I guess this is what you’d call non-traditional casting? In re the new Broadway revival of Driving Miss Daisy, starring James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave: “Ms. Redgrave — likely the first avowed anti-Zionist to play the Jewish Daisy — is masterful as her character ages, shading the proud Daisy from an imperious matron to a stooped, shaking invalid.”

“S. Neil Fujita, a graphic designer who used avant-garde painting and photography to create some of the most striking album covers of the 1950s, and who designed the visually arresting book jackets for ‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘The Godfather,’ died on Saturday in Greenport, on the North Fork of Long Island. He was 89.”

As a consumer of culture of whatever age, I guarantee you that you are familiar with some of this amazing work.

by Paul Hiebert

All six of the contestants at the Apollo Amateur Night semifinals had already advanced through two rounds. Of them, only Cherayla Davis had won first place in both of her appearances. When James Brown competed in Amateur Night, he was booed. Luther Vandross and Lauryn Hill were also booed. Dave Chappelle: booed. Cherayla Davis had never been booed. And this night, she was going out first.

Cherayla is a bald-headed black woman with a noticeable gap between her two front teeth. She wore red lipstick, blue eye shadow and a tight black dress that left her left shoulder bare. The dress was new. Her black heels made her seem taller. Tattooed onto her left wrist is a Nkonsonkonson, a West African Adinkra symbol that represents strength in community and the bond of human relationships. On the inside of her right index finger is a text tattoo that reads “Friendship.” One of Cherayla’s good friends was supposed to get the same tattoo, but hasn’t yet.

The semifinals started with the house band, Ray Chew and The Crew. They played some Marvin Gaye; two frightfully talented teenagers competed in the “Stars of Tomorrow” segment; and four audience members were brought on stage to participate in an impromptu dance-off.

Then Capone came on to tell jokes. He’s a big man with a thick neck and heavy eyebrows. You would not want him to roll over you. He’s dressed in a double-breasted black vest, orange dress shirt and beige flat cap turned to the side.

Capone explained the rules of Amateur Night to the audience. You should not boo based on the contestant’s race, religion or sense of style. You should boo if the contestant lacks talent. If the booing for a particular contestant were to reach an unbearable pitch, Capone will summon The Executioner to remove the contestant. At the end of the evening, judges select the three winners based on the audience’s applause, cheers and frantic gesturing of arms.

Only the top three would advance to the Super Top Dog finale, which will be held tomorrow, October 27. There the winner will be awarded $10,000 and the adulation once bestowed upon Apollo amateur performers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson.

* * *

A week earlier, I’d met Cherayla in a Midtown diner to discuss her life ambitions and performance strategies. She ordered a cream-of-spinach soup and expressed concern whenever my glass of water was close to empty.

Cherayla is American. She is someone who yells in the bar whenever her favorite song comes on. She was born in 1980 and raised in Kansas City, Missouri by a musical family. Her mother plays piano, her father plays guitar, her grandfather plays saxophone, her uncle plays drums and her other uncle plays violin and piano. The Davis family sings Christmas carols in harmony. Cherayla made her singing debut in church at the age of five. After high school, Cherayla earned a degree in Vocal Performance from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri.

One summer, Cherayla worked at Adventureland in Des Moines, Iowa, where, along with other young theater types, she alternated between singing a 50s-and-60s era medley in a poodle skirt and a 80s-and-90s era medley in a sequined bolero with very high-waisted black pants. It was through performing these multiple 20-minute shows everyday in an outdoor theater that Cherayla learned the importance of stage presence. She had to make it fun, exciting, believable. Although she got bored with the oppressive repetition in early June, she understood that for families visiting the amusement park from Montana, Oklahoma or Australia, each concert had to be an unsullied experience come late August.

“I’m nervous until the moment I walk on,” said Cherayla, switching the conversation back to her approaching performance at the Apollo. “I wish I could vomit, because it would make me feel better.”

Despite Capone’s official guidelines for booing, Cherayla knows the capricious crowds at the Apollo can turn on a performer without warning.

“Everything has to be right, because somebody will find a reason to boo you. People want to boo,” she said. “I mentally prepare that it could happen, but I haven’t had to deal with it yet. I know it’s a possibility. Somebody could just not like the color of dress I have on.”

The song Cherayla had first chosen to sing at Amateur Night — and therefore must sing at every Amateur Night performance — is “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from the musical “Dreamgirls.” She watches Jennifer Holliday’s diamond-studded version of the song on YouTube about twice a day. Of the 58,000 times the video had been viewed, Cherayla thinks that at least 1000 of those belong to her.

