By Anita Saesing There are two weeks left of 2020, and I can’t tell if I’m excited, worried, or exhausted. Mustering enough holiday cheer to get me through the rest of the year is like having the gas light of a car scream “empty” as you try to coast into a gas station. If, by some miracle, you aren’t left stranded in traffic, you’ll clutch your debit card and pray you have enough money to buy gas. So here I am with the lyrics, “It’s the final countdown” blaring on my imaginary radio. I have Christmas-related activities leading up to the big day, followed by my 27th birthday, then a New Year’s Eve movie night at my boyfriend’s parents’ house. This time last year, I was fa-la-la’ing my way through the most wonderful time of the year. This year, I feel as cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel. Can anyone blame me, though? This year has been one hell of a ride. My friends and I comment about how future generations will learn about 2020 in their history books just as we learned about the American Revolution, the Great Depression, and World War II. In March of 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. At the end of May, after the death of George Floyd, protests for racial equality erupted all throughout America. The message of those marches echoed the same values Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists fought for. As the economy cratered, millions struggled to keep their jobs as companies laid off and furloughed employees. Those who have managed to stay employed in 2020 are exhausted from trying to stay afloat. I’m not just talking about healthcare workers. My heart goes out to teachers, cleaning crews, grocery-store clerks, social workers, truck drivers, warehouse workers, and the like. And let’s not forget those struggling to work remotely from home while educating their children. The final blow 2020 has delivered comes in the form of social media. It was once my lifeline to the outside world, and now it’s like a car crash I can’t look away from. I have friends and family attacking one another on Facebook about politics and sharing misinformation about coronavirus. On Instagram, people reveal that they have been traveling and gathering despite CDC warnings. Sharing stories and snapping photos on Snapchat have lost their appeal to me. I’m at a crossroads of wanting to engage with my loved ones and preserving my sanity. As I hold my breath for the next phase of my life, I mentally wrestle to be present this season. I know a future where Americans are free to roam in cities and gather in social scenes is near. There have been reports that Arizona has received a shipment of Covid-19 vaccines. With the news of what may turn out to be a scientific miracle, I need to wipe the bah humbug out of my heart. 2021 is around the corner, and I shouldn’t be a Scrooge in the New Year! I can almost hear the music from live concerts. I can just about taste the food from my favorite, crowded restaurants. I can practically feel the embrace of my family and friends. Excitement wells up in me as I fantasize about packing a suitcase and returning to an airport. As annoying as people may find this, I will actually clap when the plane lands for the first time in my life. When the captain on that future flight comes on the overhead system and says, “Welcome to your destination,” I’ll know the next phase of my life has arrived. Until then, I will mask up and practice social distancing. I vow to keep my eyes on that prize and steer clear of Covid-19! Anita Saesing has always been nomadic.  She was born in California, but spent her teenage years in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  Before she graduated from high school, an elderly couple from her previous apartment complex invited her to live with them in Arizona.  Four days after her high school graduation, she packed her bags and joined them on their cross-country road trip.  She spent her college years working at various places including a childcare center and hospital HR office.  She was the first in her family to graduate debt-free from college. Anita graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Grand Canyon University.  One day, she desires to live in Italy and “do as the Romans do.”

