There’s nothing quite as awful as ignoring a deadline or telling yourself it’s nothing to really worry about. Because it always is. And yet you can’t seem to get going…putting it off, putting it off. It’s a terrible place to be stuck in…a crippling psychological condition. The guilty, nose-to-the-grindstone part of you is panicking more and more, and the lazy part is saying “yeah, I know we have to do this but I wanna wait just a little bit longer.”

Before seeing David Cronenberg‘s Crash (’96) I’d never heard the term symphorophilia, an alleged condition in which sexual arousal results from staging or watching a tragedy, such as a fire or a traffic accident.

In the 24 years since I first laid eyes on this cold, strange, perverse film (and I’ve only seen it once) I’ve never once spoken or written or even joked about the term because no one in the real recognizable world is a symphorophiliac. Because it’s a ridiculous fucking affliction…make that absurd.

And yet Cronenberg’s Crash (which was made when James Spader was slender and had wavy blonde hair) is commonly regarded as a far more interesting and artistically accomplished effort that the other Crash — i.e., the one directed by Paul Haggis, and a winner of three Academy Awards including Best Picture.

A Criterion Bluray version pops on 12.1.20, or about ten days hence.

It’s been announced that Donald Trump, Jr. has been infected with coronavirus. He’s actually been isolating since Monday so they waited four days to announce. Several Trump staffers and allies have contracted the virus including President Trump, and yet — here’s the thing — none have seemed to suffer all that much.

Orange Plague, Melania Trump, Mark Meadows, Hope Hicks, Stephen Miller, Kayleigh McEnany (who presided over a press briefing earlier today), Kellyanne Conway, Ronna McDaniel, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and several other Trump allies have gotten sick, and nobody seems to have been profoundly affected or even inconvenienced a great deal. How many days was Trump out of the loop? Six or seven, if that?

Even Christie, presumed to be especially vulnerable due to obesity, was in a hospital two or three weeks and is now out of the woods. My thought was “Jesus, even Christie skates? I thought overweight people were supposed to have cause for serious concern.”

For all of these righties getting Covid has apparently been like getting a winter flu. A day or two in bed, a few days in isolation and they’re out on the town.

Remember when Covid infections were regarded as a four-alarm health risk or even a possible death sentence? That’s not what’s happening these days, or at least not to those who aren’t elderly or obese, who don’t smoke or have respiratory issues or suffer from Vitamin D deficiencies.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, 87, caught it two or three days ago. Best wishes for a full recovery, but a little voice is telling me that he’ll also emerge unscathed.

Incidentally: A somewhat elderly Connecticut-based friend was infected about three or four weeks ago, and now she’s being told that she’s no longer infectious and more or less recovered. Except her sense of taste and smell are still impaired.

The only famous person who’s been reported as being in some kind of trouble due to Covid infection is Harvey Weinstein.

The 1960 Inger Stevens Twilight Zone version is far more haunting than the 1986 Rutger Hauer-Thomas C. Howell vehicle.

Two problems with the Stevens episode: (1) She’s supposed to be driving across the country but she all does is drive around 1960-era Thousand Oaks and Agoura Hills, and (2) How does a dead woman interact with live people and make phone calls and whatnot?

But you know what works for the Twilight Zone episode in a sad, forlorn way? The spectre of an early death was invisibly hovering over the 26 year-old Stevens when this episode was shot. She only had about ten years to live — she passed on 4.30.70 of an apparent barbituate overdose.

Roughly 17 months ago Terrence Malick began shooting The Last Planet, which is some kind of Jesus movie. The cast includes Géza Rohrig as Christ, Matthias Schoenaerts as Saint Peter, and Mark Rylance as four versions of Satan. It was announced today (11.20) that the title has been changed to The Way of the Wind.

Let me explain something: The Way of the Wind is a nothing title. It’s about as meaningful as Whistle Down The Wind, The Other Side of The Wind, The Wind, Who Has Seen the Wind?, the 1967 Association song “Windy” and Sterling Hayden‘s final line in Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1900 — “I’ve always loved the wind.”

If Malick sticks to his usual post-production timetable, The Way of the Wind should be released by sometime between late ’21 and mid ’22.

There’s been a general dismissal of The Prom‘s closing musical number, “Wear Your Crown”, and especially of Meryl Streep‘s rap interlude (1.54 to 2:11) — “”And if somebody starts in with new drama, just go high like Michelle Obama.”

It seems unfair to dump on Streep, who’s just going with the flow and giving her usual all. What’s apparently wrong with or certainly grating about The Prom is the film itself, which is starting to feel like a Cats-level enterprise — an overflowing glass of sugary, sticky, socially enlightened energy fizz…overbearingly pushed, pizazzed…lemme outta here.

We all want Emma Nolan (Jo Ellen Pellman) to take her girlfriend Alyssa (Ariana DeBose) to their high-school prom in Indiana…do it! Live and let live! But the underwhelming pro-progressive vote in the 11.3 election told us that people are sick of elite wokester scoldings and instructions about how to think and behave. Thank you, enlightened Broadwayites, for flying in from The Big Apple to celebrate Emma and Alyssa and to straighten out the local anti-LGBTQ bigots….thank you for saying all the right things in such a treacly and overbearing fashion.

People hate this shit (or at least I do), and are in no mood to be entertained to death by Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Keegan-Michael Key and Andrew Rannells. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people in Indiana voted for Trump as a way of saying “fuck the celebrative, hectoring, instructive attitudes behind musicals like The Prom!”