Well, today is indeed July 4th, Independence Day and I thought it might be fun to share an image with you from "Naked Boys Singing" I saw the show in new York and found it to be absolutely wonderful and extremly entertaining. Of course the guys in the cast provided much needed "eye candy" and really provide a show that is full of song, dance, and just the right of amount of ("wink, wink") naughty. Gay pride is something real and I am very proud to be who I am. So Happy Fourth of July. Today is also the birthday of a writer who is a national institution and that writer of course is the amazing Neil Simon. "Doc" is seventy-nine years young today. Neil actually got the name "Doc" from a nickname given to him by his late brother Danny. Danny Simon passed away this year! Neil has written more plays than Shakespeare and bar none there is hardly a klunker amoung them. Some (like "God's Favorite" and "The Star Spangled Girl") didn't work and were not hits, but most everything else he wrote was simply a smash hit. What Neil writes today and for all of these years were and are all based principles he learned from Danny and those are the same principles that Danny taught to me and all of the other students who studied in his comedy writing class for four years! To write comedy, you absolutely must get into the heads of your characters-- there simply is no other way. Woody Allen learned the same principles from Danny too! I still think the funniest Simon play is "The Odd Couple" closely followed by "Come Blow Your Horn". Everybody knows an Oscar Madison and a Felix Unger. (Danny was the real life Felix Unger!) So you simply laugh your head off because of the honesty that you find in both works. The Space Shuttle is due to blast off today for the first launch of a shuttle on this national holiday that we all pride upon. My prayers are with the astronauts that all goes well and that the discovery of the falling foam and small crack that they found yesterday will NOT be consequential. I used to get up so damn early to watch the early space launches of Gemini and Apollo when I was a kid. So deep down, I have great affection for the space program. Well, I work today-- the first 4th of July that I have had to work in eight long years-- let us hope that it is not a supreme waste of time. happy 4th of July everyone! Be safe! Be proud! It's a great day to be an American!