the only blizzard should be at Dairy Queen...

I am looking out my kitchen window...the day after February Armageddon...hopefully the first, and last, blizzard of the winter of 2026...the "little storm" that suddenly popped on the late Friday afternoon news...followed by steadily increasing snowfall total predictions...if you watch WCBS News in New York...when you saw Lonnie Quinn with rolled up sleeves over the weekend...you knew we were screwed...and so I look outside...because today I can look outside...yesterday the wind had attached giant snowflakes to the screens...oh, joy...this morning's sun paints the snow as a pretty landscape...lovely as I sip my coffee and write...but I have grown leery and weary of the roads it leaves...we still had snow from January's frozen tundra...the snow mound in the rear lot of my community looked like the iceberg from Titanic...I am tired of parking lot roulette...you know...you get to the end of the row and cannot see anything except the pile at the end which might double for luge practice...you inch forward...pray...someone upstairs is looking out...you get home and hibernate until your weather app says 40 degrees...we are inching towards warmth...we are days from March...we spring forward in less than two weeks...soon, basketball madness...Purim and hamantaschen...the Oscars (well, that's me), and St. Patrick's with its green beer and freshly baked soda bread...but I am thinking about those shitty little rodents...those celebrity groundhogs like Phil and Hal who were painfully right...maybe February 2, 2027 let sleeping groundhogs sleep...so when I clump along in my two-hundred-pound snow boots there might be a little spring in my step...

And all that jazz...

while scrolling Instagram videos last week I came across several that featured devoted fans gushing over the Broadway debut of Whitney Leavitt as the new Roxie Hart in the Broadway revival of Chicago...now in its 30th year...many of you are thinking who?...Whitney appeared in the Hulu series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives...and then gained national attention on last season's Dancing With The Stars...and they use the term "stars" very loosely...as social media permeates every inch of our lives...we, as a society, use that term "stars" pretty loosely too...the powerhouse that is Chicago has not shied away from putting a sliding scale of celebrity in starring roles over the years...to boost ticket sales?...Walter Bobbie, who as director, brought this incredible revival to Broadway...with the late, great Ann Reinking...has always felt that using celebrities bolstered by the best dancers reinforces the underlying theme of the show...fame, media manipulation, etc...not so sure Ms. Reinking or the original creator and genius Bob Fosse would agree...but they are not here to comment...when Chicago opened on Broadway in 1975 we were a country still reeling from our exit from Vietnam and the sting of Watergate...we, as an audience, perhaps did not want the subtext of the Kander and Ebb songs...the not so subtle irony that pervaded Fosse's vision...oh, and there was a little musical that also opened that year...A Chorus Line...Chicago closed after just two years...by the time the Chicago revival opened in 1996...we were much more jaded...we thought we were impervious to media manipulation...despite having survived the greatest performance by an actor in the 20th century...Ronald Reagan...but that revival...there was Bebe Neuwirth, slinky and wry...James Naughton...Joel Grey...and oh yes...Ann Reinking...those legs and husky voice and every shimmy a love note to Fosse...and then it was Pamela Anderson...Billy Ray Cyrus...and Bravo housewives...all while the best voices and legs stood in the wings and toiled eight shows a week...not good...makes me think of that song from Gypsy...You Gotta Have a Gimmick...please Mr. Bobbie...stop with the wannabee celebrity whoring in Chicago...or just admit the show is no more the acerbic vision of one of Broadway's greatest visionaries...and just a 21st century bump and grind burlesque...with wilting razzle dazzle...

Hopping into the Super Bowl, all "kid"ing aside...

Super Bowl 60...for NY fans...after a brutal season for both teams...it was almost like...who cares?...but there are football pools, new commercials, lots of diet-killing food to inhale...and the halftime show...which unless you live under a rock, you have heard about this ad nauseum...Bad Bunny...or Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio...clutch your pearls...a Puerto Rican superstar was scheduled to perform...in Spanish...and in a case of MAGA gone wild...Erika Kirk and Turning Point USA whipped together an alternative...an "American" show...headliner...Kid Rock...I still have not stopped laughing...and thinking...what the hell was Sheryl Crow thinking all those years ago when they were together...the whole thing was disgusting...if you don't care for the halftime artist then walk away...turn the channel...clean up the snacks consumed first half...or maybe...I don't know...watch...maybe you'll be surprised...or not...in a country as large and diverse as the United States maybe we can all agree that we all don't agree on everything...the halftime show is not a telecast of the nuclear codes...lighten the hell up...but the alternative show was nothing more than a paper thin cover of inherent racism...I don't speak Spanish...I've heard a lot of Bad Bunny and like his music...did I understand most of what he sang during halftime?...no...I took French in high school...so unless they bring Edith Piaf back from the dead for halftime it doesn't help...but, yes, I got everything he was saying in the subtext...down to the power lines that were climbed and their representation of how we have let Puerto Rico...part of the US...down in so many ways with helping them fix this wrecked power system...the end so jubilant...it was like watching an opera...and crying during Madame Butterfly or La Boheme...you get it, even if you don't speak the language...joy and sorrow and pride and hope are universal...Benito's emotions scattered across the field at Levi's Stadium for all to see...and yes, Mr. Bunny...the only thing more powerful than hate is love...