Who are Elektra and the Punisher?

We’ve only seen a few episodes of season two of Daredevil but the Punisher and Elektra will be making appearances. I can’t say who they are on TV but I can tell you who they are in comics.

The Punisher debuted in Spider-Man in the ‘70s before appearing in Daredevil (these two heroes share some supporting cast, like the Kingpin). He is Frank Castle, a man whose wife and children were murdered, I believe during a picnic, by the mob. Frank flips out and decides to bypass legal requirements and just shoot criminals, making him a foil for lawyer Matt Murdock. Originally Frank was a Vietnam vet but that became less plausible as the decades wore on so Marvel did the sliding timescale thing and made him a veteran of an unnamed, more recent war, so they wouldn’t have a 70-year-old man running around with a machine gun.

I never cared about the Punisher. He’s all GUNS GUNS GUNS and I’m not interested. When I’m reading a superhero comic, I’d rather see some type of raygun or futuristic weapon, rather than a bullet gun. I appreciate the Punisher illustrating the idea of vigilante superheroes violently taking the law into their own hands but we’ve been here before and it gets old. We’ve had so much inter-hero conflict in comics recently and so much anti-heroism that it would be a novelty to see heroes actually saving people.

On the other hand, I love Elektra. She is Elektra Natchios, a Greek girl who dated Matt before he was Daredevil. After her father was murdered, she studied martial arts with Stick, who had trained Daredevil. However, she turned to the darkness and allied herself with the ninja assassin group the Hand.

Elektra’s initial run from 1980-81, written by Frank Miller in Daredevil, was highly popular. She and Matt crossed paths for months and under the employment of the Kingpin, she murdered an informant in a movie theater to intimidate journalist Ben Urich from pursuing a damaging story against a corrupt New York City mayoral candidate. The Kingpin’s then assigned her to kill Matt’s partner, Foggy Nelson. He recognized Elektra as “Matt’s girl” from college and she couldn’t kill him.

Kingpin then hired the assassin Bullseye to kill Elektra for defying orders, and he stabbed her through the heart with her own sai. In a famous sequence, a wounded Elektra crawled to Matt’s apartment and died in his arms on his doorstep. Daredevil then beat Bullseye nearly to death and went crazy with grief, exhuming Elektra’s body in the false belief that she wasn’t really dead. Shortly thereafter, the Hand tried to resurrect Elektra. Somehow Matt purified her soul, although the story left it vague whether Elektra was alive again or not. Elektra has since been resurrected and is a part of mainstream Marvel, having been briefly impersonated by a Skrull.

One of my favorite stories in comics is 1986’s Elektra: Assassin miniseries, an out-of-continuity look at the character published after her death (although there is a dispute as to whether it takes place prior to her appearance in Daredevil). It was written by Miller and features totally bizarre, stunningly beautiful painted artwork by Bill Sienkiewicz. Elektra spends the beginning of the story heavily sedated and remembering her past through a distorting fog. She teams up with the cyborg John Garrett (who appeared in Agents of SHIELD) to stop the demon known only as the Beast from getting a presidential candidate elected who will nuke the Soviet Union. Amusingly, this candidate resembles John Kennedy and Jimmy Carter and seems like a hippie but is truly evil, and would replace the incumbent president, a combination of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. In addition to her ninja skills, Elektra demonstrated low-level psychic powers. She also says exactly three words out loud in the story, communicating mostly in thought balloons.

Elektra: Assassin was a great story and also a satire of ‘80s comics and movie clichés on violence, sex and attitudes toward women, featuring underwater ninjas and a secret agent dressed like a nun. It blew my mind then and is still great today.

The Walking Dead S6 E15: East

Because splitting up always works so well on The Walking Dead (remember when, right after learning a lesson about splitting up, Hershel left to go drinking, Rick split up from the group to find him, Lori went to find them and got into a car accident, and then Shane went out to find her?), they decide to split up again and look for stray people. Darryl wants revenge for Denise’s death and goes out, with Glenn and Tiffani/Bobbi Jo/Clarissa trailing him. Rick and Morgan go looking for Carol and her spiked car.

