Culture – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

The Catechism of a Christmas Carol Revisited

Humbugs and humble remembrances

In the run up to the Christmas holiday I revisit this piece I wrote for Ellemeno called The Catechism of A Christmas Carol. It makes sense because for most of my life I revisited or restaged A Christmas Carol, or some other Christmas themed show each and every holiday season.

I revisit the piece hoping that things might have changed for the better and that the hard hearted might have taken some of Dickens’ message to heart. Sadly, this year I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. But as I suggest in the piece, that’s true every year. This year it is just more openly apparent. As ingrained as it is in most of Western culture, A Christmas Carol doesn’t seem to have the same power to change hearts that the ghosts Dickens conjured did with old Ebenezer.

In fact these days, I’m slightly surprised that the folks in charge of banning books haven’t focused on this one yet, given how contradictory it is to their aims and careless heartlessness.

I write this a week before Christmas Day, 2025, in what has been a frightening year that presages more frights to come. I imagine this weekend will see theatre’s filled watching A Christmas Carol, A Wonderful Life, A Miracle on 34th Street, etc… etc…. We can hope some in those audiences will take home a moment taken to heart, if only momentarily.

Perhaps one day we’ll return to a place where the momentary touching of hearts and salving of souls means something for at least the length of the drive home from a Christmas Eve matinee. There is always hope. And that’s what Christmas is about.

As Scrooge’s nephew Fred says:

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

I hope you’ll read the piece. Merry Christmas to all of those who celebrate.

(image from Plateresca on Shutterstock.)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Time Names Architects of AI As 2025 Person of the Year

Hype masters of the Year

There was a time when I used to buy Time Magazine’s rationale for naming someone Person of the Year. The rationale always was the person or persons chosen had the most impact during the year, whether for good or ill. I’ve changed my perspective on that, long before this year’s choice.

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This year Time Magazine named The Architects of AI as the 2025 Person of the Year.

As Time puts it:

This is the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods. Racing both beside and against each other, they placed multibillion-dollar bets on one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time. They reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons.

There’s no denying the individuals Time lists have had an impact. In my opinion, the list leans decidedly into the “for ill” column. You can’t argue that these folk have certainly created a new economy with all of the yet to be fulfilled promises. But, at some point there needs to be something real underneath the hype. For better or worse, and however these promises may or may not be fulfilled, I’d love to be around a few decades from now to see how the ledger balance that describes what good may have come from AI versus what bad things it left in its wake totals up.

But if any or all of the promises come true, I doubt the AI accountants will ever show us that math.

Perhaps it’s the advent of the holiday season. Perhaps it’s that I’m just not that keen on Artificial Intelligence. But I’d rather see a focus on folks who have actually done tangible good for the world rather than folks who, to this point, have only made bundles of money promising a future that may in the end turn out to be what I suspect will be just another unfulfilled promise.

While I get the intention, I also find it darkly portentous that Time includes a “Ask me anything” chatbot that follows you along the webpage as you scroll through to read the article.

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To be fair, Time does point out some of the bad things already associated with Artificial Intelligence in the article. There are a growing number of those these days, but eventually eyeballs will pass them by in the same way folks eventually look past the ever present news of gun violence. Those sitting on that girder in the photograph are counting on that.

I’m guessing future Person of the Year selections will most likely be chosen by AI, and will whitewash most of that out of the accompanying articles.

The Wacky War On Woke Typefaces

The wingdings continue winging and dinging

I guess I feel safer. Those woke sans serif typefaces won’t be in my face any longer. At least in official communications from the State Department.

Trump professional suck up, currently serving as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio has declared that all official communications from the State Department ditch the woke typeface Calibri and return to using the more traditional Times New Roman. Apparently the Biden administration flipped on the woke switch in 2023. But no longer!

Rubio’s statement, while hiding behind the claim of clarity and formality, let the cat out the bag by castigating radical diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs in his statement. These wingdings just keep on winging and dinging with their distaste for anything they fear might smack any type of inclusion that doesn’t include bribery.

I guess if you’re on a binge to eradicate history you don’t like, ban books you’ve never read, and are afraid of anything and everything that doesn’t fit your warped world view, you might as well get rid of offending typography. Because, hey, there’s nothing else of import happening in the world that might need some attention.

