STARTING FIVE

1. Pork Chopped

That’s Harold Hamm. He’s estimated to have a net worth of nearly $17 billion (he could totally purchase ACN News and Charlie would probably like him). Hamm, an oil and gas entrepeneur, is a self-made man: he was the 13th child of Oklahoma sharecroppers (who were obviously quite fond of one another). Anyway, CNBC is reporting that he’s out $10 BILLION due to lower oil prices affecting the price of shares of stock in his company, Continental Resources.

So that’s why he looks like that (above)?

Harold Hamm is still way wealthier than Jon Hamm, but I do wonder what he’d pay to be Jon Hamm for a day. Wouldn’t we all want to know what that’s like?

2. Pay Freeze…

…does not mean the same thing in Oxford, Miss., as it does in the rest of the country, as Ole Miss gives football coach Hugh Freeze what reportedly amounts to a 50% raise (from $3 million to $4.5 million) too keep away the poachers from other programs (e.g., Florida, Nebraska, Michigan).

Of course, Mississippi does just happen to have the nation’s highest poverty rate of all 50 states, so giving your top-paid state employee a 50% raise begins (“Begins?!?!”) to call in your hierarchy of values. Meanwhile, I wonder how this might’ve gone down had Ole Miss lost the Egg Bowl on Saturday, which would’ve given Freeze four straight losses versus FBS competition.

3. B-O_-_

Lead singer of U2 (four letters). Last night it was “Boss” as in “The Boss” (and not “The Boz”, Dish), who replaced an injured Bono for a free concert in Times Square (Chris Martin also pitched in). Free concerts, free albums…I wonder if U2 covered RHCP’s “Give It Away Now.”

Meanwhile, yes, there were post-50 year-old rockers playing in Times Square, so a “ball dropped” joke goes here.

By the way, here’s Bono extemporaneously waxing on the intersection of art and technology in a recent issue of Rolling Stone: “Painters met in Paris in the start of the 20th century, and it wasn’t just painting. You have the Bolshevik Revolution because of those incendiary (take a bow, William Miller) tracts written by Karl Marx. You have the first Cubist exhibition in Paris. And they’re all related, because, what is the theory of relativity? An object changes shape at the speed of light. So now a face can look like that, because a face is no longer what we see.”

4. Monday Night Mayhem…

Okay, sure, it was a crappy MNF game and it was wet and cold in the NYC area last night (just ask the dudes pictured in Item No. 3) and, sure, it was fun to hear the rising levels of frustration in Jon “Spider 2 Y Banana” Gruden’s voice as the Jest repeatedly refused to target Eric Decker against a trash-heap free agent corner, but here’s what WAS said in the final one minute of the broadcast:

Gruden: “Signature win for the Jets.”

Tirico: “Good night from Miami!”

Now, of course, Chuckie knew who won. And I assume the High Priest of Tirico-ism realized he wasn’t in the tropics, but still, those two errors so close together need to be contained. Or maybe they were just following the lead of this young fan and taking in some anti-freeze during the broadcast…(Howard and Don would have)

5. Will…and Grace

My Promise: I have NOT seen the final two episodes of The Newsroom, but I have some thoughts on what I believe is coming. So if you do not want to know what I think will happen, STOP reading.

Item: Will McAvoy, our protagonist, has displayed a preternatural sense of calm all season. It’s as if he’s more at peace with himself and where he is in life than he has ever been. There are crises, but none are existential. And when matters are at their worst, he’s actually the guy who’s been quick with a quip–usually at his own expense. To which I say, “Uh oh.”

Item: It didn’t take the ethereal yet dirge-like performance of “Ave Maria” (“Hail Mary”) for me to start drawing connections between Will and a certain Messiah. The idea that Will was “too big to jail.” Or the trial with the judge who asks Will what he would like him to do (very Pontius Pilate of him). I think Will is headed for a martyr’s end. I think, in a most messianic fashion, that he will be sacrificed upon the altar of journalistic integrity.

Item: I think if you’re looking for a happy ending from Aaron Sorkin that he gave it to you in the Ave Maria montage (which, by the way, reminded me of the nuptials montage from Fandango). I think that, because it is dramatic and heartbreaking, that we got the Will-Mac wedding but that we are not getting “happily ever after.” I think that when they parted in the lobby of City Hall is the last time they will ever touch.

Item: “Will, you wanna pray with me?” That’s from the priest, but hoo-boy, I could smell the Garden of Gethsemane on that one…

I may be wrong. But if you look back at how that episode has played, and how the season is played, it’s all very Jesus of Nazareth/Owen Meany. The ANC news gang is Will’s flock, and MacKenzie McHale is his Mary Magdalene, and this is all going to end with our hero being sacrificed in the name of integrity and the First Amendment.

But Don and Sloan will end up together, so at least we have that.

Remote Patrol

Home Alone 2: Lost In New York

AMC 8 p.m.

Hand on the Bible, I have never seen a moment of the Home Alone trilogy (HA3 will actually air concurrently on Disney). But I include this just so I can add John Mulaney’s take on the film.