I understand Darryl looking for Dwight but I don’t really get Rick and Morgan looking for Carol. Yes, she’s a great asset to the team and they want her to stay, but she did clearly leave of her own free will. What were they going to do when they found her? Hasn’t years of living in the zombie apocalypse taught everyone that no good comes of everyone splitting off and going on separate missions? The only thing lying ahead is trouble. I did like Rick and Morgan talking about that Wolf he let go free and the examination of the chain of events because talking about “If X hadn’t done Y, Z wouldn’t have happened” is something the viewers do.

I did like Carol’s panic attack and how it appeared to be genuine. I also liked how the confrontation with those guys on the road wasn’t that clean: a few people died but a few were injured and still posed a threat. Morgan does not have the investigative skills of Marge Gunderson. He looked at the bloody spike and figured Carol’s blood sprayed on it, without noticing the zombie on the ground with a spike-sized hole in his chest. The clearest explanation for a spike with blood on it is that somebody got impaled.

Darryl apparently got shot but not fatally, given the “You’ll be alright” tacked onto the end. I guess this will be the Zapruder film until the season finale next week.

Meanwhile, Maggie gets a cute haircut and apparently is having some sort of miscarriage or big problem with her pregnancy (she did get knocked around a few weeks ago, with nasty bruises on her hips and back). Either she or Glenn or both are very dead next week. The erotic/angsty shower scene could only be foreshadowing something awful.

And so we await Negan.

The Americans S4 E2: Pastor Tim

For an episode called “Pastor Tim,” we barely saw the titular pastor, only once dead in a dream Elizabeth has. Paige confesses her confession to Tim, which of course her parents already knew, but her honesty does her no good, as unsurprisingly, Elizabeth wants to kill him. “We can get this miserable son of a bitch out of our lives,” she argues.

“Maybe we should leave,” Philip says. “You want to kill the one person in the world she trusts.” It’s yet another marital conflict. I had thought Elizabeth’s dream, with Paige finding the body, would spur second thoughts but it looks like the good pastor will meet his end in an explosion of a space heater at his cabin.

This episode was actually a little funny, with hilarious one-liners like Elizabeth telling Philip she told Paige “Wait til your father gets home,” mixing a wholesome sitcom laugh line with the decidedly unwholesome scenario of killing your daughter’s spiritual adviser after she revealed your treason. There was some tonal whiplash to this installment. Elizabeth tells Paige her grandmother is dead and after a few tears, tells her own daughter that she has to go to work, with the girl not knowing that work entails killing her one friend.

Gabriel breaks the news to Elizabeth that her mother died but that she wanted the girl born Nadezhda to know she loved her. “Did she?” asks Elizabeth, which Gabriel takes to mean, “Did she really say that?” Of course what she really is asking is, “Did she really love me?” It’s a devastating question.

The perils of puberty mean Henry has aged visibly in the year The Americans was off the air, although it’s only a few days between seasons. It’s sad that the Jenningses are so disconnected from their son and that he is more comfortable eating a bowl of cereal with the sad neighbor than being home.

I had assumed Nina was lying last season when she told her cellmate she was married but now we meet her estranged husband Boris. We also see what connects her so strongly to Anton: each of them has an estranged spouse and long-lost child. Now what happens to Nina? Maybe she feels like she is doomed anyway and had nothing left to lose by passing that note. Nina also says she is too old to marry again. What is she, 25?

Philip, still in the midst of his slow-motion breakdown, opens up to his wife about beating that kid to death with a rock and this brings the possibility of Elizabeth going to EST, which should go over just as well as her going to church. EST is actually one of the few normal-marriage secrets between the two.

