Month: November 2025

Poor Lindsey Halligan, 36, is suffering a career setback over mishandling the government’s vindictive (i.e., revenge-driven) prosecution of former FBI chief James Comey. Two months ago President Trump appointed Halligan as interim United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, despite her lack of experience. Now she’s dropped the procedural ball, and the Commey case may be thrown out as a result.**

But if you know anything about rightwingers in general or Trump in particular, you know they all tend to hire model-pretty women who exude a certain Charlie’s Angels vibe. It goes with the territory. This is not suggest or imply that the dishy hires can’t necessarily handle the job on its own terms, but their attractiveness is certainly a key factor as far as their career ascensions are concerned.

For what it’s worth, 30 years ago I tried to help a pretty, dark-haired 20something woman — a good egg in my book — get a job interview with producer Don Simpson. I began by telling Simpson that she was sharp and well-educated with a disciplined social manner.

Then I made the mistake of telling him she was good-looking. “In my experience that’s a negative,” Simpson replied. “Pretty women are accustomed to being flattered and catered to in certain ways. They’ve been told all their lives that the world will often defer to them or bend the rules to some extent, and so they’re not as hard-working and soldier-like as women who are are equally qualified but less attractive.”

I rarely spoke with Simpson about women or sex or anything in that realm; I loved talking to him because he was so shrewd and whip-smart about all the Hollywood players — who they were deep down, what their basic personalities and mindsets were, etc. I’ve mentioned the prejudice he had about interviewing attractive women for office or production jobs to point out that at least Simpson, who’s been dead for almost 30 years now, was no Brett Kavanaugh.

A 9.20 Guardian article reports that Yale Law School professor Amy Chua, who has strongly endorsed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, privately told a group of law students last year that it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all “looked like models.”

The story reports that Chau has suggested to female students who wanted to work for Kavanaugh that they should “dress to exude a ‘model-like’ femininity.”

The article adds that Chau’s law-professor husband, Jed Rubenfeld, “told a prospective clerk that Kavanaugh liked a certain ‘look'” — a presumed allusion to a fashionably-dressed, hot-to-trot “fuck me” appearance.

Which indicates that the adult, judicially-focused Kavanaugh was looking for a certain atmosphere of tumescent arousal in his law office, and that right now he’s probably a middle-aged version of the 17-year-old horndog who tried to drunkenly have his way with Christine Blasey Ford back in the early ’80s.

Then again working with hotties is a standard Republican thing. We’re all aware that powerful right-wing guys tend to hire foxes — sexy, slender, alluring — and in many cases icy Nordic blondes, which is the template for pretty much every female Fox News employee.

Consider a 2.20.17 Guardian piece by Hadley Freeman called “Why Do All The Women on Fox News Look and Dress Alike? Republicans Prefer Blondes.”

Freeman notes that right-wing women (i.e., Kellyanne Conway, Scottie Nell Hughes, Tomi Lahren, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Ivanka Trump) all present “a uniform vision of girlishly long bottle-blond hair. [And they] all dress exactly the same, which is to say, mainstream feminine — dresses, not trousers; heels, not flats; no interesting cuts, just body-skimming, cleavage-hinting, not-scaring-the-horses tedium. These are the kind of women who take pride in saying things like ‘I’m not into fashion — I like style’, and by ‘style’ they mean ‘clothes that men like me to wear.'”

So yes, Kavanaugh is apparently a dog, but he isn’t an outlier — he’s just looking for the same kind of tingly stimulation from his female law clerks that Roger Ailes wanted from female Fox News staffers.

** In November, a federal judge heard Comey and James’s challenges to the legality of Halligan’s appointment. Days later, a magistrate judge, William E. Fitzpatrick, found that Halligan may have committed misconduct by falsely stating that the Fifth Amendment precluded Comey from avoiding to testify at his trial. Fitzpatrick added that Halligan had told jurors that the Department of Justice had additional evidence that would be revealed at trial and noted the discrepancy between the indictment presented and the indictment approved by the grand jury. Halligan later told judge Michael S. Nachmanoff that the foreperson in the grand jury proceedings for the Comey case had approved a second version of the indictment that had not been seen by the grand jury.

The headline for Chang’s review in the New Yorker print edition (dated 12.1.25) is “To Die, To Weep”, which sounds fitting if lacking in terms of the usual urban edge and smart-assery. And yet, oddly, the online edition’s headline defaults to the commonly used “grief porn” dismissal.

During a summer day-trip to Washington, D.C., my young sister Laura and I experienced a short period of bathroom panic as we drove around with our mother, Nancy, at the wheel. Nancy said it was partly because of all the large fountains…all that gushing water was weakening our resolve.

It follows that millions of Los Angelenos felt the same psychological pressure yesterday due to the city coping with constant rainfall.

HE to Cozzalio: One “potty” break during the screening of Nouvelle Vague, and then another during a subsequent showing of Breathless?

So no attending to business BETWEEN these films, as some of us might do. Instead you sit down and watch both films and then in the middle of each one you go “whoops!…sorry, heh-heh, excuse me!” Then you get up and miss maybe three or four minutes of each film.

