• By treating the suicide of gay teenagers as an issue that requires balance, the Washington Post shows us everything that’s dumb about the media in one easy step.

• Snuffleupagus’ first name is Aloysius! And the reason he started interacting with the adult cast makes a great of sense.

I knew of Greg Giraldo mainly from his appearances on podcasts and some online clips, and he always seemed like a comedian who used comedy to hunt for truth. This remembrance, written by fellow comic and friend Ted Alexandro is very affecting.

Many of the posts about Mr. Giraldo link to a particular clip from the show Tough Crowd, in which he gets into it with, comic-turned-actor, Denis Leary, as an example of his wit and fearlessness. That clip is here, the conversation is about conflict with North Korea with the relevant bit starting at 3:20 (though the whole clip worth’s watching just to see how quickly he elevates the discourse):

It’s great TV. One smart person arguing with an even smarter person, and the two going directly at each other.

What’s remarkable about it is the tension that watching it, even now, produces. I think that’s because the clip shows us something that’s surprisingly rare on television, two people disagreeing with each other without compromise.

Cable news, mainly devoted to covering a political moment in which each party thinks the other is not just wrong, but crazy, hardly ever produces that kind of direct confrontation. If we had more of it, not to mention more social commentators like Greg Giraldo, our discourse might be in better shape.

• This is the kind of writing about football that makes my head hurt and my heart swell. I love reading something that lets me the see new things during a game.

• I’m a fan of professional wrestling and have a huge amount of respect for the unique combination of athletic and acting ability that a successful wrestler has, but with the way the business treats its people its far more like human cockfighting than boxing or ultimate fighting are. If you read this piece by Dave Zirin and think that WWE executive (and the wife of its founder) Linda McMahon belongs anywhere near the Senate, I’d love to hear from you.

I thought immediately of a funny, and clean, song my wife Jodi had written about an, um, adult *cough* toy, and that it deserved the music video treatment.

Ta da!

We made the costume out of a giant cardboard tube that a fabric shop was using for scraps and silver fabric from the aforementioned shop. It was extremely heavy and hot, and many thanks go to the unnamed person who wore it for the shoot.

(First video in a series!)

(Really!)

Location: A pleasant open mic night that features both singers and comedians.

Singer to Comedian Ratio: 2 to 1

What I talked about:

Recycling – My embarrassment over what mine says about me.

Highly alcoholic beverages – Earthquake beer and Joose, specifically.

Toothbrushes – How multiple identical toothbrushes equal zero toothbrushes and why that is so.

Miley Cyrus and the perpetuation of celebrity – A thought experiment about whether or not people currently famous will ever cease to be famous.

Response: Giggles. Some chuckles. A bit of confused silence.

Feedback from People I’m not Married To: Strong material that wasn’t properly sold. I seemed very nervous. (I was.) And that I ought to start videotaping my sets.

Personal impression: Not a bad 3rd attempt. Gets easier each time. Looking forward to the next.

• Bill Maher interviews Pat Tillman’s brother. Includes some disquieting stuff about friendly fire and the Army’s preparedness in terms of covering up such incidents. Also, a powerful review of Jon Krakauer’s book about Tillman’s life, death, and the cover-up is at the sports site Kissing Suzy Kolber. Well worth reading.

• The day on which I no longer care about things like who’s going to direct the next Superman movie will be a happy one in terms what it means about my personal maturity and a sad one for the same reason. (Despite not having seen any of his movies, I strongly feel that the next director should be Duncan Jones, and will argue against the other possibilities with the full power of my nerd rage.)

It’s not an attempt at “reinventing the musical.”

It presents its story with a musical palette based on rock and roll, but it’s not a “rock and roll musical”.

Most importantly, it’s not cynical. Or cool. Or arch.

A story about a family dealing with serious mental illness, Next to Normal doesn’t offer any answers, nor create any villains. While there are revelations and reveals, they’re never sinister. The story’s straightforward, and confident enough in the telling to let that be enough.

It’s quite wonderful to see a musical that stakes out a particular territory and simply owns that.

• A look at Congressman Paul Ryan’s sudden embrace of the budget reconciliation progress that feels counter-intuitive, but really isn’t. A good take on what separates Republicans from Democrats and what we should hope for from our legislators.

• A powerful, personal, piece about mental illness. That it was written in response to the suicide of a man (professional football player Kenny McKinley) is sad. That it appeared in the sports section makes me hopeful about the positive impact the piece might have.

• That’s some good geeky Ayn Rand burn…

I was scared of them because it felt like they were working the levers of a system that I couldn’t perceive.

Even as a teenager it seemed so transparent that Mr. Gingrich was a thundering hypocrite, about both economics and personal morality, that he had to be playing a deeper game within American politics. That some hidden power was pulling the strings and trying to nudge America into a particular shape.

The early days of the Bush administration felt the same way. That there were hidden agendas that may have been kleptocratic, but that still required a basic societal stability from which to profit.

For a Progressive, the opposition felt evil, in the way that a Bond villain is. Or Doctor Doom.

Man, I miss those days.

Now when I look at the politics of the right, there doesn’t seem to be any hidden agendas. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of comforting, comic-book, evil, just inchoate rage from some (Ms. Angle, Mr. DeMint) and the desire to stay one step ahead of that rage for others (Mr. Boehner, Mr. McCain).

Now, not only do the ideas not make sense, but it doesn’t matter that they don’t make sense. There seems to be no fear of ruling over ashes.

I’d like my comic-book bad guys back.

• Thing like this are why I’m no fun to talk to parties on the topic of politics. (Unless we agree, in which case I’m a riot.) I’d love it if it seemed like the GOP believed what they say they believe, or even the Tea Party, but documents like the GOP’s “Pledge to America” put the lie to that. And you can’t argue with calculated mendacity.

• Along those lines… ANGRY RANTING THAT I MOSTLY AGREE WITH!