Glanders (stupid sexy glanders!) is becoming the hot potato of the show. Gabriel doesn’t want it and the Jenningses don’t want it. If that vial breaks, “Tens of thousands of people start oozing pus all over the streets of DC,” the snarky handler tells Philip. “So it’s safe in my house, then?” Philip deadpans.

The twitchy pilot leaves the glanders in the bus, which leads to a brutal, very risky murder. I was thrilled to hear the show use one of my all-time favorites, the stone-cold classic “Tainted Love.” Now I’m reading into the lyrics and trying to guess which apply to the characters:

The love we share seems to go nowhere

But I’m sorry, I don’t pray that way

Once I ran to you, now I run from you

Take my tears and that’s not nearly all

Don’t touch me please, I cannot stand the way you tease

Really, all of the above and more apply to Philip and Elizabeth.

$*

I would love to retire early. Like, tomorrow. I would not get bored. I would start volunteering and have more time for spending time with our eventual child and write my face off. Sometimes I will go on financial websites and read testimonials from people who took early retirement. It seems like many of these people who wrote these articles should have affixed asterisks to the headlines, asterisks so big they blot out their own premises and completely eclipse the dream that you might be able to retire early.

I don’t know if websites feature these articles to inspire regular people that they too can leave the workforce before age 65 but the subtext in many of these articles “We can — you can’t.” What many of these people seem to gloss over is that they own their own companies or have sources of income that the hoi polloi does not. It’s not just “financial savvy” or not buying that daily latte or clipping coupons.  

I read an interview with a guy who retired at a young age and his secret was selling the record company he co-founded. This is his life now:

This passive income is mostly royalties from music, book, and t-shirt sales for items I’ve released in the past … So if you combine the surplus in dividends of $18,000 plus the $7,700 in passive income, my disposable spending becomes about $25,000 per year, or just a little over $2,000 per month. That’s definitely enough for my hobbies and any unexpected expenses that come up.

Well, awesome. I can’t identify at all. I don’t have a surplus of dividends because I am a normal, non-record-company-founding person. Am I supposed to actually be inspired by this advice at any level? Here are a few other examples:

Graduating from college in the late 1990s, Josh, who is now 35 and wishes to remain anonymous, started an Internet marketing company with his roommate. In their late 20s, they sold their company and were suddenly faced with the reality that they could retire -- as in never work another day in their lives … Josh's financial partner, Gabriel Fancher, says you "must get lifestyle and spending down to lower levels so you can live off of income from your assets." Fancher says that to achieve financial independence, you must, "live within your means, and save as much as you possibly can."

“Live within your means” means something different to a 30-something who founded and sold an internet company than it means to me. “Save as much as you possibly can” also means something different because the owner of a company is presumably on better footing to save money than 9-to-5 schlubs like me. Here’s somebody else:

Todd Tresidder retired at age 35, after working 12 years as a hedge fund investment manager running a $20 million-plus portfolio.

Well, the secret to early retirement is so obvious. I’ll just go back in time to age 23 and manage a hedge fund. Seriously, what is the point of these testimonials? Anybody who can manage a $20 million hedge fund can figure out a retirement plan on his own and the rest of us couldn’t follow his path even if we wanted to. So why publish this?

Tresidder says to build assets faster, you must live frugally and save a high percentage of your income … Leverage is another way to create savings more rapidly, he says. For example, investing in rental real estate provides income and cash flow that keeps up with inflation in the form of rising rents.

Again, “save a high percentage of your income” means a much quicker retirement for you than me. There’s just not that much money available to leave the workforce at 35 and people don’t need a financial adviser to understand that. And I’m already doing the whole “invest in rental real estate” thing but it’s not as glamorous as it seems. We are renting our old house until we pay it down enough that we can sell it. We lost $30,000 (not including all the money we invested in the house) since the housing bubble popped. We make a small profit on the rent but that’s it. Renting the house was not some kind of brilliant financial decision on our part — it was what we had to do to move on.