“No matter what happens in that next show, I can say for the rest of my life that I won two times on the Apollo stage,” said Cherayla. “No matter what.”

* * *

Capone called her name. Cherayla Davis walked onstage. With both hands, she rubbed the “Tree of Hope.” It looks like a petrified stump of wood on top of a brass pedestal, and all performers at the Apollo are supposed to rub it before they begin their act.

The stump belongs to a tree that used to stand next to the Lafayette Theater on 132nd Street and Seventh Avenue in the 1930s. Unemployed entertainers would sing and dance or just gather around it for luck, sometimes getting hired on the spot by talent agents and men with briefcases. When the city scheduled the sidewalk for reconstruction, the tree had to be removed. Legend has it that people grabbed whatever they could of the auspicious plant — tearing off bark, breaking apart branches, plucking the green leaves. A portion of the tree’s trunk, they say, ended up at the Apollo Theater.

Ray Chew and The Crew began the first notes of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” as Cherayla put the microphone to her mouth.

Ten seconds in, a lone boo came from somewhere up in the balcony. Someone had decided, within ten seconds, that Cherayla was no good.

There were three possible reasons for this.

1. Someone was here to support another contestant by sabotaging Cherayla’s performance.

2. Someone understood that booing was acceptable at the Apollo Theater and could not restrain themselves from the cruel pleasure of disparaging whichever contestant stood on stage first.

3. There exists someone so well-adjusted to a world of iPhones, Red Bull and all forms of instant gratification that she or he expects a display of vocal virtuosity within the first ten seconds of a song.

Then again, perhaps someone simply didn’t like the color of Cherayla’s dress.

Whatever the reason behind the boo, it was a crucial moment. Cherayla had hardly finished the opening line, yet she was falling behind. This vanguard boo transgressed expected audience-performer decorum and made it safe for others in the audience to join in.

Cherayla continued, but more people were booing. I imagine that in that moment, the stage would feel inclined no matter which direction Cherayla walked in. Even if she was hitting her notes, the monitors would inform her that she was flat. A dangerous cycle began to form: the more boos hurled at her, the more wounded her confidence; the more wounded her confidence, the more boos hurled at her.

So Cherayla was trapped, alone with her silver microphone stand. She needed to do something incredible, to upend the situation. As the song reached for its most dramatic passages, Cherayla found room to explore its full potential and showcase her abilities. She leaned forward with a tough grin on her face. She produced substantial notes that resonated throughout the auditorium. There were perfect moments. Capone, who had been sitting behind her on a stool, got up and left the stage — meaning he wouldn’t summon The Executioner to bring Cherayla’s performance to an untimely end.

Half the attendance was cheering while the other half was booing. The sound was nauseating. Cherayla was making the most of her last 30 seconds on stage by bending her knees to the point of collapse, flexing her arms to display every muscle taut with feeling. She yelled, “I don’t wanna be free/ You’re gonna love me,” and there was something horribly sad about a demand to be loved before a crowd that can only offer a cacophony of noise in return.

She ended her performance on its long sustained note, one finger pointing toward the upper balcony. The tumult continued as she walked off stage.

* * *

The next contestant, Melvin Robinson, sang a gospel number that got the middle-aged black women out of their seats. A white man seated behind them crossed his arms and sighed, unable to see the stage. No one booed Melvin Robinson.

There was a video tribute to Tito Puente, followed by the third act: Hand Sign, a dance troupe from Japan. They were impressive. One guy did a twirling handstand, and then did it again but with his legs looped through a metal chair. No one booed Hand Sign.

R&B; artist Ginuwine made a guest appearance, performing a lackluster three songs — the highlight being 1996’s “Pony” — and experienced some moments of microphone feedback.

There was a 10-minute intermission. The DJ informed everyone that Coca-Cola products are available for consumption and Ginuwine would be in the lobby to sign autographs.

* * *

All through that, Cherayla was down in the basement, in a room underneath the stage, one of those rooms that always feels a couple degrees colder than room temperature, with fluorescent lights, mirrors that extend from floor to ceiling fastened to a wall, a few flat-screen Samsung television sets and a Coca-Cola vending machine. She could barely hear the muted din from above.

Cherayla came to New York City to make it. She moved to Harlem five years ago with the intention of working in the music business. She did have, from 2006, an associate’s degree in Record Engineering from Full Sail University in Florida and an internship at Motown Records. Things were looking good.

