I’ve been singing “Sunshine Of Your Love” all my life, and in so doing I manage a decent Jack Bruce impersonation. I’ve been singing it with friends, in the car and in the shower for decades, and when I come to the fourth line I’ve always sung “give you my dog’s surprise.”

A dog being surprised by anything is a superfluous notion (dogs live in a constant state of surprise and stimulation) and certainly inconsequential in the light of any kind of cosmic perspective, but I can’t change now — gotta be “dog’s surprise” until my dying day.

After reviewing Frank Marshall‘s How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, I was seized by the idea of finding a replica of my old “Death to Disco” T-shirt, which I wore in ’77 and ’78. It would be cool to re-wear it, I decided, because the issue was settled 40 years ago.

But all I could find online were T-shirts that say “Death Before Disco.” Which is totally the wrong sentiment as it more or less translates into “I will gladly accept death before dancing on a disco floor.” Which is analogous to the classic Tale of Two Cities line, “Tis a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

The proper sentiment should be a sentence handed down by a judge — “I sentence thee, disco, to death for having temporarily killed rock ‘n’ roll….say your prayers now for the sentence will be carried out immediately.”

Given what it obviously is, Fisher Stevens and Justin Timberlake‘s Palmer (Apple, 1.29) has the right kind of attitude. Or so it seems. Timberlake (who hits 40 on 1.31.21) as a former high school football star who returns to his small podunk hometown after serving a 12-year sentence for…who knows? Moves in with mom (June Squibb) and forms an unlikely friendship with Sam (Ryder Allen), a young effeminate lad who lives next door. You can see where it’s going in a flash.

If I’d been in Times Square during last night’s snow storm, the idea of peddling around on a bicycle would’ve never crossed my mind. I would’ve just tramped around in my snow boots, scarf, silken long johns, three T-shirts, sweater, gloves and thermal hoodie. I hate what Times Square has become, but what a thing to miss out on. What a moment.

Times Square during great blizzard of December 1947.

ditto

If you’ve ever read any of Scott Feinberg‘s “Brutally Honest Oscar Voter” columns, you know that a lot of Academy members are, to put it gently, stubbornly resistant to what could be described as present-tense, finger-to-the-wind, representational snowflake currents.

If you wanted to be dismissive you could call them woke-indifferent, under-the-radar scowlers. As in unenlightened, incurious, living in their own foxholes, “I miss the ’70s”, somewhat resentful, “I’m from Missouri,” “everything sucks,” etc.

They’re not lacking in talent or intelligence or love for movie lore, these people, but they do seem irked by the social justice warrior syndrome…to processing all the contenders with a carefully calibrated woke filter. They like what they like and respect what they respect, but they sometimes vote for films that the wokesters despise (i.e., Green Book) and thank God in heaven for that.

God Herself howled in triumph, trust me, on the night that Green Book won and Spike Lee turned his back. And She beamed with delight when Get Out was blown off.

There are, of course, many other Academy members who see things differently. Particularly the newly added internationals who voted overwhelmingly for Parasite + the New Academy Kidz who hate anything that smacks of OLDER WHITE GUYS and are always thinking “let’s give actors and filmmakers who aren’t part of the older-white-guy, Spielberg-stamped network a chance.”

But based on those “Brutally Honest” confessionals, a good percentage of Oscar voters and guild members don’t think like…well, any of the elite critics and Oscar-watching columnists.

It’s like Clayton Davis, Eric Kohn, Justin Chang, Tom O’Neill, Robbie Collin, Manohla Dargis, Angelica Jade Bastién, Steve Pond, Erik Anderson, David Ehrlich, Alison Willmore…it’s like the wokesterati and SJW banner carriers live on one planet, and the people who actually work in the film industry and vote for Oscars (and Emmys and guild awards) live on another.

Do certain tastes and preferences overlap? Yes, of course, but generally speaking very few….I should say almost no critics or columnists seem to live, think and breathe like the rank and file. Put another way, very few critic-columnists dare to think and write like stubbornly independent foxhole contrarians. Because to do so would mean (and this is crucial) not getting hired by the editors and publishers who are also living in fear of the Khmer Rouge…who are white-knuckle terrified of offending the comintern.

Bottom line: If you want to be survive in the film-assessing, Oscar-covering journalistic world of 2020 and ’21, you must play along with the wokesters. Or at least pretend to play along. Which is why almost everyone is more or less singing the same tune.

Except, that is, for Hollywood Elsewhere (i.e., myself) and a few others out there. That’s right…HE and very few others stand alone. Alone against the wind and the herd.

[Posted in 6.14.19 comment thread for “And I Knew When I Got There…“]

In the opening voice-over, Tommy Lee Jones‘ Sheriff Bell speaks about decency, trust, values, tradition. About how previous generations of Texas lawmen had behaved and held their end up and handled their jobs with due diligence. And about a kind of feral madness in the land that, to Bell’s dismay and confusion, has begun to manifest.

The dream Jones tells his wife about at the finale is a bookend — a return to this meditation. The trust and affection he felt for his father and the values he lived by — knowing without being told that his dad was riding on ahead to find a camping spot and build a fire. Jones longs for that history, that sense of assurance and steadfast character in daily life.

“And then I woke up,” Bell says, finding himself in the present with the spreading malice and madness of the Anton Chigurhs and a moral or spiritual atmosphere that will one day embrace even worse things, including the monster that is Donald Trump.

“We’re now only one Presidential election [away] from the end of America as we know it. For the first time in our history, a majority of a major political party has refused to accept the results of a Presidential election. Tens of millions will now teach their children they live in a country with an illegitimate President. This is how democracy dies. Today the dividing line in American politics is not between conservative and liberal — it’s between those who believe in democracy, and those who are killing it.”