(Rated X for X-tremely Daunting) By Tobye S. Stein When the filming of the last scene of a movie ends, it’s typical for the director to say, “It’s a wrap, folks.” The director then takes her work to the editing room, where sound and visual effects are added, scenes are deleted, and decisions are made about refilming scenes that flopped. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that with 2020, a year with an unprecedented pandemic, social unrest, high unemployment, and millions of people wondering where they will get their next meal? When I arrive in the booth to start the editing process on my film 2020, the action begins with me heading to sunny Florida in January for a week of relaxation at the happiest place on earth, Walt Disney World. I know that two days after my return to Michigan, I’ll be heading to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak for a hip operation. But wait, three days into my sunny vacation, my iPhone rings. It’s an unknown caller from the surgeon’s office, asking me if I’d like to change my surgery date to January 30. I say, “No I wouldn’t.” I am told I have no choice, but no reason is given. After this inauspicious beginning, the year goes downhill. We are plagued with a pandemic, people are getting sick and dying, there is no toilet paper, paper towels, or sanitizing wipes anywhere, and the food shelves are gobbling up all of the groceries, from dried and canned beans to pasta and cereal. Ice cream freezers are bare and frozen fruits and vegetables have also been swallowed up. Even frozen pizza that tastes like cardboard is gone. A couple months into this nightmare, with most Americans sheltering in place, we all witness a video of a Black man being murdered in Minneapolis by a white police officer with his knee pressed on the man’s neck, all because the dying man is suspected of having handed a store clerk a phony $20 bill. Millions take to the streets in protest. People of color, white people, religious people, young, old, all recognizing something we should have recognized years ago: Black Lives Matter. As if things couldn’t get worse, millions of people are laid off from their jobs because of this pandemic. Restaurants, bars, malls, hair and nail salons, and gyms are forced shut in an attempt to obliterate this horrible virus. And yet, the federal government does next to nothing to stop this horror. We are repeatedly reassured that everything is under control. the virus will be gone soon, everyone will be back at work, children will be back in school, and the number of deaths will be negligible. As if death is ever negligible to the survivors. It’s depressing viewing this movie, even in the editing booth. I’m certain that no audience in its right mind would ever believe that so many catastrophes would occur in one film. So as this miserable year draws to a close, I’ve decide to subject 2020 to a major re-edit. In this version, I’m going to Disney World and having surgery as scheduled. Impeachment hearings are held and senators from both parties find the sitting president guilty of the charges against him, and he is removed from office. There is still a dangerous virus, Covid-19, and it begins in China. But this time, the federal government pays attention to the intelligence community and embraces the scientists and the medical professionals. Naturally, the government begins to implement the pandemic response put in place by the previous administration. Americans are informed about the virus and grocery stores, big box stores like Costco and Sam’s Club, and pharmacies are given plenty of notice to place limits on items, making sure everyone has access to the merchandise they need. Hospitals and other medical facilities receive the PPE they need to protect workers. American manufacturers are quickly instructed under the Defense Production Act to begin making additional PPE and ventilators. Restaurants and cafés have time to convert from in-person dining to carry-out . Congress steps up and acts quickly to provide funds to those who are unemployed and makes sure that small businesses receive the help they need to pay their employees during the month-long shutdown. In the meantime, Big Pharma immediately begins working on vaccines that are safe and effective. Although the virus is contained by now, it’s regarded as critical to get as many people vaccinated as possible because the virus is still dangerous and can continue to spread easily. After the killings of several Black people by police officers, the officers are charged and tried for their crimes. Cities and states begin investigating police violence against citizens of color and revise their training procedures. More money is spent adding mental health professionals to police departments rather than wasting the money on assault weapons and tanks. We have a presidential election in November, free from foreign interference, in which people can comfortably vote from home or in person and everyone accepts the results. Regardless of party, we all celebrate, hang our American flags, and go on to live another day. Thanksgiving is spent with family and friends without the danger of infecting each other. Jewish families gather early in December to play dreidel and eat latkes of every variety. Later in the month, Christian families gather to celebrate the holiday with turkey or ham and all of the traditional family favorites. When at last, New Year’s Eve comes, we all celebrate the victories of 2020, including having put the Trump family and associates behind bars for crimes committed against America during the past four years. Roll the credits! Tobye S. Stein retired as Chief Human Resources Officer from a California-based financial services organization. She once landed a job by replying to the age old question, “Why should I hire you instead of the other two candidates” by simply stating “I’m funnier than most people.” It worked.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

