YOU WOULDN'T GET THIS FROM ANY OTHER GUY: Barry Manilow just wants to tell you how he's feeling. (HT: Finch.) In other news:

• You'll never believe what Allen Iverson was talking about yesterday. (HT: Bad Dad)
• My winner-gets-in week 13 FFL game with Finch just got complicated by the fact that his WR accidently shot himself in the leg.
• "Against the real likelihood of financial doom for so many people, it feels almost unseemly to consider a donation to a college or university. Surely there must be a food bank or job retraining program that is more deserving," writes fellow Amherst Student alum Ron Lieber '93 in today's NYT. Still, he argues, there remain good reasons to support your alma mater this year, and those of you who are on my class agent list should expect a call this week.
• Also in this weekend's NYT: Can acclaimed film director Michael Gondry solve a Rubik's Cube with his feet? Watch that video, then this. Then watch him solve it with his nose. Then watch Jack Black one-up him.
  

SLOW(ER) BLOGGING: Not as a matter of cultural or media "movements" but in keeping with seasonal rhythms, things around here presently are being thrown with perhaps less than their usual frequency or alacrity. So it seems like a good time to share a link to one of the more occasional and contemplative bloggers I enjoy, The Burro of Information & Culture. I won't try to sum-up, inevitably over-selling or under-rating the merits of what you might find there, but instead just suggest that you pop over and poke around sometime ... maybe on a lazy weekend afternoon when the tryptophans from an arguably unnecessary turkey-and-stuffing sandwich are likely to heighten your appreciation of someone else's absurd evidence, submitted quietly, slightly a-smirk, and speaking entirely for itself.

Hat tip: Big Media Vandalism, linked by Adam back in February for their Black History Mumf film retrospective. The Burro is in their blogroll.

A STRONG, STRONG MAN: If I'm right, this isn't the last we'll be seeing Rick Astley in the next few months. I expect today's appearance to have a major impact on his iTunes sales, and the expected media boost as features writers across America are awakened from their tryptophanic slumber to explain the phenomenon will only lead to more interest, and then the inevitable question: where will Rick Astley show up next?

Will it be on "Rosie Live"? the Grammy nomination special in a few weeks? Halftime at the Super Bowl? An Inauguration ball? The "Today" show? The 5 o'clock news in Quad Cities? An "American Idol" semifinals results show? Seriously, the possibilities are endless, and if Astley has decided to cash in on his Internet fame to generate some real dollars, he can stretch this out for months, easy.

[I have to praise the brilliance of this, by the way: there is no more square, antiseptic and well-watched tradition than the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. To inject this, of all things, with a completely unleaked rickroll was just brilliant, and Astley's people had to know just how immediately it would play out virally.]

So that's the question: where's Rick next?

WAIT FOR IT: A delightful scene from this morning's Macy's parade.

WHAT DO DAVID NAUGHTON AND AXL ROSE HAVE IN COMMON? Some of you may remember the star of An American Werewolf in London, who also had a Top Ten hit in 1979 with the song "Makin' It." Presumably all of you know the leader of Guns N' Roses.

Their connection arises from this slighty surreal dispute. See also the 3rd paragraph of this piece.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING: It is good to have so much for which to be thankful, as Phoebe's impending first birthday reminds me. Consider this to be an open thread for today, for your musings on thankfulness, your live-blogging from the kitchen or anything else that's on your mind.

As for me, I've got a pile of onions to slice now ...

The Olympic Sport of Modern Pentathlon Gets a Little Less Penta - NYTimes.com

QUADROTHLENIA: In what the NYT has rightly called the most "blatant mismatch between a title and its meaning in sports since 1993, when Penn State’s athletics program became the 11th member of the 'Big Ten' Conference," the Olympic sport of Modern Pentathlon is going from five events to four.

Baron de Coubertin's dream of the 19th Century cavalry soldier -- who shoots, fences, swims, rides an unfamiliar horse, and runs -- will instead combine the first and last events as a land-based biathlon finale, with the athletes shooting a pistol at five targets, then running a kilometer, then shooting-and-running again twice more en route to the finish line. (Hell, why not throw in Slamball while you're at it?)