“When Cherayla first moved to New York, she was totally on her grind, totally trying to meet people and network in the industry,” Michelle Greene said, by phone. Michelle was Cherayla’s New York roommate for years, and also grew up in Missouri. “But I think she was kind of turned off by the politics of it, and that’s just the corporate side. She was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to do something that actually impacts lives.’ That’s when she got on at the hospital.”

After a year of bartending and looking for gigs and waiting for the man with a briefcase to arrive, Cherayla exchanged her worries for a job with benefits. For the past four years, she has been working as an administrator at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Part of Cherayla’s job is screening applicants for the residency program. Of the many who apply, only a few are accepted.

“I was tired of being poor, and a lot of people have to be poor before they make it, but I’m just not willing to do that,” Cherayla said. “You know how someone says ‘You’re so talented, you’re going to be the next _______!’ I don’t receive that anymore from people, and I don’t want that.”

These days, Cherayla says she wants to be a session singer and have no part in PR strategies, body image conversations or product endorsements. She would prefer it if nobody knew who she was; she just wants to be in the studio. “I would love to sing all day. I would love to. I would love, love, love to. But I’m not willing to put in the work it takes to be a solo artist.”

I asked Michelle what she thought would happen if Cherayla lost at the Apollo. “I think she’ll be okay,” she said. “I don’t think that one loss will deter her from singing again on the stage.”

I asked Michelle what she thought would happen if Cherayla wins. Will Cherayla start to dream again?

“I hope so, even if it’s just committing herself to go sing at an open mic once a week,” she said. “She really enjoys performing and I think that anyone who sees her perform knows how much she enjoys performing.”

* * *

Intermission ended. The Executioner came onstage dressed as James Brown and performed “Sex Machine.” The fourth contestant, Moses Harper, came on dressed as Michael Jackson. She is a rare female Jackson impersonator, and though she doesn’t sing, she does have an uncanny ability to mimic The King of Pop’s dance routine. The crowd erupted in applause.

Natalie Weiss sang the ballad “I Believe in You and Me.” She is white and wore a purple dress with black leggings. Some people booed, but not many.

Then Capone told everyone to follow him on Twitter.

The final contestant of the night was Kenichi Ebina. Kenichi is from Japan, and his vaudeville act is comprised of several parlor tricks that lack cohesion. Near the end of his performance, when he was simply waving a couple of gigantic orange flags around, many people were booing.

So then Capone called all the contestants back, and they formed a row across the stage, with Cherayla closest to stage left. Capone pointed to each performer. Cheers came for the contestants that the audience believed deserved a spot in the finals. Cherayla’s friends cheered from the balcony. The middle-aged black women next to me cheered for Melvin Robinson. A row of Japanese girls on my left cheered for Hand Sign. Everyone cheered for Moses Harper. A section of white people to my far right cheered for Natalie Weiss. A few Japanese men near the front cheered for Kenichi Ebina.

Capone said that the four contestants who received the most audience approval will stay, and the remaining two must leave. The advancing four were Natalie Weiss, Moses Harper, Hand Sign and Cherayla Davis. Cherayla clasped her hands over her mouth in disbelief.

The voting-by-applause started over again, but this time for the top three slots and with two fewer contestants.

First place: Moses Harper.

Three remained. The audience members formed new alliances and adjusted their strategies accordingly as the democratic process began anew.

Second place: Hand Sign.

It was down to Natalie Weiss and Cherayla Davis for that last coveted spot. Capone pointed to Cherayla. The audience cheered the loudest it had cheered for Cherayla all night. Capone pointed to Natalie. The audience cheered even louder.

Third place: Natalie Weiss.

Natalie stepped forward and threw her hands in the air in victory. The 30-year-old hospital administrator in the black dress pivoted to her right and walked off stage. The lush red curtain dropped and the house lights came on and the audience was released from duty.

Paul Hiebert lives in New York City.

by Sean McTiernan

One problem with torture porn is that it’s boring. As cringe-worthy and scientifically dubious as the violent scenes in the new age of splatter are, the rest of the movies tend to be a no-holds-barred explicit look on how things can totally suck. The poorly photographed anonymous characters sleepwalking from scene to scene, marching towards a squishy and meaningless climax, could lead you to believe torture porn leans more towards the “porn” end of its name. The only “torture” is paying to see it and how strongly the man beside you smells of perspiration.

Recently folks have been praising The New Age of French Horror. You can usually recognise these movies as “credible” torture porn. And everyone speaks French in them. That also is a dead giveaway.