Vaccines Are on the Way. Two Insiders Who Tried Them Tell Their Stories The cavalry is coming! On Sunday, workers at a Pfizer plant in Portage, Mich. packed up the first of almost three million doses of the company’s new Covid-19 vaccine with dry ice and loaded the boxes onto waiting trucks. The destination: 145 facilities around the United States, where they will arrive, via FedEx and UPS, on Monday. Nearly 500 additional sites are slated to receive shipments on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, approved on Friday by the FDA for emergency use, is reported to be 94% effective in preventing infection in adults over 65. Twenty million people are expected to get the first of two required doses by the end of December. The vaccines can’t arrive soon enough. More than 16 million Americans have come down with the virus, with the death toll now over 300,000. Later this week, Moderna, a biotech company in Cambridge, Mass., is expected to win similar FDA approval of its own vaccine. Other companies, including AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, are expected to follow suit, possibly by February or March. Leading immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, who will soon join the Biden Administration as a chief medical adviser to the President, told JAMA on Friday that he expects the availability of vaccines soon to rise above the 100 million dosages produced by Pfizer and Moderna. “We have a lot of companies that are in the mix,” said Fauci. Millions of Americans are now scurrying to find sources for the new vaccines, but millions of others are worrying about the safety of the speedily developed drug. A substantial number of people are not ready to sign on yet. A new MATT: NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist College poll found that 61% of Americans say they'll choose to get the Covid-19 vaccine if it is made available to them, while 32% say they would not. Fortunately for us, two Insiders. Dr. Fayth Yoshimura and Dr. Tony Shields, are among the limited number of people worldwide who have already been vaccinated, as part of having participated in two vaccine trials. They have agreed to give their fellow Insiders an exclusive preview of the vaccine experience. Fayth took the Pfizer vaccine in two doses on October 2 and three weeks later, on October 23; while her husband Tony took the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine on November 3. (Amazingly, Tony’s brother, Lee Shields, a licensed mental health worker in Seattle, was also in a Moderna trial in August 21 and September 25. It is hard to imagine a more inoculated American family!) It would be impossible to find more sophisticated scientific observers than Fayth and Tony. The couple, who have an adult son and daughter and live in the Detroit suburbs, have been married for nearly 40 years in what must be described as an awesome meeting of the minds. Both of them are top scientists with stunning backgrounds. Fayth has a Ph.D. from Yale in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. Additionally, she had postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, and the M.I.T. Cancer Center, where she and Tony met. She was a professor of biochemistry, microbiology and immunology at the Wayne State University Medical School in Detroit for 20 years, until 2015, when she became a Professor Emerita. If that weren’t enough brainpower for one household, Tony is an oncologist with an M.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in biology from M.I.T, where he studied viruses which cause cancer. He is currently a professor of oncology at Wayne State University, where he works on the development of new imaging methods and therapeutics. He is also a practicing medical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, where he is Associate Center Director for Clinical Sciences. Since 1996, he has participated in more than 500 cancer research and drug trials as the principal investigator or participated as a co-investigator. One trial that earned no mention in Tony’s 64-page CV: he was actually in a drug test in May and June to prevent Covid using hydroxychloroquine, the President’s favorite would-be coronavirus medication. Says Tony, “I figured if somebody was going to use it, you've got to do some good data, it was a low dose. I wasn't worried about it.” Fayth and Tony have followed the politics of the vaccines closely. Says Fayth, ‘I was very leery when Trump kept saying, ‘Oh, we're going to have the vaccines; it's going to be an October surprise. And we're going to have the vaccine before the election.’ And I was very leery then that it was going to be rushed and not adequately vetted or anything like that. But then I felt better when the drug companies started to push back and said, ‘No, we're going to be very careful. We're going to do this right. It's not likely that it's going to be the end of October, beginning of November.’ They really started pushing back quite hard, and so I felt a little more confident.” So the couple decided to seek out vaccine trials, where half of the participants would receive the actual vaccine and half would receive placebos. Why? For Tony, it was reflexive, based on his astonishing amount of experience with medical trials. Says Tony, ‘I put patients on trials every day. That’s one of my main goals and vocations. And I figured people need to be on these trials. But also, I wanted to get the vaccine. I figured there was a reasonable chance it would work, and that the toxicity was likely to be minimal. So I figured it was a good chance to do good things for science and actually get an early shot at the vaccine.” Fayth felt similarly, In addition, she notes, “I guess I was not so concerned about the toxicity of this because I've worked with nucleic acids my entire scientific career. I've probably already injected it into myself, ingested it, inhaled it and I've survived this long, so I didn't think that taking the Pfizer vaccine was going to be a terrible health issue.” Moderna’s vaccine trial was the first one in the Detroit area. Fayth and Tony applied, but they never heard back. Then, the couple read about the Pfizer test in the Detroit Free Press. Says Fayth, “They were recruiting locally and were looking for people from minority groups, like Asians, Hispanics, African Americans and Native Americans. And so, I thought, "Oh, wow, I should give this a call." So, I called the number and they first said, "Well, we've closed the trial. We already have 30,000 white people who have volunteered." But then I said, "Well, I'm not white. I'm Asian." And they said, "Oh, yes, we're very interested." They signed me up immediately and wanted to give me the injection the next day! And I said, ‘Well, no, I want to read the patient consent form. I want to see what I'm signing up to get.’ I got the injection about a week and a half later.” In the meantime, Tony had found another vaccine trial at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. “I applied there. They just had the Johnson & Johnson. Subsequently, Ford called me and sent me a notice asking, ‘Are you interested?’ And I said "Yes." Actually, I went into Ford the very first day they were giving it and I was, like, Patient No. Six to get that vaccine at Ford.” Fayth’s Pfizer vaccine, just as the Moderna vaccine, involved two shots, but Tony’s Johnson & Johnson vaccine involved just one. After filling out detailed consent forms, the couple were well on their way to inoculation. On October 2nd., Fayth went to a local outpatient clinic in Farmington Hills, Mich., to receive the first shot. “When I went in, they went over what the side effects were going to be. And then I got the shot in my left arm, and then they gave me the nasopharyngeal swab, the one that practically goes up to your brain. They then drew 20 ml of blood. Fayth, ever the researcher, recalls “they didn't really tell me what they were testing for. I did ask them and I said, "Well, are you looking for antibodies, I assume? What about T-cells involved in immunity, cytokines, et cetera?" And the people at the local clinic said, "We don't know and we've contacted the people at Pfizer to get the information." And it's been several weeks now and I still have not heard back from them.” Little did the people at the clinic know that they were treating someone who was a virologist. Fayth was told by the clinic personnel what side effects she might experience. “They said that it could be pain in the arm.” Additionally, she says, ‘they wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to have any kind of severe immune response. So, after the shot, like the flu shot, they want you to sit around for half an hour to make sure you're not going to go through some kind of anaphylactic shock. So I sat there for a half an hour afterwards,” But the real Pfizer vaccine experience came after Fayth left the clinic. ‘Basically, what I experienced was a very sore arm. I couldn't even raise it. And I got back and muscle pains, fatigue, which lasted about 48 hours.” Clearly, she had received the real thing, she says. ‘The placebo was just saline, – 0.3 ml of saline, which is a very, very small quantity. It's about half the amount in a flu shot. And in fact, in the patient consent form they said, ‘The side effects we're describing, you're not likely to get them with the placebo, with the saline.’” Initially, Tony’s experience at Henry Ford Hospital was a carbon copy of Fayth’s. “It took about two and a half hours all told. They went through basically the same things. You can get fever and chills and aches. They ask you a bunch of questions about your health and take your temperature and blood pressure. Then they drew about five tubes of blood. They did a swab for the virus. And then they gave me the shot.” And then, after he left? “I had absolutely zero reaction to it,” says Tony. The reason, he believes, is that unlike his wife, he had received the placebo. “Most people who get these shots get some reaction if they get the vaccine. So, I’m pretty certain. There's still a small chance, though.” And how does he feel about going through the trial and getting the placebo? Tony is philosophical, to say the least. “Meh. That's the way those trials go.” But hold your tears, Insiders. Because Tony is a front-line medical professional who treats some patients with Covid-19, he has already been offered and has accepted the opportunity from his hospital to receive the Pfizer vaccine—the real one—later this week. So at 3:30 pm on Saturday, look for Dr. Tony Shields, researcher par excellence, at the Walgreen’s at 6331 E. Jefferson Avenue in Detroit, rolling up his left sleeve. As for Fayth? Been there, done that!

