Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of professional writer/musician Ralph Greco who lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. He is also a podcast co-host, but as everyone has a podcast these days, this fact is of very little consequence.

Ralph can be reached by writing ralphiedawriter@gmail.com

The Grace of ‘Will & Grace’

Influenced by the opinion of my girl, she and I began watching the full series of Will & Grace. I knew of the show way back when, had watched a handful, but I was never a fan. Not for any real reason other than I didn’t tend to take to sitcoms back then (still, really don’t).

I used to love T.V. love sitcoms back in the days of Taxi and before that, classics like the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Bob Newhart. These were must-see viewing with my family on Saturday nights, along with The Carol Burnett show airing a little later the same night. Jesus, TV was so great back then! Shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Mike and Molly, and King of Queens, most of what has passed as sitcoms for the past few decades though have left me kind of wanting when I peak in. Save for Will and Grace, which I am really digging now…and I think I know why.

And conversely, I think I also know why most recent sitcoms leave me cold.

For my examples here I will lead with Big Bang Theory and Modern Family. These are two sitcoms I have come to in their syndication runs. I didn’t catch them in their initial broadcasts (save for Modern Family which I caught during the show’s last season) but given what is my sad state of affairs of current TV viewing—Netflix, Amazon, and Max pretty much boring me to tears save for a very few exceptions—and the big three broadcast networks showing anything interesting to me, Modern Family and Big Bang Theory, are kind of my go-to’s now.

But, I wish they weren’t.

Why?

I find a good many of the characters on these shows rather repellant.

Across BBT, MF, and even Everybody Loves Raymond (and believe me, not everybody loves Raymond, I can attest to this) there are mean, emasculating, competitive characters of near sociopath compacity, they might even be downright pathological. From “Sheldon Cooper” and “Bernadette Rosetenkowski” (and is it only me, but does anybody else find Melissa Rauch’s “Bernadette” high-squeak-of-a-voice simply unintelligible lots of the time?) of Big Bang Theory, to the completely unlikeable, should-never-have-had-kids “Claire Pritchett” played Julie Bowen on Modern Family to Raymond’s wife-mommy “Debra Barone” played by Patricia Heaton on Everybody Loves Raymond, and his character’s actual mommy horror-show matriarch played by the usually wonderful Doris May Roberts.

And although it only lasted a season (thank God) if you saw Mary McCormack playing wife and mom “Peggy Cleary,” on ABC’s The Kids Are Alright you might have puked. She was so manipulative of her family I couldn’t watch more than two or three episodes until I had to list this show amongst my “I’m not watching this even if my life depends on it!”

These characters and so many more, are really ugly people. Dominating their loved ones. Marching headfirst in what they want all the time, to the exclusion of the feelings of those around them, and never truly learning even when they face a comeuppance. Yes, I realize that the extreme in these characters creates the tension, the ‘situations’ if you will. But these characters are so unlikeable to me, time and again, the queer the episode for me, even of the rest of the episode is funny.

I won’t even step across the minefield of examples of the sorry-excuse-for-the-American-dad my buddy Tom and I expound on all the time. From Family Guy’s “Peter Griffin,” “Raymond” above, and so many other examples, we find so few men to look up to these days. But this is an argument for another day.

Let me get back to Will & Grace, as this show started this all….

Yes, here are extreme and wacky characters. And surely Megan Mullally’s “Karen Walker” can throw her voice around to a grating degree just like Raunch (never as bad though). But the saving grace here (if you will allow me) is that there is a sweetness to this show. The characters truly care about each other, even in the face of some sharp ribbing. Almost always the damage a character does is to themselves and if they do indeed try to get one-over on another, they face the consequences of their action with a sure contriteness.

