Sometimes the dopiest attempts at humor are not only funny but lasting.

Back in ’75 three of us — myself, my cousin Chrie and a quietly sassy Manhattan dude named Carl Houk — were driving north on Route 7 (Norwalk to Wilton).

We passed a hot-dog stand I’d known for years. It had a hand-painted sign (red on black) mounted on the roof, and had always said the same generic thing — ARTS Roessler Hot Dogs**. Except this time Houk pointed out a pretty good job of vandalizing the sign, the artist having used the right shade of red paint and all…

I couldn’t stop chuckling. Something about the owner knowing he had to re-paint the sign, but not having found the time with customers arriving each day and thinking to themseles “hmmm, yeah… FARTS.” I’d think of the sign an hour or two later and the giggles would start again. I kind of hate people who laugh excessively, but I was certainly no one to talk that day.

Here we are a half-century later and I’m still having fun with it.

Around a year after the 1975 sighting Carl Houk killed himself inside his East Village apartment. Gas oven.

** There was never an apostrophe between the T and the S.

Earlier today the progressiely-around-the-bend Spirit Awards gave Sean Baker‘s Anora their top three trophies — Best Feature, Best Director (Baker) and Best Lead Performance (Mikey Madison).

There’s a longtime HE commenter (his real-life initials are L.B.) who’s been saying all along that as much as he personally likes Anora, it won’t win many big awards as it’s too sexual and too profane, as least as far as the old farts are concerned. I think he owes the HE community an explanation about how he came to this conclusion. No big deal — just explain what told you this.

George Armitage is gone at the age of 83? Sorry to hear….sorry and sad, but at least my evening’s activity is decided upon. Grosse Point Blank (’97) and the great Miami Blues (’90).

The early ’90s to early aughts were Armitage’s directing heyday, thanks to the critical huzzahs and decent box-office earnings generated by Blues and Blank.

Armitage began as an exploitation-level director in the ’70s. Alas, the reception to Vigilante Force (’76), a crude and schlocky drive-in flick that he wrote and directed and which subsequently tanked, earned poor George a 14-year stretch in movie jail. Then, as noted, he was out and fancy free during the ’90s.

But then Armitage wrote and directed The Big Bounce (’04), which did so poorly — $50 million to shoot, $6.8 million domestic box-office — that he was sent back to jail, and that time they threw away the key.

Vigilante Force “was the creation of writer and director George Armitage, who saw his career temporarily derailed when Vigilante Force flopped. It would take till 1990’s Miami Blues and then 1997’s Grosse Point Blank for him to get back on track, and by then it was too late for him to establish himself as anything but a cult curio with film buffs wondering what he might have achieved with more opportunities.” — from a review in the UK-based The Spinning Image.

We are clearly living right now under something fairly close to a post-democratic reactionary dictatorship.

I have no problem with Trump going after woke derangement, DEI and trans gender insanity, but the DOGE stuff is scary and some of the new terms seem outrageous, like Trump’s calling Zelensky a dictator, lying about his having started the Ukraine war and insisting upon mineral rights as a basis for a U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Dissenters and anti-Trumpers are out there, obviously, but we’re in the thick of a semblance of fascist rule all the same. No strong opposition…everyone falling into line. Heads are spinning. Many Democrats still appear to be woozy, in shock. Not a developing situation, but one that’s happening right now and right here.

Earlier today Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman openly wondered if a scary, authoritarian, non-democratic government could actually happen here:

“I’ve rarely experienced such a bone-chilling reaction as the one I had watching Walter Salles‘ I’m Still Here. The movie itself, especially the first hour, is powerful. But that’s not what it was; I’ve seen plenty of powerful political films.

“What felt new to me — and intensely disquieting — was taking in a saga of repression like this one and wondering if it now had the potential to happen in America. I felt as if it was a question I’d never had to ask myself before.

“It’s not as if there hasn’t been staggering oppression within the confines of the United States. When you watch a movie drama about racism, from To Kill a Mockingbird to Malcolm X to Fruitvale Station, you’re seeing the scalding reality of systemized injustice.

“But I’m talking about something different: the specter of dictatorship.

“In 249 years, that has never defined America. And as we all struggle to wrap our heads around the question of what the second Trump term will mean, how far it will go, how much the rule of law is threatened, and how much freedom will be lost — the question of whether, in fact, it can happen here — it’s clear to me now more than ever that the movies have been teaching us about all this for decades.

We are not in the world of Costa-Gavras‘s Missing (’82), which I regard as the most chilling drama about a South Anerican fascist dictatorship and the secret murdering of leftist dissenters. American progressives are not being “disappeared,” of course, but this kind of oppression is closer than some of us might realize.