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Andy Borowitz December 9, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A furious Donald J. Trump attempted to fire the Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, sources report. According to the sources, Trump was so irate about the Supreme Court’s dismissal of his election challenge on Tuesday that he phoned Barrett directly to inform her that she was “history.” “I hired you to get a job done, and you didn’t get it done,” Trump angrily informed Barrett. “You’re out of here.” Sources say that Barrett had the unenviable task of informing Trump that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life and therefore cannot be fired, a revelation that left Trump “flabbergasted.” “If I can’t fire anybody I want, maybe I don’t want to be President anymore,” he reportedly muttered. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 23 By Laurence Lerman Like the seemingly endless barrage of fungal blatherings from our outgoing Commander-in-Chief, the previous month’s onslaught of holiday movie programming—though not nearly as unpleasant—have been something that must be endured through the arrival of 2021. And with good news arriving last week in the form of the national rollout of a COVID vaccine and a resounding “Get the hell out!” for our soon-to-be-former President, the standard saccharine holiday fare hasn’t really offered anything more than surface-level alleviation of our collective tense mood this year. So, instead of running down what’s new and cloying on the Yuletide film front—or a roundup of classics that you may have already dusted off for yet another viewing (okay, okay, there are some perennials that warrant it!)—how about an abbreviated look back on a genre of films that might not immediately be identified as Christmas movies? I’m referring to the ones where Christmas may be on the screen or in the air, but “peace on earth and good will toward men” (and women too!) ain’t part of the picture. I’m thinking that when Luke the Evangelist was working on that “peace on earth” shtick for the canonical gospels, he probably wanted to take an occasional break and read or write something a little different for a change of pace, right? And I’m not just talking about a random Christmas reference motif thrown in willy-nilly—Idris Elba setting up a tree for no good reason after awaking from hypersleep in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012) or Michael Keaton stumbling into a Times Square liquor store decked out in chili pepper Christmas lights in Alejandro Iñárritu’s Oscar winner Birdman (2014). No, I’m talking about movies that have an “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” level of pervasiveness, even if they don’t really feel like that way. The quintessential “Is it a Christmas Movie?" movie remains, of course, Die Hard, the 1988 instant holiday action-adventure classic starring newly minted superstar Bruce Willis as wisecracking NYC cop John McClane. On the West Coast to resuscitate his troubled marriage, McClane ends up at an L.A. Christmas Eve party picking off a phalanx of high-tech Euro-baddies who’ve penetrated Century City's Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper in a plot to steal a zillion in bearer bonds.The film’s incendiary climax finds said bonds floating down to the ground in a paper blizzard to the strains of Dean Martin crooning “Let It Snow.” Sequel-spawning-sized box office aside, another holiday gift the John McTiernan-directed Die Hard bestowed upon Hollywood was the creation of an instant shorthand in elevator pitches for large-scale action flicks. Thus, Under Siege became Die Hard on a battleship, Speed was Die Hard on a bus, and so on. Lesser among these is the 1997 action-disaster flick Turbulence, a “Die Hard on a plane” affair about a Christmas Eve prison-transport flight that leads to a shootout, a pair of dead pilots and a stewardess matching wits and weapons with a serial killer who’s commandeered the jet and threatens to crash it into L.A. Lauren Holly is the plane’s plucky and resourceful flight attendant, Ray Liotta (in maximum post-Goodfellas lunatic mode) is the initially smooth-talking madman, and a Boeing 747 dripping with seasonal decorations is Nakatomi Plaza. (Best moment: Liotta’s trademark maniacal cackle as the plane does a 360 in a lightning storm.) Directed by veteran Robert Hunter (who helmed the similarly plotted 1976 TV film Mayday at 40,000 Feet! two decades earlier), Turbulence tanked at the box office even while its high-concept sheen spawned a pair of follow-ups. Jumping quickly to the bottom of the food chain but still worth a mention are the exploitation cinema’s inevitable slasher-styled variations on Hollywood’s standard Christmas confections, led by a number of movies featuring a murderous psychopath or two clad in Santa suits. Most notable among these are 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night and its four sequels, along with the “All Through the House” segment of 1972’s Tales from the Crypt, wherein an escaped mental patient donning Santa’s familiar togs stalks a terrified Joan Collins (and deservedly so, as she’s just killed her husband while he was placing gifts beneath the family Christmas tree). There’s another wave that finds the holiday season serving as a vivid and constant backdrop upon which the central story is set—Christmas is happening behind all the action, but there’s not that much being celebrated up front. Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992) darkly exemplifies the approach, with Gotham City decked out in decorations and a tree in the town square as it ignores the accepted idea that Christmas is a time for family and togetherness. Instead, it puts forth two lonely antagonists: Oswald Cobblepot aka The Penguin (Danny DeVito), who’s been abandoned by his parents as a baby and left to drown; and sad secretary Selina Kyle aka The Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), whose only family is her crew of cats. And let’s not forget Bruce Wayne, aka Batman (Michael Keaton), one of fiction’s most famous orphans. Twinkling Christmas lights and glittery, decked-out trees provide a sinister embellishment to the 1999 erotic drama Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's modern-day adaptation off Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Dream Story. One holiday season night finds Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill Harford yanked away from his addled wife (Nicole Kidman) and thrown into a series of increasingly enticing, infidelity-baiting scenarios. The good doctor does his damnedest to resist, until it all comes crashing down around him at a climactic Carnival of Venice-styled ritualized orgy. Christmas may be a time for giving, but in Kubrick’s telling, a sexually unsettled couple may be in danger of losing it all. Christmas drifts even further from the center in Sydney Pollack’s paranoic 1976 spy thriller Three Days of the Condor, which finds C.I.A. code breaker Robert Redford on the run across Manhattan and Brooklyn from his own agency after he unwittingly stumbles upon a government conspiracy that’s—as the expression goes—“far above his paygrade.” The movie’s only holiday signifiers—it takes place in a chilly New York December—are the sounds of three popular Christmas tunes that make diegetic appearances in the background: “Good King Wenceslas,” “Joy to the World” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The last is sung by carolers during the film’s final scene, where Redford is about to blow the whistle at The New York Times’ midtown offices. With murder and deceit surrounding him, it’s doesn’t turn out to be a very festive season for Redford, though he does spend some time in bed with his hostage-turned- accomplice Faye Dunaway, which would be considered a Christmas gift by many. The final pair come courtesy of bad-boy Seventies auteur William Friedkin, whose “Christmas scene” five minutes into his classic 1971 cop drama The French Connection sees Gene Hackman’s Brooklyn police detective “Popeye” Doyle going undercover as a Brooklyn street corner Salvation Army Santa. The charitable bell-ringing quickly gives way to Santa chasing down a knife-wielding drug dealer on a street in Bensonhurst—Santa knows if you’ve been bad or good, right?—and then beating the hell out of the perp in a garbage-strewn lot. Ho-ho-ho, indeed. Finally, from Friedkin comes 1985’s To Live and Die in L.A. Set in the city of not-so-pleasant dreams, the sun-soaked noir takes a deep dive into the not-so-legal maneuverings of an unscrupulous Secret Service agent (William Petersen) as he attempts to take down a wily counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe in his career-launching performance). As a series of title cards informs us, the crime sage unspools over the month of December into early January, while it disregards any talk of or reference to the holiday season. No trees, no decorations, no snow, no Santas, nothing, save for murders, double-crosses, corrupt lawyers, entrapment schemes, strips clubs, shotgun blasts to the head and the movies’ best car chase since The French Connection. Friedkin has described car chases as being “the purest form of cinema,” while never to my knowledge mentioning his dismissal of Christmas in two of his most lauded efforts. Then again, this is the guy who made 1974’s The Exorcist, his most famous film, so maybe we shouldn’t even be asking him…even if did inspire a detailed figurine of a possessed Linda Blair levitating above her vomit-strewn bed, which remains the most bizarre Christmas tree ornament I’ve ever seen. Happy holidays, all! Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

A Washington, D.C. Attorney Issues a 2020 Call to Action Long before Twitter and Facebook arrived on the scene, there were impassioned political writers and theorists in America. At the front of the line was Thomas Paine, one of the greatest political propagandists in history. On January 10, 1776, Paine published a 50-page pamphlet entitled Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, on the Following Interesting Subjects. Although the title was staid, Paine’s prose was incendiary, calling for the colonies to break from England completely. Common Sense was an instant success, selling more than 500,000 copies, at a time when similar tracts were being sold in the hundreds, In the judgment of The Encyclopedia Britannica. “More than any other single publication, Common Sense paved the way for the Declaration of Independence,” which was unanimously ratified later that year on July 4. Not a bad achievement for an Englishman who left school at 13 years old to become an apprentice to his father, a corset-maker. Fast forward to 