Sure we’re charmed. But writers and directors? Shakespeare had his own problems, but resenting the award academies wasn’t one of them.

It’s not sexism. It’s not a mystery. As all smart women will tell you, women are mostly not as interesting as men. The only interesting women are the women who understand how interesting men are. These are women who wouldn’t try to make a movie starring Meryl Streep. But that’s what Hollywood women are compelled to do. Even though Meryl Streep is the crashing bore to end all crashing bores, she’s the feminist unicorn. A golden icon that doesn’t actually exist. In talent terms, I mean. Ask any women you actually talk to. All men would pick Helen Mirren, who just couldn’t wait to be naked in front of a camera. Besides being such a great actress and a Dame and all. Absolutely nobody wants to see Meryl Streep naked. The same way nobody wants to see Lena Dunham naked. I rest my case.

Oh forget it. I never said anything. Noth-Thing. I know Noth-Thing.

I DO pay attention. I do SEE you.

Can’t always respond to individual comments. Too busy being distracted by my own attempts to distract myself from everything current. So consider this a catchup.

Thanks to Lake. His “randomized” Youtube of my night of searching for love songs makes it look more complete and planned than it was. There’s a rhythm to his playlist I can’t explain even to myself. There are true loves and happy loves and tragic loves and unrequited loves and operatic loves and romantic loves and amazingly lyrical loves and raw, aching loves that break every piece of your heart. Nothing I planned. I combined songs I knew that mean something to me personally with songs culled from a generic search to represent, I hoped, the commonality of romantic love around the globe. One thing that might unite us all even in the worst of times. Lake made it seem like a whole with groupings and transitions and breaks that work. I urge everyone to take a look.

Lake’s Playlist.

[Link not functional. Working on it. Go to post called Couldn’t Sleep. See Lake’s comment.]

Thanks to Ron. He’s not the only one who peeled off from the preferred pathway to law school back in the day. He got closer than I did to signing up, but then I set a record for weakest application essays to the three law schools I applied to. I’d been aimed at that hell from earliest childhood and I complied in name only. Can’t even remember the three, except that Georgetown was politely uninterested. What I do remember is that when I was a business consultant, I frequently sat with lawyers on planes. I always asked how happy they were with their careers. To a man, they were miserable. Since I’m not miserable, I count that a win.

Thanks to Tim. The only one who had the balls to respond to my politically incorrect post about new gay rules. I suspect a lot of other people are quivering in their foxholes on this subject. Congratulations.

Thanks to Suds46. Highlighting individual songs makes people more likely to listen. You are a key part of the provenance of my list. I am grateful.

And, regrettably…

Thanks to No One. No one can suck it up enough to root for Mylie Cyrus, who has a talent that has been used against her, to ensnare her in bad behaviors and situations her own parents should have protected her from. I stand by what I said.

P.S. Somebody could have liked the Stones concert I posted. It only takes one of you to make me feel a wink has been returned. I always have an ulterior motive. It isn’t interesting that Lady Gaga wanted to be on stage with a bunch of seventy year old rockers who can still outdraw every Top 40 star on the map? No?

Then the hellwitcha. Probably doesn’t matter, either, that this is the only concert where you’ll ever see Jagger and Springsteen together. Not worthy of remark by ANYBODY. Not even my wife. Gift blown off. Incidentally, Jagger’s better. Nothing I can do about the fact you don’t follow links. Why TBB isn’t the best selling book in history. (Also some Stones history on display. Jagger introduced Mick Taylor and the other Stones embraced him. Jagger bumped past him as if he wasn’t there.) Why Jagger is the one star who hasn’t been to rehab. CEO of the greatest rock franchise ever. Ruthless and miraculously energetic. Maybe he knows something all the ones who have died imitating him don’t. It is better to lead than to follow.

Just kidding. The lack of cultural context and sense of humor is something I’m long used to. Already dialed in. I know you’re a very very serious lot. And I work every day at becoming more solemn, as befits my great age.

We’re all eggshells, all the time.

