“Omarosa got hired at the White House,” our friend who, unlike us, prefers not to swan dive into the cesspool of American politics, told us this week.

And really, as an emblem of the horrors to come, that was as good as anything, a recognizable manifest absurdity that requires no explanation. If you know Omarosa, we can spare you Mike Flynn, and Jeff Sessions, and Ben Carson, and Rick Perry, and Secretary Exxon, and hey, how much time do you have? You get the point.

But, as we explained to our friend, this is still the Preshow. Trump holds no actual power yet. We may be getting a steady diet of announcements and tweets, but they’re still all digestible, even when they cause indigestion.

This will all change — dramatically — in two weeks. Après Obama, le deluge.

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If our life has been about anything, it has been comedy. Laugh-In may have been stuffed with rehashed vaudeville routines, but they were all new to our eight-year-old eyes and ears, and we tortured our father with recitations as soon as each episode was over. Mad magazine remains an enduring influence, down to our use of “department heads” on this website. The Seventies Sitcom Renaissance was ours to binge upon, capped by SNL debuting just when we were ready for it.

But our deepest love was stand-up, and we hit the sweet spot for that too, led by Cosby (sorry) and Carlin: One a master storyteller, the other a master of language itself. We didn’t listen to pop music in our teens; we bought comedy albums.

Which is why we were deeply intrigued this week when the chatter went around that Donald Trump never laughs in public.

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Screw kitty pix, we’re bringing out the big guns to deliver a hearty fuck you to 2016.

Debbie Reynolds, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ Star and Carrie Fisher’s Mother, Dies at 84 [Variety]

Iconic Star Wars Actress Carrie Fisher Dies at 60 [People]

We are probably alive today because Jack Kennedy checked our military’s impulses.

We were three during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as such have no memory of it. Our introduction came much later, during the Seventies, thanks to an ABC dramatization starring William Devane as Jack, and Future Fake President Martin Sheen as Bobby.

The Missiles of October holds up pretty well four decades on, both against our teen memory and what we later learned. But you’ll have to forgive Sheen’s terrible Boston accent to get through it.

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Zsa Zsa Gabor died today, and we got to thinking how she was famous for being famous while we were growing up, and that it was sister Eva who starred in the absurdist masterpiece of our youth, and then we wondered whether Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz was a fan of Green Acres, so we went Googling for references, and then this happened.

We regret the error.