Day: June 11, 2023

…are not, I would say, “impressive” in their appearance. Not by any conventional standard.

The percentage of serious standouts by average go-getter criteria —- people who seemed unusually attractive or were exceptionally cool dressers or possessed of a certain X-factor special-tude — seemed miniscule. Most of them looked like Ukrainians who’d been living through bombings. Plain, drained, unexceptional, stressed, diminished, haggard…in some instances like the ragged end of nowhere.

Very few looked like Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, Darren Aronofsky, Lady Gaga, young James Cagney, young Walter Matthau, Harvey Keitel’s “Sport” in Taxi Driver, Lou Reed, Rosario Dawson, Jim Carroll, Ben Gazzara, Sidney Lumet, Luís Guzman, Alan King, young Joe Dallesandro, Hilly Kristal, Liev Schreiber, etc.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon eyeballing people on First, Second and Third Avenues, mostly south of 12th Street and north of 4th Street, and mostly I was muttering to myself “these people don’t look like finalists or dynamic achievers or upper-echelon types…the older ones look like stooped-over schlubs and the 20somethings seem older than their (apparent) years.”

And fairly horribly dressed for the most part — dreary shorts, nothing T-shirts, sandals and slip-ons…an absence of style, normcore drab. And relatively few looked like workout Nazis…bulky, scrawny, pudgy, drinker bods.

Okay, it was warm and humid and, Sunday being Sunday, nobody was trying to look their best but still…

Mick Jagger ‘78:”To live in this town, you must be tough tough tough tough tough tough tough.” Jeffrey Wells ‘23: “Lower East Siders look creased and worn to the nub nub nub nub nub nub nuhb.”

I’m comparing Lower East Siders to rank-and-file residents of West Hollywood, where I lived for nearly 40 years, and Venice, where I lived for three years, and Westfield, where I grew up, and Wilton, where I went to high school and where I currently live. I’m sorry but the people of these towns all looked (or currently look) better — healthier, less hassled, good genes, a certain spiritual buoyancy, etc.

Sorry but these were my impressions.

I was so full of despair this afternoon, I decided to really sink into the swamp by visiting Spicy Moon, the vegetarian Asian food cafe on East 6th between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

The owner, June Kwan, is the mother of EEAAO’s co-director and co-writer Daniel Kwan.

Few films have made me feel more sick in the soul…a deeply loathed Oscar-winner that truly heralded the apocalypse. If and when the waiter hands me a paper check, I’m going to write “good food but no fan of the film!”…something like that.

Honestly? I didn’t much care for the vegetable dumplings. They tasted like hot mashed-up Brussels sprouts and were filled with a kind of seaweed green gloop. Did I leave a nice tip anyway? Yes, but…

No, Justin Chang — Celine Song’s Past Lives is not “the most affecting love story in ages.”

Song tries to finesse this gently agreeable but wispy, faint-pulse love story into a kind of continent–traversing Brief Encounter, but she doesn’t quite have the chops or…whatever, the somersaulting, pole-vaulting panache.

A recently premiered film that actually deserves this effusive praise is Tran Unh Hung’s The Pot au Feu.

I’m trying to understand why Chang and several other elite critics are so over the moon over this thing. They’re just undercutting their cred by over-praising it…doing themselves no favors.