2020. Washington D.C. lawyer Russell Bikoff, furious about the President’s post-election actions, felt a similar need to issue a call to action. In November, Bikoff sat down at his computer (not with a quill pen) and wrote an angry resolution, “condemning President Donald Trump’s and Republican Claims of Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election and Efforts to Steal the Election and Delegitimize the Incoming Administration of President-Elect Joe Biden.” It took Bikoff several irate hours spread over ten days to polish it off. “I have the Trump Administration to thank for making me a politically engaged citizen and Democratic party activist,” a determined Bikoff told The Insider. “I want to encourage organized pushback against Trump’s outrageous and dangerous campaign and the Republican acquiescence by another organized force, the Democratic Party and its affiliates across the country.” Continued Bikoff, ‘I hope that Republicans can be placed on notice that there will be negative consequences for them if they allow Trump to gather momentum and whip up his voters, sort of a threat of sanctions.” While in spirit, Bikoff is a modern-day descendant of Thomas Paine, their paths to publication couldn’t have been more different. Bikoff never worked in a corset-making shop: rather, he honed his forceful rhetorical skills at the University of Michigan Law School. From there, he went on to become a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and a federal official in the foreign affairs community and the U.S. Department of Justice. For the past 15 years, he has practiced law in Washington, D. C., focusing on. criminal defense and civil litigation. Insider readers who have been enraged by the President’s post-election antics, will be more than pleased to read Bikoff’s stirring resolution, which we have reprinted in its entirety here as a Word document: Politically involved Insiders are invited to pass along the resolution to their own political organizations for adoption. The ultimate intended recipients: local elected officials, state legislators, governors, U.S. senators and members of Congress. As roiled as the political waters are now, we are thankfully not contemplating a Paine-style revolution. The President’s reluctant exit will be on January 20, almost 244 years to the date that Bikoff’s forerunner, Thomas Paine, published his own fiery treatise. While the Trump era feels to many people as though it has lasted for centuries, the end is mercifully near. Russell A. Bikoff Attorney and Counselor at Law 1620 L Street, NW Suite 610 Washington, D.C. 20036 Tel. 202.466.8270 Fax 202.293.4377 E-mail: Rab@BikoffLaw.com BikoffLaw@Verizon.net Website: http://BikoffLaw.com

By Andy Borowitz December 3, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—With his job on the line, Attorney General William Barr begged Donald J. Trump not to let one isolated incident of honesty wipe out two years of wonderful lying. According to those who witnessed the Oval Office meeting between the two men, Barr desperately sought to remind Trump of the steady stream of outrageous whoppers that he had spewed during his tenure as the President’s toadying lackey. “What about when I said the Mueller report exonerated you?” Barr pleaded. “That was a great one, wasn’t it?” “And remember when I said that no tear gas was used on the protesters in Lafayette Park?” he said. “We’ve had so many good times together.” The Attorney General tried to excuse his one moment of honesty as “temporary insanity” and assured Trump that it would “never happen again.” “Even the greatest liars slip and tell the truth sometimes,” he said. “I don’t,” Trump frostily replied. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

December 1, 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate Nearly 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy put the United States on a mission to the future by proclaiming that it would land a man on the moon within a decade. Our generation’s moonshot mission is sustainable development on Earth. NEW YORK – Sixty years ago next May, President John F. Kennedy put the United States on a mission to the future. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” Our generation’s moonshot is sustainable development on Earth. We have already set the goals, but not yet embraced the challenges in full. In two pivotal moments in late 2015, all of the world’s governments unanimously adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate agreement. The world pledged to end extreme poverty, ensure universal health care, and provide education for all children by 2030; countries would decarbonize the world’s energy system to head off the dire risks of human-induced climate change. A subsequent scientific report in 2018 indicated that the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C requires meeting the latter goal by mid-century. These bold goals are no less achievable than the moonshot, which the US accomplished on Kennedy’s original timeline, in July 1969. The US moonshot in fact illuminates how to achieve bold goals such as the 17 SDGs and the needed energy transformation. The moonshot was a “mission” with organizational attributes – ably described by historian Douglas Brinkley in his study American Moonshot – that were vital to its success. It had a clear goal and timeline, and a rigorous plan based on both. NASA, the