Day: June 26, 2024

…until tomorrow morning (Thursday, 9.27, 9 am) but I can at least disclose that it’s easily the best of the three, and I don’t mean the scariest — I mean the most arthousey, the least popcorned and bullshitty, the most inventively shot and staged, the most gently intimate and most adult-angled (no kids!).

And it costars perhaps the coolest cat in film history — the smartest, most well-behaved, most street-wise feline since that black cat stole the show in 1962’s A Walk on the Wild Side. (The Day One cat is mostly white, and his real name is Frodo.)

All hail director-cowriter Michael Sarnoski (Pig).

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And “booo!” to John Krasinski.

HE–posted on 2.10.21:

…are things likely to be in midtown Manhattan?Just asking.

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The other day (a little after dinner hour) I was slowly making my way around a Whole Foods or Fresh Farm parking lot, and I happened to drift into a one-way lane that was against the directional arrow. Speed-wise I was driving like an 88 year-old…nudge, nudge, putter, putter…and figured “okay, this won’t hurt anyone…it’s just a parking lot”.

But then along came a pink-faced, silver-haired fellow in a Volvo wagon with an overweight woman riding shotgun, and when he saw me inching my way forward in the wrong direction he went into Samuel Fuller Shock Corridor mode…an expression of major sputtering outrage. His window was halfway down and I could actually hear this 70something dingleberry going “haaayyyy!!!”

My reaction was to pretend I hadn’t seen or heard him. In actuality I was rolling my eyes and muttering to myself, “C’mon, man…it’s not like this is Planes, Trains and Automobiles and I’m John Candy in a devil costume, driving on the wrong side of the highway….’you’re going the wrong way! You’re going to kill somebody!’ And it’s not To Live and Die in L.A. with me speeding down a major highway against traffic and causing trucks to jacknife. It’s a parking lot, for God’s sake, and I’m going roughly 5 mph…get past it.”

The Volvo wagon outrage guy couldn’t do that. He had to turn up the outrage…”heaaayyyy!!!” I have news for guys like this — hay is for horses.

…I decided a few days ago that I had to buy a new 4K Bluray player (a Panasonic DP-UB420-K) when my two-year-old Sony 4K UHD player appeared to be dying.

I was wrong — the Sony remote was apparently dying, except it wasn’t because the “fresh” batteries I had put into the remote weren’t fresh. (My bad, my dopey.) The Sony was fine and all is well — it’s downstairs in the living room as we speak.

The point is that when the Panasonic DP-UB420-K arrived I knew it was probably shit because it didn’t weigh anything. I lifted the box and it weighed as much a set of cloth dinner napkins. I don’t buy or use any electronic device that doesn’t feel substantial from a weight perspective — it has to feel at least a little bit hefty. I don’t care if that makes me sound like an old fart — I won’t buy anything that doesn’t feel at least a bit heavyish.The Sony 4K feels great in this regard — it weighs as much as a small micro-wave unit for the kitchen.

I immediately went down to Whole Foods to return the Panasonic. Within minutes the refund notification ($265) was in my inbox. Take this featherweight 4K UHD Bluray player and shove it!

A Cialis heart attack is an intense burning sensation mixed with a feeling of serious nausea. I popped a Cialis pill the night before last, and yesterday I was struck by a Cialis chest-pain episode along with near-vomiting.

It happened on a patch of grass near a service station where my car was being worked on. I was talking to Sasha Stone when the sensation hit. I was barely able to breathe.

I’ve never had heart trouble, and every day I take Atorvastatin (cholestoral-lowering medication), Lisinopril (blood-pressure medication), Naproxen, Magnesium and Prevagen.

Harvard health excerpt: “ED pills are safe for healthy hearts, but all men with cardiovascular disease should take special precautions, and some cannot use them under any circumstances. The problem is their effect on arteries. All arteries, not just those in the penis, generate nitric oxide, so any artery can widen in response to Viagra, Levitra, or Cialis, causing blood pressure to drop temporarily by 5-8 mmHg, even in healthy men.

“Organic nitrates are drugs that widen arteries by increasing their supply of nitric oxide; that’s how they open the partially blocked coronary arteries in patients with angina. But because nitrates and ED pills both act on nitric oxide, the drugs don’t mix; healthy volunteers given Viagra followed an hour later by nitroglycerin see their blood pressures drop by 25–51 mm Hg, a potentially dangerous amount.

“All experts agree that men who are taking nitrates cannot use ED pills; this includes all preparations of nitroglycerin (short-acting, under-the-tongue tablets or sprays), long-acting nitrates (isosorbide dinitrate or Isordil, Sorbitrate, and others, and isosorbide mononitrate, Imdur, ISMO, and others), nitroglycerin patches and pastes, and amyl nitrite or amyl nitrate (so-called poppers, which some men use for sexual stimulation).”

…to the point that I’ve memorized most of them.

Maher: “When the French cooked Joan of Arc, she was still pink in the middle.”

…or filmmaker who’s made one movie (even a shitty one), you’ll almost certainly be invited into the Academy.

No disrespect for SAG negotiator Crabtree-Ireland or Past Lives helmer Celine Song, but woke ethnicity passes have degraded the AMPAS brand.

It used to mean something to be embraced by your Academy peers over some generally acknowledged degree of professional distinction or accomplishment. Now a significant percentage of Academy membership invites are DEI–driven.

Which means, obviously, that DEI cult considerations will matter more and more down the road. Which is why Joe and Jane Popcorn are no longer Oscar-loyal…they can see how cut off from reality the Oscar awards have become since the spread of woke cancer. Which is why I was so overjoyed by the Best Actress triumph of Poor Things star Emma Stone. Merit over equity! Hallelujah!