This “New Age Of Horror” in France doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, even when you put aside the fact it only consists of about five movies. Martyrs, a grim exercise in worthiness and misery, is admittedly very well-made. Gory as it is though, anyone whose watched it will tell you it’s not really a horror movie. Frontieres is really derivative and actually a bit crap if you watch it again. Suffice to say, if you’ve seen the dinner scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you’ve seen a fifth of Frontieres. Watch it over four more times and play some Pink Panther movies over it and you’re sorted. Actually, you should do that anyway, that’d probably be amazing.

Untill today’s movie, the biggest international success of the French New Age of Horror was Haute Tension. As anyone who’s seen Haute Tension will tell you, it’s impossible to tell if it’s good or not. Because, you see, it’s ending is so incredibly, suffocatingly irritating and nonsensical that the common reaction is to jump up once the movie ends and run into the nearest wall until your memory of the past 90 minutes has been wiped.

That pretty much leaves it to Inside to deliver on the high-faultin’ promises of The New Age of French Horror. And deliver it does, harder than you’d ever expect and after it’s done, you’ll be too busy sobbing to think about walls.

There’s only a couple of things you need to know. Sarah and her husband are in a car crash. He dies but she survives. She’s pregnant, and, months later, she is in her house the day before she is due to deliver. A mysterious woman arrives and wants to get inside the house. She’s more persistent than you’d expect…. far, far more persistent.

Not only is that all you need to know, that’s all you should know. Inside is one of the few movies well-made enough to earn its many brutal shock moments and it’s far better you have no idea what’s going on. Even if you’re the kind of person who Googles the plot of a movie to see if it’s “worth it,” you need to make an exception for Inside (and you should also know that everyone hates going to the cinema with you).. It’s the Brian Wilson of artfully made horror movies.

In addition to being crazily gory, it’s a well-paced, artfully-made and actually exciting horror movie. Gore is always pretty good but if you wrap an actual movie around it, that’s a recipe for success. What elevates Inside is how awkward and weird the violence is. No amount of Rube Goldberg murders (see: Saw) can evoke anything approaching the cringe that the clumsiness and practicality of Inside’s characters injects into every scene.

One component of that is that you’re never given a chance to forget Sarah’s pregnancy or think of her as just another horror heroine. Her pregnancy is, as you can guess, an integral part of the movie. The film’s most flashy touch — done with CGI — could easily have turned it into a cheesy nightmare. Every time Sara is pushed or jolted, we’re treated to a view of the fetus inside her getting pushed around too.

Really Sarah’s got very little in common with a normal horror protagonist. She rings the police immediately and does everything a sane person would do in her situation. Sadly for her, she doesn’t have superhuman strength or reflexes either. The Woman, on the other hand, does seem to be stronger than the average crazy lady. Unlike other movie slashers, she didn’t get thrown in a vat of toxic liquid, come back from the dead to seek revenge or get hit by lightning. She’s just insane. And who better to play her than consummate cinema lunatic Béatrice Dalle, of Betty Blue. You could actually view Inside as a sequel to Betty Blue if you wanted. It’s only a bit of a stretch.

It’s dangerous to talk about Inside too much. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a beautiful and mysterious woman leaping out of a bush and kicking the crap out of you. If you were into that. And you should be.

Sean McTiernan has a blog and a Twitter. So does everyone though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. In other words: it’s great for the gym.

by Bethlehem Shoals

For as long as I can remember, I’ve gone out of my way to enjoy eves, precipices and the part of a roller coaster right before that first drop. Even though I hate everything that comes next — and in the case of holidays and other special occasions, I bore easily. I just love the anticipation. Still, the night before my second book came out, all I could think about was my fucking record shelf.

Let me backtrack on that one. The book isn’t really my book. It was a group effort that includes contributions from 12 people. Said book has been on sale as an Amazon preorder for months now, which means I’ve been monitoring my ranking and delighting at the slightest blip. Anything to feel something. And, while this title didn’t officially hit stores until today, it’s been available at some retail spots since the weekend, indie and big box alike.

So, anyway, it’s not exactly accurate to say that this book is coming out. Whatever, there are no lightning bolts anymore — only low, mounting growls and guerilla armies. I am objectively aware that very few people in this line of work get to put out one book, much less a second. Still, I knew that when I woke up in the morning, my nebulous career choice of “writer” would make that much more sense. If everything goes well, I’ll feel like a public figure for a couple of weeks, maybe even to the point where I pretend I’m getting sick of it.

But the anticipation: As a kid, I always had trouble falling asleep the night before my birthday, or my brother’s. I don’t know why the Jews decided that ritual waiting around should take place during the day, thus making it that much more mundane and altogether void of suspense. I have never once thought, “What if I get hit by a car this afternoon and don’t live to see this Pesach?” Going to bed before a birthday was a leap of faith, a long, dark journey into presents. Sometimes, I would clench my eyes shut, open them up, and convince myself that hours had passed. Maybe this is a time-honored Christmas tradition, but I’ve never heard a carol about watching the test patterns on the UHF at 4AM.

