Cats is about as unpopular with Joe Popcorn as Uncut Gems. Once again critics are off on their own planet. A portion of the Rotten Tomatoes gang wants Cats to face prosecution in The Hague. Ticket buyers are just “ehh, doesn’t work, whatever…next!”

Left San Francisco around 1:30 pm. 101 south to Gilroy, 152 east to southbound 5. ETA in West Hollywood around 7:30 pm. That zoned-out, droopy-lid feeling.

Until this morning, I had no idea Travis Bickle‘s apartment was located at 586 Columbus Ave., between 88th and 89th streets. I’d aways presumed his pad was in some ramshackle Hell’s Kitchen building, in the mid to upper 40s between 9th and 10th Avenue.

No Lighthouse or Les Miserables? I’ll cut Barack a break and presume he hasn’t gotten around to either. (Or he’s seen both and shied away because The Lighthouse has currents of madness and Les Miserables stokes unruly rebellion.) And he approves of Diane!

On one hand I’m in league with Joe Popcorn as far as WTF reactions to Uncut Gems are concerned. On the other I’m stunned by negative or “later” reactions to Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse, which is easily among 2019’s ten best if not the top four or five.

The sad truth is that 97% of ticket buyers can’t get beyond subject matter. “So what happens? Two lighthouse keepers go crazy on a rocky island in the 1890s”…no, much more than that. You can’t tell them “it’s the singer, not the song.” You can mention the visual atmospheric highs…black and white, 1.19 aspect ratio, King Triton, the demonic seagull, magnificent production design…and 19 out of 20 popcorn inhalers will reply “so?”

Tatyana wanted to visit Top of the Mark, the 19th story bar-restaurant on the penthouse level of the Mark Hopkins hotel. I hadn’t visited since the mid ‘80s so what the hell. It opened in ‘39 and became quite the essential stopover for WWII officers (slender, nattily uniformed, in the company of classy ladies in bright red lipstick) bound for combat in the Pacific or returning from same.

The cultural atmosphere at the Top of the Mark is a little different these days. A few nice-looking people, sure, but also a fair amount of overweight, horribly dressed proletariat commoners wearing baggy jeans, knitted skullcaps and whitesides. A time-traveling anthropologist comparing the differences between 20th and 21st Century clientele would be struggling for the right politely descriptive phrases while conveying an honest assessment, as I am now.

The truth is that over the last 60 or 70 years certain aspects of American culture have not only gone downhill but sunk into the swamp. We’re talking about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire here. Herb Caen would be in shock.