VIEIRA: Happy Thanksgiving, Matt, and to all of you watching this, the 86th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!

LAUER: And to you too, Meredith. What a beautiful fall day. And legendary rock and roll singer Bob Seger is here to help host this year. Good to have you with us, Bob. We’re so excited to have you, an all-American recording artist, here today to celebrate the most all-American time of year, Thanksgiving.

SEGER: Okay.

LAUER: Well, we’re off and running. Here comes our favorite medieval green monster, Shrek, taking a stroll through Times Square with his sidekick, Donkey. Shrek’s ears are taller than an NBA regulation basketball rim, and his head would fit a size — get this, Meredith — 208 1/4 hat. That’s 201 and 1/4 hat sizes larger than Laura Dern’s. And her head is fairly big. Also, Shrek’s tunic could cover 18 of those chess boards on which humans are the pieces. At art fairs, that kind of thing.

VIEIRA: Incredible. Now, here are my favorites of every Thanksgiving parade. It’s the M&Ms characters!

LAUER: They are adorable. Now, get this, Meredith: the white gloves on these melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hands cuties are as large as an Olympic-sized swimming pool if you lopped two feet off of said pool.

VIEIRA: Wow. And, apparently the female M&M’s go-go boots are, if laid down, longer than if professional basketball star Shaquille O’Neal and the guy who played Jaws in the James Bond film “Moonraker” were attached in a similar fashion as the tortured characters in the film “Human Centipede.” So I believe that means not stretched out full length, as the characters in that wonderful film are typically in a kneeling position.

LAUER: Well, look who’s made her way to Manhattan amidst her worldly travels. It’s Dora The Explorer, the Nickelodeon star beloved by girls and boys throughout the world. All proceeds for this float go to UNICEF, which has provided emergency food and health care to children in need throughout the world since 1946.

VIEIRA: Wow, that is terrific. Now, Dora must have a lot of trail mix in that backpack because it’s four stories tall, her hiking boot is a dainty size 208, and — get this, Matt — you can fit seventeen unfolded folding chairs in each one of her big brown eyes. And, also, get this, this young explorer’s shoes are smaller than you’d expect.

LAUER: Wow. And apparently the only place Dora hasn’t explored is the Darfur region of the Sudan because she would be absolutely destroyed in — get this, Meredith — so many unspeakable ways. Also…huh, interesting.

VIEIRA: What’s that?

LAUER: Well — making sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing — it appears they’ve somehow tapped into my dreams as this next float features characters from a fairly disturbing nightmare I had just two nights ago! I’m kind of wondering how the team of wonderfully talented engineers and designers managed to know…weird…

VIEIRA: No, Matt, those are actually the minion characters from the Universal motion picture “Despicable Me!” Each one of them is the size and shape of a multi-vitamin that would uh….gosh…lot of stuff to read this year…

LAUER: Here, dragon dragon! It’s Toothless, the adorable fire-breather from “How to Train Your Dragon”! And I sure wouldn’t want to house train him! Because, to –

SEGER: Is that really something to worry about?

LAUER: Uh, well…right. But if you did have to house train him, you’d have to use more newspaper everyday than gets printed anymore in this country.

VIEIRA: And, if you’re an out-of-work reporter or any of the other ranks of jobless in this country, you could maybe get a job cleaning after this fellow, but the sheer humongous output of waste you would have to shovel would hit home for you how — get this Matt — incredibly tragic your life has turned!

SEGER: I don’t get how a float generates proceeds.

LAUER: What’s that?

SEGER: You said the float of that Mexican girl…That the proceeds from that go to something. But no one’s paying to see the float. What do you mean by the proceeds of the float?

VIEIRA: As Ke$ha, that’s spelled with a dollar sign, performs her hit “Dirty Picture” with the crew from “Toy Story 3,” one of this year’s sensational new floats is making its way up the route. The Greenberg balloon is, get this, 35 times taller than Ben Stiller, the actor who plays the lovable slacker in the film…..

And so on.

First post in, what, almost a year? We’ll I and friends have been working on this for a long time. I love this thing. But I want it to keep going as a series somehow. We’ll see. But please enjoy this nice, brisk version.

(your name) can’t believe that just happened to him/her!”

or

(your name) is so sad today.

Watch the “Are you okay?”s, “Why? What’s going on? TELL US!”s and “Stay strong, girl/dude”s come piling in!

I could say something mean now, but I won’t!

[Singer finishes singing. Seacrest says some stuff and he and the nervous singer turn to the judges for the feedback.]

Randy: Mmmm. Kinda pitchy in the middle there. I really didn’t feel it, dude.

Kara: It was just okay. Not a good song choice for you.

Paula: You know what I like about you, (whoever’s on the stage)?….An artist…An artist is like a bear…an artistic bear…that doesn’t hibernate when the other bears sleep the winter away. You are up in the winter. You don’t miss Christmas like other bears. You catch Santa, even if he is fake. You pull his beard off and get at the truth. The Truth. And you eat the Truth and swallow it deep. And I can hear that in your vocals and in your ears and your heart and your bear paws. And that’s what I love about you. That’s why you’re so so amazing! So incredible.

Simon: That was horrendous. You’ll be off the show next week.

American Idol judges and their Cokes