Like the show that reveals the secrets behind well known magic tricks, I want to write to answer questions that have been raised about the current status of the Birmingham Weekly. I want to set aside a curtain of negative rumors, including selfserving accusations.

We just don’t get up to Muscle Shoals often enough. Florence, Sheffield or Tuscumbia either; in fact, you and I have been remiss in visiting our Quad Cities lately.

The TimeLess TimeLiness of marvin gaye’s masTerpiece Sometimes I feel myself turning into one of those guys who says too frequently, “Can you believe it’s been [insert mindboggling lapse of time] since [insert pop culture event of epochal significance]?”

I was suffused by a transcendent insight of cosmic proportions awhile back and it was hard to stop laughing. Surprisingly, not when I saw Glenn Beck’s last show on Fox or Keith Olbermann’s first on Current.

That Michelle Bachmann considers herself a viable candidate for the Presidency is one thing. In the curious world between her ears, anything is plausible. She thinks AmeriCorps brainwashes kids, she believes financial regulation reform smacks of Mussolini-style fascism and she has stated that the Revolutionary War started in New Hampshire. Why shouldn’t she assume she’s Oval Office material?

I know you don’t care about Medicare. The very word is redolent of mothballs and Aqua Velva. Medicare is old people’s business, a topic ill-suited to a zeitgeist manual such as Birmingham Weekly. However, the loosest cannons upon Capitol Hill are taking aim now at the largest health insurance program in the country, and if they succeed in destroying Medicare, they just might take your future with it.

It was a curious afternoon in the venerable Virginia Samford Theatre and the first time I’d been backstage. The occasion was a salute to the late Cousin Cliff Holman, legendary host of children’s television shows since Kermit the Frog was still in a fabric shop.

Is this all about oil? Or are we actually saving people’s lives? Those questions recur every time American military might is brought to bear upon the Middle East.

In the wake of the tsunami, we are reminded that nothing brings our enormous planet down to size quite like its basic building block.

It occurred to me the other day that the last bastion of true democracy is the license tag renewal line.