Remember that ridiculous, two-year-old story about Brendan Fraser boycotting the 2023 Golden Globe telecast because Phillip Berk, the HFPA’s former president, had not only gently groped Fraser’s ass but may have even stuck his finger between the cheeks and attempted God knows what…remember what a wuss Fraser seemed to be after this story broke?…”I’ve been molested and it kinda made me cry” or words to that effect…what a fucking little baby.

When I was 15 or 16 I was groped on at least two separate occasions by a couple of middle-aged queers on 42nd Street. I would be walking east towards Times Square and the creepies would “accidentally” bump into me and furtively pat my schlong. You think I whined or cried about this? You think I went to the cops and reported sexual assault? No — I was Lee fucking Marvin. I just pushed on and ignored it.

Yesterday it was reported that Apprentice director Ali Abbasi had left CAA and Management 360 over his having patted or slapped the ass of an actor whom he knew and had hung out with previously. The ass-patting happened at a CAA Golden Globes after-party.

“I want to address the recent articles about me directly and openly,” Abbasi wrote on X. “I fully understand that my action made someone uncomfortable, regardless of my intent, and for that, I am truly sorry.”

“I had spent time with the person concerned on multiple occasions and had reason to think we had a friendly relationship. When I saw him at the Golden Globes party, I was excited to reconnect. I made an over-familiar gesture — a slap on the rear — which I intended as playful and not in any sexual way whatsoever. I quickly realized I had misjudged the situation. I apologized to him on the spot, and the following day I made sure my apology was reiterated through my representatives.”

Offended actor to Abassi after the Golden Globes ass-slapping: “My God, Ali…what did you just do?”

Abassi to offended actor: “Did I do something….? Jesus, calm down, man.”

Offended actor to Abassi: “‘Calm down’? Are you kidding? You’ve just destroyed your career and I’m going to be your executioner! Because you fucking patted my ass just like those gay guys patted Jeffrey Wells‘ package on 42nd Street and like Phillip Berk patted Brendan Fraser‘s ass and probably like Kevin Spacey patted Guy Pearce‘s ass on the set of L.A. Confidential, and nobody gets away with that shit! You’re a dead man!”

Abassi to offended actor: “It was a reckless, half-assed gesture of affection…God! Sorry to rile you but…wow. Did I poke my finger into your anus? No. Did I grab your cock? No. Did I cup one of your ass cheeks in my hand? No. But now I have to die? What kind of a world are we living in? What kind of a man are you?”

Offended actor to Abassi: “Good God, I’m weeping over this….can’t you see the tears streaming down my cheeks? I’m crying because emotionally I’m basically a three-year-old girl. Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo….you slapped my little baby bottom! Waaahhhhh! And you’re going to pay! Hell hath no fury like an actor whose ass has been patted by a noteworthy director. I will get you, Abassi! By the time this is over you’ll be lucky if you wind up wearing the uniform of a bloody toilet attendant.”

Variety‘s Jack Dunn: “Abbasi will still be in attendance at Saturday’s Indie Spirit Awards despite the controversy.”

If I could attend the Spirits I’d go right up to the Apprentice table and bend over next to Abassi and ask for a nice gropey ass-massage. Give it to me, Ali…take me to ass-massage heaven. And then I’d go over to the actor who complained and say, “Did you see that, ya little punk? I’ve half a mind to do the same to you, fuckhead. You really need to be bitch-slapped.”

The “Free the Menendez Brothers” wokeys believed that that alleged sexual abuse of Erik Menendez by his murdered father Jose Menendez…the wokeys and their chief advocates, former Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon along with Kim Kardashian and Monsters producer Ryan Murphy, should have changed the game.

The wokeys were basically saying the brothers probably wouldn’t have killed Jose and and their mother Kitty if Jose hadn’t severely traumatized Eric by fucking him in the ass a few times. So what the hell…let bygones be bygones and allow the boys to (heh-heh) slide, so to speak.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up there”, current DA Nathan Hochman said on Thursday, 2.21. “Jose may or may not have fucked Eric in the ass,” Hochman more or less said, “but Eric and his brother Lyle still shotgunned their parents to death in 1989, plus they’re proven liars and hucksters so fuck the wokey rationale — these guys aren’t going anywhere…they’re going to stew in jail for decades to come, and the wokeys who wanted the brothers to be paroled are fucking ass-wack sickos.”

The wokeys, in short, basically believed that if you’ve been sexually abused you’re almost not guilty of murdering your abuser[s]. Or, you know, that your guilt has been mitigated by the trauma of being ass-fucked. They believed that Erik and Lyle having done 25 or 30 years in jail…well, that was enough.