What is that? This is not serious movie-watching. Godard would have sneered at this. Ask anyone. Ask Scorsese or DeNiro.

So you go through your daily life submitting to bathroom breaks…what, six or seven times each waking day, not counting waking up at 2 or 3 am (or 3 or 4 am) to take a whiz or a dump?

Forgive me for making a coarse assumption, but “potty break” sounds to me like sit-down action. It’s basically a child’s term like “I went poopie” (I have a four-year-old granddaughter so don’t tell me) or, if you’re standing up, “I went pee-pee” or “wee-wee”.

I would have gone for more oblique terminology like “I used the facilities” or “I hit the head” or “I heeded the call of nature”, all of which allude to or allow for the possibility of stand-up action.

I shudder at the idea of hitting a bathroom this many times per day. It sounds like a form of tyranny.

Speaking of “sit-down action”, I posted a related piece 14 years ago.

[Posted on 9.19.11] Last night Jett, his roommate Sonya and I caught a 7:50 pm screening of Drive at Brooklyn’s UA Court Street Stadium plex. My second viewing. Great film.

I hit the smallish bathroom after it ended. Two urinals and a toilet stall with six or seven guys lined up. I should have bailed right then and there, but I was looking for a little sit-down action and wasn’t sure of my alternate options.

A guy left the stall and a 30something black dude took ownership and, like, didn’t come out. Three, four minutes. Five minutes. Six. Could he be undergoing self-administered surgery? Filling out a mortgage application?

Then, still on the pot, he began talking to his girlfriend on his cell, flirting with her, settling in. “How ya doin’? Movie’s over…yeah. You wanna eat somethin’?,” etc.

If I had any balls I would have knocked on the stall door and, just like Tom Cruise in Collateral, said, “Yo, homey!” I didn’t, of course. I just stood and waited like a sap, listening to this jerkoff go on and on. The idea of showing consideration to others simply hadn’t occurred to him.

Around the seven- or eight-minute mark I gave up and went outside and used the facilities at a nearby Barnes and Noble.

It’s simply a matter of culture and manners. Let’s face it — some people are low-lifes.

I’ll be attending an invitational screening of George Clooney‘s The Ides of March at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday. If I happen to hit the bathroom after it ends I can absolutely guarantee that nobody will sit in a toilet stall for several minutes, ignoring the fact that several others are waiting, while chit-chatting with a girl. I’ll put $100 on this right now. I’ll bet anything.

Posted by Sasha Stone on 11.11.25 (one day before my birthday): “You’ve heard people say Hamnet ‘wrecked’ them, that they couldn’t focus on anything else after seeing it. This will be true for many people, but not all, certainly not those who feel locked out by the intense emotion on-screen.

“But when you see the film for yourself you’ll see what I saw. Some of you. You’ll see how it was all the path to getting there, to where we understand the need for art. It is just a look between the two characters that says, ‘This is all I have because I couldn’t do anything else.’

“And in that moment, at least for me, I was not able to breathe. The choking sobs were too much for me, and I was overcome. That is catharsis, but it is also the way out of misery, the way out of grief, the way out of madness. We need art like we need oxygen. This movie shows us why. Zhao can see and she has the courage to say this, and she does so with minimalist discipline and an artist’s eye.

“Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing. Truer words were never said. Art, however, signifies everything. Hamnet is a masterpiece, and if not the best film of the year, one of the best I’ve ever seen. And suddenly, at least to me, the Oscar race just got competitive.”

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Film critic colleague: “You can get an AARP membership at age 50. Once upon a time you could get great rental car discounts with it. Now not so much. Also — the AARP magazine is the biggest print rag in the country. Plus it and the website pay phenomenally well. They pay $250 for 125 words. Do the math. They used to cough up a grand just to submit a list for their end-of-year roundup.”

HE to colleague: “‘Do the math’? I got $2.00 per word from Entertainment Weekly in the early to mid ‘90s.”

Colleague: “So did I except nobody earns that now. Okay, maybe a New Yorker writer.”

HE to colleague: “$2.00 per word in ’92 works out to $4.62 per word in the 2025 economy. What’s the per-word norm these days?”

Colleague: “Online, one is lucky to get 50 cents per word. In some cases it’s ten cents.”

Alternate headline: “Oldsters, AARP and Cunnilingus, Part 2.”

I’m happy to learn that Maria Muldaur is alive and well and still kicking and shimmering at 83. The way she sings “rohMAAHNNCE” in “Midnight at the Oasis“, a sex song if there ever was one, makes you wonder if the former Maria D’Amato might be some kind of earthy, twangy hick from Texas or Oklahoma or Arkansas. But she was born in Greenwich Village and attended Hunter College High School on the Upper East Side.

Maria married fellow Jim Kweskin Jug Band performer Geoff Muldaur in 1964. The same year a daughter, Jenni Muldaur, came along. Geoff and Maria’s marriage lasted until ’72.

True Geoff Muldaur story: I saw him perform with his band at the Westport Player’s Tavern in ’76 or ’77. The opening song was “Sloppy Drunk“, and Muldaur, playing acoustic guitar, was pissed at the audience for chatting and yapping so loudly he and his fellows could barely be heard.