I don’t want to complain too much because we are doing OK. But you know what: I work at a regular office job, have a mortgage and credit card debt. I don’t own my own company. Is there any advice for regular people to retire early? These people tout “save as much as you can” and I try but I’m not making a mint to begin with and have middle-class things to pay for. Articles like these seem like they’re offering solid financial advice but they skip the huge step of “be rich.”

The Walking Dead S6 E14: Twice as Far

The worst thing was the way Denise kept talking for a few seconds after that arrow went through her eye, giving advice with her last breath. Good Lord, that was rough. She seemed like a nice person, too. The tragedy was that all that happened for a can of soda for Tara. Of course, there’s nothing to say Denise or someone else wouldn’t have gotten killed anyway. It took me by surprise because even though the show did that trick of giving a character depth right before killing her off, they have been doing that to a number of people lately, so Denise’s development didn’t raise any alarms for me.

It did seem a little too neat that Denise and Eugene each ran into trouble after trying to prove themselves to the group, with one dying and the other one getting injured. I was impressed by Eugene’s idea to make bullets because I’ve always wondered where they get this seemingly endless supply of ammo. I was also impressed by Eugene’s jaw strength, biting all the way through denim like that.

The Saviors finally manage to do some actual damage but then fail in the end, getting driven back by Darryl, Abraham and Marlene/Sadie/That One Woman. I guess Negan is sending out the B-list to deal with the Alexandrians because the score by now is Alexandrians 59, Saviors 1. I am aware that this is a fakeout and the actual Negan will be more impressive.

What the hell is going on with Carol? I liked how they were adding some shading and regret to her badass persona but moving away seems like it’s going too far and came from nowhere. I would have been more convinced if she’d faced her demons and come to terms and stayed on in another capacity than killer. Maybe she recognizes that though she’ll kill if she needs to, she really doesn’t want to, and she’ll just be a liability. This seems like a retread of when Carol left before and had to come roaring back to save everyone from Terminus. (Speaking of Terminus, it was a nice callback to have Darryl refuse to walk down the train tracks because the last time he did that, they all almost got beheaded and eaten.)

I did like how the opening of the episode kept repeating certain ways of measuring time, like Morgan adding bricks to the cell and the woman adding more cans to the shelf, to show time passing.

So who do we think is going to die in the season finale? I’m aware of who bites it in the comic. I’m thinking the prime candidates are Maggie, Glenn, Abraham, or Carol if she comes back.

The Americans S4 E1: Glanders

Yay! The best show on TV is back! Oh, how I missed you.

The Americans wastes no time getting started, with Philip telling Martha how he killed her IT coworker Gene the previous day. Still rocked by the revelation that her husband is a Soviet spy, Martha understandably flips out, crying,
“What have you done? What have I done?”

Yet Martha continues to abet the spying, whether from a sense of love for Philip, or because she is in so deep that she can’t see a way out, or a combination of both. While illicitly copying FBI surveillance records, she tells Stan, “I guess you never really know a person, do you?”

Biological weapons seem to be the big enemy this season. “This is to meningitis what the bubonic plague is to a runny nose,” the contact tells Elizabeth and Philip about the agent that could spread the titular disease glanders. I had never heard of this disease before but I read that it causes nodular lesions in the lungs and results in septicemia and death within days.  Better keep that safe in the freezer, Jennings family. Apparently Tatiana, from the ominous Department 12, is involved in all this.

Paige also deals with the fallout of the revelation that her parents are spies, unable to walk into the classroom and pledge allegiance with her classmates. Elizabeth tells her daughter her work is about getting people to trust her, then lies her ass off that she and Philip don’t hurt people but “try to make the world safer for everyone.” It fascinates me that part of Elizabeth’s rationale here is a twisted version of trying to get closer to her daughter by bringing her into the spy setting.

