Jeff Wells

…but when it comes to children being preyed upon by lunatic lefty teachers and administrators allied with the trans community, I’m not altogether upset by this one. I see it as a form of possible protection for my granddaughter, so I’m sorry but I’m in agreement.

The trans community undoubtedly sees this as a setback. The fact is that they overplayed their hand. They brought this on.

@michaelshellenberger

Trump has, blessedly, restricted gender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers for kids. But why did this scandal go on for so long? Part of the answer is money. Another is the rise of the "trauma" therapy cult. And, at the heart of trans medicine, is an anti-human nihilism.

♬ original sound – Shellenberger

I’m not actually “serious” about trying to launch any of these therapeutic or advice concepts into actual going concerns, but I could easily dispense HE-styled wisdom and insight along these lines if so required. I have the ability to bullshit people and convey meaningless-but-harmless insights in a kindly, thoughtful, considerate way…as much of an ability of any licensed therapist or psychologist or social counselor.

1. HE Dating Academy, an HE-related, interactive dating advice website: “How to attract top-tier women if you’re a socially primitive shut-in…an under-educated 20something or 30something flatliner who’s generally un-travelled, spends most of his time online and who’s either unemployed or has a relatively low-paying, going-nowhere job. And who drives an older, starting-to-feel-shitty car.”

2. HE Advice to the Lovelorn (self-explanatory): A lifetime of experience and gathered wisdom offered to young men & women whose prospects of finding someone really special to fall in love and partner with in the mid 2020s are, let’s face it, pretty close to zilch. How to look good (get in shape & lose weight, avoid shitty foods, don’t wear whitesides or collared flannel shirts), how to smell good and wear interesting hair (no shaved heads or tennis-ball coifs) and how to speak intelligently about…well, many things.

3. HE Philosophical Counselling (self-explanatory): What does it all mean & where are most of us headed? Don’t ask. A been-around, seen-it-all veteran of hard-knocks living and the proverbial, turbulent romantic trenches is offering improvisational but serious, solemn but freewheeling therapy. Unlicensed or Mumford-styled counselling. (It goes without saying that Mumford sessions are not synonymous with the lessons of Roger Dodger.) Less costly than what licensed therapists charge but just as good in terms of exploring the vagaries of life and discovering various eternal / mystical truths and possibly even attaining tangible, take-it-to-the-bank results, and which will certainly be more entertaining than traditional therapy.

Has anyone noticed? Nobody talks about it. The hate conversations are about Emilia Perez and The Brutalist, of course, and the love conversations are about Anora, Conclave and A Complete Unknown, and the “yeah, liked it, really good” conversations are about A Real Pain and I’m Still Here and maybe September 5. But nobody even mentions Wicked. It’s “there” but nobody’s paying attention. It’s totally fallen by the wayside. Not happening. Unless, that is, Ariana Grande wins for Best Supporting Actress. Which is possible.

It was one thing to listen to Caroline Kennedy’s recollection of the behavior of young Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “I watched his younger brothers and cousins follow him down the path of drug addiction…his basement, his garage, his dorm room were always the center of the action”…that was one thing. But the remainder of her sentence really put a chill into my system: “…where drugs were available and he enjoying showing off how he put baby chickens and mice into a blender, to feed to his hawks.”

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“Anyone who posts a video of herself crying and posts it to the internet should be disregarded and ignored automatically” — agreed.

I didn’t know what to do or say when Selena Gomez‘s weeping video hit a couple of days ago (i,e, sometime on Monday), although I did know right away that she/it pushed too way hard.

Plus it struck me as a tad ungenuine for an actress who “grew up speaking Spanish but lost her fluency around the same time she began her Hollywood career as a kid“, and was therefore obliged to “spend months relearning the language for her Emilia Perez role as the trophy wife of a Mexican cartel boss.”

