To be fair, all politics is theater, and certainly a televised occasion like the State of the Union speech, and its follow-up, is all performance. Whereas the follow-up part of the ritual - the ostensible honor of being chosen as the official responder to the State of The Union - appears increasingly to be a curse.

I wasn't expecting this big, emotional, Super-Bowl-type spot promoting the Golden Arches to pop up during the Golden Globes. But there it was: the stirring, food-free, children's chorus-sweetened 60-second "Signs."

The first week of 2015 has proven surprisingly harsh and even heart-rending. But we have weathered worse; and keep in mind that as January progresses, we are only an ambiguous number of months away from the return of "Mad Men"!

It's hard to believe that the backstory surrounding "The Interview," the dimwitted bro-mance road movie that Sony Pictures ended up pulling from theaters Wednesday, could have achieved such levels of worldwide crisis and stupidity. Yet it did.

I know they're supposed to be stodgy; nothing quite out-stiffs the British Royals on state occasions. But for some naive reason (maybe only having to do with her terrific fashion sense), I thought that Kate and Prince William were the young and modernized versions. So I was surprised to see that during their recent trip to New York City, much was made of Kate's visit to a child development center in Harlem, where she -- get ready -- sat down and wrapped a Christmas gift.

It's hard to write about advertising and marketing when the most potent thing to happen overnight, after the jury decision not to prosecute the Eric Garner case was made known, was a spontaneous citizen "die-in" in Grand Central Station.

With the big gobble-gobble weekend approaching, it's probably a great time for Weight Watchers to debut this new 60-second spot, timed for prime family viewing on our first Post-Turkey Sunday. (AKA, when the stuffing hits the fan.)

"Sweet fancy Moses!" See that? Scooping up any random line from a "Seinfeld" episode makes this opener about 400 times funnier than anything I could have come up with myself.

No, it didn't break the Internet. And sorry, you can't unsee that impossibly large, oiled-up, whiskey-colored double spheroid that can stand in for so many things. I refer, of course, to the unexpected, slightly surreal images of Kim Kardashian West, cover star of Paper magazine's Winter 2014 "Break the Internet" issue.

Given all the sturm und drang of this week's midterm election coverage, plus nonstop news about Taylor Swift, it might have escaped your attention that November is Men's Health Awareness Month.