Maybe we’ll find out just how far the big tech oligarchs are willing to follow the administration’s lead if they start removing the Calibri typeface from future software updates. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if that actually happens.

The Netflix Paramount Media Money Muddle

Stay tuned

It was quite comedic to watch the reaction to the news at the end of last week that Netflix had won the bidding to take over Warner Brothers. There was indeed much celebrating. There as also quite a bit of consternation. The celebration was primarily because there is an abundant school of thought that no one wanted Paramount, now essentially another tentacle of the Trump administration, to win.

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I didn’t bite on the news celebrations or the consternation being the final chapter then. Of course it wasn’t. The Netflix bid parlayed out to $72 billion. On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a hostile all cash takeover bid of $77.9 billion.

There’s only a roughly $5-6 billion difference between the two bids, but the Paramount bid seeks to swallow up the pieces of Warner Brothers/Discovery that Netflix apparently wasn’t interested in, including media properties such as CNN, TNT Sports, and Discovery. Netflix’s bid was for Warner’s Studio and HBO’s streaming business only. Note that Warner Brothers had previously announced that it planned to split up the combined businesses in just that vein.

So, what does it all mean?

First, it means a lot of lawyers and lobbyists are going to make a lot of money. There are political, marketplace, and money pieces moving around the board in what looks to be quite a saga that I imagine Hulu will end up making a series about within a couple of years.

Netflix is after the content. And the control. Ben Thompson has an excellent run down on that, and why Netflix’s delivery system makes it make sense. Netflix has created quite a war chest for its bid (which is both cash and stock), by building a relatively slick distribution system to deliver its already abundant content, plus whatever it continues acquiring. (How many TV remotes are there without a Netflix button these days?)

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s all cash bid includes quite a few players including his pop, Larry Ellison, both of whom are Trump supporters, as well as outlays from sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and also Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. Without those partners Paramount, valued at around $15 billion, would have a hard time competing with Netflix’s roughly $400 billion war chest. (The Wall Street Journal has a decent rundown on more of the money specifics.)

Second, it means what was already a muddle the way most of these kind of things are, will get muddled up even more due to the politics of the moment. I’ll disagree with Ben Thompson’s analysis that points out that the President doesn’t have final say on this. That may have indeed been true in a past we’re no longer living in. Those old rules no longer apply. As we’ve been learning everyday since January 20, 2025.

Third, Hollywood also has its concerns. The traditional studio power structure is not enamored of Netflix and its heretofore disdain for theatrical releases, which also brings movie theatre owners into play. I’m not sure if the Netflix bid means the death of Hollywood as some claim, but it certainly would shift the pieces, the game board, and the power structure as what began as a tech company could end up controlling much of what we see on our smaller silver screens.

Big money is at stake obviously. But when big egos get involved the costs for everyone increase. Including those flipping through content consumption choices with their remotes.

Stay tuned. I’m guessing that Hulu series will be quite a watch when all is said and done.

Sunday Morning Reading

Hands on with playwrights, movies, smart toilets, and a discomforting rooster

Another Sunday. More snow overnight. More shoveling later. The holidays creep closer or perhaps they’re already here, given that grandpa mode has kicked into high gear. Started writing a new play out of the blue yesterday. I have no idea why, but it just tumbled out of my brain on to the screen via the keyboard. Time to share some Sunday Morning Reading. Read as you will, even if it’s on a smart toilet.

I often save the softer pieces for later in this column, but I’ll lead today with David Todd McCarty’s Christmas Means Comfort. Tell that to the rooster.

The world lost a treasure this week with the passing of architect Frank Gehry. Lee Bray writes a nice obituary and tribute. Check out Architect Frank Gehry Who Designed Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavillion and Foot Bridge Dies at 96.

Samuel Beckett’s Hands is a terrific piece by Rob Tomlinson about, well it’s about Samuel Beckett’s hands and how Dupuytren’s contracture may have influenced not just how, but what he wrote, given that Beckett always begin his writing with pen and paper.

