I took some time off from a script deadline to watch a repeat of a Law and Order I hadn’t seen — yes, there are some left — and it got me thinking about masculinity. So before I got back to work, I wanted to put those thoughts into some order.

The story was about the accidental death of a participant in an informally scheduled, lunch hour, fight club type event in a New York park, which later led to a revenge “rumble” between friends of the dead man and the “murderer’s” co-workers, which led to three more deaths and twelve injuries.

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Okay, I’m confused. That wonderful show The Fantasticks had a 50th Anniversary moment the other day in New York. As an alumni of the show, I was invited, but couldn’t make it.

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Christmas Tree

Well, it’s that time of year again, when the annual battle between secularists and religionists is again engaged, though not as virulently as in the past. However, the question still remains: Will we be having a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday?

Last year, here in Durham, neighbor to the liberal hotbed of Chapel Hill, the “Christmas” trees that once graced the lobbies of the Wilson and Davis libraries at UNC’s Chapel Hill campus during December are now being kept in storage. You can ask a custodian to let you in to take a look at them if you want.

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Just saw again James Marsh’s wonderful documentary Man On Wire, about Phillipe Petit’s extraordinary wirewalk thirty-four years ago between the two rooftops of the now destroyed twin towers of the World Trade Center. Petit, France’s busking performer/provacateur, had been obsessed by the towers from the moment he read that they would be built. The film details the meticulous and sometimes haphazard preparations leading up to Petit’s jaunty trek on August 7th, 1974.

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Quietly and with great secrecy the administration has called in the services of the International Metaphysical Psychic Society, or IMPS, to investigate the possibility that the President’s teleprompter is haunted.

Haunted?

No one will admit that IMPS representatives are on the scene, but a White House staffer who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of a tax audit, said that the occult investigators have already concluded that there is, indeed, a promptergeist in the White House.

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I had a choice last night.

I was doing my stand up and hosting the early show at Goodnight’s Comedy Club in Raleigh with Crank Yanker Jim Florentine as the headliner. The green room had a television, which was tuned in to the Oscars.

I managed to catch Hugh Jackman barely surviving the torturous best movie number and hoped there was a place in heaven for all actors who put every bit of their heart and soul performing pieces of shit — in this case, a very large fudgepack of it.

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I didn’t see the Joachim Phoenix appearance until the videos the next day and I was as mystified by it as everyone else.

At first I thought it was a hoax, contrived by Phoenix and Letterman — talk show Dadaism — and found myself laughing at its absurdity. My partner, Norman Stiles, and I had written a number of such spoofs for the celebrities who guested nightly on America 2Night when we were head writers there. The Phoenix thing just smacked of comedy and that thought was uppermost in my mind.

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A writing gaffe jumped out at me while watching last Monday’s 24 on TIVO yesterday. While it was small, a mini “jumping the shark” you might say, it nevertheless represents a larger writing issue: When does the writer’s work reach a credibility breakage point ? In short, when has the writer written something that causes a viewer to throw up his hands and just say, “Awwwww, gimme a fucking break.” Or, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

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This won’t be the only piece in the blogs about the media’s utter capitulation to the Obama campaign in the past election. Their behavior reminded me of joke about how France reacted when they were invaded by Germany: “Table for eighty thousand? Right this way.”

No fight, no resistance, no nothing. The media tarnished the election process by using their bully pulpit to surrender themselves and us to the Obamalytes. The Fourth Estate shamelessly used its powers of advocacy to sway our Democracy their way.

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So much is being said across the country about this final episode of The Sopranos.

When it ended, when that screen suddenly turned to black, I was pulled off my seat, which I had been sitting on the edge of throughout. And then, when I saw the credits, I felt …. satisfied. It was almost palpable, this feeling of… what? … rightness.

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