The dreaded red wave simply didn’t materialize.

In race after race and to everyone’s surprise (including Bill Maher‘s), Democratic candidates held on, eeked out victories and even triumphed in some instances.

John Fetterman beat the Trump–supported Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, and Georgia’s Raphael Warnock will probably wind up defeating Herschel “nutcase” Walker in a 12.6 runoff. It appeared this morning that Colorado Rep. Lauren “wackazoid” Boebert may lose her race. Also this morning Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari “wackjob” Lake, a Trump fave and a Big Lie proponent, appears headed for defeat.

The red wave narrative turned out to be bullshit, bullshit…a crock of steaming rightwing go-along media-concocted horseshit.

Republicans will probably have a slight House Majority at the end of the day, yes, but the bottom line is that in many states and territories voters rejected many MAGA crazies, and while it may take until early December to determine which side will control the Senate, it’s feasible that Dems might hold on to their thin majority.

I suspected that Ohio’s Trump-aligned U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance would prevail against Democratic candidate Tim Ryan, so I wasn’t floored when this happened. But so many wowser, fascinating things happened, and very few of them encouraging to the MAGA lions.

There’s no way you can’t call Donald Trump a diminished figure this morning.

Rise up en masse like the gladiators in Capua, kill the Roman guards, strike terror in the hearts of your captors…and if they try to make you cower and shudder like you’ve been doing since ‘17 or thereabouts, tell them “sorry, buster but the ball game’s over…the sensibles are taking control and the woke wackos are on the run.”

Whenever someone passes at too young an age or due to some tragic mishap or a stroke of bad luck, someone always says that the recently departed “loved life.” Which I would call a nice but imprecise sentiment. It’s so vague it’s almost meaningless.

HE’s definition of a lover of life would be the Kinks guy who loves living adjacent to Waterloo Station.

I’m actually a lover of the splendor and symphony of all great European train stations. Ditto the great cities and towns — Paris, Rome, Munich, Hanoi, Hoi An, Milan, Prague, Venice, Arcos de la Frontera, Caye Caulker, portions of Key West, the Berkshires, Monument Valley, Lauterbrunnen — and the tens of thousands of beautiful pastoral vistas all over. Ditto my cats, my granddaughter Sutton and her parents Jett and Cait and Sutton’s Uncle Dylan, black Volvo wagons, BMW rumblehogs, heavy leather jackets, Indian or Italian dishes, vinyl record albums, cookies & cream gelato, Italian suede lace-ups, etc.

The only negative that comes to mind amidst all this joy and nurture and rapture, the only aspect of life on planet earth that I consistently have problems with and which generally darkens my worldview are…well, people. Not everyone, of course. The majority are fine. I can just can’t with the three-toed sloths.

A friend wrote an hour ago about a movie theatre that decided against going dark during a showing of Till.

Friendo to HE: “This is just one more reason I watch films at home. Me alone at Till at Regal Cinema Hampton Bays on Long Island.”

HE to friendo: “Uhm, what about that folksy, time-honored tradition of strolling into the lobby and asking theatre staffers to turn the lights out during a showing?”

Jason P. Frank and Rebecca Alter’s “49 True Facts About Lydia Tar” is brilliant. But in a vaguely cruel way. Okay, not cruel but certainly subversive. And yet it fits right into the film. Because it’s basically saying, humorously, that Lydia Tar’s banishment and ruination wasn’t such a bad idea.

In other words, Frank and Alter are a pair of cold icepicks who privately salivate at the idea of taking down a dynamic talent who’s long revelled in an elite celebrity orbit but who holds the wrong (i.e., politically brusque, anti-woke, vaguely amoral in the manner of many X-factor genius types) views and — this is the really damning part — has treated Columbus Ave. Joe Coffee baristas rudely.

Friendo: “This is part of why democracy is ending in America in four days. The point of that piece is: ‘We hate Lydia Tar.’ Translation: ‘Our Marxist absolutism trumps ambiguity in art.’”

My primary motivation in posting this was the exquisite lighting used for the Jean Harlow fireplace pic, which was snapped in 1935 by George Hurrell. Then I happened to walk by the Britney Spencer photo inside the Sono Collection. And then Claudia Cardinale came to mind, followed by Paulina Porizkova.