THURSDAY--Another Edition of:

With the weekly flip of the fedora to Jimmy Cannon

Nobody Asked Me But:

1) The Monty Python documentary on the IFC channel is superb---and something completely different.

2) Is there any chance that TV news can be a bit less obsessed by Baseball and its unending playoffs and spend more time on important matters which---to TV-- seems to be house fires and mayhem of all sorts?

3) Why do people feel Baseball is a team sport when it is a huge managed business that allows people to patronize the stadiums (for exorbitant prices) so they may by $9 Beer—and in the case of the Yankees in a stadium that the tax payers subsidized at the expense of local parks meant for the youths of the area?

4) The obits mention the demise of many evil doers who always wanted publicity which just encourages more of them (who want notoriety)---did we really need to know or the death of the murderer of Sharon Tate, or Howard Unruh (Camden mass murderer before it became a sad fad)?

5) The people who sell a piece of paper to another party who in turn sell it to another creating nothing but paper profit are faring better than those who actually work to create concrete things—so its really satisfying to know that the Goldman Sachs, the JP Morgan/Chase, etc; are weathering the storm so well and limping along with millions in personal bonuses.

6) Isn’t it really unremarkable that the T. Geitner spent so much time on the phone with his compatriots in the financial industry after he became Treasury Secretary?

7) Taking a bus down 5th Avenue have you wondered how people afford the digs between 60th Street and 96th Street and folks in other areas are having trouble meeting the monthly bill?

8) I loved the letter in the Times about “Compassionate Releases” for dying prisoners and, forget Capital Punishment arguments, did these felons give the victims of whatever crime they committed a “Compassionate Release”?

9) I am so amazed by Sarah Jones and her ability to capture the culture of different ethnicities and slide into their dialect (accent) with such ease that she allows us not to even notice the change the same person has undergone.

10)But some of the most interesting and meaningful productions are Off Broadway.

11)That balloon incident is another example of media hype that ballooned (pun intended) into an embarrassment to the participants (and a criminal charge) and to the media who took them seriously thanks to everyone’s love of reality TV. We need another OJ car chase at 20 MPH for excitement.

12)It seems that the kids today can learn all about the birds and the bees (though, did you ever see any of them *&^%?) by watching commercials for E.D.---everything has an acronym—fancy name for ---well. No graphics here. So, TV is educational after all.

13)I anxiously awaiting Theodore Bikel’s latest production at The Folksbiene---and my conversation with him to air on WFDU (Sunday Simcha / Traditions).

14)While life seemed a lot simpler some 60 years ago on the subject of Medical Insurance, Crime, and such the truth is that Minorities and Women did not fare well.

15)Why are African Americans described as “People of Color”? Does that make Whites the new Invisible Man because they have no color? Or are they just colorless instead of colorful?