While I’m sharing stories about playwrights, the movie Hamnet is garnering lots of attention and accolades. (I haven’t seen it yet.) Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s excellent novel of the same name, Hamnet mostly follows accepted scholarship that William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while grieving the death of his son, Hamnet. (At the time, the two names were practically interchangeable.) As with most things Shakespeare, there’s generally accepted knowledge and there are always those who challenge it. James Shapiro takes a look at The Long History of the Hamnet Myth.

And while I’m sharing stories about movies, take a look at Susan Morrison’s piece on How Noah Baumbach Fell (Back) In Love With The Movies.

I linked earlier this week to a piece by Phillip Bump called There Are Limits to the Hitler-Trump Comparison. Just Ask These Historians. I don’t disagree with the thesis. I just think it stops short in the way most history usually does.

Rory Rowan and Tristan Sturm write that Peter Thiel’s Apocalyptic Worldview Is A Dangerous Fantasy. Here’s hoping this first draft of our current history proves lasting.

There’s been much talk about all things military recently given how the current administration is tossing away most of what we believe the military stands for as easy as my grandson tosses away toy soldiers. Carrie Lee says The Soldier In The Illiberal State Is A Professional Dead End. I concur. Sadly.

In the wake of the cataclysm that was Twitter, social media is essentially a messy muddle these days with users continuing to migrate from one platform to another seeking some sort of place that feels comfortable enough to share and often discomfort others. Ian Dunt writes what he calls a love letter to one platform with Thank God for Bluesky.

Smart toilets were in the news this week. I actually got to see and use one at a Christmas party last night. All I could think about while doing my business was this piece by Victoria Song called Welcome To The Wellness Surveillance State.

And to conclude this week, Amogh Dimri informs us that the Oxford University Press has chosen Rage Bait as 2025’s Word of the Year. Dimiri thinks it’s a brilliant choice. I guess it begs the question, if we’re angry enough to rage, is it really baiting?

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Living in the Past with Apple Music Replay

Musical time warps

I listen to music but I’m not a voracious listener like some are. Fact is, I spend most of my listening time with podcasts and audio books. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see what music I did spend my time listening to. Apple Music, like other music services, offers a feature to summarize what tunes you’ve tuned into over the year called Apple Music Replay.

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Given all that’s going on in the U.S currently I shouldn’t find it surprising that I spent most of my time reliving parts of my youth that were just as tumultuous as our present, revisiting a lot of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and The Grateful Dead as well as the musical Girl From the North Country that features the music of Bob Dylan. (I spent considerably more time with that selection last year.)

It’s also interesting to me that when I do listen to music I do so through a couple of very eclectic playlists that range over quite a few genres. I never see that reflected in these generated mixes, only artists or albums I’ve selected specifically, which tells me these lists are mostly made up from selections you’re searching for. Perhaps that explains why when I ask Siri to cue up a playlist it fails as much as it succeeds. But then again, most of those playlists contain mostly music from my past, more than contemporary selections.

Seems to me, we could all do with a little more music these days that is speaking directly to these days.

Apple’s I’m Not Remarkable Ad Is More Than Remarkable

More of this please

Every now and then a company gets it right and this is one of those times. Apple got it right this time, releasing a new ad, I’m Not Remarkable. It’s REMARKABLE.

Highlighting Apple’s accessibility features for its product the ad features an astounding number of challenged young folks singing, dancing, and of course using Apple products, demonstrating how this young people live and work their daily lives through college. The message is bang on. The production is astoundingly good. Watching the ad is thrilling, and I also suggest you visit Apple’s website that contains the transcript of the ad.

More of this please.

I’m hoping Apple releases a “making of” video of this ad. If they do I’ll update this post accordingly. Meanwhile you can watch the ad below.

Chicago Bears Coach Rips His Shirt Off In Hot Dog Challenge After Bears Win

Free Hot Dogs!

Chicago is one crazy town. Especially when it comes to sports. Multiply that by a very large number when it comes to the Chicago Bears. After today’s win over last year’s Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles the crazy is out of this world.

So much so that new Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson, who has become famous for his post game chant of Good, Better, Best after the Bears have been on what once seemed like an improbable winning streak, took up a challenge today and ripped his shirt off in the locker room to lead his now famous chant.