Pastor Tim hilariously asks Paige if her parents would be willing to sit down and talk all this Cold War stuff out. Of course they absolutely will not, as Paige realizes the more sensitive ‘70s/’80s way of being open and talking about your problems just will not work with people from an older generation, particularly those raised in post-war Russia.

There was a thread in this episode of the old ways not connecting with the new, or at least people not being able to explain old experiences in new terms. Philip tries to tell the EST class about how he beat another boy to death with a rock but he knows he can’t use new age terminology or psychobabble to explain it and the crowd really doesn’t want to hear the truth, as much as they think they might. “He moved away,” Philip tells his classmates about the boy he killed and they give him a hilarious round of applause. I guess they have to encourage his growth as a person.

Trouble is brewing after Stan’s girlfriend (and Sandra Doppelganger) Tori spots Philip and Sandra looking “intimate” getting a drink after EST class. Stan is as unhinged as I’ve ever seen him (and might want to watch out for the biologic agent in Philip’s jacket) and threatens his neighbor. I wonder if Stan will be more vigilant with Philip now and this will lead him to pull at some threads about the spy work. I don’t think Philip really wants to sleep with Sandra but more just wants someone to talk to.

The person he is able to talk to is Martha. At his apartment, he opens up about how hard it hit him when he had to kill Gene. Martha listens and thanks him. This is in pointed contrast to the end of last season, when he tried to open up to Elizabeth, who turned into Sovietbot at the sound of Reagan’s voice on the news and shushed him.

Season four begins in a quiet but tantalizing way but judging by the preview of next week, things are going to escalate quickly. Apparently, the Jenningses find out that Pastor Tim knows about the spying and Martha goes to Gabriel’s house?! Are you kidding me?! Oh, this is going to be good.

The Walking Dead S6 E13: The Same Boat

I assumed right away when Carol told her captors her name in a mousy voice that she was faking, playing the part of the defenseless housewife again so she could lower the Saviors’ expectations and strike back. I figured the Saviors were in for major trouble, having taken captive Carol, the show’s most dangerous person, and Maggie, who has shown impressive steel during negotiations.

What I didn’t count on right away was how much truth there was in Carol’s breakdown. She may have been playing up the panic attack and rosaries but it was all based on something real. I was thinking at first, when Carol was crying as she talked about her daughter, that she was like an actress drawing on a painful memory to make herself cry, but who’s to say her faith didn’t get her through that Sophia’s death? You can use those rosary beads to pray and comfort yourself but you can also sharpen that cross and use it for more practical ends.

I thought it was more interesting to see Carol snap when realizing how many people she’s killed, having a real breakdown, than having one that was entirely fake as a method of turning the tables on her captors. I am liking the development where the show is not taking lightly the fact that Rick and the gang killed a bunch of people in cold blood because even as a preventive measure, it’s brutal. The Walking Dead isn’t just implying that “they’re doing what they have to do,” it’s leaving space for questioning.

Those Saviors were a piece of work. I loved the smoker, who had to have been a school lunch lady or waitress at a biker diner before the zombies came. Paula had a weird pre-zombie backstory. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention but I couldn’t follow why she had to stay with her boss during the emergency and then killed him. I’m being glib here but it just felt like her story came down to “I had to stay late at work so my daughters died.”

None of them were really as competent as they seemed and I’m not impressed so far. I am sure things will change when Negan arrives but so far the team has taken down his minions with no trouble. Darryl blew up those people with a rocket launcher, they killed everyone at that satellite facility and now Carol and Maggie freed themselves, all with zero casualties on their side.

I loved how Darryl hugged Carol.

Island

This message is for you, the man at the head of the express lane, arguing with the cashier that the four individually packaged pieces of cake are on sale. You who leave the line to saunter to the bakery to bring back the display sign proving that cake is 50 cents cheaper. You who stare imperiously at your surroundings as the cashier calls for a price check, without even a gesture of apology to the people waiting behind you with one item each.

