I’m not sure how many dissolute or self-loathing rock-album covers I can name off the top of my head, but Neil Young‘s “American Stars and Bars” (’77) has to be near the top of anyone’s list. I think it may be more of a “self-loathing:” thing in quotes than in earnest. First Draft‘s Peter Adrastos Ahas called it “a parody of the rock-star pomposity that was so prevalent at the time.”

Many people I’ve known have gone through self-loathing stages in their lives; you could almost call it a necessary chapter on the path to spiritual clarity and fulfillment. But you have to live through your self-loathing phase while you’re still experimenting (in your mid to late 20s, early 30s at the latest). Being “tired of yourself and all of your creations” doesn’t work so well after 40.

What I somehow missed until this morning that the drunk-on-the-floor art was designed by Dean Stockwell (Blue Velvet, Married To The Mob, The Boy With Green Hair).

Tina: I know where we are! These are the flatlands. My husband’s friends used to dump bodies here.
Danny: Great — I’m sure you can show me all the points of cultural interest.

I didn’t know Elliot Roberts, Neil Young‘s longtime manager for over 50 years plus a career-guider and consultant for Joni Mitchell (i.e., her manager from the late ’60s to ’85), Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Devo, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, et. al. And I only dealt with him personally once. But I’m sorry about his passing at age 76. Hugs and condolences to all those who knew, admired and cared for the guy.

Young has posted a tribute on his website. “My friend for over 50 years, Elliot Roberts, has passed away. We are all heartbroken, but want to share what a great human being Elliot has been. Never one to think about himself, he put everyone else first. That’s what he did for me for over fifty years of friendship love and laughter, managing my life, protecting our art in the business of music. That’s what he did.”

My one and only run-in with Roberts happened at a party in Los Angeles. (Or was it Toronto?) It might have happened nine or ten years ago, but it could have been more like 15 years. It might have been around the time of Young’s Greendale, which popped in ’04.

Anyway, I saw Young standing in a corner of the gathering and noticed he was more or less alone, and so I walked over to say hi. I was just about to offer a greeting when all of a sudden the stern-faced Roberts (who was about my height) was right in my face, eyeballing me like a security guard and saying “Can I help you?”

HE: “Can you ‘help’ me? Well, I’m a journalist and not an assassin, and we’re all at a party and I just wanted to chat with Neil for a second. What’s the big deal?” Roberts: “Neil isn’t doing interviews tonight.” HE: “Okay, cool but I’m not looking to ‘interview’ him…just, you know, some friendly, inconsequential small talk.” Roberts: “Not tonight.” HE: “Why is Neil at a press party with guys like me all around if he doesn’t want to talk to anyone?” And yaddah yaddah.

Roberts refused to back off. He was playing the security goon, determined to protect Neil from any and all comers. During this idiotic back-and-forth I snuck a look at Young, and he was staring at the rug and wearing a shit-eating grin…totally amused by Roberts playing the flinty hardass and blocking me like a linebacker.

The night before last Tatyana and I visited Robata Jinya, a well-liked Japanese noodle restaurant on West Third Street near Crescent Heights. We walked in without a reservation, but it was nine-something and there were open tables here and there. I sidled up to the hostess but she was entirely focused on a 20something Asian guy who was yapping and yapping and yapping. She was determined to meet his needs before dealing with me…fine. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

The Asian guy, apparently a “me, me, me” type, wouldn’t stop talking about whatever. I was eyeballing this sociopath and telepathically conveying the following: “What are you doing, talking about your childhood or something? Or about your car payments or a Dodger game you attended a few days ago? There are other people here besides you, asshole…people who want to sit down and eat…right? If you want a table, say so and maybe the hostess can help you out.”

But he kept on going. Yap, yap, yappity-yap, yap…what is this guy’s basic malfunction?

After two or three minutes of watching him go on and on, the hostess finally led The Yapper and his date to the rear of the restaurant, but she didn’t return for another two or three minutes. How long does it take to lead a couple to a table, hand them a couple of menus and say ‘here you are…enjoy!” Presumably the Asian guy had made a reservation but wasn’t satisfied with this or that table and/or was complaining that none of them were quite right.

By the time the hostess returned we had decided that Robata Jinya was an unpleasant place due to the combination of loudly conversing diners plus pounding EDM playing on the speakers. This is a trait of under-35 bars and restaurants and more precisely their patrons. Under-35s enjoy aural oppression….they like having to shout their thoughts to each other despite sitting only 30 inches apart. On top of which the air conditioning was aggressively pumping cold air despite the fact that it wasn’t even warm outside, much less hot.

