I can’t recall the last time I dialed for directory assistance, but it had to be sometime in the late ’90s or early aughts, right? Being the lazy type, I hated leafing through the white and yellow pages. It’s funny how you forget this stuff, but I can’t seem to recall when I stopped dialing 411 or 555-1212 for phone numbers.

Normal sensible thoughts and logical conclusions apparently didn’t factor into the recent deaths of poor Gene Hackman, 95, and his 63 year-old wife, Betsy Arakawa.

This, at least, is what came to mind when I read breaking news about what caused the couple’s deaths.

Santa Fe officials have stated that Arakawa died of Hantavirus, a rare flu-like disease, on or about February 11th.

Hackman, they said, lived with his dead wife’s body for a full week before succumbing to complications from heart problems and Alzheimer’s disease.

Arakawa, repeating, died of Hantavirus on or about February 11th.

Does Hantavirus infection cause death immediately? No, but you can’t be casual or cavalier when it gets into your system. Hantavirus initially causes flu-like symptoms (fever, fatigue, muscle aches) but can lead to difficulty breathing and, if untreated, respiratory failure and shock.

Why didn’t Arakawa contact her primary-care physician or paramedics to explore what might be happening to her? No explanation.

Arakawa expired on the bathroom floor on Tuesday, February 11th.

“She died of the virus likely that day, New Mexico Chief Medical Examiner Heather Jarrell said at a highly anticipated press conference on Friday afternoon,” it says here.

What did Hackman do when she passed? Nothing, according to authorities. He sat or slept or shuffled around the house for roughly a week after his wife stopped breathing. No calls to their doctor or to cops or paramedics, no calls to his neighbors…the poor guy just hung out and did nothing.

He eventually passed from “hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and from Alzheimer’s,” Jarrell said.

In other words, when he realized Betsy was gone Hackman apparently gave up. He chose not to summon help. He threw in the towel. A sad ending, to say the least.

“…we need to not have a woke democracy…sorry but these are tough times.”

HE believes in democracy and that’s final, even if it means that a wokester fanatic is elected President. That said, the chances of a wokester fanatic winning the 2028 Democratic nomination for President are 100% nil. Wokeys have been totally discredited, and have fled into the forest.

HE is looking for a list of characters who didn’t whine or fold or collapse when faced with death…characters who essentially said “fuck you, dickhead,” knowing full well what the response would be.

Matt Friend is only 26. He’s never done a devastating Chris Walken (or at least not to my knowledge), but nobody does a better Barack Obama.

Late yesterday afternoon I tapped out a few Mickey 17 reactions from my Norwalk AMC theatre seat. I was the only one there so no concerns about iPhone glare.

(a) I’m 40 minutes into Bong Joon-ho’s long-delayed, politically fraught follow-up to the over-rated Parasite, and it’s obviously ass…dystopian primitivism, visually dreary, crudely plotted, sadistic characters, physically gross and slimy. Vomiting, brutality, chaos, writhing agony, bodies dropped into molten lava…and it’s a stab at black comedy, of course. The broad, emphatic and profoundly unfunny kind.

(b) I’m the only humanoid in the theatre so I can write all I want. This poor little futuristic allegory, shot entirely on sound stages, is an instant commercial tank. Zero want-to-see. I am the late Earl Holliman back in ‘59…”where is everybody?”

(c) “No multiples! No more re-prints!”

(d) Mickey 17’s lighting is grayish, murky, shadowy, draining. You can make out various visual details but the film is so dark you’re left wondering “why am I even watching this?”

(e) AMC concessions should offer packets of heroin as special coping additives. Sold only to customers with ID verifying that they’re over 45 years of age.

(f) Bong sure loves his creepers! Creepers are fat, insect-like life forms, cousins of Dune sand worms (thousands!), mixed in with a few large, woolly mammoth creepers, but mostly the size of bloated armadillos…despised by Mark Ruffalo’s Trump-like, dental-veneer-wearing leader but in fact benign and Ewok-like in a certain sense, and representing harm to no one.

(g) Creepers, of course, symbolize immigrants or social lessers. This is a movie offering explicit social instruction. Trumpian evil must be eradicated! Wokeys leading a revolution on a Hoth-like snow planet!

(h) RPatz is no longer the young, slender, dishy guy…he’s still thin but now on the brink of middle-age…time cuts no one a break.

(i) The menage a trois scene between Naomi Ackie and the two Pattinsons (the amiable, kind-hearted Mickey 17 and the hostile-aggressive Mickey 18) is the most interesting interlude so far. Superfluous but interesting.

(j) I’m almost at the one-hour mark. Actually the 75-minute mark. A full hour to go. I really do need to snort a little smack. Oh, you have some? Thank you…thanks so much.

(k) Poor Toni Collette….over-acting as Ruffalo’s icy-phony wife…pocketing a paycheck but doing her career no favors.

(l) Ruffalo: “You’d better be on your toes. One false move and you’re man-burger.”

(m) At least Mickey 17 ends happily. The diverse, under-40, white coat or military fatigue-wearing Bong wokeys make things right.