the same sense that those hideous, velvet depictions of Elvis are paintings.” — Lou Lumenick, NEW YORK POST.
• [Abandon] “Consider the title your best advice.” — Desson Howe, WASHINGTON POST.

Phone conversation with The Queen.

Me: So, I’ll see you at four, then.

The Queen: [pause] Huh?

Me: I said I’ll see you at four o’clock.

TQ: [pause] Wha-? No.

Me: No? No, we’re not meeting at four o’clock like we discussed?

TQ: [pause] Um? Uh, oh, four, yeah. We’re meeting.

Me: Are you reading your email while you talk to me on the phone?

TQ: [pause] Huh? No, no.

Me Should I believe you?

TQ: [pause] Wha-? No. I mean yes!

Apparently UPN is doing some sort of a show where a bunch of people compete to become a Supermodel. It called “The Supermodel Show,” presumably because their target audience would get confused if it was called anything more subtle. This follows on the heels of Making The Band (where people competed to be in a rock group), American Idol (where people competed to become a pop star), and The Bachelor (where people competed to look like a moneygrubbing publicity whore on nationwide tv).

In the future this is how all job interviews will work. The Wal*Mart Teller Show. Making The Nike. You and 11 other teens will apply for a position at Hot Dog On A Stick and have to go through twelve weeks of televised elimination rounds. Ultimately the American viewing public will get to decide if you spend your days serving $7.00 cups of lemonade to mall rats.

Holy Smokes! The Flash intro to the Hot Dog On A Stick website is longer than The English Patient! (Although somewhat more engrossing.)

Gold is dumb. What can you do with it? Gild stuff — lilies and Capitol buildings and whatever — or cram it into your cavities, that’s about it. So I’m glad the U.S. dropped the gold standard back in, um, back in whenever they dropped the gold standard. But I can’t seem to get fired up about the dollar either. Dollars are all the same boring color, they get wadded up and torn, and, frankly, I think Andrew Jackson was having a serious Bad Hair Day when he snapped his picture for the twenty. Plus the value of the dollar keeps going down. (Apparently it used to go up too, but that was back in the late 90′s when people still thought e-potbelliedpigs-online.com was a pretty good idea).

But I was listening to Marketplace the other day, and they said something interesting: no matter what the state of the economy, toy makers generally do pretty well — after all, kids don’t give a rat’s ass if Lucent missed their third quarter projections by 7/15 of a cent, all they know is they need a Fashion Polly Sparkle Style House and, by God, they need it NOW!

That’s what gave me Great Idea #57709: the US should make the four pronged square Lego the standard unit of US currency. The bigger Legos will be worth more, and the smaller Legos will be like coins, and those huge Lego plates will be, like, $1000 bills. We’ll also outlaw those stupid “Mindstorm” Legos because they are new-fangled and I don’t understand them.

This plan has so many good points that I can’t even begin to list them and yet now I will:

• When Bush announces that we’re abruptly switching from the dollar to the Lego, your new wealth will depend on how many Legos you own at that moment. In other words, your affluence will become proportional to your nerdliness (which will pretty much make it a wash for Bill Gates, I guess).
• People will have a much greater incentive to save. What can you do with a bunch of saved dollars, except hide them in the Minute Maid Premium Original Low-Pulp Orange Juice container you have in your fridge (not that I do this!!). With saved Legos, you can make castles and life-size blocky replicas of Halle Berry — hooray!
• Money would suddenly become color-coded, thereby making the US exactly like Canada.
• Legos are, like, impossible to counterfeit. Believe me, I’ve tried.
• When you tip a pretty waitress you could make a cat or a rose or something cheesy like that. Conversely, when you pay your taxes you could build and send in a pair of $7,860 multi-colored buttocks.

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