So we said “thanks anyway” and went next door to the quieter, less expensive, much less crowded Tasty Noodle House. It seemed cool at first, but then the waitress, whose English was a bit labored and hard to understand, started making trouble by pointing to my orange valet ticket, which I’d been given by the Robata Jinya valet guy. She seemed to be saying that I had the wrong ticket, or that I’d given my car to the wrong people or something in that realm.

“Are you saying we can’t eat here because of the valet ticket?” No, she said, smiling but pointing again to the ticket and saying something about chicken wings. The basic message, I later discerned, was that if we had parked in the Tasty Noodles lot we could have eaten free chicken wings. But I didn’t want any fucking chicken wings. HE to waitress: “Okay but could you possibly drop the subject and just, you know, let us order?”

I found the conversation so frustrating that I got up and left. Tatyana stayed and talked with her a bit. Then she came out and explained the chicken wings thing. “But I didn’t want any chicken wings,” I protested. “I hate chicken wings. Why did she keep harping on that? Chicken wings, chicken wings, parking lot, parking lot.”

You were being rude to her, Tatyana said. “Excuse me but the waitress wouldn’t stop beating me over the head with this,” I replied. “She was like a travelling salesman selling vacuum cleaners.”

We eventually went back inside and started over. Once the chicken wings had been forgotten, everything was fine. Well, almost. When I ordered some dumplings the waitress said “crispy or soft?” Crispy? There are no crispy dumplings, I said. It turned out she meant pan-fried.

Yeah, I know — Larry David. But the combination of the “me, me, me” guy and the chicken wings was awfully rough.

I twice saw William Friedkin‘s Cruising, a loose, ironed-out adaptation of Gerald Walker’s crime thriller — once at an early press screening, later with ticket buyers. Both times my reaction was “reasonably well-handled and exotically interesting from time to time (I liked the nocturnal Central Park scene between Al Pacino and Richard Cox), but who was Pacino’s character deep down, and what was the thing with Cox’s disapproving father because the voices aren’t the same?”

Something was missing. It never felt solid. More of an odd detour flick than anything else. And I didn’t get the final scene at all (Karen Allen trying on leather gear, tugboat chug-chugging up the Hudson River).

But this morning I thought to myself, “Okay, it’s been 39 years and re-watching it will only set me back $2.99…maybe I’ll have another look.”

“The challenge in a series like BBC One’s Years and Years (HBO, 6.24) is not kicking out at the predictable backlash from Trumpers, climate deniers, racists and fascists — for numerous reasons they are not the target audience — but in taking what everybody else has been feeling in the past few years and turning it into compelling drama rather than a soap-box lecture.

“And that’s what producer-writer Russell T. Davies gets most right most of the time, even when his rage — and it’s his and everybody else’s sense of outrage that he’s tapping into — necessitates that he lean into themes that validate progressive, rational and empathetic concerns.

“He’s preaching to the choir here — Years and Years very clearly being a WTF? reaction to Trump and the American drift. But Davies has managed to package it in a wildly entertaining, moving and, yes, sometimes funny look at a world gone mad.” — from a 6.21 review by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tim Goodman.

Herewith a Bergdorf Goodman encounter with Donald Trump, sometime in late ’95 or early ’96 when the future President was 49 or 50. Written by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and currently in the 6.24.19 issue of New York magazine and also in “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal” (St. Martin’s Press, 7.2.19):

Maher: “Who do the Democrats have that we know can beat Trump? There really is only one answer to that.

“And it’s not Joe Biden. I like Joe, but if we give him the keys there’s at least a 50% chance that he gets in the car and mows down a Farmer’s Market. Also young people look at him as if a typewriter is running for President.

“Bernie Sanders is an American hero in my book, but he’s another candidate who has his cardiologist on speed dial.

“I like Mayor Pete, but we must ask the question ‘is America ready to be led by a gay teenager?’ He’s 37 but looks 27…he’s the only veteran who came back from Afghanistan looking refreshed.”

HE to Maher: Yes, I am ready and eager to be led by this particular gay teenager…please.

Maher: “Never underestimate the power of being in people’s living rooms for decades. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s not the way I’d like it to be. But we live in a post-literate, post-truth, starfucker society, and this is going to be the dirtiest campaign in history.

“No one worries about Oprah being a socialist. I have Nate Silver‘ed the shit out of this, and [Oprah] is the only sure thing winner for the Democrats…no pressure.”

Posted 18 months ago:

Best trailer yet…agreed?