So, thank you Will & Grace for reminding me what I sometimes do like about sitcoms, also for showing some of the most masculine men I have ever seen on T.V. (and gay men at that, talk about spinning a ‘woke’ idea, huh?) and reminding me, yet again, what I don’t usually like about our American sitcoms, but what I can when the sitcom presents real, funny, complex, but likable people

COVER ME

Look, I won’t ever damn anybody, especially a musician trying to make a living. If you’re not ripping anybody off–a fellow music maker, your bandmates, or the audience–have at it, I say. But I just read today that Lynyrd Skynyrd is going out for a 2024 tour and other than one small detail, there are no original band members left flapping the old “Freebird” anymore. (For those ready to call out me out for specificity, yes I am well aware of Rick “Rickey” Medlocke, playing guitar in LS presently. The long blonde-haired musician played drums and sang some lead as a session player for Skynyrd from 1971 to 1972. He’d go on to more acclaim in the band Blackfoot)

Let’s face it, Lynyrd Skynyrd is not the only classic rock act presently perpetrating the shouldn’t-they-just-be-considered-a cover-band-by-now swindle. Even one-third of my beloved Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the only member still alive, drummer Carl Plamer, is going out…without the departed Keith Emerson and Greg Lake (don’t you just hate it when your band members can’t join a tour because they are no longer part of the living; God what nerve!) Palmer is touring with his band but also (take a minute to swallow this) with videos of Lake and Emerson playing live that he plays along with so he can celebrate more than a slightly ghoulish 50^th anniversary of his famous trio.

Or how about ABBA building a theatre and show in England last year that employed a hologram performance, and not the real Swedish pop-makers at all?

As I said, this isn’t the first time I have been bothered by this admittedly small world concern. Especially covering the more ‘mature’ acts one encounters in the vintage rock firmament, as I often do, it isn’t unusual to find a band that has undergone some personnel changes over the decades if it has managed to survive. As I made clear from the outset of his screed, I champion anyone making a living, trying to catch the slippery and consistently dwindling revenue stream that comes from live music making, enduring the drudgery of the road at any age.

And those tribute acts/cover bands often make a very good living, have the act they are copying down to a tee. So, I’m not down on them either. Hell, any one of can make for a free solid summer night’s entertainment down at any of our local town band shells.

But as I marvel over the sky-high price of tickets for bands with maybe one original member or an old backdrop in their midst, when I have seen this same band across the past decades with its original members playing with the ferocity of youth that can never be recaptured, when I hear fans profess their love for some act that perfectly plays and looks like the band that the band is copying, or even how amazed listeners are that this group trolls out songs the actual band they are emulating never tackled live, I have to cry foul. Even the best younger hired guns standing aside one old original member or some perfect tribute act with the very best period costumes can never, ever, best what I saw, loved, and built my love for music around well back in the day when the bands I loved were the best versions of themselves.

Stand-up=Movies?

I have been watching my oldest and best fiend Tom ‘do’ comedy for the past year or so at local open mikes. (The one he frequents is called Friday Night Live, happening, in my ‘burb of Clifton, NJ). And not that we both didn’t know this fact before, but we are reminded time and again how hard stand-up is. Comedians get up with just a mike and their wits to try and entertain a crowd.

Talk about scary!

Then I catch something like Bill Burr’s just released Netflix movie “Old Dads” and think…mmmm, a stand-up routine doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie, nor a stand-up comedian a great actor. Very much like Sebastian Maniscalco’s “About My Father,” which was, in my opinion, equally as abysmal as Burr’s flick, I found what I most laughed at were the visual realization of pieces of each comedian’s routines, their jokes, which I laughed at when I first heard them, writ large on screen in some visual scenario. But, beyond these moments, these great stand-up comedians, couldn’t sustain an hour and half with the substance of their acts, and in fact, they did so quite painfully.

I’m not saying Burr, Maniscalco even an Adam Sandler don’t translate well on screen, they do. Burr was great in “The King of Staten Island,” and Maniscalco in “The Irishman” (a movie that proved that even the great Martin Scorsese can make a clunker…and a long one at that!) and I have truly dug Sandler in lots of movies. But a stand-up routine and a movie are two different animals.

I know Netflix grabs these dudes for big money paydays because they know a Burr and certainly a Sandler are big names to the general public presently. Why not cash in? I get it, it makes sense to get product from anyone who is riding the crest of current popularity. This doesn’t mean though that you’ll get a good movie from someone just because a.) They have proved successful in another area b.) They are successful presently. C.) It seems like this is just the thing to do to these days.

Well, I can tell you my buddy Tom and all the comics down at Friday Night Live (FNL: Super Sonic Mic | Jersey Quickie Mic | Facebook) are doing great. So, that’s something at least. Now, maybe if Netflix wanted to come down and do a documentary on them….

