I am a true lover and dedicated fan of Italian and French cuisine.
I tasted my first French dish in 1998, during my first and most unforgettable visit to Paris. I’ve been back since then, but I distinctly remember the first-time aroma of magical Paris streets. This most beautiful city in the world smelled so wonderful and romantic. Quiche, ratatouille, rooster in wine, snails, foie gras, truffles, cheeses. Quel délicieux repas!
I tried Italian cuisine later. and fell in love desperately, irrevocably and forever. Ravioli, Lasagna, tortellini, fritata, risotto, tortelloni. Che pasti deliziosi!
Italian and French cuisine is the most exquisite and balanced for me. In all respects.
I don’t know how to cook and frankly don’t enjoy it. But I admire men who know how, and who love the business of cooking and serving.
In the below photo is a pasta dish I prepared in a Roman apartment (via di Monserrato, 154). It was a rare case when the cooking spirit was suddenly upon me on Italian ground. I bought some handmade pasta in Venice but didn’t prepare it until we moved into our Rome abode.
This is a brief apology for not caring all that much about seeing Scott Frank and Allan Scott‘s The Queen’s Gambit, a seven-episode Netflix miniseries that began almost two weeks ago (on Friday, 10.23).
I was initially intrigued when I realized it was an adaptation of a 1983 novel by Walter Tevis, author of three novels that became noteworthy films — The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell To Earth. But somehow the idea of a period saga about a young chess wizard (Ana Taylor Joy) who stands up to entrenched sexism but succumbs to drug and alcohol dependency when she enters her late teens or whenever…somehow it just didn’t flip the light switch.
It nonetheless has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating and is no doubt worth the effort. I’ve admired and respected Frank’s work for many years. I’ll drop in soon.
Kanye West, 43, is a mentally unstable an eccentric celebrity rapper. For most of us his half-assed campaign for President wasn’t even worth deriding as a joke. And yet 60,000 idiots voted for him. I could understand 600 or 6000 votes, but 60K? Imagine all of them packed into a sports stadium and singing spiritual hymns.
According to the AP, Kanye’s biggest state-wide vote tally — 10,216 — came from Tennessee. The second largest was Minnesota, where he received 7,789 votes. The third and fourth highest counts happened in Kentucky and Colorado — 6,259 and 6254, respectively.
Kanye quote #1: “I don’t give a fuck if I win the presidency or not. I am in service to God. God has a plan for us and his people to be finally free. Trump, Biden, or Kanye West cannot free us.”
Kanye quote #2: “When I’m president, let’s also have some fun. Let’s get past all the racism conversation, let’s empower people with 40 acres and a mule, let’s give some land, that’s the plan.”
“’Even though Joe Biden emphasized his working-class roots and sympathies,’ Sandel told me, ‘the Democratic Party continues to be more identified with professional elites and college-educated voters than with the blue-collar voters who once constituted its base. Even so epochal an event as a pandemic, bungled by Trump, did not change this.
“‘Democrats need to ask themselves: Why do [so] many working people embrace a plutocrat-populist whose policies do little to help them? Democrats need to address the sense of humiliation felt by working people who feel the economy has left them behind and that credentialed elites look down on them.’
“Again, while Biden made small inroads with working-class voters, there seems to be no huge shift. Maybe because many working-class Trump voters not only feel looked down upon, but they also resent what they see as cultural censorship from liberal elites, coming out of college campuses.”
In other words, wokester scolding.
“As Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, wrote in an Oct. 26 essay, ‘Trump is, for better or worse, the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide that has swept along the media, academia, corporate America, Hollywood, professional sports, the big foundations, and almost everything in between.’
“’To put it in blunt terms,’ he continued, ‘for many people, he’s the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture. This may not be a very good reason to vote for a president, and it doesn’t excuse Trump’s abysmal conduct and maladministration.'”
And yet these assholes voted for him regardless. Despite all the horror and arrogance and the collossal pandemic mismanagement, they stuck with him. And that not only makes them idiots and fools but socially subversive chaos agents. They’re voting like children. Worse, like delinquents.
The vast majority of reasonable, fair-minded, non-psychotic humans out there understand that Donald Trump is a dangerous sociopath and a would-be totalitarian dictator who doesn’t give a damn for electoral fairness and Democratic procedure. But a significant portion of them, certainly those from the Great American Rural Region, voted for him anyway because they hate obnoxious progressives more than life itself.
They would rather live hand-to-mouth in a grubby trailer park than live under “socialism”, ridiculous as that equation may sound. Or to submit to the very real tyranny of cancel culture. They would rather tell “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo how much they despise her “anti-racism” message than vote for a better way of life in terms of wages, health care, affordable housing and fighting corporations. They would rather entertain a fantasy of jailing or at least baton-ing or fire-hosing the “Defund The Police” crowd…the BLM looters, Portland window smashers, store burners and the like rather than vote to incrementally better their own lives.
