Good Morning, America. I went to Bryant Park at quarter to seven Friday to see Donnie and Marie who were performing on GMA. Here they are:

Marie was very professional and kept the audience warmed up. Donnie overslept and arrived looking like butt, but it was him all the ladies were screaming for. (One woman, well, two if you include the idiot from GMA, asked Marie how much weight she's lost, because whatever a woman does, that's the most interesting thing about her.) After the show went off, they recorded a medley for GMA's website of "Paper Roses" and "Puppy Love".

From the crowd... A woman was coaching her kids to yell in unison if they ever got on camera, but one of them wasn't having it. "Why wouldn't you want to yell, 'We love you, Pooka!' on national TV?" she cried. And as Donnie was heading back stage, a homeless guy yelled, "Hey, Donnie, what's your birthday?" If you're reading this, you probably know it's December 7, 1957. "That's what number I'm playing tonight!" yelled Hobo Joe.

Coincidentally, I'd just been to a "Broadway in Bryant Park" concert the day before. Cast members from a horrific sounding new show called Thirteen ("the first all-teen Broadway show", whose performing arts high school kids, dancing and singing with smiles plastered on their faces gave me the creeps), Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, Grease, Legally Blonde (the worst!), and the only one I wanted to see, Rent, sang selections for the office lunch crowd. A guy standing next to me during Blonde asked, "What is this, a talent show?" Hee! Then I thought about it, the new Elle Woods was picked on a reality talent show, so sorta, yeah.

And now, from the village, to you, idiot. A woman and her six year-old kid got on a crowded train. A man who'd been standing was halfway into sitting position when the kid raced through the crowd to shove his hands on the seat and claim it. "Get up," the mother said. "No, I was here first." "Get up, that man was going to sit down." (She could have acknowledged that in most cases, 'you snooze, you lose' valid, but that in this one, it's trumped by deference to an adult.) "No." So she looks, not to her kid, but to the poor guy who wanted the seat, and says, "I can make him get up if you want me to." A) It does not appear that you can, you asked him twice and he basically told you to shove it. B) What's he going to say? He said what you'd expect, that it was okay. and C) Why is it okay with her that her kid doesn't mind her? What if she was telling him to do something for his own safety? Why does my generation seem to have abdicated their parent role in favor of being their kids' big buddies? They're not going to become functioning adults when the only guidance they get is, "Good job!" Oh, and then the kicker was they were only going two stops!