This message is for you, the woman in the parking lot, wedging her cart next to the driver’s side door of the car next to her. You who continue loading your trunk calmly while the other driver is unable to get into his own car. You who seem to feel there is nowhere else on earth to park that cart but right in the way of someone else, and that there is no way it will be physically possible to move the cart once you have placed it.

This message is for you, the woman at the front of the line in Wawa. You who complete a purchase and, with a smile indicating either extreme inner peace or dimwitted unawareness, slowly and methodically put each dollar bill in change back into your wallet so each bill is facing the same way. You who cannot conceive of the idea of moving slightly, just slightly, to the side while rearranging your money so people behind you can complete their purchases.

This message is for you, the man walking behind a coworker into the office. You who remain silent, without even a mutter of thanks, when the person ahead holds the door for you. You who breeze through magically held-open doors as if you are Louis XIV and it is your divine right to be served.

This message is for all of you: Never forget that you are an island unto yourself and that nothing outside your skin, certainly not the needs of those vaguely human shadow blobs standing near you, matter even the tiniest bit.

Early Spring

Faster than I could stop it, new green life shoots up through a lawn smothered not long ago by blizzard. Tree buds, which assumed they still had several snooze cycles before the alarm, get a rude awakening in single digit March.

Part of me welcomes this. Part of me needs more time. I am ready for this great thawing, this great opening of hearts to the warm breeze, but I could use more time to prepare.

This early spring fools me, drives me into an unearned panic that there is so little time left to graft hydrangeas and azaleas onto the land, to grow colors that are uniquely ours, mine and his, somehow combined in some alchemy that we cannot explain.

But it’s not as if the nurseries will put up closed signs and say we are out of luck and should have started sooner. I must learn to fool myself, to breathe in the early balmy afternoon and know the season is young and there is still so much spring left to soak in.

The Walking Dead S6 E12: Not Tomorrow Yet

Of course the plan went to hell at the end. The capture of Maggie and Carol shows why you do not send a pregnant woman out on a murderous raid. I don’t mean to be sexist and suggest that pregnant women are all delicate little flowers who can’t handle anything but perhaps it was not the smartest idea to send Maggie out with the kill squad. There are more prudent ways to help out and it’s not like Maggie hasn’t contributed anything: that negotiation last week was a masterstroke. Granted, she was supposed to be a lookout, and maybe Carol’s hesitance in letting Maggie help is what got them captured, but still.

Of course, when has anything gone right for this group? I really didn’t expect them to waltz in and claim Negan’s empire unchallenged.

The raid on Negan’s headquarters was exciting and nightmarish. It was very chilling to watch Glenn and everybody stab those guys in the head in their sleep (and they were really heavy sleepers; I would have awoken at the first sound). The Walking Dead is making an effort to paint Negan’s people as brutal, given the Polaroids of humans whose skulls were crushed by the Neganites.

The show better have a hell of a payoff for how brutal Negan is because it will need to justify the awful brutality displayed by Rick and company. This is the first time they have ever crossed the line of straight-up murdering people for food. To its credit, the show does not take these actions lightly, with characters feeling real agony over having to commit mass murder (and the guy with long hair being unable to do it at all). We can all have a lively debate about how justified the group’s actions are but if you look at it objectively, you have to wonder who is in the right here.

Speaking of agonizing over murder, Carol is back in a big way after being absent the last few weeks. I liked the part with her keeping a running total of the people she’s killed so far because, even if she had no choice but to kill, it gives the murders some weight. If you think about it, killing 18 people puts Carol up there with some famous mass murderers and of course it will take a toll after awhile.

The past is starting to haunt Carol, with her dumping out that acorn-beet (mmm!) cookie on that kid’s grave in a nod to guilt. Maybe she feels that the end is near, what with taking up smoking (unconvincingly) and hooking up with that townie and all the wistful talk of motherhood. I hope they’re not doing the classic move of all of that extra character development just to kill her off because Carol is by far my favorite.

