I’m back from a nice week off, ready to fire up the ol’ blog as we kick off 2009. Regular readers have no doubt already noticed that Kaity, once again, “stepped in” for me, and wrote another post. On my blog. The reason I put “stepped in” in quotes is that unlike the first time she did this, I wasn’t “told” she’d be doing it “again” and was therefore very “surprised” when I went to “my” blog during my vacation and discovered “Kaity” had gone all “rogue” on me. “Again.” (If you actually make air quotes with your fingers each time, you’ll find that reads quite well).

And what she wrote! Here I am, brave enough to say in those promos for our newscast that she was my “best friend.” Me, a man, showing my feelings. Isn’t that what women want? And what do I get for my trouble? Mocked, that’s what! Again I say, mocked! Sure, she has a point when she writes that I have no other friends, but there’s no need to rub it in. Anyway, I taped those promos before I got a Facebook page, and now, “Kaity,” if that’s even your real name, I have 89 friends! 89! I have not personally met many of these people, but still.

Speaking of which, I am now findable on Facebook, for those of you who also don’t feel the need to actually know your friends. If you search for “Jim Watkins” with “Tribune,” my smiling, slightly grainy face should come up. So find me, friend me, and we’ll teach Ms. Tong a thing or two about true, meaningful friendship in the digital age.

John Travolta poses with his son Jett. (Associated Press Photo)

For obvious reasons, this is very difficult topic to take up at this moment. A child has died, and I don’t care if it’s the child of a movie star or a bank teller or a candlestick maker, it’s the saddest thing that can happen. But the fact is, the death of 16-year-old Jett Travolta as he vacationed with his family in the Bahamas last week has caused a huge uproar in what is often referred to as the “autism community.” (a sampling of autism blogs here, here, and here)

As the father of an 11-year-old autistic boy, I write this post tonight, not to make any judgments about Jett’s life or the type of care he received, but to help sort out the reactions that are coming in from around the world about Jett Travolta and the possibility he was autistic.

NOTE: First posted Tuesday January 6th

Came across this on the BusinessDay website today:

“(Bernard) Madoff was charged in December with securities fraud but freed after posting bail of $10 million. He remained free after Monday's hearing, pending a ruling by magistrate Ronald Ellis of the US District Court in Manhattan.”

Yes, we all know the story, but let’s just let it sink in for a moment. Bernard Madoff is home tonight. He’s home at his palatial Manhattan penthouse, in the exact same cushy environment he’s been in for many of the years that he was perpetrating what may well be the biggest property crime ever by a single human being. There’s something very, very wrong with this picture.

I try to be positive. I really do. Well, sometimes I do. But it’s not easy to find silver linings behind the dark cloud of the economic mess. So I’ve put together a Top 10 list of things to emerge from the recession that could be seen as not-all-bad.

Let’s talk about the weather. With snow heading this way for the weekend, I’m guessing it’s a topic at or near the front of your minds. We have a great weather team here at PIX, with Mr. G, Linda Church, and Chris Knowles, plus a terrific group of producers. And over the last 12 or 13 years, what they and their colleagues at the other stations do has taken on a much larger role in news broadcasting. Weather stories now “lead” newscasts, and occupy more newsgathering resources, than they did before that time. Tonight, let’s talk about why that is.

Let me say first off, to quote the old Letterman sidekick, Larry “Bud” Mellman, I am not an attorney. That didn’t stop me from blogging last week about Bernard Madoff, confessed perpetrator of history’s largest fraud, and how the federal magistrate needed to immediately revoke his bail. I mean, you steal $50-billion, it seems to me like you need to head downtown. Justice, I (and many, many others) thought, doesn’t get more clear cut than that, right?

Wrong. I’m sure you’ve heard the news. Judge Roland Ellis today ruled against prosecutors who wanted Madoff’s bail revoked. Here’s the story from the Washington Post, which includes a link to the judge’s decision.

Try a little experiment; read the next two paragraphs of this blog… wait, not yet!... and at the same time, have someone nearby speak to you, to convey some specific information. When you’re done, you might have absorbed the information you were reading, or you might have understood what the speaker was saying to you, but I doubt you were able to fully grasp both. Now you have some insight into the newly-hot issue of cell-phone use by drivers.

