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# Iconoclast
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/iconoclast-20061123/
- Published: 2006-11-23T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T01:16:55.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*BLAST BY SETH BARNES The turkey tally*

*By Seth Barnes*

Thanksgiving is a time to stand aside and recognize our blessings and good fortune. For one day, we look back instead of forward. We hit the pause button on our frenetic lives and acknowledge this bounteous, complex drama we call life.

And since you’ll have a pretty healthy dose of old fashioned “giving thanks”today as you watch football, carve the turkey and get reacquainted with Aunt Matilda, I’m going to do you a favor and spend my time in this column complaining and acting like a maladjusted jerk. You know... normal, everyday human behavior. After all, when this 24 hour period of good cheer comes to a close, you’ll find yourself back on the battlefield of idiocy and incompetence (some call this place “Wal- Mart the day after Thanksgiving”), and you’ll want to remember how to sneer and make immature gestures.

In my day job, I work with search engines, a modern phenomenon that allows us to access a treasure trove of information in a few keystrokes.I think we’d all agree that this technology is a true wonder, even if it makes The Laziest Creatures on Earth (more commonly known as “the American public”) even more lazy and slothful.

Anyhow, Yahoo! runs a site where they list the Yahoo! Buzz Index, a ranking of what the world’s searching for based on overall search growth. It’s a neat way to pick out breaking news stories. As you can imagine, a lot of search “buzz”centers on pop culture. It seems that people care more about whether Nicole Ritchie has actually consumed a calorie this calendar year (undetermined) than the nascent instability on the Korean Peninsula.

In this spirit, using the Buzz Index, I give you The Turkey Tally: a list of the dweebs, doofuses and general concepts that the world-at-large is devoting its waking hours to. I’ve added my own personal comments and pot-shots for your viewing pleasure.

Michael Richards — Not much more can be said about this incident, but I always assumed that goofy, lovable “Kramer” was in fact a boiling racist filled with vindictive rage. Didn’t you? What’s next, “Newman” denying the Holocaust?

Black Friday — Really, what’s the appeal of going shopping with millions of other people? It’s like hearing about a traffic jam on the I-10 and jumping in your car to join the masses.

Clay Aiken and Kelly Ripa — Apparently, they had a tiff when guest host Aiken covered Ripa’s mouth during an interview. All I have to say on the matter is that I’m pretty sure Osama bin Laden has a picture of Clay Aiken taped up in his cave as a personal “why we wage jihad” reminder.

Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii — When they show clips of the losers camping outside Circuit City to buy these newly released game consoles, look closely. There are barely any girls/women present. And therein lies our hope: That this slice of our population will actually weed themselves out of the gene pool through their inability to interface with anything other than Grand Theft Auto.

Tom Cruise — I’m fine that people are searching for him on the Internet. As long as he, his wife, his kid and the phalanx of photographers that chronicle their lives stay in Italy, the rest of us can catch a breath or two.

Turducken — The first result in Yahoo defines a Turducken as “A 15 pound … semi-boneless turkey stuffed with duck and chicken with layers of our delicious stuffing between each bird. You have the choice of either our traditional Cajun sausage or a cornbread stuffing.” Layers of delicious stuffing between two cooked birds? I’m pretty sure whoever invented this is an American hero.

“If I Did It” — Stay tuned for the bootlegged YouTube O.J. interview. And let me just say that if I did it (that is, viciously murder two unsuspecting people in cold blood) and got away with it, I’d probably just stick to the golf course instead of trying to make like Ernest Hemingway.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 23, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/112306.pdf?ref=smdp.com)