The way Abraham dumped Patty/Marge/Whatshername was just unnecessarily cruel. She didn’t do anything to deserve that. You think he’d realize that he will still have to see her every day and not burn any bridges so badly. It's not like he can just move away to a nicer neighborhood.

The Ku Klux Who?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is being interviewed on the set of some Sunday morning political show.

Reporter: I also wanted to ask you about some comments by David Duke about your candidacy. He offered support for your presidential bid and said that for white people not to vote for you would be “treason to their heritage.” What do you think of this white supremacist’s implied endorsement?

Donald Trump: Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. Okay? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don’t know. I don’t know, did he endorse me or what’s going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.

Reporter: You don’t know anything about David Duke?

Trump: Never heard of the guy.

Reporter: Well, he was a Louisiana congressman. He actually ran for president twice and has been in the public eye since the ‘80s. He was a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Trump: Come again? The Ku Klux Who?

Reporter: Klan. Are you … unfamiliar with them?

Trump: I’d need to do more research.

Reporter: Really? The burning crosses? Men wearing white sheets? Doesn’t ring a bell?

Trump: … You know what, I think I have a bad earpiece. Anyway, like I said, I’d have to do more research on this “KKK” gang. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about. You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I would have to look.

Reporter: Let’s move on. You also have tacit endorsements from the Aryan Nation and the Bund. Do you think their support speaks to an element of racism and discrimination among your supporters?

Trump: Aryan Nation? I don’t know that nation. Never saw them on a map. Never heard of them. The only thing I know about a “nation” is that we need to make America great again. The blacks, they love me. Besides, I don’t even know what these people want.

Reporter: Well, here’s a group with a very clear mission: An endorsement from the Make America White Again movement. Their leader has said a vote for you would be “a vote for complete supremacy of the white race over all the inferior people of the world.”

Trump: I don’t know what these people stand for. The last thing I’d want to do is shoot my mouth off about something I don’t know much about.

Reporter: But it’s right there in their name. They want to make America white again. Isn’t that enough to go by? You can’t disavow them based solely on their name and rhetoric?

Trump goes silent. Then he cocks an ear to the side and stares offstage.

Trump (to empty and silent offstage area): What? What? Oh, OK. (To reporter) Gotta go. They need me. Bye.

The reporter sits stunned as Trump leaves. Suddenly, Chris Christie, who had been standing silently in the background blinking out “SOS” in Morse code, speaks in the barest whisper.  

Chris Christie: Help me. Help me … I am … in hell …

Alert: Just 25 shopping days left until Easter

Shit. Shit shit shit.

I guess the early holiday just snuck up on me this year. But nobody in my life wants to hear excuses. They just want their Easter baskets, on time and bursting with chocolate. It’s not like the supermarkets and drugstores didn’t warn me. They put up Easter displays on Feb. 15, the moment the Valentine’s Day chocolate turns irreparably rancid, just so we can all start our shopping early. Because God knows Easter shopping takes at least six weeks to complete.

I just have so much to do and am feeling completely overwhelmed. My estimate is that I will need 27 Easter baskets to distribute to family and friends. The amount of plastic grass alone is incalculable. Then think of all the plastic eggs and jellybeans and chocolate bunnies and pastel M&Ms (they must be pastel because any other kind does not taste like Easter). Plus the hundred or more Easter cards I have to send out to everybody and … and …

I have to lie down.

What a fool I am. For the next 25 days, I’m going to be reduced to driving all over the tri-state area, scouring every obscure convenience store looking for chocolate. And I’m only going to find the dregs because everybody else started shopping over a month ago. And then Easter is going to be ruined for everyone.

Sigh. I never thought I’d be one of those people who started Easter shopping on Holy Saturday. Now I’m going to show up with a bunch of baskets that look like drunk people made them during the Depression. My God, I’m going to be laughed out of Christianity, aren’t I?