Britney Baby, Please Pick Up Your Panties

It’s less the knives or even the bizarre dancing (which we have certainly seen before) of Britney Spears’ latest video posts that worries me. No, it’s more a question of, why the hell doesn’t she pull up her bikini bottoms? 

While these videos and lots of what Britney has gotten into, and surely posted lately, continue to fuel questions of her competency (the police arrived at her door during a ‘welfare check’ after one of her recent knife masturbatory escapades) and broaches the larger question of what a private citizen should be able to get into in their home without being bothered (a significant consideration to my mind given the Orwellian state we seem to be living in). For me, when viewing these videos of the pop star cavorting across her tile floor, I instantly think, ‘Hey, Brit, if you want to expose your hey nanner-nanner (something most of the public has seen already) go ahead. But this look is just kinda stripper sloppy, doncha think?’

Even a blind man would see the marketing genius in premiering Britney dancing in a schoolgirl outfit in her break-out “Baby One More Time video). And we all know, it is pretty much understood to be de rigueur to have our pop divas sold to the public with a certain amount of sexuality attached to what they do, even as they slip out of their 30s, even their 40s. But as has been made clear by the actions, postings, and often by their couture choices and surgeries, the Madonna’s, Mariah’s Cary’s, and surely our dear sweet Britney find it harder and harder to keep their pop edge popularity the older they get. Views get skewed, sensibilities hampered, and I guess wearing one’s bikini bottom as low as possible without complete exposure is somebody’s idea of a good look.

For me this fashion statement is more worrisome than the knives and ask anybody….I’m no fashionista!

The Final Word On The Words I Can’t Understand

This is getting way out of hand for me. Maybe living here in N.J. I come in contact with a larger immigrant population than say, in some place in the middle of the country. And I know there is a debate raging presently about all the peeps coming in from here and there, the ‘sanctuary city’ question, how New Yorkers, the whole country is feeling overrun…or not. This is not what this piece is about though. Those debates are very complicated, and I don’t have enough information to side with any side, if I would even side with any. No, what I am on about here is non-American-born people trying to speak the language.

Or, more precisely, how people with hardly any true facility with speaking English are the ones who are put in corporations’ or retail establishments’ front-line customer interaction.

I just spoke to a recruiter who I had to keep asking, “Can you repeat that please?” because I did not understand his English, his accent was so strong…and this is a guy reaching out from an American-based headhunter service to place workers in American companies. Then there was the sammy I ordered at Dunkin Donuts yesterday (sorry Dunkin) where the lady behind the counter kept asking me something I absolutely could not understand and her co-worker had to step in and ask, “That’s on an English muffin, right?” What gets me is, I’ll try until my dying day to work with you and translate what you are saying, but don’t then give me the attitude then that the heavily-accented lady gave me when I couldn’t decipher what she was on about or give me obvious ‘tude over the phone when I tell you I can’t understand you.

Of course, when you bring up a point like this you are instantly called a racist. Go ahead, label me, I don’t care; I have been called worse (“Ralph, how can you be called worse than a racist, that statement alone shows you are probably a racist!”). The thing is, I don’t care about anybody’s rash assumption of me when all I am doing is asking a question or bringing up an obvious point. What I am is a cunning linguist (to take a term from Deep Purple); words matter to me, sorry. As does the simple ability to speak the language of the country I am in. I remember getting all pissed at the French when I traveled through Paris for the first time that few people spoke (or cared to speak) English. Then I had to remember, what country I was in. They might not have let us use their airspace during the war (Have you heard the old joke of why there have been so many civil wars in France? It’s because they like to win one every once in a while) but how could I complain over the fact that I was the foreigner in this instance and had no right to demand they spoke my language?

I know it takes time to assimilate and I know this is a country filled and built by immigrants (at least modern society as was “colonized,’ there were certainly people here before immigrants came, but then again those people weren’t here originally, so we are all immigrants, no?). But please, if you are going to put people in the front line of communication, be it the tech I speak to when I call my cable company or the person filling my taco at Moe’s asking if I want this or that kind of meat, it would be good if this person could be understood.

FU To Streaming: How I Can’t Watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and the evils of the ala carting of life

Once again, I am denied It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Apple TV + has it, and the other Charle Brown holiday specials are locked up. If you have Apple TV +, you can watch any of these wonderful shows anytime, which would be the same if you own them on DVD but forget catching them on broadcast TV.

