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.

Comments(0)

There are three — no, four people I wanted to be when I was a kid: Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Ted Williams and Gene Kelly.

Oh, I flirted occasionally with Joe DiMaggio, James Cagney, Steve Van Buren, Johnny Lujack and a few others, but those were my top four.

So, on the occasion of Oscar night, some friends wanted to know what our favorite movie or movies were and I reached into my grab bag of wannabe heroes and thought about movies.

Comments(0)

When my dad, who immigrated from Italy, legally, made me walk the streets with him during election time, ringing doorbells for Truman and Stevenson, he repeated a mantra I never forgot and eventually believed in: “The Republicans are the party of the rich, the Democrats are the party of the working man.”

That thought served me and the country well until recently. Money and wealth are now as much a part of Democrat party life as they are that of Republicans. And in this global 24/7 age of communication, the idea of money and wealth are joined by the power of media, academic and cultural influences.

Comments(4)

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.

Comments(0)

From Senator Tom Coburn on the Senate floor yesterday.

“The biggest earmark in history is in this bill. There is $2 billion in this
bill to build a coal plant with zero emissions. That would be great, maybe,
if we had the technology, but the greatest brains in the world sitting at MIT say we don’t have the technology yet to do that.

Comments(0)

The only dog I have in the political hunt is the well being of our country.

As I review the several weeks of Obama’s reign as the St. George of the Republican Dragon and the savior of the country I can only say, If my dog was named Obama, I’d have him retrained.

Incidentally, I know he’s the Savior because Renee Flemming sang so in a Christmas Carol on Prairie Home Companion a few weeks ago:

Comments(0)

What can I say!? The Giants broke our hearts again. This was the single sentence sent me by fellow Giants fan and wonderful comedy writer, John DeBellis, when we lost against the Titans a few years ago despite being ahead twenty-one zip at the half and cruising along to a win. But we lost. And John’s E-mail just said:

They broke our hearts again.

That’s what they do, what they seem to have done many times in the past. They don’t just lose — they break your heart.

Comments(0)