Something you should read all of. Jonah Goldberg ostensibly reacting to NJ gov Chris Christie’s bridgegate scandal. But he was on an airplane with a dying laptop battery (I’ve been there), and he wound up talking about so much more (I’ve been there too; it makes you smarter):

People who choose not to dedicate their lives to getting rich aren’t making a mistake, they’re doing what they think and hope will make them happy. I almost went to law school. All things being equal, I think I’d make a pretty good lawyer. Except for one thing: I don’t think I’d like being a lawyer. I like being a writer — most days, at least. Is it unfair or wrong that I don’t make as much money as some lawyer who spends his days reading through stacks of low-flow toilet patents? No, because (a) I don’t care enough about money to spend my life doing that kind of work and (b) fairness has nothing to do with it. The market sets the price for such things.

My boss at the American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks, is the foremost champion of the idea of “earned success.” It turns out what makes people happy isn’t money, it’s the feeling that you made a meaningful contribution to life. Absolutely: You can get that from building a business and getting rich. But you can also get that from raising a family, starting a charity, being a winning coach or an exceptional teacher, from writing a novel, or, in my case, from your record for fitting 37 Cheetos in your mouth at one time. (“They’ll never take that away from you.” — The Couch)

What can’t give you a feeling of earned success is getting stuff you didn’t earn. It can make you temporarily excited. But meaningful happiness comes from finding meaning. And what counts as meaningful for you might count as a huge waste of time to me. That’s why the inalienable right to pursue happiness has to be an individual right.

Rang a bell with me. Well. Read it all and then get back to me. I have a cold and I’m stoned to the gills on Mucinex. Lloyd Pye died without telling me first. And Raebert’s being a nuisance. I could use some witty repartee.

You knew I couldn’t let the last post go with no Stones reference. Not going to disappoint you. Newark concert 12/12. The whole thing. Old things with young things applauding. Gaga too. Just the way we like it.

Disgusted with the accelerating rot of my country, I just couldn’t find the arms of Morpheus. So what did I do? I travelled the world looking for love songs.

Found them. Here are the links.

Africa

Alabama

Australia

Brazil

California

China

Connecticut

Cuba

England

England 2 (because they earned it and it’s also French)

France

Germany

Greece

India

Ireland

Italy

Japan

Mexico

North Carolina

Russia

Scotland

South Africa

Tennessee

Texas

Wales

Wisconsin

World (aka Hoboken, New Jersey)

PLAYOFF. Yeah Adele is unbelievably great. But put this classic against, well, a long dead American. Who seems more alive?

P.S. And then there’s love beyond sex. Something about life itself. No comment. Just this and never mind the German…

Even grizzled Scots lie down to sleep. Eventually. You’ll see.

I’m sure nobody will remember that I wasn’t as scandalized by Mylie Cyrus’s twerking as some others. But I tended to see her as a victim nonetheless. She still may be. But I finally moved my stuffy ass to watch her Wrecking Ball video — because Fox News was using excerpts as a lead-in for a story about how Obama is doing in the younger generation.

Not talking about the news piece. Except it caused me to watch the video, which is underdressed to be sure, but not enough to obscure the fact that — unlike Madonna and Lady Gaga — Mylie Cyrus can actually sing.

Maybe that will be enough to save her career and her life. Maybe not too. So easy to say she’s no Judy Garland, but there are similarities. No beauty but an earthy connection. Volume, tonality, and a precocious sense of piercing (country) phrasing. When she’s soft, you’re drawn in. When she’s soaring, she’s in command of what she’s doing. It’s a strong voice, however frail she seems to be otherwise.

I’m not predicting. Just hoping. She has more talent than her role models and predecessors. God help her. Please.

P.S. No. I’m not lusting for her. She’s a stick. I like breasts and hips. I just think she’s getting a raw deal from the people who are trying to steer her career. I believe that if she settled down she could be another Lorrie Morgan, which isn’t such a bad thing to be. And Mylie has the bigger voice.

Standing tall isn’t easy for everybody.

Conservatives seem buoyed by the new Gates tell-all book. I’m not.

I’m astounded by various claims that it’s unusual for a former administration official to publish such a book while his erstwhile boss is still in office. It happened multiple times in the Bush administration. But that doesn’t make it less scurrilous.