That’s why last night, even more so than usual, I cursed the day this record shelf was born. I might even include it on my enemies list, if only I could find the right stationery. My wife was watching Frederick Wiseman’s Model, which seems just about perfect for the scene, and all I could do was hammer away at a piece of writing that, admittedly, is fueled primarily by nervous energy. Just not the right kind. It’s the stuff that builds up in the gas tank, and then one day causes your entire engine block to collapse.

The record shelf, like most record shelves, is an Ikea Expedit. If there is a record shelf in your place of living, and it doesn’t look like it was ripped out of a seventies rec room or an eighties coke dorm, it is most likely an Expedit. It’s all but unavoidable, totally ecumenical, as likely to be filled with thrift store rock or an invaluable stock of sealed raers. It’s unavoidable, axiomatic, and with good reason: it’s nearly perfect. Brute function with a dash of form, the Expedit outstrips its native brand and all the prejudices that Ikea brings. Picking one out — you have your choice of three colors, last I checked — is like a christening for a new place. Ever since I moved to Seattle, though, my Expedit has been trying to kill me. Tonight is one of those nights.

I buy records. I don’t own thousands of them, but I’ve gotten to the point where I think nothing of dropping $100, even though I absolutely SHOULD be thinking about that: my salary comes from writing about the NBA on the web. Reissues might as well not exist for me. I have an iTunes full of albums that I would gladly drop $100 on, even though I already know them inside and out. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a collector, because that implies that I’m a well-oiled connoisseur, or the kind of bright-burning wreck who sleeps in a pile of vinyl. I’m a music fan who discovered a hobby better for me than smoking or pills. I’m working on a theory about hobbies: they are a form of sublimation, or a window into the unconscious, like what kind of porn your browser cache holds. Above all else, though, they are just trivial enough to remain socially acceptable.

We look for pasttimes that simultaneously bring out and bury the worst in us — and if we’re lucky, amplify some of what makes us good, too. Sports fandom certainly falls in this category. I’m fairly sure that my rifling through piles of records, in search of damage that may or may not have occurred within the last three days, has eclipsed all good sense. But it’s laughable, not troubling. Unless, of course, there’s a deeper lesson here, and my record shelf and I are in the process of unlocking some important truths about the universe — truths far more important than a silly second book.

The problem with a perfect invention is that it presumes a perfect world all around it. A well-behaved, orderly set of parameters, just waiting to be screwed up by this or that intruding body. What happens, though, if the world around it fails to hold up its end of the bargain? Gravity, and the ground, are more fundamental to human experience than the exact color of the t-shirt I’m wearing. When you put a shelf into room, you do under the assumption that the problem will come from the accessory, not the room itself. Seattle is a wonderful city and my apartment is cozy as all get-out, but here, I’ve learned how things can go wrong from the ground up.

The Expedit faithfully stores, and protects, however many hundred records you place in it. What if, though, the walls around it were bent and uneven? Then it goes from a lifesaver to a death trap. You get a gap between the wall and the shelf that allows for jackets to get hammered down into the floor. Every couple of months, I realize this about my apartment, and worry that I’ve destroyed scores and scores of perfectly good corners. Corners are something to be preserved. It’s sort of a competition, but more generally, sharp, shiny things wear their newness as identity.

That’s what I’m doing, rather than eating a good meal and pondering my uncertain future.

Except, I tell myself, it’s only natural for things to wear out with age. The record itself, and the cover’s faces, these are forms of damage that are just fine with me. In fact, trauma usually finds a way to blend into this process, smoothed out over time so it looks like more like a story than an exclamation. That’s how scars do. It’s also a fair description of my walls. Not how they got that way, or what they look like, but how I’ve worked them over in my mind.

A few months ago, dragged by a friend to Barney’s annual denim sale, a salesperson tried to explain to me that the ridiculously overpriced jeans she had talked me into buying could be aged perfectly, but that perfection itself would be imperfect, organic. It would be a function of human error, and how sweaty I could stand the jeans being. Whatever perfect was, it was imperfect, and imperfect perfect was marred by imperfection. The ideal of living was to commodify it, then pretend you didn’t do so. You might as well have never bought the jeans, or the $100 record. Everyone is against you, but it’s a good thing.

Though that might also explain why I can’t quite realize that I’ve got this book coming out.