42 and 1/2 years ago I interviewed this famous, emotionally emphatic 50 year-old woman for an Us magazine interview to promote E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. She was 7 years old at the time, and now she’s on the fucking cover of AARP’s print publication.

I feel like I’m on a time toboggan, and it’s going faster and faster.

The actual “Chicks in the Office” TikTok video embed (“Shame on the Acadeny Over Emilia Perez!”) won’t properly display. That aside…

@chicksintheoffice

Shame on the Academy!!

♬ original sound – chicksintheoffice

I felt a certain degree of excitement about the original Richard Donner Superman reboot (‘78) and even the gradually declining early ‘80s sequels. And I’ll admit to feeling a vague revival of this when Bryan Singer‘s Superman Returns came along in ‘06.

But Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel shat the bed, I felt — it was covered in gloom sauce, and left me with a splitting headache. Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (‘16) really put a nail in it.

And now James Gunn has directed and delivered still another one, God in heaven, and is calling it just plain old Superman. I suppose we should all be thankful that David Corenswet‘s Clark Kent / Supie hasn’t been re-imagined as trans. (Corenswet, 31, is straight and married.)

Where does Gunn get the chutzpah to drag out Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) yet again? Where is the shame? How can Gunn glance at himself in the bathroom mirror?

Here you go: the #Superman trailer. Krypto, take us home.

Watch the teaser trailer now and ❤ this post to get updates from @superman before it hits theaters this July. pic.twitter.com/w77kiKef54

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) December 19, 2024

During the scriptwriting or script-polishing phase of It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni really went to town — emotionally, therapeutically, performance-wise — as he kissed Blake Lively‘s ass in a phone message. 2 am, six minutes and 49 seconds — “I am so sorry…sorry that you went through what you went though…you’re the secret sauce.”

From Echo Chamberlain‘s “Emilia Perez: Woke Trainwreck with 13 Oscar Nominations“:

“Musicals can be great when they’re, you know, designed to be musicals. But [Mexico’s] real-life narco culture context is gritty and unsparing — death, incarceration, brutality, gothic violence and despair. And Emilia Perez having that as a template from which there springs forth musical numbers is mind-blowingly absurd.”

Roughly three weeks until the 2.16 debut of Season 3 of The White Lotus…creator Mike White once again exploring the shallowness, self-absorption and occasional venality of a crew of wealthy tourists on holiday, this time in Thailand and more particularly Ko Samui — a sizable-but-not-huge island to the east of the southern Thai peninsula (i.e., Gulf of Thailand).

Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins (miserable), Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam (son of Alessandro) Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey (shallowest of all?), Natasha Rothwell, Patrick (son of Arnold) Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong and Aimee Lou Wood.

How many will die?

Wiki page: “Until the late 20th century, Ko Samui was an isolated, self-sufficient community, having little connection with the mainland of Thailand. The island was without roads until the early 1970s and the 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) journey from one side of the island to the other could involve a whole-day trek through the mountainous central jungles.

“Ko Samui’s economy now is based primarily on a successful tourist industry, as well as exports of coconut and rubber. Economic growth has brought not only prosperity but also major changes to the island’s environment and culture.”

…it’s that the final destination (be it financial, political, geographical, spiritual or what-have you) is anecdotal at best. For what truly matters, what stays in the mind and truly sticks to the ribs is the rough-and-tumble of it all…the journey, man…the journey is everything.

Epilogue: The First Architecture Biennale:

“In 1980, a retrospective of László’s work is held in Venice. The exhibition includes the community center, finally completed after a decade’s hiatus. A now-adult Zsófia, accompanied by her young adult daughter (who is the spitting image of Zsófia) and an aging László, gives a speech highlighting how the Van Buren community center was designed by László to resemble the concentration camps that imprisoned the Toths, and functions as a way of processing trauma.

“She ends by recounting what Laszlo once told her: ‘No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.’”

The Brutalist director-cowriter Brady Corbet is three months younger than my older son, Jett.