Eulogy for my late sister Laura, who died from cancer in the spring of ’08 (and which I posted in this space about five years ago):

When she was young, before her mid-teen years, my sister Laura was very much in the game. She had a high IQ — higher than mine, I recently learned — and was quick and alert. She told and got jokes, and was animated, playful and full of pep. She had a wonderful laugh and had, until the end of her life, the most beautiful smile. She’d smile and you’d melt.

As a young girl she was sometimes a bit feisty. One of my vivid early memories is coming home from elementary school one afternoon (I was in the first or second grade) and telling my mother, who was lying on her bed, about something good that had happened — a good grade, a pat on the back from my teacher, something along these lines — and Laura, who was standing next to my mother’s bed, saying, “So what?”

I was never as close to Laura, then or later in life, as was Tony, our younger brother, but I’ve never forgotten this impression of her — a girl who had opinions and gumption and intelligence to spare, and who gave as good as she got.

Sadly, that side of Laura never matured, much less developed. She became afflicted in her mid-teen years with schizophrenia and never left the ground, much less spread her wings. Most of her life, sadly, was about coping, about holding on as best she could and getting by with a measure of dignity. She lived in her heart and her mind, but not, truth be told, very much in the present.

A few days ago I heard a writer or journalist of some distinction (I forget his name) say that Ireland wasn’t about the present or the future, but about the past, over and over. As she got older, that was Laura through and through.

She was occasionally a contentious person, but she was mostly quiet and gentle and meditative. She had a good heart, which is to say a better heart than mine. She cared deeply about spiritual matters, and one aspect of this is that she became a Catholic, as I recall, sometime near the start of this century. Her day-to-day life was about what she could do within the margins of her affliction, a cruel hand that was dealt to her at birth, but her inner life was enormous and deep and perhaps even radiant.

In my early 20s I was a tree guy — trimming, shaping, cabling, ropes, saddles, chain saws, pole saws. On both coasts. Except the approach is different in Los Angeles because everything grows back so quickly and abundantly here, so the motto is “cut the shit out of everything” while back east they want you to be a little more lacey and delicate. Californians never ask for that or they’d be paying you to come back every three or four months.

Around 7:30 this morning a crew started working on a nearby Jacaranda tree, and as usual they were butchering the shit out of it. It was a tree before they started — after they finished it was a hat rack. I went up to them and asked, “Why don’t you just cut it all down and cut it into firewood? There’s barely anything left — why not finish the job?”

One of the tree guys shrugged and said, “It’s what they wanted.” He was blameless, of course. But what a drag, I was thinking, that pretty trees are always getting raped out here. Because hat-rack trimmings destroy the shade element, and then you have to wait six months to a year before the leaves grow out and return to any degree.

The day before another tree crew was chain-sawing away and cutting the shit out of the Ficus trees on Melrose. Same hornet whine, same cutting aesthetic, truckloads of brush hitting the street, shoved into a chipper, etc.

All this ugly noise and destruction made me think of the huge trees along the Tiber in Rome — sycamores, oaks, eucalyptus, planes, umbrella pines — and how wonderfully massive they all seem to be when you first drive into town, and all the wonderful shade they create, and how they never seem to get trimmed or chain-sawed and how the tips of long branches always shoot out over the Tiber and at times touch the water.

I don’t know how old these Tiber trees are on average, but fairly damn old.

Big trees and their cool, calming shadows are a much bigger deal in Rome than in West Hollywood. I think it’s safe to say that without qualification.

“I did a show in Vegas, must have been 12, 15 years ago. And we tried to do an 11 pm show [but] people didn’t want that. So we moved the show back to 9 pm. The hotel alerted just about everybody, but some people didn’t get the email. So I’m walking through the lobby…Hard Rock, Planet Hollywood, some place like that…after the show’s over. It’s like 10:55….the show was at 9. I come across this guy with his family, and he says ‘hey, I’m here for the 11 pm show, they told me…’ And I said, ‘I know, I’m so sorry, they switched the time of the show, it’s over.’ And he says, ‘But we flew in from Idaho. To see you.’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry, what can I do?’ And he kept going on, and I finally said, ‘How much was the show?’ And I pulled out my own wallet and paid him back, $450 or whatever it was. And without missing a beat, the guy goes, ‘What about the air fare?'”

The story starts around the 9:15 mark.

If you still haven’t seen Todd Douglas Miller‘s Apollo 11 in IMAX, please do so during the coming one-week re-engagement (starting on 12.6). And while you’re watching you might want to play a little game with yourself. There’s a whole lot of pre-launch footage of NASA technicians, VIP NASA guests, and Average Joe tourists waiting to see the launch. The name of the game is “Find the Obese People.” Because in 1969 they were all but nonexistent. You might spot one or two NASA technicians who could stand to exercise a bit more, but no Jackie Gleason types. Among the tourists it’s really hard to find a moderately fat person, and damn near impossible to spot any serious Jabbas. It’s just the way things were back then.