Personally, I think Gates has just proven himself a coward and a sneak. If he believed the president didn’t believe in his own war strategy and that his Afghanistan policies and public pronouncements were strictly designed to secure reelection, he should have resigned on principle, with specification, when it could have made a difference in said reelection campaign.

What is it now? A stab in the back and a further undermining of the confidence any president can have in the people who serve at the pleasure of the president. All public officials are now just best selling writers in waiting, storing up shocking anecdotes when they should be serving the people of the United States.

Nothing his book says is any secret to people who were observing the administration’s behavior. It was obvious to many way outside the beltway that Obama’s only incentive was ending America’s military engagements, regardless of the cost to national security and our troops. But never mind what Obama didn’t believe in. The time to have made an issue of it was when Gates was following orders he didn’t believe in.

The moment is forever lost. Now he’s just a small man, literally and figuratively, who thinks his personal resentments are a ticket to the redemption of his lost integrity and, oh yes, a big payday.

Color me unimpressed. The title says it all. Duty. Really? I no longer think he knows the meaning of the word.

Dorian Gray. The Archetype. Believe me. He has no scruples whatever. He gets what he wants, no matter who has to pay. If you think I’m kidding, read his book. “The Secret Life…” It’s sooooo gay.

It’s getting way too easy to be accused of homophobia. I can save you from all that abuse and the reeducation camps that are certain to come. Face it. You don’t want to be doing calisthenics at dawn to the orders of a drill instructor in short shorts, do you? Give me just two minutes of your time. Memorize the content. It could save your life.

This should be pretty simple. I’ve been watching for a long time and now I know what the rules are. Time you did too.

As they’ve been telling us since Kinsey, 10 percent of men are gay. Doesn’t matter how many women are. The open secret is that gay men find Lesbians the dullest drabs in the universe. Who cares how many there are? Gay men have Leonardo and Michelangelo. Lesbians have Gertrude Stein, who wrote an autobiography of the other drab she lived with. It didn’t work then. It’s useless now. Actual numbers are pretty small. Disappointed, ugly women who probably fell in love with gay guys and never got over it. Gay guys rule. Forget the other bullhorn types.

You can tell that 20 percent of men are gay because 30 percent of characters in TV sitcoms are gay. They wouldn’t do that if it weren’t true, would they?

Therefore, the following behavioral rules apply.

If you think a guy is gay, he IS gay and you must treat him with more than the usual respect and deference. He probably knows more about art and literature and classical music than you could ever learn. And when I say “think” I mean if you have the tiniest suspicion… If he’s even slightly well dressed, if his hair is in place, if he’s good looking, if he’s friendly, if he’s morose and disdainful, if he ever looks at himself in a mirror, if he ever stares moodily into the distance, if he ever throws a jocular arm around your shoulders, if he ignores you completely, he’s gay. These easy guidelines should prevent a lot of unpleasant situations.

All your friendships with men are thwarted gay relationships. You’ve cut yourself off from life. All the gay sociology experts say so. It’s a consensus, which is all science ever needs.

Be alert to the fact that you have always lived outside well developed subcultures that are and have always been exclusively gay. For example, every male in show business is gay. All of them. That’s the easiest one. All jocks are gay. Why do you think they shower every day with one another? All self-described campers, hunters, and outdoorsmen are gay. Why do you think they’re constantly trying to escape into the wild away from their women?

Back to that 40 percent figure. It’s a crock. Way way understated. Truth is, the surest sign you yourself are gay is that you find gayness in some way distasteful. You think you don’t like art or literature or classical music. You think you don’t want to be an actor, a jock, or a hunter. The more you sneer at makeup and hair care products, the greater your state of denial. You’re just kidding yourself. Whenever you watch porn, you’re really looking at the endowments of the men. And then there are those of you who actually think you like art and literature and classical music and women. You’re the saddest of them all. It’s 2014 and time you saw the writing on the wall.

Come on. Admit it. All men know that women are disgusting. What’s with those flabby bumps on their chests? All real men know that wide hips and round, soft, fleshy asses are not what the creator had in mind. He as much as said in Genesis that Eve was a mistake, didn’t he? Why did he give her the Curse?

