Start off your day with a piece of music from the Great American Songbook. We couldn’t get the real Frank, so here’s a younger substitute: Here’s a very talented 11 year old (who sounds like a talented teen) doing the song with a music track: And, yes, here is the original in a stage performance in 1971: The lip sync track on the first You Tube embed above comes from this classic Sinatra...

After so many depressing stories about sports figures who’ve done drugs, got into legal trouble, become physically decimated due to their past athletic battles, it’s refreshing to find an uplifting story about a famous athlete who is truly a great role model. And here it is: Shaquille O’Neal has earned his doctorate degree. But don’t call him Dr. Shaq: The four-time NBA champion Shaquille...

During election year each side talks as if the world will end if they lose. The words of this song are important to remember during election year:

Osama bin Laden was so depressed about Al Qaida’s low favorability ratings in the Arab world, we now learn, that he considered a name change for the franchise and a new career. No word as to whether he was mulling a Donald Trump invitation to host “The Apprentice: Boardroom Terrorism” or to be the subject of a Comedy Central Roast, which would have certified him as a has-been. Death, a panel...

President Barack Obama joked about it at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, but reaction is still pouring in about the revelation that he ate dog as a kid. Here’s the latest:

Tomorrow you’ll read the buzz and the critics — and politically motivated comments about comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue at the 2012 White House Correspondent’s Dinner. Why watch it and judge for yourself? Here it is: You can read what news reports say about his monologue HERE.

Before you get inundated by politically motivated reactions from Ds and Rs to President Barack Obama’s monologue at the 2012 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, why not watch it yourself and make your own decision? Here it is: Here are some Tweets I did on this subject on my Twitter page: @JoeGandelman @gotlucky If a President gives a monologue that gets laughs it’s always harder for...

Watch the White House Correspondents’ Dinner live HERE. As usual, the President (in this case Barack Obama) will do a monologue poking fun at him and his political foes. And the host will take potshots at the President and others. This year’s host: Jimmy Kimmel. Also: watch it and place bets now on which comments by Obama and Kimmel will be turned into chest-beating lines of supposed outrage since...

From “Mad Men,” we know a media target is a demographic group who wants and needs the same thing or can be conned into thinking they do. Now, a brief hospital stay conjures up a bizarre new target audience of the old, the maimed and the chronically ill that ad men have in their sights.  The future is grim, if you can believe where advertisers are placing their bets on the bed-bound who watch...

The Pitman Painters by Lee Hall is inspired by William Feaver’s book concerning the Ashington group. In 1934, a small group of working class men gathered at the Ashington, England YMCA hall to be taught art appreciation by Robert Lyon from Durham University. The class was sponsored by the union run Worker’s Education Association (WEA) and was comprised mostly of miners. The Pitman Painters tells...

Why has the issue of how America’s presidential candidates treat members of the dog kingdom suddenly taken on such prominence? For France’s Le Figaro, columnist Thomas Vampouille offers a view from across the Atlantic of what Europeans have dubbed ‘Dog-Gate.’ For Le Figaro, Thomas Vampouille starts out this way: The duel for the White House between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama has...

In a talk with someone on the road recently about changing entertainment trends and techniques, we got on the subject about how in early radio (before my time) and early TV (not before my time) some entertainers “snuck” commercials into the middle of their shows. And, also, about how cigarette companies were major advertisers. Here is an example from the show of one of radio and early TV’s...

President Barack Obama last night appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s late night show and generally got good reviews (most criticism seemed politically based and politically motivated). Here’s the segment so you can watch it — and judge it — for yourself: You can do a search on the reaction to it HERE (but yes Fox News will react as you suspect both online and on the air). By watching it yourself...

Obama ignores North Carolina’s anti-gay amendment:

The Big Belch is a graphic novel about a greedy oil company that causes a terrible oil spill and conducts a reckless experiment in hopes of diverting public attention from the disaster they recently caused — and ends up very nearly destroying the world in the process. The Big Belch addresses (in a zany fun way) what might come about if the Republicans get their way in gutting environmental regulations. This...

Mr. B. You’re back again. Nothing bad on the digestive front, I hope. No. Selig. I actually came by to talk with you about something important. To get your advice. Can we sit down and chat? Sit down, sir? This is a washroom. The only places where we could… Point taken. We can chat standing. Do you know what a political action committee is, Selig? A PAC? Yes sir. They’re things that promote...

ROONEY MARA AS LISBETH SALANDERThe Magnificent Seven (1960), a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic samurai epic Seven Samurai, and King Kong (2005), Peter Jackson’s reverential remake of the original. To which can now be added the 2011 American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which hews to Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s posthumous runaway international bestseller — the...

If you’ve been fruitlessly looking all these years for a big, fat book crammed with a cross section of the very best work of a variety of American newspaper columnists spanning many years: look no more. The book you’ve been fruitlessly looking for is now here. I’ve always loved columns and columnists and one of the hardest things to find was a book of columnists. Not a bio or a book that has columns by...

If you thought Jimmy Carter was a flop as President, then read about how the science fiction film John Carter was a flop for Disney. So much so that the flop of super hyped and super money losing flick is credited with playing a big role in the major show biz story of the day: that Disney movie chief Rich Ross is stepping down. Here’s a good summary from Newsy.com: Here’s a trailer from the movie...

I did this drawing today in commemoration of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.