You are reading the words of a broken man. Branded. Marked with a coward’s shame. A digital outcast, sent into exile far from the warming fires of the community of man.

What I’m trying to say is... Facebook won’t let me have any more friends.

US Airways plane ditches into Hudson River. Image sent in to WPIX.com. (January 15, 2009)

Obviously not a lot of time to blog tonight, as we get our coverage of the Hudson River plane crash for the PIX News at 10. I only wanted to say what a joy and relief it is to be able to broadcast news of a happy ending after what looked to be shaping up as a terrible disaster. The fact that no one was killed or critically injured after a jetliner had to ditch in a frigid, rushing river is just what people are calling it: a miracle. So many times over the years, Kaity and I have rushed to the studio to anchor what we knew would be coverage of something very bad, that was going to, or had already, taken lives; 9/11, of course, but also the Staten Island Ferry accident, the City Hall shooting, the steam pipe explosion. To be on the air for three hours straight hours this afternoon, for something that could have been so tragic.. and then to wrap it up by saying everybody’s okay…. Well, it’s as good a feeling as I’ve had in a while, and I hope many of you are feeling as happy and energized and proud of our city as I am.

PHOTOS: INCREDIBLE WITNESS PIX: US Airways Jet Lands In Hudson River

I’m a big fan of skill. To me, it’s so fascinating watching someone do their job/hobby/sport/art with top-notch, world-class ability, I don’t care if we’re talking about Lebron James on a fast break, or an excellent plumber finding and fixing a leak no one else could figure out. There’s just nothing cooler than being really good at something.

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, 58, is the pilot responsible for safely crash-landing the US Airways flight onto New York's Hudson River January 15, 2009. On an online professional profile he describes himself as a 29-year employee of US Airways.

Which brings us, of course, to Sully. Captain Chesley Sullenberger the Third, the veteran U.S. Airways pilot who butterfly kissed that big metal bird down onto the frigid Hudson river with no engines, beating odds that even veteran aviators are finding difficult to calculate, and saving more than 150 human beings in the process. Sullenberger is Hero #1 in America right now, and deservedly so.

I’m going to spend most of today getting ready for the PIX News coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday. But I did want to blog about one thing that I know has been of great, agonizing concern to many of you: my Facebook status.

It’s always ironic to hear “law and order” conservatives discourage efforts to maintain… law and order. Example #1, currently one of the biggest elephants in the (Oval) room keeping our new president company, is the matter of whether former Bush administration officials—up to and including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney—should be investigated for crimes against the Constitution committed in the name of fighting terror.

Here’s Fox News stalwart Mort Kondracke last month:

“For the sake of national security and national unity, President-elect Barack Obama should put a stop to efforts to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for anti-terror "war crimes."

".. The motive behind such efforts is not -- as claimed -- "truth" or "justice," but political vengeance.”

George Bush might be out of office and clearing brush all the live-long day down in Crawford, but apparently, it’s still not polite party conversation to raise even the possibility of questioning certain aspects of his administration. In my blog post yesterday, I merely called for a responsible investigation of issues like torture, domestic spying, and extraordinary rendition that the Bush White House permitted as part of its fight against terrorism.

Well, my goodness, you would have thought I’d said there weren’t any WMD’s in Iraq. Here are a few of the comments from readers, both negative and positive… with my comments on the comments (Hey, it is MY blog!)

Political junkies, especially those who follow New York politics, must be in their bliss as we end this week. Time to tally up how all the players did, starting with an easy one...

I certainly wouldn’t know first-hand, but being a secular saint must be hard. If you look across the landscape of American popular culture, you probably don’t need more than two hands to count the number of famous people who have completely unsullied images. I’m not sure if that’s because it takes a certain kind of person to become extremely famous, or if being extremely famous means your image, deservedly or not, will take a beating.

Which makes this situation with Joe Torre and his new book hard to figure out. Calling him a saint might be a bit of a stretch, but try to think up some other celebrities or sports figures who served 12-years in the Gotham spotlight and emerged with their aura more or less intact. He did a Hall of Fame-caliber job with the top sports franchise in the world serving the most difficult owner and dealing with the most unforgiving media. And after all that, he got a job managing the SECOND-most renowned baseball franchise, in a city that—and it’s worth mentioning this in late January—is MUCH WARMER! Joe always seemed to come up smelling like a rose.