All I’m saying is, give your native gayness a chance. Regard all your male friends and acquaintances as gay. What could go wrong?

We’re living on the cusp of a new definition of tolerance. Get with the program. Open up. Be free. Be expansive. Be gay.

Nobody’s going to look down on you. This is 2014. Did we mention that? Even the trogs won’t look down on you. Because when all of you are chasing each other, all the women will be forced to like us. Which would be heaven indeed.

Can’t wait for the spreading of the gay gospel, same sex marriage, and all the rest of it. Gay liberation means that there will be on average only two or three of us in every strip club, and our dollar bills will reach all the way to the moon.

Look at that flexibility! In some ways, as the government gets sillier, life gets more fun.

Where was I? Oh. Yes. A plea for more tolerance and none of that homophobia crap. It’s not exactly in our best interest. If you know what I mean.

Really?

Now we know what happens in all the time the president isn’t at fundraising events in Hollywood or playing golf or basketball. He’s watching teevee. A lot of teevee.

An NRO youngster named Matthew Continetti has written about a New York Times weekend culture essay proposing to explain the president’s lofty tastes in television viewing as if we might all be illuminated by it. Matthew is not impressed.

Obama, we learn, “seeks not to escape to the delicious back-stabbing of the ‘Real Housewives,’” nor to “the frivolity of the singing teens on ‘Glee,’” but to “shows like HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire,’” as well as to “the DVD box set of AMC’s ‘Breaking Bad,’” Mad Men, Homeland, The Wire, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, and SportsCenter. “Friends say Obama is also awaiting the new season of the Netflix show ‘House of Cards.’”…

The problems with Shear’s exercise in psychoanalysis quickly become apparent. He makes distinctions where none ought to exist. The antics on Modern Family and Parks and Recreation are just as frivolous as “the singing teens on ‘Glee.’” Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and House of Cards are filled with as much “delicious back-stabbing” as any episode of Real Housewives. The dramas the president favors are soap operas with sophisticated vocabularies. Left unmentioned is the difference between the shows Shears pooh-poohs and the shows Obama watches. It is the same difference between a juicer bought at Walmart and one bought at Williams-Sonoma: The latter is a luxury good. It takes cash to afford the cable connections, premium channels, and Netflix subscriptions required to watch all of the titles on the president’s viewing list. It is also necessary to have leisure time, which, disturbingly, the president seems to have a lot of. No wonder he finds out about everything from the newspapers.

Shear clearly had a thesis in mind when he sat down to write. His article is an argument in search of evidence. He seems to think Obama’s taste in television reveals a tragic sense of life, a Niebuhrian realism that informs the administration’s domestic and international agenda. Shows that undermine this idea, such as sports and comedies, are downplayed. Dramas with antiheroes, violence, conspiracies, and sex are emphasized.

“It may be ‘Homeland’ that offers the most interesting insight into Obama’s downtime preferences,” Shear says. Homeland is a Showtime series about an insane CIA agent pursuing an Islamic sleeper cell. The show is just as violent and ridiculous as 24, but lacks the “let’s roll” ethos that imbued the background of the earlier series. For Shear, however, this increasingly absurd program stands for much more. “‘Homeland,’” he writes in a wonderful example of cliché, “reveals the hidden dangers in a complicated world.” It is also “subtle, presenting choices that are rarely easy and never cost-free.” Complicated, subtle, rarely easy, never cost-free — do these adjectives call to mind the reputation of a certain head of state? “It is not unlike the phrase Obama often uses with his advisers: ‘Hard things are hard.’” And dumb things are dumb…

About the president’s habits and tastes there can be no question: They are utterly typical of the American educated class.

Homeland, Game of Thrones, House of Cards — these are the latest distractions of the well-schooled echelon of society that toils in high positions in finance, academia, media, and the bureaucracy, that binge-watches fashionable shows with determination and marathon-runner stamina, that discusses over dinner recent articles in the New York Times Magazine or The New Yorker, that laments rising inequality during vacations in tropical locales. To watch such programs is not a sign of critical acumen but of social status…

Actually, it’s a sign of much more than that if you happen to be president of the United States. Take a moment. Think of what you would regard as entertaining diversion if you were the president (I won’t say leader of the free world, because he is clearly no longer that.) Wouldn’t you want anything BUT the shows he professes to watch?