Bethlehem Shoals is a founding member of FreeDarko.com and a regular contributor to NBA FanHouse. Pay attention to his book and FD’s art emporium.

It is true that there is no way that you could give “The Larry Sanders Show” enough credit in the history of TV comedy.

Do you dislike the Blackberry Torch commercial wherein the faintly-mustacheod techno producer Diplo says, “I can’t believe that people are actually paying me to travel across the world and collect new influences, build new sounds with different artists…” and then proceeds to mostly show-off how super rich and fabulous he is? If so, you might enjoy watching the video everybody’s favorite Taiwanese digital news source Next Media Animation made for his new song with the never-not-crunk Atlanta rap star, Lil Jon. It’s awesome. Diplo gets his comeuppance, and then some. (Also, depending on your tolerance for grating techno beats and aggressive shouting, you may want to watch it with the sound turned down.)

Here’s the annoying Blackberry commercial, in case you don’t have a TV.

You have seen this, or something similar, throughout the last week and will continue to see variations for another couple months at least:

With conventional wisdom congealing around the idea that Democrats are likely to lose the House and narrowly hold on to their majority in the Senate, there are already plenty of people talking about what the election results a week from today might mean for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election race.

The most common analysis emerging from this chatter is that the election is nothing but bad news for Obama — a rejection of the agenda he pushed over the last two years and a spark of encouragement for the men (and woman?) who are preparing to run against him on the Republican side.

But, a new Pew poll suggests that there is danger in reading too much about 2012 into next week’s results.

So much conventional wisdom! So much repudiation of the conventional wisdom! So much repudiation of the conventional wisdom BECOMING the conventional wisdom! It’s tiresome, no? I read a ton of political blogs, and this is pretty much the takeaway from all of them. I’m here to tell you that while perhaps there is something to this analysis, there is one other highly likely scenario that risk-averse pundits are ignoring so that they huddle safely in the comfort of the Lamestream Media-approved narrative. But what is it?

Republicans will re-take the House and just barely miss taking the Senate. They will announce that unless the President agrees to the repeal of the health care bill they will prevent any other legislation moving forward, and will block the consideration of all nominees requiring Congressional approval.

President Obama, delivering his first State of the Union address with John Boehner seated behind him, will lower his head and announce his disappointment over the opposition party’s unwillingness to make any serious efforts to help heal the country in this time of national crisis. Then, staring at the ceiling, he will transform into a beam of pure energy, all light and fire, and soar through the Capitol roof. The message left on his teleprompter will read “UNLESS.”

Seeking to take advantage of this bizarre and unprecedented event, the House will immediately begin impeachment proceedings against newly-installed President Joe Biden on the grounds that his hair plugs constitute high crimes and that in any event the founders never intended anyone from Delaware to hold the highest office in the land. Biden’s Senate trial will result in his being removed from office after Chief Justice John Roberts, the presiding officer, rules that corporations should also be allowed a vote in the matter. John Boehner, following the rules of succession, will be sworn in as President of the United States. His nominee for Vice President, Wal-Mart, will be swiftly approved, although there will be confusion over how it will be able to fit into its alloted space in the West Wing.

The economy will continue to stagger, leading to rising anger among independents and Democrats, although President Boehner will retain the support of Tea Party groups, who, when asked to reconcile their positive feelings about the new administration even in the face of growing deficits, will respond, “Oh, we were never really serious about that. It was the black guy thing, actually. Jeez, we thought that was pretty obvious.” Disappointed liberals, meanwhile, will attempt to form a counter-movement, but give up as soon as Steve Jobs unveils a new edition of the iPad, which will keep them busy for the next couple of years as they talk to each other about all the amazing features.

After audiotape emerges of President Boehner referring to Sarah Palin, host of the number one-rated Fox program “America’s Most Hottest,” as “dumber than a pack of Camel Lights” and claiming that “my tan is brighter than she is,” the former Alaska governor will threaten a primary challenge against the incumbent, “unless me and each memeber of my family gets $40 million dollars tax free, plus clothing expenses.” Seeking to avoid a divisive campaign, the Chamber of Commerce will solicit the full amount from anonymous Chinese donors, leaving the Republican nomination in Boehner’s nicotine-stained hands.

Amid a chaotic Democratic National Convention in Minneapolis, Hillary Clinton will be on the verge of accepting her party’s nomination when suddenly a beam of pure energy, all light and fire, will soar through the hall. A shining Barack Obama will emerge at the podium and deliver the following speech:

Good evening. I have spent much of the last year and a half journeying through the cosmos, visiting other civilizations so vastly different from ours that you could scarcely comprehend their existence. I have seen things that I cannot even convey to you, so unfathomable are their mysteries. I have made this journey with one purpose in mind: to save the United States of America and all that she stands for.