In the words of a certain former president, bring it on.

I’m talking about the snow storm on the way. I only moved out of Manhattan a little over a year ago, but already I’m a battle-tested snow-shoveling rock salt-scattering ANIMAL! BOO-YAH!!

That’s right. I have evolved into the species known as Suburbanus Snowshovelus. And I have to say, I didn’t see that coming. I grew up in a suburb of Cincinnati, and most of my memories of tasks like shoveling snow and mowing lawns are not especially fond ones. Of course, that’s because my brother and I only did those things when we were ORDERED to. I can’t remember a single instance of me saying, “Hey, Dad, the snow’s really coming down.. May I go shovel now, please?”

No matter which local station you were watching to get your news last night, you probably saw part of a City Hall news conference held by Mayor Bloomberg. That’s because behind the mayor were standing news anchors from EVERY station. The idea was to get the word out even more about the looming deadline for the federally-mandated switch to digital television. (That deadline was February 17th at the time of the news conference, but Congress later in the day pushed it back four months).
(CORRECTION!! 4:30 PM Jan 28 WHEN I WROTE THAT, ONLY THE SENATE HAD APPROVED THE DELAY, BUT THE HOUSE DEFEATED IT TODAY.. THE DEADLINE REMAINS FEB 17TH)

I was sent to City Hall representing PIX. I thought it was a little ironic that all these anchors were joining Bloomberg to talk about a deadline, when, as we all know, the mayor was quite averse to a certain deadline he himself was recently facing. So this is me at the news conference, trying to take on both issues at once.

There’s much to be gleaned about what’s changed and what hasn’t changed in Washington after not a single Republican house member voted in favor of President Obama’s economic stimulus package tonight. On the surface, of course, it means a certain kind of partisanship—a good kind, in my view—is alive and well.

While much was made of Obama’s so-called charm offensive to win GOP support for the enormous stimulus bill, I doubt that he really thought he would change any republican minds. It was a gesture in keeping with his promise to reach across the aisle when he makes policy. He reached, the loyal opposition disagreed, the vote was taken and the majority party won. That’s the way the system works. Good for the winning majority, and good for the Republicans who unanimously stood behind clearly-stated reasons they didn’t like the bill.

I saw something today on the web that I thought called for a quick follow up to last night’s post on the current state of partisanship in Washington. I ended that post with a plea for leaders of both parties to tune out the media noise machines from both the left and the right as they search for real solutions to this awful economic crisis. Well, all I can say is, THAT didn’t get off to a very good start.

In the post, I admiringly cited comments from Republican House member Phil Gringey about the difference between being a radio show host calling for aggressively partisan action, and being an actual legislator trying to get the stimulus bill worked out.

Metallica performs live to a sold a crowd At BBC Radio 1s Theatre in London. (September 14, 2008)

I’m very fired up about going to see heavy metal titans Metallica tomorrow night at the PNC Center in Newark. It always surprises people that I would be such a big fan of hard rock. The clichéd TV news anchor image – you know, that whole Ted Baxter/Ron Burgundy blow-dried thing – makes people think more of Engelbert Humperdinck than Rage Against the Machine. I guess I can understand that. But I’ve always loved hard, loud, angry rock. I am, after all, a semi-alienated white dude who grew up in the suburbs. This is my soul music.

My buddy Mark turned me on to Metallica when he dragged me to one of their shows at the Garden in 1997. I was blown away. A few months later, they were the musical guests on “Saturday Night Live.” I was the weekend anchor at WNBC-TV at the time, and the newsroom there is just one floor below the SNL studio. So like a couple of 16-year-olds, we plotted with an NBC page who had been assigned to the band (they always have a couple of pages keep an eye on the musicians, to bring them snacks and keep them from wandering off) to meet James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, the Metallica leaders and co-founders. Success!! They were really nice, and although the picture of us with James has been tragically misplaced, check out this photo of Lars and me...