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By:  Kevin Trainor//Managing Editor In the inner thoughts of Senator Al Franken (D-MN) he may feel he ought be held to a different standard.  After all, the 66 year-old junior senator from Minnesota came of age, career-wise, in the drug fueled halls of studio 8A in the then RCA Building; the home of “NBC’s Saturday Night” as it was called in 1975.  Teaming with fellow new writer hire Tom Davis they wrote edge-pushing sketches, and had their own slot on many episodes called “The Franken and Davis Show.” It was their own bent take on the pop culture scene.  Almost all ending in a gross-out culmination.  It was funny.  A very different time.  Later Franken would leave, and come back to the show two different times.  Among his other character defining appearances were his stints on “Weekend Update,” discussing the oncoming ‘80’s as the “Al Franken Decade,” and, of course, “Stuart Smalley,” a confidence-challenged man making sense of himself in se...

By: Kevin Trainor/Managing Editor “Low Drag – High Speed,” that was the motto of a group of young U.S. Army Intelligence Center students at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, in the second half of 1988.  No one exemplified that better than then Captain Michael Flynn.  The 29 year old military officer was exactly the central casting type of the 1980’s military resurgence under President Reagan.  Not an ounce of excess, straight arrow, and focused up.  “Strack” was a term that the budding military analysts, and briefers, would label such officers.  Part in jest, part in admiration. “Captain Strack,” fit Flynn.  Later he would hear of the term, and laughingly approve.  Flynn was posted as “Commander, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Training.”  He had a group of favorites among the military students, often calling them by their full names rather by rank.  The barracks of HHC was more of a dormitory.  Nobody had a bad word to share regarding t...