They hate you, wokesters…almost everyone does. It’s my honest belief that if not for your scintillating contributions to the national conversation over the last three or four years, Joe Biden would have probably won in a near-landslide last night.
You know how most wokesters are responding this morning? They’re shaking their heads and saying “wow, those toxic white rural racists just don’t get it, do they? Well, I guess we’re going to have to protest and condemn all the more until they wake up.”
I realize that Joe Biden‘s odds of winning appear to be reasonably good at this point. 264 electoral votes thus far, and he’ll be at 270 when he wins Nevada. But nothing substantial will be accomplished under a Biden administration with the Senate remaining in Republican hands.
I just can’t wrap my head around the loathsome Susan Collins and Lindsay Graham winning in their respective states (Maine, South Carolina).
So Biden has won Wisconsin and will almost certainly take Michigan and Nevada — 32 electoral votes. Still in doubt are Pennsyltucky (20) and Georgia (16) The idea is that the still-uncounted Atlanta vote eventually might tip Georgia in Biden’s favor, and that the same might eventually happen with the metropolitan Philadelphia vote in Pennsylvania.
Biden can afford to lose Pennsylvania if he wins Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. He’s currently ahead in all three states.
He could also prevail by winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But Pennsylvania is looking dicey. (To me anyway.) If Biden loses Pennsylvania and either Michigan or Wisconsin, he can still win if (a) the Atlanta vote him a Georgia win and (b) holds on to the Arizona plurality. Right?
“Joe Biden has won absentee ballots counted in Pennsylvania by an overwhelming margin so far, according to data from the Secretary of State early Wednesday. If he carried the remaining absentee ballots by a similar margin, he would win the state.
“President Trump leads by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania as of 5 a.m. on Wednesday, and Mr. Biden’s chances depend on whether he can win a large percentage of the more than 1.4 million absentee ballots that remain to be counted.
“So far, Mr. Biden has won absentee voters in Pennsylvania, 78 percent to 21 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s office. The results comport with the findings of pre-election surveys and an analysis of absentee ballot requests, which all indicated that Mr. Biden held an overwhelming lead among absentee voters.
“If Mr. Biden won the more than 1.4 million absentee votes by such a large margin, he would net around 800,000 votes — enough to overcome his deficit statewide.”
10:55 pm [posted by a smart guy named Mike Vatis]: “Just a reminder for people losing their minds right now. Biden was not really expected to win, and does not need to win, Texas, Florida, Georgia or North Carolina. A landslide win by Biden that included some of those states would have been wonderful, a clear renunciation of Trumpism. But the greater likelihood has always been that the race would come down to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — again.
“Plus we’ve known for a long time now that the early vote counts (i.e., the ones you’re seeing now) in Michigan and Pennsylvania would comprise election-day votes, which would favor Trump, as many Democrats voted by mail or voted early, and those votes are tallied later. And we’ve also known that, because of the way different votes are counted in these key states, Trump’s strategy has been to (a) declare victory tonight or tomorrow morning based on the early vote counts, and (b) use the courts (and public disturbances) to stop the counting of any mail-in votes after tonight.
“DON’T PLAY INTO HIS STRATEGY BY WETTING YOUR PANTS, PEOPLE!
“All the votes must be counted, period. We won’t know the results for several days. That has always been the likely scenario, and that is what everyone should have been preparing for. Don’t let dashed hopes of a resounding early victory for Biden now drive you into Trump’s trap of believing that Trump somehow won.
“Also: Biden has an alternative path — if he does not win Pennsyltucky, but takes Wisco and Michigan, he can still get to 270 if he takes Arizona and the single electoral vote accorded to the Omaha congressional district. That alternative path is still very much alive, too. So there may still be some very good news tonight out of Arizona and Omaha. And there may be some very good news out of Wisconsin early tomorrow morning (once Milwaukee county votes are tallied). But Michigan and, especially, Pennsylvania, will take more time. So be patient, and don’t do Trump’s work for him.”
10:45 pm: A recent 538 poll (posted on 11.2) had Demicratic challenger Sarah Gideon leading Republican incumbent Susan Collins in the Maine Senatorial race. The latest AP tally of today’s Maine vote has Gideon well behind Collins. In short, the 538 poll bore very little relation to what was in the minds of Maine voters.
9:55 pm: Anyone who claims he/she knew that the Biden vs. Trump vote would come down to a cliffhanger is lying. Two or three (including Joe Biden) predicted it would be closer than expected, but almost everyone believed that a decisive Biden victory was in the cards. Some were predicting a possible landslide.