(In full disclosure, Apple did allow A Charlie Brown Christmas to be shown on PBS for one night the first year they owned them).

Look, I know I am an old fart. I actually still watch network television, I am cable connected, and I truly believe that the facility we now have to get what we want, when we want it, how we want it, while we sit wrapped in the comfy confines of our living room couch does us more bad than good, I feel. My buddy Tom and I often have this discussion when we start to rant about the current generation with our “Hey, you kids, get your bikes off my lawn” (quick story about that…Tom and I grew up on the same street, and he lived next door to an old guy who not only didn’t want you to park your bikes in front of his house but would doddle out his front door and push the offending bikes off the sidewalk in front of his house, right into the street). Tom and I postulate that since we can all pretty much ala carte our lives, we rarely get introduced by anything we haven’t been looking for. Our experiences are truncated; therefore, our education about life is lessened. The creative programming of radio shows a lost art, practiced now only across satellite radio, where we still have the ability to truncate our choices, spinning across all the specific shows we can seek.

But back to Apple TV +. I can’t damn them for making a business decision to buy the Chuck shows. But even if I can stream a show or pluck it out of a DVD case and slip it in (that’s what she said), the problem (and I know this is wholly my problem, it’s not a big deal, ok, I get that) is that I am once again, ala carting my life. And life, for me, is as much about the surprises that come at me (and granted, those surprises, as you grow older, are usually more bad than good). I like to try and plan and make sure I am home to catch the holiday TV specials I so loved as a kid, as much as I love them now. I don’t want a Spotify algorithm picking songs for me based on my past choices or Amazon making recommendations by considering my shopping of a month ago.

And I damn well abhorred a supposed world-wide epidemic that took us all away from socializing in person for two long years that made such paranoid weaklings of big sections of the population who will never again want to venture out of their homes without a mask.

Or does this all come down to being aged-out of life? Am I complaining about the same thing, in how it relates today, that everyone my age begins to rail against, mainly, that what I once cared about, needed, and enjoyed has become obsolete, pretty much as I have? I really don’t know, although I fear what I just wrote is true.

I just really wanted to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown this yea

The Most Pervasive Long-Term COVID-19 Symptom: Acute Narcissism

None other than supreme self-proclaimed narcissist Howard Stern just announced that his paranoia over COVID-19’s supposed recent rise had caused a rift between him and his wife, Beth O. Just getting out and about again after years being locked up in his home, Howard is fearful all over again of contracting the virus (or his fear never really abated) over new news of COVID’s supposed ride and the most recent vaccine rollout. I know Howard’s not alone in his worry, but he doesn’t realize how infected he is…with the acute narcissism that is the most insidious long-term COVID-19 symptom.

I have friends who lived for and still live for the virus’s resurgence or even just a hint of news of one (the latest brouhaha has them positively tingling). These were the same folks who, at the high end of the pandemic, texted me daily COVID-19 death stats, lived to shoot over online reports to convince me how I needed to get vaxxed (which I never did) and were living their life as if COVID-19 was a welcome friend. At the start of the pandemic, when I reasoned hopefully that maybe things would pass in a few months (a false hope I now realize), I had a buddy who loved to passionately correct me that it would take years (which he was right about) for society to come back; and he seemed to relish this fact. I have another family member who was adamant about illustrating how things would never be the same and took every chance he could to call out this or that action as part of the “new normal.”

As if the years prior to the COVID-19 outbreak were normal by any stretch of the imagination. Things ain’t be normal for me for decades, kinda ever since MTV came on the scene…but that’s a story for another time.

Surely, these folks and many more like them did not want to see people sick. They were cut to the quick as I was over people dying. We all agreed what a planet-wide scourge COVID-19 was…at least in the real everyday effect of the virus. But in another sense, the people I am mentioning here, and so so many more, loved the concept of something they could consistently research facts about, lived for comparing their mask to others as they stood front and center, showed how diligent they were, and mostly kept themselves poised and participating in a worldwide conversation they thought they were actually part of.

Nobody was or ever is part of this conversation, of course, because one doesn’t really exist. To have a conversation, one person must talk while another listens…and nobody is listening these days, and indeed not across social media. And as we all know, social media has been the greatest fuel for the rampant narcissism, pre-COVID even, created by the human race.

