Osama bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi, Kim Jong Il. Not a good time to be an evil, egomaniac tyrant. So watch your ass, Donald Trump.

This time of year I feel especially blessed to have such a smart, sweet, kind, funny, healthy and thoughtful daughter in Ann Caroline. If I may share some parental advise: when having a child it is vital your mailman has good genes.



Since you asked:

Saw Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris."

What can I say. It is very Woody Allen-y. Visually it is a beautiful love letter to Paris. But if you have seen "Manhattan" or "Hannah and her Sisters" and have never been to New York, be prepared for more grit and grime than he depicts.

Suspect Paris is the same way.

The lumpy self-absorption of Woody's lead character is getting old.

The lead characters fall into two categories. If they are smarter or more accomplished than the main character, the Woody-wanna-be, then they are impossibly smug and snotty.

If they aren't as evolved as the Woody-lead, then they are a knuckle-dragging cultural stereotypes. Lead women are either shrill and shallow or impossibly young and hopelessly love with the Woody-type-lead. "Annie Hall" was both in reverse order.

There are great throw-away lines like when Hemingway asks Gil if he hunts and Gil responds; "Only for bargains." Yes the film is clever and witty but it also feels like it is trying too hard to be so.

All in all the movie is worth watching. Interesting theory of how every generation of artists thinks the best time was the generation before theirs. Woody's endless hammering of living with the fear of death and the basic premise that people think any club/time/city that has them for a member can't be that great, well, it gets a little old.

But in the end it asks the same question of a lot of the non-early Woody Allen movies: When will he go back to just being funny?