What’s unfolding may well turn into a variation of Bush vs. Gore. Who knows? But what a mess, what a shocker. And there’s definitely something wrong with the polling industry. It’s infuriating that they got it so wrong.
9:10 pm: James Carville to MSNBC viewers — “Come down off the ledge, put away the razor blades and the Ambien….hang in there, we’re gonna be fine. The [final] count is gonna be good for Biden. I don’t mind putting the champagne on ice. I’ve waited four years for this…I don’t mind waiting another four days.”
As of right now (9:20 pm) Biden has 213 electoral votes vs. 136 for Trump. It’s all going to come down to the final tallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona — a good portion of the remaining votes being mail-ins.
7:50 pm: The tight numbers are horrifying. I’m going through an out-of-body experience. I feel like mybrainismelting. I’m blaming the pandemic for his horrible evening, because we’re mainly talking about “live” voting and that means mostly Republican votes since righties don’t get Covid.
So yes, mail-in ballots could save Biden-Harris, but their stunning under-performance is mainly due to purported associations between Biden-Harris and hardcore p.c. lefty messaging….wokesters, cancel culture, looters, p.c. fanatics, Critical Race Theory, p.c. hatred of cisgender white guys, “Defund The Police” insteadof “Re–ThinkThePolice“, Robin DiAngelo‘s “White Fragility”, the Portland and Seattle marauders, the BLM ers and the Rosanna Arquette metaphor.
Yes, I know — there’s no rational reason to believe there’s strong linkage between the agendas of Joe Biden and odious wokesters, but how else to explain what’s happening?
You can’t tell me anyone gives a damn about Hunter Biden‘s laptop. Are older white cisgender male voters (including Cuban-Americans) afraid of Kamala Harris being President, considering Biden’s advanced age? I believe it has to be the wokester factor. Two years ago an Atlantic article reported that a vast majority of Americans hate cancel culture. Tonight they registered their displeasure, or so I strongly suspect.
Yes, Virginia…the woke left may (I say “may”) have pulledofftheseeminglyimpossible — i.e., getting a compulsively lying, incompetent, sociopathic brute re-elected President of the United States. Maybe. Rank evil may actually triumph again. Trump supporters are voting for a form of socialsuicide and climatedestruction They actually voted to support recklessness, incompetency and stinking-to-high-heaven corruption.
If I was a pollster I would be thinking about ways to obscure or camoflauge my appearance…fake noses, fake beards, fat suits, Woody Allen-styled fishing hats. Mobs with clubs and ax handles will be out looking for them on Wednesday morning, and I wouldn’t altogether blame them.
All along the argument against Trump has been irrefutable, but somehow the radical left has managed to weaken or dilute the argument for Biden, which is ridiculous given that he’s never been and never will be in any kind of wokester pocket. He’s a sensible, practical old-school center-lefty.
I can’t believe this is happening. I’m almost having trouble breathing. This could still come down to mail-in ballots…right? Plus all the predictions about Democrats ending up flipping the Senate in their favor…even that isn’t happening. Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins have been re-elected! Good effing God!
6:55 pm: I don’t like all these close races. Same day voting is favoring Trumo; mail-ins will mostly help Biden. There are nonetheless millions of voters out there who are flat-out loose-screw nihilists…they want to give an incompetent, lying criminal another four years, if only to spite the wokesters.
North Carolina numbers are driving me crazy. Trump has taken the lead in Ohio. Once the Pennsylvania mail-in ballots are counted (probably by Friday), it’ll be okay. I’m nonetheless nervous, anxious, biting my nails. And I’m feeling really angry at the pollsters. I want to literally punch them out.
Friendo: “The polls are off like they were in 2016. There should be a total overhaul of the polling formula. I hope to God this doesn’t extend for weeks and weeks. There’d better not be recounts.” Journo pally: “I’m feeling some 2016 deja vu.”
5:25 pm: A mere Biden victory will not be emotionally satisfying. I want Biden to beat Trump badly, or at least fairly badly. Right now…who knows? And what’s with those Trump-supporting Latino males?
5 pm: Red and blue states are voting accordingly. Biden has 85 electoral votes vs. Trump’s 55. Many millions want the beast to stay in the White House, and many other millions not only disagree but are slapping their foreheads in disbelief.
4:30 pm: This is like Oscar night only much, much better, so I guess I’ll start timestamping with running commentary starting around…uh, now. Biden has taken Virginia and Vermont, and will probably win North Carolina. Oh, and Trump has won Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina and…uhm, Indiana. In the cards. Florida will probably go for Trump. (Panhandle rubes + an apparently sizable percentage of Miami-Dade Latino males.) And also Georgia, it seems.
