Month: May 2022

I arrived at the JFK Swiss Air-Lufthansa terminal a little late — 2:35 pm. (The southbound A train wasn’t running in Manhattan due to signal maintenance.) Right away I sensed trouble. The Chicago stockyards ticket line was moving so slowly (it took 35 minutes to advance 35 feet) that it seemed obvious I wouldn’t make the 4:30 pm flight. Because I would still have the miserable security line to cope with.

So I went into hardcore theatrical do-or-die mode. I began pleading in a muted way. I was begging for mercy but without sounding too much like Blanche DuBois. I rolled my eyes a couple of times. I did everything but drop to my knees and weep. Inwardly I must have hissed “Jesus H. Christ” three or four times.

And I wasn’t the only one. I was watching a 40ish German couple have a fit — “But we’re going to miss our flight!”

I ran through the terminal and made the flight with less than five minutes to spare. God in heaven!

If I hadn’t made such a fuss and demanded that they get the lead out, I would have had to take another flight. If I had the power I would bring those awful JFK Swiss-Lufthansa desk agents up on charges. (Or certainly their managers) Understaffed, overwhelmed, indifferent.

4:59 update: Our plane has been waiting a half hour to take off. 5:15 pm: Liftoff achieved.

https://vimeo.com/710127461

HE’s Swiss Airlines flight departs JFK at 4:30 pm. Arrives in Zurich (great town!) around 6:15 am, a final commuter hop to Nice that arrives…I forget exactly but probably 9-ish. No bus or shuttle — take the local train to le gare de Cannes.

Third photo: Mickey Rourke, Roman Polanski on the set of The Palace.

If your Samsonite suitcase loses a wheel, you can supposedly obtain a replacement by way of a ten-year warranty. Actually not so much. The second photo is the Wilton pad — three stories, garage & laundry room. spacious interiors, nice forest view, squawking geese flying over, etc.

All sorts of different metaphors could apply to the idea of George Lucas roaming around and popping in at random, but let’s say he’s an emissary of death — Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black except older and with a blue-white checked shirt.

The current abortion divide between the states “makes me think about the Civil War…pre-Civil War. Because we seem to be going toward this place in America where we’re gonna be two countries. One where you’re a free woman, and another in which it’s a Dred Scott situation.

“When you look at some of the things that are being proposed in some of these [red] states. I mean, Louisiana says flat-out that [abortion] is homicide. When you drive from L.A. to Nevada…on one side fo the border you’re a free person and on the other side you’re a criminal. You can fly across the country and gain and lose your reproductive rights 20 times.”

Somewhere between 40 and 50 years ago Andy Warhol said (or took credit for) a legendary perception — “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

Nowadays everyone has the potential to become famous for somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds, on a rotating, love-is-here-and-now-you’re-gone, surfing-the-cycles social media basis.

Most many of us would like to be permanently well known, I’m guessing, but you have to do something exceptional or at least noteworthy to get into that club. It’s entirely realistic, though, to become famous on a moving-train, fast-fart basis.

What Warhol originally meant, I think, was that the fame sphere was shrinking as the media-distraction machine was spinning faster and faster, and that the process of becoming “famous” was becoming more and more egalitarian.

Today the Warhol vision has reached its apogee. There is no one out there with a smart phone who can’t be at least briefly celebrated or momentarily trending or whatever — perhaps once or twice in a single day, or over a two- or three-day period, or perhaps repeatedly…anyone can strike it rich. But you have to sell it.

Is there anyone on social media (TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) who isn’t trying to present themselves as a major celebrity of some kind? Not movie-star-famous or even famous in their profession, perhaps, but certainly exceptional and living a fairly proud and wonderful life…domestic joy, endless intrigue, happy pets and occasional creative triumphs.

There is almost no one with a social media profile who is living a quiet, moderate, for the most part unexceptional, no-big-deal, steady-as-she-goes life — everyone out there is a hero, a star, beloved by family, a super achiever, a gleaming presence.

Am I the only branded person on social media whose basic message is “okay, I lead an interesting life in some respects, granted, but in other ways what I try to do each day is hard and often a struggle, sometimes (it seems) even in a Sisyphusian sense.

“Am I a celebrity in my mind? Do I radiate luminosity, glory and glamour? No and fuck no. Because I believe in modesty and noses to the grindstone and submitting to the task. HE is not about the wonderfulness of me but about what I, the adventure-seeking craftsman, try to bring to the column (consisting or five or six or more stories) each and every day.”

Thrillers about psychotic ex-boyfriends stalking and terrorizing ex-girlfriends are enjoying extra relevance today, largely due to the prevailing #MeToo persuasion that 85% of white cisgender males are essentially toxic and in many cases bad-news oppressors.

The crazy former boyfriend is sometimes portrayed in horror-flick terms, or certainly by Act Three — unhinged, murderous.

Andrew Semans‘ Resurrection seems to have gone this route with Tim Roth as the fiendish ex and Rebecca Hall (who always over-acts) as the former girlfriend. (Speaking of wackjobs from the past, does anyone remember The Gift, in which Hall costarred?)

The first noteworthy psycho-ex-boyfriend movie was Joseph Ruben‘s Sleeping With The Enemy (’91). Mpustachioed Patrick Bergin actually played Julia Roberts‘ lunatic ex-husband. Roberts had to shoot him three times to make sure he was dead.

If you ask me the most realistic and believable woman-protagonist drama that dealt with a must-to-avoid ex-husband was Molly Smith Metzler‘s Maid, the Netflix miniseries that premiered last October.

Crazy ex-girlfriend flicks are, I suspect, not currently permitted. If Adrien Lyne‘s Fatal Attraction (’87) had never been produced 35 years ago, you sure as shit could never make it today. The only way it could get past the woke commissars would be if Glenn Close‘s Alex was the somewhat sympathetic protagonist and Michael Douglas was the bad guy.