During the final episode of season #2 of The Sopranos, Tony (James Gandolfini) tells his sister Janice (Aida Turturro) that they were both emotionally scarred by their mother Livia (Nancy Marchand). One of her most malignant traits, Tony says, was her inability to experience joy. The psychoanalytic term is anhedonia, which of course was the original title of Woody Allen‘s Annie Hall.

The other day somebody called me a Livia-like grump, and that I’m always scowling and complaining and whatnot.

My stock response is to remind people of a riff I wrote five years ago, and reposted in ’17. It was called “Like, Want, Need.”

“I’ll tell you what I want,” I began. “I want to walk around New York City at a fairly vigorous clip. I want to love and support my wife Tatyana and my sons every way I can. I want to sail into the mystic. I want to stay in touch with everyone and offer as much offer affection, trust, intellectual engagement and friendship as I reasonably can. I want to live forever. I want good health, and to me that also means good spiritual health. I want to keep most of my hair and never grow breasts or a pot belly. I want Japanese or South Korean-level wifi wherever I go. I want to read and know everything. I want to bask in love, family, friendship and the purring of my cats until the end of time.

“I also want several pairs of slim ass-hugging jeans, and I want to be clean shaven. I want well-made shoes, preferably Italian suede or Bruno Magli or John Varvatos. I want to keep all my Blurays forever. I want color, aromas, travel. I want challenging hiking trails in high Swiss places. I know it’s not possible, but I’d prefer to always be in the company of slender people. I want to zoom around on my Majesty and use the Mini Cooper only when it rains or when I need to buy a lot of groceries. I want mobility and adaptability and the smell of great humming, rumbling cities. I want European-style subways, buses, trains, rental cars. I want a long Norman Lloyd-type life, and I insist that my mental faculties stay electric and crackling forever.” And so on and so forth.

You can say these are the words of a hopeless sourpuss, but they’re not. You can say I’m being dishonest or otherwise covering up, but I’m not. I’m no Livia and no Woody. Life is nothing without joy, and joy is nothing unless you embrace it…unless you jump into the pool with your clothes on.

A colleague has heard good things about The Aeronauts (Amazon, 10.25), an historical adventure flick about real-life scientist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) and the fictional Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) on an epic fight for survival during an 1862 gas-balloon voyage. The colleague has heard it’s “a heavy-hitter spectacle”, and that Jones might emerge as a Best Actress frontrunner. Maybe. His source insists it’s also a contender for Best Picture and Best Score.

The colleague says he’s been told that “around 80% of the movie takes place in the air.” Does anyone believe that? Maybe 40% or 50%.

The colleague also says that Taika Waititi‘s Jojo Rabbit (Disney, 10.18) is “screening very well.” Set in World War II-era Vienna and focused on Nazi persecution of Jews, the dark antiwar satire could emerge as “one of the Best Pic frontrunners after all is said and done.” Or so he’s been told. Because it’s an instructive piece about racism and prejudice.

(l. to r.) Jojo Rabbitt‘s Roman Griffin Davis, Taika Waititi, Scarlett Johansson.

Based on Christine Leunens‘ “Caging Skies,” the story is about Johannes Betzler (called “Jojo Rabbit” Betzler in the film and played by Roman Griffin Davis), an avid member of the Hitler Youth. The plot kicks in when JoJo learns that his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) behind a false wall in their home.

Pop quiz: Who in HE Land believes that a kid in 1940s Vienna would be called by the English nickname “Jojo“? The first time I heard “Jojo” was in the 1969 Beatles song “Get Back”; the second time was when Richard Pryor‘s Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling was released in ’86. “Jojo Rabbitt” sounds like it was pulled out of the same name hat as “Jiminy Cricket” and “Foghorn Leghorn.”

My reply to colleague: Your friend, I suspect, is overly impressionable. I definitely don’t trust him/her…sorry.

The Aeronauts is fact-based, yes, but appears to be a family-friendly period adventure tale a la Around the World in Eighty Days, Up, Night Crossing, Mysterious Island, et. al. As noted, Glaisher’s balloon flight happened in 1862 — Jules Verne‘s Around The World in Eighty Days was published in 1872.

Aeronauts director Tom Harper (Wild Rose, BBC’s 2016 six-part War and Peace miniseries) is apparently one of those highly competent, proficient fellows who haven’t yet developed an especially strong imprint or creative style. I intend to see his just-opened Wild Rose (RT 93% Metacritic 78%) today or tomorrow.

Since peaking with 2014’s The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne starred in a highly problematic Wachowski Brothers film (Jupiter Ascending), gave a gimmicky Oscar-bait performance in The Danish Girl and then did two Fantastic Beasts movies — a family-friendly, Harry Potter-like franchise.