It’s been seven days since my stolen iPhone 6s Plus was blacklisted (i.e., deactivated) through AT&T, and the losers at Apple are still dragging their feet, scratching their heads and not correcting the 8 Plus passcode situation.

Ten days ago Michael Newman, friend and tech ally of that name-brand director friend (i.e., “Mr. Hotshot“), told me to forward the IMEI # of the stolen iPhone 6 Plus to the AT&T people and ask them to kill it. Which I did. The thinking was that once Apple iCloud technicians understood that the stolen iPhone 6 Plus was no longer a working device, much less a valid or trusted one, the Apple security passcode lockout problem (caused by Apple’s six-digit, second-step security code being continually if nonsensically sent to the thief who stole the iPhone 6 Plus on 7.5) would stop being an issue. Apple would then send me the six-digit passcode and everything would be jake.

Except it’s not, thanks to Apple procedure and professionalism. Things are still tangled up in blue.

HE to Mike: “How can Apple fail to recognize or act upon the obvious and proven, which is that (a) the iPhone 6 Plus was stolen and bricked, (b) the same iPhone 6 Plus has been killed — rendered inactive — by AT&T and therefore needs to be un-trusted by Apple, and that (c) the six-digit verification code therefore needs to be texted to MY phone?

“It’s very simple now. It’s obvious. It’s all settled and figured out. I’ve forwarded proof of theft and proof of purchase of the iPhone 6 Plus and 8 Plus, etc. So what’s the problem? The Apple people are perverse. It’s like they have some kind of disease.”

Mike to HE: “At this point the phone itself is out of the picture. Now it’s the phone number” — the thief’s, ending in 9114 — “that needs to be removed from the account. Previously the escalation to the security group happened, but they were confused between the iPhone 8 receipt and the 6s that was stolen. They will call me Monday. We are 90% there. Hang in there — will speak to you Monday afternoon.”

HE to Mike: “I hear you & thanks so very much again. I’m hanging in there. One question: How could those brainiacs possibly be ‘confused between the iPhone 8 receipt and the 6s that was stolen’? Receipt of purchase for both phones has been provided. The iPhone 6s Plus was bought on 9.6.16 in New York City (receipt provided), and the current iPhone 8 Plus was purchased at the West Hollywood Grove Apple store on 7.5.18 (receipt provided). There’s just no possible basis for confusion. Everything is quite clear in the notes and documents they’ve been sent.”

A friend and I wandered around downtown Ridgefield, Connecticut yesterday afternoon. It’s a little more culturally complex than it used to be, but it’s still a whitebread town for the most part. Victorian homes, huge front and side lawns, super-tall trees that have been here since the Revolutionary War. Ridgefield hasn’t become an outdoor mall like Westport; it still has a certain leafy, affluent, quirky-liberal personality.

Not that I’ve ever given a damn, but Bonomo Turkish Taffy peaked in the ’50s and ’60s, was discontinued in 1989 and returned to the market in 2010.

Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies, a political thriller about the FBI’s harassment of Jean Seberg (Kristen Stewart) over her support of the Black Panthers and sexual involvement with black power activist Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), has been shooting since late June. The screenplay is by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse; the dp is Rachel Morrison (Black Panther, Mudbound). Pic costars Jack O’Connell, Margaret Qualley, Colm Meaney, Zazie Beetz, Vince Vaughn and Yvan Attal as Romain Gary, whom Seberg was more or less married to at the time of her death in Paris on 8.30.79, at age 40. An all-but-guaranteed presence a year from now at Venice, Telluride or Toronto, one would think.

I’m too consumed with loathing for the habits of Average Joe moviegoers (texters, noisy eaters, drink-slurpers, constant bathroom-breakers, late arrivers, chit-chatters) to be interested in catching commercial screenings with any regularity. Hence my lack of interest in Sinemania, AMC Stubs-a-List, the all-but-defunct Moviepass, et. al. Attending all-media screenings in New York and Los Angeles is coarse enough. Otherwise give me elite film-festival screenings, press viewings in the usual small private rooms, streaming on the 65″ Sony HDR, etc.

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, quoted in David Smith‘s 7.20 Guardian article, “Do Republicans disapprove of Trump’s meeting with Putin? ‘They couldn’t care less‘”: “You’ve got to really examine the flyover states. They couldn’t care less about what happened in Russia. They love this guy, they think this guy’s for them. These are low information emotional voters and they like what they see in the president. They think he’s working for them.”

The best thing about this non-teaser for Matthew Weiner‘s The Romanoffs is the music. Beyond this my reaction is basically “what?” An Amazon anthology series debuting on 10.12, The Romanoffs “centers on separate stories about people who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family.” In other words, people who (a) believe themselves to be hot shit in some primal, genetic way and (b) need the Russian royal blood association to augment a frail sense of self-worth. Socially insecure people are interesting subjects for a $70 million series? Costarring Aaron Eckhart, Christina Hendricks, Isabelle Huppert, Jack Huston, Marthe Keller, Diane Lane, Amanda Peet, Paul Reiser, John Slattery, Corey Stoll, Noah Wyle, Kathryn Hahn, Mary Kay Place, Griffin Dunne, Ron Livingston, etc.

I’ve barely thought about Orlando Bloom over the last decade or so, no offense. I tuned out after Elizabethtown (’05), and stayed that way during all those Pirates of the Caribbean and Hobbitt films. Over the last 13 years I’ve tended to regard Bloom as a good-looking Buddhist party brah who fucks hot actresses. An actor who had serious heat during a four-year, early-aughts period (Black Hawk Down, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven) before disaster struck. But now he’s back.

Three days ago Bloom returned from the Land of the Dead because of what he did during a performance of Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe at the Trafalgar Studio One. Bloom stopped the show twice to tell an audience member to put away her iPad. “I need you to put [that] iPad away now!” Bloom reportedly bellowed from the stage. But she didn’t and so Bloom declared two or three minutes later, “Put that fucking iPad away now and I will wait.”

The woman in question was apparently using the iPad to fan herself as the Trafalgar a.c. was on the fritz, but no matter. In HE’s view Bloom has suddenly become a person of fibre, backbone, consequence. Let his career comeback begin today. All hail Orlando Bloom, a man among men — a dude with standards, a guy who snapped and said to himself “no! fuck this…her iPad goes or I walk off the stage.” Words can’t convey the respect I suddenly feel for the guy.

Killer Joe began its London run on 5.18l18, and deliver the final performance on 8.18.18. Nine days later Bloom begins filming Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, playing an American officer in Afghanistan.