Julia and Geoffrey realize they totally forgot to discuss the Garfield's Thanksgiving songs in the main episode for this week, so they start there before moving on to commercials and … other things.
First, the opening theme. Because the more you eat, the more grateful you will feel… Next, the song that plays while they actually eat, "Thanksgiving Everyday" -- Geoffrey calls this a glurge. Julia points out that Dr. Liz is a terrible vet, because dogs should never eat corn cobs. They can't digest them and end up with intestinal blockages. Dr. Liz puts a corn on the cob on Odie's plate! Is that a murderous gleam in her cartoon side-eye?
Lasagna Cat, as Geoffrey notes, is kind of hard to explain. You can find it by searching Lasagna Cat on YouTube.
And Julia also mentioned Garfield Minus Garfield, which led Geoffrey to bring up Square Root of Minus Garfield (though he didn't quite remember the name).
Of course this wouldn't be After These Messages if we didn't also watch commercials. We checked out the Peanuts MetLife Thanksgiving Commercial from 1989. Of course, half of the kids are dressed in appropriative Native American costumes, which is a shame, but also ever pervasive. As Native visual artist Valerie Reynoso pointed out in an article about costumes, "…appropriation trivializes the brutal history of colonization of the Americas and its legacy today ... [and] sustains the Western idea that Native attire is only acceptable when worn by a white person and when viewed under a colonial gaze."
Anyway, this commercial was basically a bunch of cartoon Peanuts characters singing a Thanksgiving song … which Geoffrey actually knew! Geoffrey called it "Harvest Home" though "Come Ye Thankful People, Come" may be the actual title. Julia had no idea this song was a thing. But this did lead Julia to reminisce about a song from a middle school winter concert called "Feast of Lights"
This then led to Julia and Geoffrey arguing about whether "O Come O Come Emmanuel" is a gorgeous song (Julia) or just the worst (Geoffrey). Who do you stand with on this, the most important issue of 2019?
Other songs discussed include "Here Comes Santa Claus" (which Geoffrey says is too religious, while Julia apparently never actually paid any attention to the lyrics) and "Santa Baby" (whose utterly charming composer is Jewish, and also Julia's mother met him once on a train).
Okay, we know. You didn't come here for the extended examination of holiday seasonal music. You came for the commercials! We watched some commercials from Thanksgiving 1989, which featured a bumper Geoffrey remembered from the Muppet Babies! We watched through three commercial breaks (about 6 minutes and 20 seconds), which included Precious Places, a sweet Hot Wheels Car Wash, Honeycomb cereal, a Ghostbusters play set, and a commercial for the movie The Little Mermaid, which was in theaters! If you listened to this week's main episode, you'll understand why this excited us so much. Ursula the sea witch is Jon Arbuckle's grandma!
The kind of crab Geoffrey was thinking of was not a hermit crab, but a fiddler crab, by the way.