After all, he’s not just a member in good standing of the educated class that takes all its cues from the New York Times and WAPO crowd. He’s a guy who is confronted daily by the power politics of the most ruthless dictators and terrorists in the world, statistics of drive-by shootings, the machinations of drug cartels, the cynical deal making of lobbyists from Wall Street and Madison Avenue, the demolition derby that is the legislative process, the ruthless behaviors of cabinet officers, agency heads, lawyers, lawyers, and lawyers in the executive branch, and the constant disinformation promulgated by the double and triple agendas of the intelligence community.

So how do you take a break from it all in the few hours a week (say 30, given we’re speaking of Obama) when you just want to be entertained? The unceasing political treachery conducted by knives, swords, and poison in Game of Thrones? The constant, pervasive evil of the characters in Breaking Bad? The cynical narcissism without end of Mad Men? The naked self-eating malice of House of Cards, which repels even members of congress as a grotesque parody of their lives? The malevolent violence of Boardwalk Empire — rides into the reeds that end in gunshots muffled by the surf. Is this fun for a person who has real power? How?

Not fun. It could only be, well, absorbing if you need to keep reaffirming some life narrative that justifies your own daggers, swords, and poisons.

Otherwise, you’d probably be seeking different subjects altogether. A series about a rural veterinarian, filled with love and laughs. A movie about a girl who learns how to win a spelling bee by tapping the rhythm of words on her leg. A movie about a girl who leads geese on their migration. A whole bunch of sports movies that bring tears to the eyes while demonstrating that hard work and good character on all sides can win the day. Or a movie about a kid born poor who rose to the heights of one of the most accomplished professions in the world, one that involved saving lives rather than ruling them. You know, a kid who wasn’t born with a white professor mother who wanted him to transform the world with daggers, swords, and poisons.

But maybe you need to keep yourself amped up to white hot anger with The Wire and surfeited with contempt via Parks and Recreation for the inept unaccountable bureaucracy you perpetuate so relentlessly. Your excuse for ruling by edict on the rare occasions when you pay any attention whatever to what your beloved government is doing.

Or maybe you don’t make any connection at all. You’re tired from schmoozing with movie stars and 18 holes of golf, and the best thing that goes with your late night choom is Breaking Bad. Maybe you know all about that.

Which would be a good sign. Because we sure do. Understand about the late night slouch with his choom. We get it.

Makes sense now.

Kathy Griffin wants to show us her breasts. Whoopee! (Of course I’d look. All men who’d tell you otherwise are lying. Men. Love. Breasts. Even the breasts of Greta van Susteren, who’s whining now.)

My wife is mad at me for calling out Brizoni. Maybe she’s right. She thinks it’s unfair of me to reproduce a silly selfie he posted on his Facebook page. I think it’s my responsibility to say come home, prodigal son, all can be forgiven. We’ve agreed to disagree.

So let me talk about Kathy Griffin instead. Desperate for attention is a sad state. She seems to pride herself on being D-List, meaning people know you but don’t care if you die. Why she’s gone to such extremes of late. Simulating oral sex with Anderson Cooper, ripping off her blouse with Anderson Cooper, and most recently promising to go topless with Anderson Cooper on their annual New Year’s CNN gig. Phooey.

It’s understandable that people want attention. Being outrageous is a quick way to achieve that. Thing is, it’s getting harder to be outrageous. People who sport bare boobs, show off silly hair dye, and say “unacceptable” things on Twitter are a dime a dozen. The hard thing is being outrageous by demonstrating thought and intelligence.

I’m betting that Kathy Griffin has nipples. But she refuses to confirm that fact for the many millions who might doubt it. In truth, she lied. She said, in effect, if you want to see my nipples, watch me and Anderson on New Year’s Eve. She didn’t deliver. Hmmm.

Who does that remind us of? It’s a lot like someone who promises to be smart and original and turns out to be dumb and dull dull dull dull dull.

Wife still mad at me, but my conscience is clear.