I recall astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson appearing on Steven Colbert’s show rather early into the pandemic, before the lockdown, of course, saying (and I am paraphrasing) that what he was most interested in was how we would be impacted culturally post the shutdown. Science would do what it could to combat the virus; he assured the studio audience and viewers at home as the bigger brains among us came to understand the virus. But he claimed, and rightly so, it would be how we treated each other and our place in the world after we got through this unprecedented attack to our health. And Tyson was postulating this well before there was a lockdown.

And he was right; narcissism has run rampant.

You can’t expect to quarantine a healthy population and not have some sort of mass kookiness ensue when that population is finally set free. The rise in violence, the anxiety people are reporting, even those fists we see flying daily between people trying to find a seat on an airplane, it’s all part and parcel of the à la carte world each of us enveloped ourselves in, where we nary have to look at, let alone talk to another person, as we go about our day, job and what we consider our intimate relationships. No wonder we have become so narcissistic; despite Zoom calls and ichat, we only had ourselves in the equation when we were locked down and grew so comfortable with our PJ festooned selves, that all we can deal with is us now.

Howard Stern, entertainers, in general, have to coddle a certain amount of narcissism in order to do their job. It’s unnatural for a human being to want to engender that much attention onto oneself unless one can increase one’s self-worth, even if it’s only in one’s mind. Sure, we all like to yawp a good game, but to bask in the spotlight, one needs to protect themselves through hubris against the glow. But what COVID-19 did was give us all a leg up in how we met the virus, how we got to know the virus, and how we could compare that knowledge and diligence to others.

We are COVID, us roar.

 

For a multitude of reasons, I will never be the biggest fan of Jann Wenner. I always thought his magazine, Rolling Stone, was unusually dismissive to prog rock, my favorite genre of music, the magazine’s reporters never liked anything Led Zeppelin released, and what was once considered one of the more popular rock papers turned into a political rag. Then there is his whole connection with the Rock & Roll Hall of Shame, as many rock fans call that institution (not so much the building but the yearly see-and-be-scene fests that HBO now has claim to) and how it demeans a great genre of music.

But it was announced this week that Wenner had been removed from the R&R HoF board.

I’m not holding out hope that nominating policies will now change and deserving bands and solo artists will start to get into the hall (not that those in already are not deserving, it’s just that so many have been left out) as Wenner wasn’t ousted for anything that has to do with what he does at the R&RHoF. He was thrown out over comments he recently made in a New York Times interview.

Again, I don’t dig this guy, but once again, we are up against somebody being axed/canceled/ fired for…yes, say it with me, kids…an opinion.

On a publicity tour for his new book “The Masters,” which contains interviews with such notables as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Bono, among others, Wenner was asked why he didn’t interview any women or black music makers. He replied, “It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni (Mitchell) was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test.”

And

“Of Black artists − you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”

I guess one could see some of the above as insulting, although in the second quote about black artists, to be honest, I really don’t even know what Wenner means. And although he did apologize through his book publisher Little, Brown and Company, saying, in part: “I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences,” once again, we miss the point.

The guy just expressed an opinion.

Even if you abhor Wenner’s point, even if it flies in the face of currently considered mandatory culture inclusion, it’s just one dude expressing his opinion. Sure, the Hall of Shame is well within their rights to kick him out (although I haven’t seen their code of conduct to know this for sure though). Still, when one considers the many musicians who are in the hall and how, across that spectrum, there are plenty who held and even expressed views that the current cultural mandatory inclusion edict would find downright disgusting, why aren’t we asking for their removal?

Oh wait, we probably are going to get to that in no time. Shit, I spoke too soon.

I have a buddy who works in the art department of a small PA college that will remain nameless. He was telling me that over a discussion of famous artists that are being taught to students of that school this last semester of 2023, he learned that professors were not allowed to include nor even mention Picasso. Why? Because, whoever determines these things and fits labels presently, has saddled the great painter as a misogynist. Even if, by our current standards, Pablo would fall into a broad category of what we currently consider misogynistic behavior (and judging something from long ago by current standards is part of the pandemic or presentism, I feel), I once again ask….so, freaking what? Is Picasso’s art less than it ever was, his contribution not as significant? Should he NOT be included with the great artists of the 20th century, studied, his work hung in museums?

