It turns out that there is a cure for that nasty little depression that usually settles over your head right after the holidays. You know how it goes. You have all of that happiness, manufactured or not, and activity between the end of October and the end of December. Those last three months of the year always seem to fly by so quickly. You have parties to prepare for. You have to make travel plans. You have to buy gifts. You get drunk. You stagger home. You take time off from work and work has actual time scheduled to be off. It’s great and then January comes and there’s nothing.

I actually have the credentials to be a total cinema snob. I got a piece of paper from Webster University that says I can be. It was mostly an accident that got me this piece of paper. I love movies. I have always loved movies. It comes from my dad who loves movies and used to sit me down and tell me to watch certain movies because he figured I would like them and, most of the time, he was right. This is how I became fans of “Fail-Safe,” and “The Wild Bunch.” I also saw the suite of Man With No Name movies by Sergio Leone that starred a young Clint Eastwood in a poncho and bad dubbing.

The worst day of the year is rapidly approaching again. I speak, of course, of St. Valentine’s Day. It is, without a doubt, the dumbest holiday with the possible exception of Sweetest Day but since they pretty have the same theme I really sort of count them as the same holiday. Of course Sweetest Day is an even more ridiculous holiday but since it hasn’t really caught on the way Valentine’s Day has I have to sort of put it aside.

The dumbest thing is that no one can really definitively state where the whole holiday came from. It appears as if there were two Saint Valentines, for example. There was the Valentine of Rome who was a priest there in about 269 AD. He had a reputation of being a doctor in addition to being a priest and would often treat people even if they were unable to pay him.

It’s tough to be a radio guy these days. Back in the early days the DJ was pretty much a celebrity because there was nothing else. You couldn’t really take a record player with you when you went running or driving. So the only way to listen to music on the go was through the radio and the DJ was as much a part of the entertainment as the music. That isn’t the case these days.

How do I know? Well, I used to be in radio. I never made it past part-time but, in a way, that was even more depressing than being one of the regulars. There I would be talking in between Foreigner and Led Zeppelin songs and talking like anyone was really listening. Most of the time everyone out in the world just wanted me to shut the hell up and play the commercials and the Led Zeppelin song.

Have you ever had the feeling you were just a bit character or had been cast in some way in someone else’s epic story? Have you ever felt that you have been cast in a role that you would not normally want to have in this particular story? For example, have you ever felt like maybe you are being cast as the villain in some kind of epic story? Well, I am not entirely sure I have felt that way personally but I think the city of Chicago and the Chicago Bears team may very much feel that way when it comes to this week’s game.

Of course, the Bears are poised to make their second trip to the Super Bowl. People in other cities may not realize just how spoiled they are. If you live anywhere in the nebulous region commonly referred to as New England you probably don’t think of yourself as spoiled. Yet, every year, no matter how poorly the Patriots have played throughout the regular season that team manages to get into the playoffs. The city of Pittsburgh has numerous Super Bowl visits and victories under its belt. San Francisco sure looks terrible now but it wasn’t all that long ago that the 49ers were winning everything and anything all the time. Sports fans have very short memories.

I have been a fan of the show “24” from the very first season. I remember reading about the concept and how it was supposed to be an entire season where each episode was an hour during one particular day. The buzz was great that first season. It was also a first season that opened with an entire plane exploding in mid-air with the terrorist responsible actually escaping out of the plane to do it. That’s quite an impressive way to start.

From that point forward “24” has seldom disappointed. Has it made a few missteps along the way? Sure, all of us who are fans recall with a cringe the whole Elisha Cuthbert versus the cougar phase. Many of us also remember the season that just sort of meandered around while Jack flew into Mexico and dealt with drug dealers and somehow the drug dealers had something to do with a virus or something. It seemed to take forever to get going. However, even that season, once the virus got released in a hotel full of people things started moving. It made me realize that the whole season should have started with the virus being released in the hotel instead of the whole drug dealer thing.

So it all came down to that final moment in overtime for the Chicago Bears. They had been battling the Seattle Seahawks up and down the field and, essentially, it had come to a stand-still. The game was tied and that meant sudden-death overtime as is always the case in the NFL. No matter how you score, you are the team that wins. If you tackle the other team’s quarterback in the endzone and get a safety you win the damn thing.

Rex Grossman had done all right. He made several rather bone-headed plays. It still seems like the young quarterback needs to have all of the time in the world to make a play. If you rush sexy Rexy then you can probably get him scrambling and when he scrambles he is just as likely to throw it to the referee or Lovie Smith on the sidelines as he is to a receiver down field. The man is no running threat at all. I think the only way to maybe get Rex to run would be to release an actual bear on the field while outfitting him with raw meat underpants.

I don’t know when this might have been but I have to think there was a time when interviewing for a job was a simple affair. Perhaps, much like when people think of the 1950s, there never really was a time when it was simple but I prefer to think there was. I like to think there was a time when you saw an ad in the paper or perhaps a Help Wanted sign at a place, walked in, filled out an application, talked to someone and walked out with a job offer. These days that just doesn’t happen.

Part of the problem has to be that people are crazy, of course. Too many people are walking around trying to get into offices so they can eventually go crazy and do harmful things to as many co-workers as possible. I personally know several people who apparently either doze through or choose to ignore the sexual harassment seminars that everyone at every office has to sit through at least once a year. There are those who have rather grim criminal records and you don’t want to give them jobs doing important things. You do not want the convicted child molester working as a school crossing guard, for example.

Not long ago I wrote a column about smokers. Like much of my writing it was firmly tongue-in-cheek and was, in a round about way, a compliment on the resiliency of the people who still resolutely smoke despite weather and health concerns. For the most part I was complimented for this particular article. I concluded that when it came to smokers not a single one of them was likely to quit before they were ready and some may not be ready at all.

Being someone who has never been drunk and never been high and never tried smoking I am often looked at strangely. I can share some of this with one of my personal heroes, Penn Jilette. Penn is one half of the comedy/magician team of Penn & Teller. While Penn and I would completely and utterly disagree on matters of faith, religion and the human soul I think we could agree on much more. Penn is a lifelong teetotaler. That means he has never even had alcohol touch his lips. He has never even considered doing drugs. He too, has never been high.

Back in the early 80s a movie came out that predicted machines would eventually gain more and more control over the world until they reached the point where they ran the weapons of the United States and launch a missile strike on the Soviet Union. Eventually the machines took over and Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up and became Governor of California. At least, I think that’s how the movie went. Anyway, the forward-thinking director of this film was Jams Cameron. Here in 2007 I can now say that Mr. Cameron may have been right but that the machines may not need anything as dramatic as nuclear weapons.