Day: November 8, 2019

Take away the Atlanta Olympics bombing aspect and the suffering that poor Richard Jewell endured could be processed as a metaphor for what all obese people go through.

As I said last month, the guy was primarily found guilty of not looking like Cary Grant in the 1940s or Clint Eastwood in the ’70s or even Seth Rogen in Pineapple Express. A damp-skinned, flat-topped, moustachioed beach ball, Jewell initially looked and, in the opinion of some, behaved like a guy with issues. The very model of a neurotic loner, and out of this a certain zealous reporter for the Atlanta Constitution became convinced he was probably a wrong one, and then the FBI bought into this also, and before you knew it everyone was off to the races.

I saw Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out (Lionsgate, 11.27) the night before last…finally. The next day a certain p.r. hotshot asked what I thought and whether or not Johnson’s nimble, cuttingly funny script has a shot at a Best Original Screenplay nom.

I was planning to tell Johnson himself what I thought anyway, so I cc’ed him in my reply.

“I was expecting some kind of boilerplate Agatha Christie meets wokester sensibilities thing, but it’s actually fairly sharp and clever and funny. The spritziest, most efficiently assembled, fleet-footed Rian Johnson film ever. Amusingly acted and tightly written. A very slick and crafty package… nice!

“The teasing and misdirection moves are very well handled. I had a much better time with it than anticipated.

“So in answer to your question, yes, I think it does have a shot at a Best Screenplay nom.

“51 year-old Daniel Craig, playing the Hercule Poirot-type role, is in good shape, but he looks too old to be playing 007.

“I knew going in that [actor’s name] is the conniving bad person but it was still fun and diverting.

“Ana de Armas seemed to mostly be concentrating on looking pretty and doe-eyed and fetching. Everything she did and said in the film was about “am I looking good in the shot?”

“Incidentally, I HATED the cut of her pants cuffs, riding three or four inches above the sneaker line. Only hipster assholes wear pants that are cut like that. Are you telling me that Ana’s character, a Paraguayan woman who lives on a modest salary with her family in a grubby, smallish apartment, is going to wear HIGH-CUFF HIPSTER PANTS? I don’t think so!”

Johnson reply: “So happy you dug it, man. Though there goes our shot at a BEST PANTS nom.”

Why are those doltish, self-destructive, dumb-as-a-rock bumblefucks still with Trump? Because they despise wokester elites — i.e., those snide urban know-it-alls who seem to loathe white working-class folk, favor POCs in every debatable situation and are determined to push politically correct agendas ‘til the cows come home.

“How The Unsufferably Woke Will Help Trump,” an 11.8 N.Y. Times essay by Timothy Egan, spells it out plainly. Average Joes hate Film Twitter zealots **, and they can’t stand the Indiewire and Jezebel staffers of the world, and they’re willing to re-elect Donald Trump in order to fully express their disdain.

Thanks, wokesters! I hated most of you anyway but this adds a layer of icing to the cake.

The scariest part of Egan’s piece alludes to the apparent fact that for now Elizabeth Warren isn’t connecting with these hinterland slugs.

** partially for trashing Green Book. Which is a roundabout way of saying that bumblefucks hate guys like Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich and L.A Daily News critic Bob Strauss.

9:30 am update: I passed the DMV written test on my second attempt. But the people who created these tests are still conniving jerks.

Earlier: I’ve just failed the written test for a renewal of my California Class C driver’s license. I’ve been driving in this state without incident for decades. I know exactly what to do and not do when I’m at an intersection or whatever so don’t tell me. I use basic logic when I answer the DMV questions, but of course they’re chickenshit, nickle–and–dime trick questions with the intent of trying to confuse or delude the questioner.

Example: Fatigued or drowsy driving will not be prevented by rolling down the window, drinking/eating caffeine or sugar (or chugging a Monster), turning up the music volume or cranking up the air conditioning, but these activities will definitely mitigate drowsiness, especially chugging a Monster. I’ve saved myself from possible disaster more than once by Monster-chugging so don’t tell me. But the DMV fanatics don’t want me to answer this way, and will flunk me if I do. The whole test is like this. They’re just trying to mess with you.

Now I have to study the stupid manual and try again. If I fail two more times I’m dead. I hate these people. Not the attendants but the twisted creeps in Sacramento who created the questions in the first place.

The fact that Jennifer Lawrence and art dealer Cooke Maroney got married last month is not really my business. Obviously my mentioning it in the column makes it a matter of marginal interest…why am I writing this? The focus is Maroney’s neck beard. Failing to trim or shave neck-beard growth has always struck me, no offense, as an uncouth, swarthy, dock-worker thing. I guess not. Now it’s a sign of a free and untrammeled spirit. But if I was in a hiring position an undisciplined neck beard would give me pause, at the very least.