Just before or just after the first song Muldaur leaned into the mike and said in a steady, mellow tone of voice, “I really hate you people…I do, I really do.” He was basically scolding them for refusing to look past themselves by showing a little respect and humility. I loved Muldaur for saying this because the folks in the tavern were acting like obnoxious twats…he was right. I clapped and went “go, Geoff!” and “”whoo-hoo!”

…but only five Oscar nomination slots in this category. So who will emerge as the weak sister…the odd man out at the end of the day…which performance will be cut loose from the pack?

The six Supporting Actor contenders are Jay Kelly‘s Adam Sandler, One Battle After Another‘s Sean Penn, Sentimental Value‘s Stellan Skarsgard, One Battle After Another‘s Benicio del Toro, Hamnet‘s Paul Mescal and Frankenstein‘s Jacob Elordi.

Obviously one of the performances that will be shucked will be either del Toro’s or Penn’s. If they both get nominated they’ll probably cancel each other out so one has to go. It’s kind of absurd that Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw seems to have the most heat in this category, at least as far as the shameless Gold Derby whores are concerned. Except Penn’s performance has no depth or shading — he’s playing a robotic, stiff-necked marionette in starched military fatigues. I say cut him loose and hold on to Benicio.

HE’s preferences for the five slots are in this order: (1) Skarsgard in Sentimental Value (likely to win as a kind of consolation prize as the empty Coke bottles have seemingly decided en masse that Value can’t win Best Picture because it’s Norweigan…totally moronic thinking); (2) Mescal in Hamnet (the first screen performance that he’s given that I really and truly respect…it almost made me forget his licking-up-the-cum-droplets scene); (3) Sandler in Jay Kelly (his saddest and most soulfully resigned performance); (4) Benicio del Toro‘s Sensei in One Battle…(the only French 75 leftist I really liked in that film); and (5) Elordi in Frankenstein…2025’s biggest breakthrough performance.

Criterion publicist to Scott Mantz: “Before we set up your Zoom interview with Eyes Wide Shut dp Larry Smith, we need you to give us your solemn oath…”

Mantz to Criterion: “Sure, whadaya need?”

Criterion to Mantz: “We want your promise that you’ll never mention the word ‘teal’ during your chat.”

Mantz to Criterion: “Teal? Me?”

Criterion to Mantz: “We’re serious, Scott.”

Mantz to Criterion: “Worry not! I’m your boy. I don’t think I even know what teal means.”

Remember that scene in Broadcast News when Albert Brooks‘ Aaron explains that William Hurt‘s Tom, while being “a very nice guy”, is the devil? We have a similar situation here. Mantz obviously doesn’t have hooves and horns and a long spiky tail, but…

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HE to Mantz on Wednesday afternoon, 11.19: “I’m watching your 30-minute chat with Larry Smith, and you don’t even mention the obvious teal-tinting on Criterion’s EWS 4K Bluray. Unless I wasn’t paying attention, you don’t even MENTION it!!  Nobody has ever had any problems with the brightness levels, as Larry mentions. It’s the fucking TEAL poisoning!”

[Note: Yesterday I shared my negative reactions with Mantz and, just to be sure, asked if he mentioned the word teal and/or asked Larry to comment about teal-ing. Scott ghosted me, of course. HE to Mantz: “I’m going to reasonably interpret your silence as confirmation that you never uttered the word.”]

“Larry says ‘the theatrical blues were the theatrical blues…we didn’t mess around with any of the main [color] structure’….bunk! That’s precisely what Larry and his ignoble Criterion cohorts have done. The vivid blue iron gates in that envelope-handover scene have been changed to somber subdued teal.

Robert Harris’s HTF review: “Are the blues deep rich blues? No. They do lean toward a teal.”

“Early on Larry says the film wasn’t color-timed or fine-tuned before it was released because of Kubrick’s untimely passing. Oh, yeah?  I spoke to EWS producer Jan Harlan a few months (or was it weeks?) after EWS was released, and he was very deeply involved. He really cared.

“But Larry is telling us…what, that Harlan didn’t try to finesse the color as best he could before the film was released in ‘99??  Nobody stepped into the color-correcting breach after Kubrick passed on March 7, 1999?  (EWS was released four months later — 7.13.99.) I don’t buy that. Nobody does.”

Larry also says that EWS “was too grainy,” a condition that he presumably remedied. And yet in his Home Theatre Forum review of the 4K Criterion disc, Harris writes “grain haters need not reply.”

Since when is Ryan Coogler’s Sinners a movie for old-timers, much less a highly recommended one?

It’s a drawling, drooling, blues-savoring, bloody-faced cunnilingus vampire exploitation film aimed at POCs and under-40 wokesters with TikTok accounts.

Are AARP execs aware that old farts of both sexes aren’t exactly into ravenous oral sex, and that the mere mention of this arcane sexual practice makes them uncomfortable?

And why haven’t you recommended Sentimental Value? Have you even seen it?

What else are you recommending to the walker-and-wheelchair set? Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom?

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