As a longtime fan of Karina Longworth‘s You Must Remember This podcasts, I’ve been meaning all month to settle in with her Song of the South series, a six-episode historical examination of Disney’s most controversial film. This weekend, I’m thinking.

A friend tells me that Longworth’s take is properly lamenting and damning, but that things turn sour in episode #5, which deals with Blaxploitation and the White Backlash of the ’80s.

No one’s disputing that Song of the South contains antiquated, unfortunate and subliminally ugly racial stereotypes in certain portions. Has anyone listened to the five Longworth episodes that have been posted, and if so what’s your take on it?

Everyone understands that Song of the South is an unfortunate relic of a long-past era, of course, but that it’s technically fascinating and quite the achievement for 1946. I’ve only seen excepts from this 1946 Disney release — never the whole thing. And I’d love to see a high-def version just to appreciate the live-action-blended-with-animation material, not to mention the fact that Gregg Toland was the dp.

Longworth may differ, but it’s been alleged here and there that Song of the South isn’t quite as racially toxic as its reputation suggests.

A little more than a month ago HE commenter “Bad Hat Harry”, who’s seen some kind of bootleg copy, maintained that “it’s a perfectly charming, sweet-natured thing, and the only subtextual racial politics one could reasonably read into it have to do with reconciliation, harmony and respect. Uncle Remus is a wonderful character, [and] the stories are all-timers.”

In the same thread HE commenter (“Lord of Misrule“) stated the following: “I have watched this several times and cannot, for the life of me, fully understand what all the fuss is about. There is not one African-American character in the entire movie [who] is not treated with the utmost regard. At one point, one of the characters actually ‘permits’ her son and daughter to play with another black child so they can play together. At another time that same character regretfully, almost tearfully, has to ask Uncle Remus not to keep telling his stories because her (white) child acted irresponsibly.

Posted yesterday (11.20) by Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Brent Larkin, former director of the editorial page: “Of all the regions in all the states in all the country, Jim Jordan got dragged into ours.

“There was no good reason to punish Greater Cleveland by making the person who’s now the second most contemptible human being in the entire U.S. government part of the region’s delegation to Congress.

“When Jordan slithers out from under his rock each morning, dons a shirt and tie — sans the jacket, lest he be mistaken for Joe McCarthy — his life’s work is to besmirch everything America stands for in service of Donald Trump.

“If it takes undermining yet another principle of democracy by condoning attacks on men and women who have devoted their lives in honorable service to this country, Jordan is always ready and willing.

“If it takes changing the Trump defense strategy on an almost daily basis because facts keep getting in the way, Jordan is the ideal bootlicker. Trump’s support is all that seems to matter to the man former House Speaker John Boehner regularly referred to as ‘a legislative terrorist’ — along with a whole bunch of other descriptions unfit for print.”

We all know that Peggy Noonan wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan and Bush 41, and that The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Today they’ve posted her 11.21 opinion piece that says the case for impeachment has been “clearly made.” Which it has, of course. But by today’s standards Noonan is a classic-style conservative (or right-leaning independent), and in the current rabid climate the only op-ed piece that would really punch through would be one written by one of the House crazies or, better yet, one of the Republican Senators presumed to favor acquittal. Noonan and the WSJ know that the Senate will not vote to convict. Republican Senators don’t care if Trump is guilty because the Trump faithful — 38% to 40% of the electorate — don’t care.

Regional journo pally; “Saw Uncut Gems last night. There’s no doubt that Adam Sandler gives a terrific performance, but everything else is really problematic. It’s loud. It’s shot as if the Safdie brothers have ADD. The atmosphere and almost all the characters are utterly disgusting. I couldn’t help thinking, ‘Who was this made for? Who wants to pay money to immerse themselves in this bucket of slime?’ I’m not criticizing the craft, but craft to what point? My wife, who has a very high tolerance for all sorts of movies, walked out on the film, and after it was done, I wrote on the comment card “Well made, but repulsive.’

I don’t mind saying I’ve been in a faintly melancholy mood over the all-but-complete domination of whitesides, as HE regulars know. Everywhere I go, nearly every actor in town…a fashion tragedy. It’s not hugely depressing, but despair grips from time to time.

And then Jon Hamm walked onstage following Wednesday night’s Harmony Gold screening of Richard Jewell, and suddenly my whole outlook changed. He was wearing a pair of snazzy, possibly Italian business shoes with — I loved this — slightly worn red soles. Plus a nifty, well-tailored plaid suit. All I know is that I suddenly felt…well, better. The whole whiteside thing fell away.