US space agency, devised a three-act mission, including the single-astronaut Mercury flights, the two-astronaut Gemini flights, and the three-astronaut Apollo flights that ultimately went to the moon and back. And there was a national commitment to an integrated public-private program, ultimately involving some 20,000 private companies and 400,000 workers across the US. Finally, there was a large and realistic federal budget commitment that funded the effort from 1961 to its completion in 1969. In 2021, with President-elect Joe Biden in office, the US will recommit to the SDGs, rejoin the Paris climate agreement, and commit to cooperation on these efforts with the rest of the world. Success will require no less a bold commitment than the moonshot, but this time for goals on Earth and carried out by all countries together rather than one acting alone. The sustainable-development mission should engage the public and private sectors worldwide, marshaling the idealism, energy, and digital savvy of today’s young people. To provide the demand stimulus and technological breakthroughs needed to spur the post-COVID-19 global recovery and prolonged economic advance will require ambitious long-term goals and plans, key intermediate milestones, and the financing needed to achieve them. At the start of 2020, Europe adopted just such a mission approach with its European Green Deal (EGD) and accompanying program for research and investment (Horizon Europe). Economist Mariana Mazzucato has argued wisely and persuasively for Europe’s mission orientation. The EGD calls for decarbonization of the energy system by 2050, a circular EU economy that slashes industrial pollution, and a comprehensive “farm to fork” program to achieve a sustainable and healthy food system. Europe’s commitment to decarbonize by 2050 helped to spur Japan and Korea to do the same, and China to commit to decarbonize by 2060, a date that can and should advance to 2050. My colleagues and I in the US chapter of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network have recently laid out a Zero-Carbon Action Plan (ZCAP) that charts a technological, financial, and employment pathway for decarbonizing the US energy system by 2050. Like the moonshot and subsequent US technology missions (including the creation of the Internet and the sequencing of the human genome), ZCAP envisions a public-private partnership to accomplish four key objectives: shifting all power generation to zero-carbon sources, mainly wind and solar energy; adoption of electric vehicles; converting buildings from oil and gas heating to electricity; and switching from coal, oil, and gas in industry to hydrogen and other “green” (zero-carbon) fuels. The main goal of ZCAP is to help the Biden administration and the incoming Congress do what governments generally find difficult: to think ahead as far as 30 years, by setting a clear goal and charting the technological and financial pathways to reach it. ZCAP compellingly demonstrates the feasibility of decarbonization by 2050. At an annual incremental energy systems cost below – and perhaps far below – 1% of US national income, the US economy can complete the energy transformation while increasing jobs, reducing air pollution, and addressing the special needs of hard-hit communities in order to ensure a just transition. The key to mission thinking is to identify the technological pathways to success and the policies and finances needed to pursue those pathways. Of course, not every step on the actual path can be known at the start. NASA had to innovate at every step of the moonshot, and the engineers scrambled relentlessly and brilliantly to develop new technologies in order to overcome obstacles. Yet NASA had charted out the main milestones of the moonshot by late 1962. In the same way, there are still critical unknowns about the energy transformation to 2050, such as the best zero-carbon solutions for aviation, ocean shipping, steelmaking, and some other heavy industries. Yet for each hard problem, there are several possible solutions that can be explored through directed research and development. Similarly, we have much to learn in how best to use new digital technologies to fight extreme poverty (SDG 1), ensure healthcare coverage (SDG 3), and guarantee universal access to education (SDG 4). But many promising demonstration projects are underway around the world. The coming year can therefore mark a breakthrough for the planet, a positive coda to the deaths and despair of 2020. With intensified public health policies around the world modeled on the successes of the Asia-Pacific countries, and with the introduction of vaccines, the pandemic can be brought under control, thereby opening the way for a fresh global start on sustainable development. There will be three major UN gatherings in 2021 – on biodiversity conservation (in Kunming, China in May), food systems (at UN headquarters in September), and on climate (in Glasgow in November). All are opportunities to launch our generation’s bold mission for sustainable development. To seize them, governments, academia, and businesses worldwide should work together intensively in the coming months to chart out the pathways to the future we want and need so much. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mission-sustainable-development-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2020-12