My first thought about Thomas Bezucha‘s Let Him Go (Focus Features, 11.6), which is a kind of period western, set 50 or 60 years ago, about family, horses, children, continuity, guns, axes and fingers…my first reaction was “wow, this is really well directed…so nicely composed, exacting, unafraid of silences, confidently paced, grounded.”
So right away I relaxed and settled in. This’ll be good, I told myself. Quite obviously. So well acted all around, so commanding, so nicely honed. And Guy Godfree‘s cinematography and Michael Giacchino‘s score are perfect. I was purring. I love films like this! I felt so good about it that I put some popcorn into the microwave. You know what I mean. If a film is really bringing it, popcorn completes the mood.
And then something happened around the 80-minute mark, and I went “what the hell?”
That’s all I’m going to say. I’m not going to elaborate except to say that the film, which is about a pair of grandparents (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane) who’ve lost their adult son in a fatal horse-riding accident, and months later are looking to see about the welfare of their three-year-old grandson after their son’s widow (Kayli Carter) has married a primitive bumblefuck who lives with a family of ornery polecat varmints a la Animal Kingdom and is headed by a cigarette-smoking Ma Barker sociopath (Lesley Manville)…I’ll only say that things turn rather violent around the 80-minute mark and hoo boy.
After it ended an excerpt from Barry Hertz‘s Globe and Mail review kinda pissed me off. It called Let Him Go a “skillfully executed thriller that is narrowly aimed at one demographic — audiences over 50 who like a little violence with their late-life dramas — but succeeds at entertaining just about anyone who comes across its dusty, blood-soaked path.”
So if a movie is smoothly assembled and takes its time building characters and moves at its own steady pace, it’s strictly an over-50 thing? Because…what, 45-and-under audiences require something noisier and punchier and faster-paced or they won’t sit still? My God, what’s happened to western civilization by way of movie culture? Because the cinematic value system that Hertz has described is, like, really fucked up.
Hats off to Bezucha, who directed, produced and wrote the screenplay adaptation of Larry Watson‘s same-titled 2013 novel. Bezucha knows what he’s doing. Let Him Go feels like it might have been directed by David Fincher or Fred Zinneman or William Wyler.
Monica Vitti, currently living in Rome, was born exactly 89 years ago today. I recognize that “Monica who?” was immediately whispered worldwide after this post appeared. She “lives” today because of her five-year collaboration with Michelangelo Antonioni. I only became a fan after restored versions of L’Avventura, La Notte, L’Eclisse and Red Desert began appearing on DVD and then Bluray. We all come to things in our own way, and in our own time.
Incidentally: Should this African dance scene from L’Eclisse prompt present-day concern and perhaps even an official shunning? Should L’Eclisse be removed from public access a la Song of the South? Should Antonioni be posthumously cancelled? Should Vitti be disciplined? Wokesters are feverishly debating this as we speak.
The allegedly weakened ability of the USPS to handle all the pandemic mail-in ballots has been a concern for several months. All sorts of inquiries and legal challenges. Why did it take until today for a federal judge to order U.S. Postal Service inspectors to sweep postal facilities in six battleground states? The order couldn’t have come a week or two ago?
AP MCCLATCHY, 10:57 am Pacific: “The last-minute order on Tuesday by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington, D.C., directs the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service to inspect facilities in central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, south Florida, Arizona and a few other locations between 12:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. Eastern time.
“The order is part of one of several lawsuits against the Postal Service over [Louis DeJoy‘s] cost-cutting measures that slowed mail delivery this year and raised concerns that mail-in ballots would not be delivered on time. Recent data has shown that on-time mail delivery in some parts of the country has dropped to levels lower than in July, when millions of Americans went days, even weeks, without mail.
“The order focuses on postal districts that have struggled to deliver ballots on time in recent days. It also centers on states that will not count ballots received after election day.”
November 3 is election day. Mail-in balloting has been widespread because of the pandemic, but the time to vote for the President of the United States is nigh.
Almost without exception, opinion polls show that Joe Biden is well ahead of his rival. But I think Donald Trump will win, and not because I like him. There is absolutely another reason for my personal forecast. We will soon see. If Biden wins, he’ll become the 46th U.S. president.
You can tell that Los Angeles business owners are expecting a worst-case scenario just by walking the streets. Fifteen minutes, I assure you, is quite enough.
I live in West Hollywood, less than a mile from Beverly Hills, and I can feel the restlessness. Still fresh in my mind are the looting and destruction of shops on Melrose Avenue late last May and June, after the George Floyd murder.
