For what it’s worth, HE believes that Jeremy Strong’s haunting performance as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice is 2024’s most impressive performance in the Best Supporting Actor realm, and obviously deserving of rank-and-file Academy acclaim.

I was driving along and thinking about Timothee Chalamet‘s Bob Dylan in James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown, and right on cue my random-ass iTunes library started playing “She Belongs To Me.” And I began singing along and it felt really great, but when it came to the third stanza a certain memory kicked in.

The lyrics go as follows: “She never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall / She never stumbles, she got no place to fall / She’s nobody’s child, the law can’t touch her at all.”

All my life I’ve been of the firm opinion that the last line should read as follows: “She’s nobody’s child, ma can’t touch her at all.”

We all know what and who “Ma” is. She’s the enforcer, the sheriff, the take-no-shit Ma Barker…a ramrod authority figure from way back…the “Egyptian ring” woman’s mother, a voice of bluster, a proverbial butch boss, Cody Jarret’s doting and devotional “ma!”, etc.

The law may wag its finger and say this or that, but “ma” is the matronly dictator whom people fear the most. (I certainly feared my own whip-cracking mom, Nancy.) And yet “ma” can’t touch this woman at all. Talk about formidable.

A few days ago I was sitting in my usual cubicle inside Wilton’s public library, and there was an overweight bearded guy sitting one cubicle away, and he was making King Kong or Mighty Joe Young “urp” sounds…the kind of belchy noises that older people with bad plumbing sometimes make.

I could see his black curly hair above my cubicle wall, and I was staring a hole in the back of his mongrel head. I was shaking my own head and wondering how people get this way….how they manage to sacrifice their dignity and composure. The noises were so bad that they interfered with my concentration. It’s three or four days later and they’re still interfering.

…about the recent announcement (which Jordan Ruimy was on top of early) that Martin Scorsese‘s Frank Sinatra project has once again been knocked off the rails…thank you, Jesus!