Christopher Ave

The news media have undergone quite a lot of changes in recent years, mostly due to the stupid economy. Layoffs, furloughs, restructuring and changing assignments have been commonplace in most newsrooms across the country as newspapers, Web sites, TV stations and magazines struggle to find new niches and new, relevant ways of reaching readers.

Copy editors — hugely essential in the journalism process — seem to have taken the brunt of workforce reductions across the board.

Enter Christopher Ave.

He’s the Post-Dispatch’s political editor, but he’s also a talented singer and songwriter. His “Copy Editor’s Lament (The Layoff Song)” is a marriage�

Whenever the winner is announced at a beauty pageant, the losers always stand there with a processed smile on their face and freshly glazed eyes. They clap because they are programmed to, but deep inside their brains they are fantasizing about ripping the winning [contestant's] head off with their bare teeth. They never go through with it. But thankfully, a losing drag queen at the Miss Brazil Gay 2009 pageant had the [guts] to do it. No, she didn’t rip off the queen’s head, but she did something even better.

Disney reportedly will start showing the Michael Jackson 3-D movie “Captain EO” at its theme parks in January. Jackson spent $30 million to make the movie and persuaded Francis Ford Coppola to direct, George Lucas to produce and Anjelica Huston to co-star in it. Disney played the movie at the parks in the 1980s and ’90s, then pulled it.