The challenge came from another wonderfully crazy Chicago favorite, The Wieners Circle, famous not only for its Chicago hot dogs, but also it’s wonderfully witty and irreverent statements on its sign, challenged the coach to take off his shirt during one of his post-game rallying cries. And Coach Johnson did so today after a thrilling victory.

Johnson’s acceptance of the challenge means the Wieners Circle is serving up free hot dogs this week.

Meanwhile the Chicago Bears keep serving up wins to a hungry sports town heading into the stretch run before the playoffs. There’s no question Johnson has changed the culture of the Bears. It’s a far cry from a year ago on Black Friday when the Bears fired head coach Matt Eberflus the day after a huge Thanksgiving day loss at Detroit. Perhaps equally important, Johnson is also rallying the entire Chicago Metro area after all we’ve been through this late summer and fall.

Put it another way that Chicagoans understand. He’s on his way to owning this town and certainly giving new meaning to the slogan, Bear Down!

Edit: Added the photo below from The Wieners Circle later in the evening.

Finishing Ken Burns’ The American Revolution

The series is complete. As a nation the question remains open.

We completed watching Ken Burn’s excellent The American Revolution this week. Thank goodness for streaming, allowing us to view it on our schedule. Two spoiler alerts. First, we won the war. Second, we’re still struggling with many of the differences that made the formation (and perhaps the continuation) of what would become the Untied States such a close thing.

The series is excellent and I highly recommend it. Burns and his team do their expected thorough job of researching and producing the documentary. We’re lucky there were so many letters written by those beneath the status of the cast of characters most of us could identify at a glance, because that material provides much of the content and texture inside the frame.

The production does it’s job so well that my hunch is some will come away learning things they never knew about a period of our history we’ve wrapped in so many myths it would keep troops at Valley Forge warm. I would also guess that in today’s political and social climate there will be far too many who tune out or don’t tune in because they prefer the comfort of the mythology.

Which is a damned shame. As I said in an earlier post about the series:

I’m not hearing things differently, but I’m hearing how folks can take their own meaning out of many of the things written and said during that period that led to this country’s founding. History may indeed rhyme, but it also echoes. Often in strange ways.

If you have followed any of Burns’ work you know his approach to American history is to tell the parts of stories we leave out of the picture. I grew up in a part of the country where you could turn your head left or right, spit, and hit the history of the American Revolution or the Civil War. I count myself lucky that my 10th grade history teacher kept reminding us that there was so much more to discover about our past than he had the time to teach us, planting a seed of curiosity that continues to grow inside of me to this day decades later.

Ken Burns and his team continue to keep that curiosity growing. We should all be grateful and unafraid that they do so.

Read ’em. Maybe Weep. Maybe Get Pissed Off. But Read ’em

Blood, some boiling, some cold, but killer writing.

Life on the Wicked Stage readers will be familiar with the Sunday Morning Reading column wherein I share good writing and interesting topics. Sometimes things fly across my radar after I’ve published the week’s column. Three pieces hit and hit hard late on Sunday after the Chicago Bears continued a mysterious, but gratifying winning streak. I’m going to share those stories here, on a Monday. The writing is too hot to let cool, and the subject matter burns even hotter.

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First up, is an excellent piece by Will Bunch called The Night America’s Doomed Ruling Glass Gorged On Lamb, Blood, and Oil. Bunch puts the elite on the menu and carves them up with a bone saw.

Next, check out Anand Girdhardas’ excellent How The Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails. A vivisection that exposes what we all imagine.

Finally, read Tatiana Schlossberg’s A Battle With My Blood. A Kennedy family member, dying of incurable blood cancer eloquently tells her story, and ours.

You might think these pieces tilt into the category of just another round of depressing news and commentary. Partly that’s true. But it’s a small part for small minds. I find each of them reassuring. Reassuring that smart people, spilling words like blood on digital paper, can pour out the pain we’re all living through personal pain of their own, and decipher the day-to-day charades even as the current deadly and dangerous game continues.

I’d say the writing is courageous, but that’s obvious. The real courage comes in reading what’s written and paying enough attention to make it matter. Perhaps sharing them around this Thanksgiving week when we give thanks for our blessings with family and friends. Especially those we disagree with.

Be thankful. Be courageous.

(Image from Militarist on Shutterstock)