As I look at you all tonight, I regret to tell you that it is an impossible task. Left to your own devices you will continue to grow larger and dumber until you are easy targets for the mutant animals created by your toxic stew of chemical spills. Those of you who are not eaten will sweat to death or drown in tsunamis in previously landlocked areas. But with proper guidance, perhaps there is a chance to change course. Unless —

At that very moment the celestial Obama’s attention will be distracted by a shiny new iPad in the front row, and he will step down from the podium to play around with it. A couple of months later a small boy in Montana will accidentally set a fire that burns the whole country to the ground, and the world’s greatest hope for democracy will return to ash.

The other possibility is that the employment slowly picks up, Republicans overplay their hand, and Obama gets re-elected based on the fact that voters pretty much only care about the economy. But I think we’d be wise to pay attention to the “beam of light” scenario. I know history doesn’t repeat exactly, but this is pretty close to how it played out for Harry Truman back in ‘48.

This may be important to someone, so I’ll share it: “DEAR MISS MANNERS — What spoon do you eat with, a teaspoon or ‘soup’ spoon? I have relatives who are doubtful, and I get teased all the time about this.” [SPOILER: Miss Manners doesn’t give a shit what kind of spoon you use.]

by Joe Berkowitz

Celebrating Halloween is like going to the opera: some people hate it, some love it, some people hate it but pretend to love it, and everybody’s dressed like an Italian swashbuckler. Halloween and the opera are also alike in that they’re both journeys that couples seldom embark upon separately. (Who spends girl’s night out savoring the libretto in Don Giovanni?) The couples who enjoy Halloween tend to do so because it’s a chance to show off bilateral creativity while hanging with friends and maybe getting wrecked. At this very moment, legions of couples are anticipating this coming weekend with greater fervor than the Snickers-craving rugrats for whom the holiday ostensibly exists. The ones who’ve been together long enough to have sifted through and itemized each other’s garbagey baggage are probably in for a killer time. With a new relationship, though, it’s a different story. When couples are still finding their footing, neither person really knows who the other one is. If you’ve only started dating recently, Halloween is the moment when the masks come off. Boo.

For the past two years in a row, I have watched in horror as the still-blossoming relationships I was involved in passed, spirit-like, into the Otherworld on Halloween. Okay, that was very passive. I did more than just watch. In both instances, I was an active participant — done in by my own idiocy and ignorant man-logic. Although the actual breakups didn’t occur until some time after, they can both met their real end on Halloween.

“Wait a minute,” you might be thinking. “Are you sure you’re not just looking for something external to blame for what appear to be deep, fundamental relationship problems?” Well maybe a little — but participating in Halloween unearths a whole sarcophagus-load of issues in any new relationship, and so it makes sense that it just might raise some red flags too.

The sheer number of decisions that need to be made in advance of the big day is enough to make anyone’s skull itch. It’s like a little wedding. Each decision then affects myriad sub-decisions, to the point where mapping it all out in a tree-graph would look like the outline for a ridiculous Choose-Your-Own Adventure book. (The most boring Choose-Your-Own Adventure book of them all.) The decision that matters most is definitely the costume decision. While it might seem innocuous, having different outlooks on whether to dress up for the occasion speaks volumes. The anti-costume person might see her opposite as immature and embarrassing; someone who will go chasing waterfalls instead of rivers and lakes, etc. If you’re pro-costume, though, you may think your counterpart is either too cool for school or prematurely wizened into retired homebody status; someone without the imagination or cojones to bring a Zombie Liz Lemon to dazzling life, or even appreciate such a feat.

Thus begins a battle of wills and no matter who wins, nobody wins.

Let’s assume, then, that 80% of couples totally agree on the costume issue, and furthermore, that they’re in favor of dressing up. Now it comes down to the costume itself. Whose skin do you want to slip into? What pop culture reference and/or meme most accurately represents where you are right now, philosophically? Finding common ground to build costumes on shouldn’t be much of a problem, but that’s not always the case. If she’s superpsyched about her Snooki-poof and he won’t go along with the Guido theme, the question inevitably becomes one of “well, why?” And that’s when the unexpected opinions tumble out. Senses of irony, levels of vanity, appreciation of Edward Gorey — it’s the odd bits that really flesh out one’s master sketch of the person they’re with. These attitudes were surely going to come out eventually, but Halloween forces them to the surface, ready or not, like a pincer grip on a pimple.