I ask this question over and over: why are we so thick-skinned? Why can’t a dude like Wenner, who flapped his big yap without considering the current reactionary pulse of the media, or a Picasso, who we are judging decades later, not able to express their opinion or act a certain way, without a backlash of loss of job or place in history?

This is not a crazy idea, really. Or at least I don’t think it is.

I can enjoy somebodies ‘art,’ or even their nutty actions and speechifying if, occasionally they say or do something not in keeping with my sensibilities. The only opinion that should ever cause us to get up and stir is…our own.

And that’s my opinion on that!

It’s Their World, We Just Happened To Be Living In It

Toto, I Actually Think We Are In Kansas!

Like him or not, Bill Maher, like Drew Barrymore, is taking a stand.

As Maher wrote on X, which used to be Twitter, which used to be…sorry I can’t follow all of that:

“Real Time is coming back, unfortunately, sans writers or writing. It has been five months, and it is time to bring people back to work,”

“I love my writers; I am one of them, but I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much.” In solidarity, Maher claims he will honor the spirit of the strike by not using writers or written segments, like his usual front-of-show monologue.

This is not the first time Maher has come under fire for his stand on the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike that has pretty much shut down film and TV production for the past few months. On his Club Random broadcast of a few weeks ago, he had this to say:

“What I find objectionable about the philosophy of the strike [is] it seems to be, they have really morphed a long way from 2007’s strike, where they kind of believe that you’re owed a living as a writer, and you’re not. This is showbusiness. This is the make-or-miss league.”

With the little I know of showbusiness, being a fantastically successful unsuccessful professional writer and musician, I feel Maher is right. Writers are not owed a living; no one who tries to make their living in the ‘arts’ is. Furthermore, it’s my opinion that nobody is ‘owed’ a living in any field.

I remember hearing older rock stars bemoaning the COVISS shutdown (yes, I know I spelled COVID wrong; that’s just my attempt to mock the virus that I feel laid waste to our culture because we let it) that they couldn’t go out and tour. Wa, wa wa. Be happy that you had the life you had making records, touring, and sucking up your fan’s cash and adoration. You are not owed that living just because you were lucky/talented enough for a time to make a living at your art. Sure, COVISS hit you…but it hit everybody and frankly, people buying your music or coming to see your ridiculously-priced shows don’t do this so much when money is tight, as it has been these past few years. If you think a Madonna is feeling the pinch (and in fairness, I didn’t read about Madge complaining during COVISS) imagine what it has been like for the ordinary Joe or Jill. Sorry, but maybe artists have to do something else in trying times.

Oh, God forbid.

It’s the same I feel with writers, actors, etc. If one chooses a risky profession to begin with, and if you happened to have made a modicum of money from it, be thankful.

I’m not saying the demands of the strike are not valid; sure, some are. But with Maher, Barrymore, and even others announced this week coming back (and why isn’t anybody mentioning how “The View”, and “Live With Kelly and Mark,” has been back a while now, aren’t they then ‘scabs’ just like Maher and Barrymore are being called?…just asking) they are not so much as scabs as they are employers putting a good amount of their staff back to work.

As Maher went on to say:

“Despite some assistance from me, much of the staff is struggling mightily. We all were hopeful this would come to an end after Labor Day, but that day has come and gone, and there still seems to be nothing happening. I love my writers; I am one of them, but I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much.”

Sure, I’m not saying Maher’s attempt here is completely altruistic, and, in fact Maher isn’t claiming this. His show is important to his livelihood, and he is moving forward to protect that fact; having the power to do something about it, he is. And I think a smart guy like Maher has got to wonder, as another semi-smart guy, me is doing the same: what will be the state of network late night talk shows if the strike stretches on much longer?

Let’s face it, we are a very unique mammal in that, although we can surely miss our past and pine for comforts taken from us, we are ever so adaptable and quickly forget so much of what we miss simply because life has to move on. And time and again it has been proven we move on rather rapidly when given an alternative to that which we once thought we couldn’t live without. Especially, as we often come to find, how stifling that something we are missing has really become over the years, something we just stuck with out of habit.

Such is the case, I feel, we will find the longer talk shows, sitcoms and movies are denied us. If we have to, we will find new faves in independently produced fare and maybe something bigger and better than the talk shows we gave grow used to.

Either way, we will keep on keeping on, I’m sure.