PAY CAPS DON’T APPLY, if your political connections are strong enough.

SLEEP ASSAULT: “If it’s true, then Nordegren committed a very serious criminal attack. Attempted murder, perhaps.”

VIDEO: Why you shouldn’t leave that Christmas Tree up too long.

LESSONS FROM JOHN GALT.

TAKING “DEATH PANELS” to the next level.

EMBARRASSING OLD EMAIL ADDRESSES: “And it’s so awkward, because I really felt like it was cool.”

PATTI SMITH on what’s happened to Rock & Roll:

After being away from the music scene for more than a decade and a half, Smith said she’s glad to have found, upon returning to the stage, that rock ‘n’ roll is anything but dead.

“I think that in the current state of rock ‘n’ roll, we actually have two states,” she explained. “Obviously, the state of the music business is in shambles, but … the state of the people, I think, is fine.

“We’re in a very democratic era of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not an era of rock gods. You don’t have the, you know, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Grace Slick — there isn’t really the pantheon of rock gods and goddesses that we had in my time. But we have something equally as interesting, and that’s the fact that rock ‘n’ roll is really, more than ever, the people’s cultural voice.

“You go on MySpace or different websites, and there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of people making their own music, expressing themselves, exchanging files and deciding how they want to hear music and how they want to distribute music. Everything is changing, and I think that’s fine. Rock ‘n’ roll was a revolutionary cultural voice that was people-based, and I think the people have taken it over.”

Power to the people! You could write a book about that phenomenon.

ALMOST HOME: A Christmas story from Salena Zito. It’s true, and it has a happy ending.

CAR LUST: Santa’s Sleigh.

MERRY CHRISTMAS:

AVATAR as suicide fantasy.

THIS YEAR’S Carnival Of Christmas is up!

MERRY CHRISTMAS to our troops.

CHRISTMAS dog-blogging.

UPDATE: Related item here.

FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT: PJTV’s Yule Log.

BOX OFFICE SQUEAKER: Avatar neck-and-neck with . . . Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel?

‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, as written by a lawyer.

Okay, this is from a couple of years ago, but I enjoyed the whole Island Christmas thing!

UPDATE: Is this rampant hyper-masculinity appropriate for Christmas? Sorry if you’re offended by all the testosterone!

MERRY CHRISTMAS:

Via Molly Lewis. Entire Wade Johnston Christmas Extravaganza here.

FOR HORSES, No More Room At The Inn.

YULE-BLOGGING, from Walter Russell Mead.

TOP 15 EVENTS in the past decade of videogaming.

And some related thoughts of mine, here.

FRANK J. FLEMING: Have A Merry Government-Regulated Christmas.

PHYLLIS CHESLER: Could Jesus Live Safely In Bethlehem Today?

WHEN HOLLYWOOD RETREATS, OTHERS ADVANCE: Video games take command of war epics as movies retreat from recent conflicts.

If you want to see a thrilling war movie about America’s battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, forget about heading to your local movie theater or calling up your Netflix queue.

You need an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 video game console and a game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for epic action from today’s front lines.

Hollywood churned out dozens of in-the-trenches, pro-America extravaganzas such as Wake Island and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo while World War II was being fought.

But the portrayal of the U.S. military during its current engagements has been more subdued and even critical.

Game makers have stepped into the breach. And they’re making huge bucks crafting patriotic entertainment pieces for which the movie industry used to be famous.

Good for them.