I won’t be seeing Osgood Perkins‘ Longlegs until early Thursday evening…best I can do.

The first Osgood Perkins was, as we all know, a highly regarded stage actor who died in 1937 at age 45. He was the father of the late, great Anthony Perkins, who was born in 1932 and died in ’92. The current Osgood is the son of Anthony and Berry Berenson — the latter was killed on 9.11.01 when her flight, American Airlines #11, slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

55 years ago Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey‘s Lonesome Cowboys goofed on the idea of Manhattan gay guys pretending be buckskin buckaroos. It was a silly, sloppy mess but amusing here and there. Or so I thought when I caught it in Los Angeles way back when.

To go by SXSW reviews Luke Gilford’s
National Anthem is a sincere love story about Charlie Plummer‘s Dylan, a straight young guy, falling in love with a trans rodeo performer named Sky, played by Eve Lindley.

I haven’t seen the newbie, and I’m not sure that I need to.

In a nutshell, Steve Schmnidt’s 7.8.24 essay — “We Are Running Out of Time” — says that we really, really don’t have much time left to stop a catastrophe.

Transcript: “Where is the mighty voice of the Democratic party asserting Americanism? It’s absent, it’s a whisper, it can’t be heard and this is the tragedy. Democracy is collapsing, not because it’s not good but it’s become weak and corrupt, and because fascism is rising in its place as it did almost 100 years ago.

“This is an extraordinary moment, a dangerous one. The leaders of the Democratic party have deluded themselves, lied to themselves, engaged in a game of pretend. They looked away, they wished away what was clearly in front of their eyes and here’s the deal — life does not permit such things, it always catches up.

“This moment requires leadership, patriotism, conviction…it requires on the part of Joe Biden an act of humility, an act of patriotism.

“We should appreciate what we’re witnessing. We don’t have much time left to stop it. In fact there are only 42 days until the Democrats [nominate Joe Biden and in so doing] give away the country to Project 2025 and to Donald Trump and [only a few weeks later] Donald Trump will wait somewhere in a hotel suite, perhaps at Mar a Lago, waiting as the seconds tick down until the networks are ready to make their projections. The difference is that in 2016 the world was surprised, [and] in 2020 we we all saw it happen and knew it was over for Trump. But this time Trump is winning and there won’t be a surprise when ABC News and NBC News and CBS News and CNN and Fox all say the words ‘Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States, is tonight the president-elect of the United States.’

“It will be a moment of immense tragedy…a tragedy that could be seen as far off as any that has ever been able to be seen for it and we will have watched it come down the tracks at us, from the moment the light was just a little pin prick peeking out in the dark until it ran over everything. What a shameful moment for the country, for the media, and for the Democratic party…what a terrible low moment.

“But [our path] can be redeemed. There must be another road taken and what that road rejects is self-interest…what that road rejects is power for the sake of power…what it embraces is duty and honor and sacrifice. It is the American Road and down that road awaits a brilliant legacy for the 46th president of the United States, and on the road not taken something terrible awaits…not just defeat but an eradication of everything that Joe Biden has done. Because the only memory that will remain, the only indentation in the sand that will persist is a legacy of losing to Trump.”

Honest HE rewrite under the eyes of a watchful God: “I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally: Because my obvious cognitive decline has become the central focus of the ongoing 2024 Presidential campaign (even though Donald Trump‘s authoritarian and fascistic views about presidential power, recently fortified by the Supreme Court, are far more threatening in a general sense), I am all but certain to lose both the popular and electoral vote counts on 11.5.24.

“In short, I am finished. My goose is cooked. But I am determined to run nonetheless because my life-of-Joe-Biden saga has always been about persistence, tenacity and never giving up.

“Will tens of millions of Americans suffer and howl and stamp their feet when Trump is re-elected? Will American democracy as we’ve known it take a spear wound or two and perhaps worse? Almost certainly. But as I said to George Stephanopoulos the other night, what matters in the end is how I feel and whether I’ve fought my best fight.

“’As long as I gave it my all,’ I said to George, ‘and did the best job I know I can do — that’s what this is about.’

“Translation: If the United States of America has to go down with me, so be it.

“So as your president and as a staunch fellow Democrat, don’t fret about Trump’s coming victory. What matters the most is how I, Joe Biden, feel about myself, and how Dr. Jill Biden feels about me and how my eternally disreputable, formerly addicted son feels about me, and how obstinate and mule-headed I’m willing to be. And as your president, trust me, I am more of a mule than Francis! (Go ahead — ask Donald O’Connor. No, wait, he died 20 years ago.)

“My Irish feet, trust me, are set in cement, and Biden cement doesn’t crack.”

After I began to think and write about Charlotte Wells’ listless Aftersun, which I saw in Cannes in ‘22 and will never see again, I discovered I was having difficulty remembering the name of Paul Mescal, who played the weepy dad.

It wasn’t just that I felt an instant animal dislike for this 20something Irish actor, but something about his last name just wouldn’t stay in my brain. It didn’t sound Irish, for one thing. Too mushy. So I decided upon a word association technique. I thought of him as a form of human mescaline (i.e., disorienting) and it worked. I simply decided that this watery-eyed sedative of an actor was the Carlos Castaneda mescalito guy, even though there was nothing the least bit trippy about him.

Problem solved.