Last year, my girlfriend and I decided to dress as Watchmen. We’d both enjoyed the graphic novel, and we were happy to buy readymade costumes at Ricky’s if it meant no last-minute scrambling for accessories. The deciding factor, though, was my eagerness to get her into a skin-tight, smoking hot catsuit. Amazingly, I failed to see any potential downside. Again, man-logic.

It only took one moment of seeing my then-girlfriend hollered at by every Heath Ledger Joker and Kanye West in the East Village to realize what a huge mistake I’d made. “Why did you want me to wear this?” she asked later on, after much unpleasantness. Although the booty-flaunting Silk Spectre costume was one she’d seemed in favor of earlier, there was nothing I could say in my defense. I had championed the idea basically to show her off, and then I hadn’t handled it well when the plan backfired. Unless, that is, an epic shit-talking match with Popeye the Sailorman is somebody’s idea of handling something well.

Jealousy is unavoidable on Halloween. Unless you are wearing a costume that covers your entire face, nobody’s immune. If you’re not at a small, intimate gathering (by the way — let’s hear it for small, intimate gatherings!), there’s bound to be a cornucopia of eye candy on display wherever you go. It’s unrealistic to expect that you and your partners’ eyes will stay ever-interlocked all night, especially when you get separated for a moment.

It’s also magical thinking to assume that the group of frat guys with CGI abs decked out like the cast of 300 won’t be trying to smang it with every girl all night long (and perhaps some boys as well). Halloween is a clarion call for rampant hedonism and silliness, so people try harder in every sense. You may think you’ve developed a lot of trust in your new relationship, but when that trust is tested frequently and aggressively, something’s got to give and it will probably be your brainstem.

The stress of Halloween travel combines all the worst elements of vacation traveling, only now you’re covered in foam and latex and you may not have any pockets. This makes for a particularly turbulent emotional state to navigate for two people who are still new at being together. If you’re in an urban warzone like, say, New York City, getting around on the night everyone goes out is an exercise in The Laws of Attraction: you’re gonna have to hope reeeeally hard on the outcome you want, and there’s no guarantee it’ll happen. Last year was especially brutal — the L train was down, dooming a bevy of Brooklynites to compete for scarce cab rides in the rain, and most of the other subway lines were malfunctioning too. (I’ll never forget the sight of a colonial soldier racing against a Jedi knight to chase down a cab, and the eventual shoving match that ensued.) And just like on vacation, the way you respond to contingencies and surprise stressors reveals a lot about how you function as a couple. It will either bind you together against a world conspiring to harsh your buzz, or it will turn you against one another.

So the best way to ensure that things go smoothly on Halloween is to plan it within an inch of your lives. That’s why it set off alarm bells two years ago, when my girlfriend of about a month seemed kind of cagey about making plans for the big night. She had been considering going to a costume ball with her girlfriends, but that was before we became an item. It took a while, but then she finally decided she still wanted to go to the ball with her girlfriends and meet up with me afterward. I agreed to the idea, matching her enthusiastic tone even though it was about the last thing in the world I wanted to do. The rest of that night is typical. Since we were only going to be together at the end of the night, I didn’t bother picking out a “Mad Men” character to match her Joan Holloway getup — instead settling for a dumb political concoction too embarrassing to admit here. Rather than deciding exactly where we’d meet or designate a time for our rendezvous, we agreed to play it by ear, which worked fine until the booze we were both separately drinking began to take effect.

New couples already have enough volatile elements to contend with on Halloween — the costumes, decisions, traffic, and sexy goings-on — throw a bunch of alcohol on top of that fire, and it’s obvious what can happen. What happened to me two years ago was that one of us began sending out a series of jealous dweets, and the other had to be put inside a taxi and sent home to an early slumber. (In the interest of fairness, I’ll leave it to you to guess who was who.) These results are probably typical, considering that Halloween is right up there with New Years Eve in terms of holidays that involve stunt-drinking and frequent use of the word ‘party’ as a verb.

So the bad news is that if you’re in a new relationship and you just sort of let ‘whatever’ happen on Halloween night, you might wake up on the first of November facing the beginning of the end. The good news is that this outcome is by no means predetermined! When you plan whatever you can plan and bring a laid back attitude to the unforeseeable, the odds are weighted heavily in your favor. Halloween can be a stress test, but the best relationships gain strength from adversity. When your relationship survives the long, crazy night intact, much like the Final Girl in a horror movie, you’ll totally be back for the sequel. Get ready, it’s New Years Eve.

Joe Berkowitz is making big plans for this weekend.

Photo from Flickr by Matthew Hoelscher.