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Walk Softly and Carry a Big Shtick

Brad Zimmerman’s My Son the Waiter, which “Zimmy” wrote and stars in, opens with a string of Borscht Belt jokes. They’re funny, especially for those members of the tribe who grew up with this ethnic humor. Along with much of this show, these one-liners, quips, witticisms, etc., provide a red carpet for strolling down a mirthful memory lane back to when Jewish comics such as Shecky Greene and Buddy Hackett regaled mostly urban audiences vacationing at hotels in the mountains of upstate New York. 

 

The comedian/actor/auteur also good-naturedly kibitzes with ticket buyers. But after about 10 or 15 minutes of Zimmerman’s shtick the nostalgic spell begins to wear off, and we shift gears from high hilarity down to the mildly entertaining. Some may enjoy Zimmy’s zingers and amusing anecdotes. Others might find them to be “Meh.”

 

The NNV (Number Needed to Vaccinate) and the NNT (Number Needed to Treat): Truth-telling Statistics that Big Pharma and the CDC Never Report to us Physicians or our Patients

It has been over a decade since I came to the realization that the entire profession of medicine had been bamboozled by the propaganda coming from the Big Pharma drug and vaccine maker Merck & Company that its so-called “fracture-preventative” drug Fosamax had defrauded us doctors and our patients by falsely claiming a “50% efficacy rate” in the prevention of bone fractures in osteopenic/osteoporotic women.

 

I had always been suspicious of pharmaceutical sales reps and the Big Pharma corporations that they worked for, and I had wondered exactly where they got the 50% effectiveness figure. So I finally got around to actually digging into and studying the clinical study statistics that were in the FDA-approved product insert that all drug and vaccine makers are forced topublish and include with the product (and which only a few physicians ever take the time or inclination to read).

 

FOR THE LOVE OF (OR, THE ROLLER DERBY PLAY) Theatre Review

 

While there have been some roller derby movies, notably in the 1970s with Raquel Welch’s 1972 Kansas City Bomber and the 1975 sci fi pic Rollerball, and more recently with Ellen Page, Drew Barrymore and Juliette Lewis in 2009’s Whip It, this fast moving sport on wheels is a unique, daunting setting for a live stage show. Somehow director and choreographer Rhonda Kohl and her gifted cast manage to pull it off with some imaginative “roll playing”, bringing Gina Femia’s For the Love Of frenetically and fully alive on the Theatre of NOTE’s boards.

 

SEX Theater Review

Around 90 years before Stormy Daniels burst onto the scene, Mae West shook vaudeville, Broadway, Hollywood and then Las Vegas. Buzzworks Theater Company’s Sex is a buzzworthy revival of West’s play. After Sex’s 1926 Broadway premiere, the comedy’s playwright/star “was arrested, fined $500, and sentenced to ten days in prison,” according to Gregory D. Black, author of Hollywood Censored, which features a picture of West from her 1933 movie She Done Him Wrong on the book’s cover.

 

A faux radio news bulletin about West’s bust (no pun intended - the actress was so well-endowed she gave her name to life preserver jackets) cleverly opens Buzzworks’ production of Sex. While the two-acter’s dialogue may have seemed cutting edge during the Roaring Twenties, to 21st century ears used to a discourse continuously coarsened, from pop culture to the presidency, many of the lines today sound corny and campy.

 

New Polls Show Anti-Trump Isn’t Enough to Beat GOP

With six months to go before the midterm election, new national polls are showing that the Democratic Party’s much-touted momentum to gain control of the House has stalled out. The latest numbers tell us a lot about the limits of denouncing Donald Trump without offering much more than a return to the old status quo.

 

Under the headline “Democrats’ 2018 Advantage Is Nearly Gone,” CNN reportedWednesday that nationwide polling found “the generic congressional ballot has continued to tighten” -- “with the Democrats’ edge over Republicans within the poll’s margin of sampling error for the first time this cycle.”

 

Big Pharma Wants People on Antidepressants Forever and It’s Working

30 Apr 2018– Antidepressants were once considered a short-term therapy to help people get over a troubled time. All that changed with the debut of the so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant drug ads on TV, and the promotion of the now-discredited “chemical imbalance” theory of depression. Though there is almost no evidence of the theory––that SSRI antidepressants correct deficits in brain levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter––antidepressants became blockbusters for Pharma.

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