Three or four weeks ago the driver’s side window in my VW Passat gave up the ghost. It went down but wouldn’t go up again. The front-seat passenger window worked fine and still does; ditto the two backseat windows.

A broken open window obviously means no protection, so I had to handle it pronto. I asked Vinny, a local mechanic whom I respect, if he could fix it. Sure, he said. The next day I met him at a vaguely down-at-the-heels Bridgeport shopping plaza.

Vinny took the door apart and determined that the electrical mechanism that controls the up-and-down motion of the window had suffered a short circuit. The short was caused by a small pool of water that had collected in the door well. To fix it correctly he’d need to find a new white-plastic window mechanism, Vinny said, but he managed to manually crank the window upward.

It was gratifying, at least, that the window was closed and locked in that position. All I had to do was remember to not hit the down-window switch.

I told Vinny I’d get in touch after I returned from Ontario and would promptly pay him to buy and install the mechanism, etc.

Vinny was buried in another job when I returned but that was okay.

Last Saturday I went to a local car wash, and as I approached the vacuum section a Latino guy in a low-thread-count T-shirt motioned for me to lower my window so we could speak. I was temporarily spacing out or daydreaming, but like a total idiot I unthinkingly hit the switch and lowered the driver-side window…gaaahh! It was once again stuck in the open position, and the car was 100% vulnerable to scurvy, slime-fingered thieves.

I immediately called Vinny and said, “Yo, Vinny…the window is down again. Can you help me today or tomorrow or soon?” He said he’d been sidelined with a bad foot (gout) but that he’d search for a used mechanism and we could hook up the next day or certainly the day after.

The following night (i.e., Sunday) it was lightly raining as I sat in the Wilton Library parking lot. I turned the engine on and began listening to music. I was concerned, of course, about more rain water getting into the car through the open window. My left arm was sitting on the elbow rest but I wasn’t touching any buttons or window switches. I sat and listened to Randy Newman and thought about my life.

And then, like magic, the driver window activated itself….whrrrrrrr. The window went up halfway, stopped, thought about it for two or three seconds, and kept going up until the window was completely closed shut.

My mouth fell open. I gasped. It was a moment straight out of Irving Pichel‘s The Miracle of the Bells (’48). Just like the statues of St. Michael and the Virgin Mary slowly turn on their pedestals until they face the coffin of Alida Valli‘s Olga, the driver’s side window had closed itself…the hand of God or some tekekinetic force had intervened.

Vinny’s foot was still hurting yesterday (i.e., Monday afternoon) but we’ve planned on a Wednesday afternoon meet-up.

And that “thing” is that Maestro isn’t all that focused on Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein. Well, it is to a considerable extent, obviously, but Carey Mulligan’s Felicia has the spotlight. Duhh.

My spitballs are (a) definitely Mark Meadows, (b) probably Rudy Guiliani, (c) possibly John Eastman. Further speculation?

Oh, and by the way? If I were Fani Willis I wouldn’t entertain ambitions to run for public office down the road. She’s presumably an excellent attorney but to say she has an awkward speaking style is putting it mildly. She reminded me of Tiffany Haddish announcing the Oscar noms in 2018. You can feel her struggling as she reads the particulars.

If you want to cut to the chase in the matter of Michael Oher‘s Blind Side lawsuit against Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy (and their response to same), you may want to read Leigh Steinberg‘s 2.9.15 Forbes article, titled “5 Reasons Why 80% Of Retired NFL Players Go Broke.”

From yesterday’s boilerplate HE piece:

ESPN’s Michael Fletcher: “[Oher] alleges that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who took Oher into their home as a high school student, never adopted him. Instead, less than three months after Oher turned 18 in 2004, the petition says, the couple tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators, which gave them legal authority to make business deals in his name.

“The petition further alleges that the Tuohys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from an Oscar-winning film that earned more than $300 million, while Oher got nothing for a story ‘that would not have existed without him.’”

In other words the Tuohys are shifty and slippery, baby, and Oher wants a cut of that money, honey.

The classy, movingly scored new teaser for Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix, 11.22 theatrical) tells us quite plainly that the film is less about the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and more about the 27-year marriage between Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (Carey Mulligan).

The emphasis, in fact, seems to be 60/40 in favor of Felicia. The trailer suggests, in fact, if it wasn’t called Maestro Cooper could have gone with something like Duet or The Two of Us. They were very comfortable with each other, the footage says…they vibed quite nicely.

While the mixed footage (color and monochrome) and choice editing allude to a difficult, imperfect relationship when Lenny and Felicia hit middle age (there are brief bits in which (a) Lenny hair-strokes a young hawk-nosed dude at a party and (b) Felicia catches Lenny making a pass at the same guy in a hallway) but Lenny being gay…well, it’s there but a trailer can’t delve into the fact that their marriage was based on a sensible and civilized arrangement — i.e., “wealthy famous gay guy married to beard wife for the purposes of public image, not to mention the kids.”

If anything the teaser is suggesting Lenny was bi. (He wasn’t.) That plus “their relationship was fraught and strained but always musical.”

And of course, the teaser doesn’t contain the briefest flickering reference to the Bernsteins’ Black Panther party (Tom Wolfe‘s “that party at Lenny’s“).

As noted, Maestro will hit theatres on 11.22.23 (i.e., JFK day), and will thereby go head to head with Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon. Can someone come up with a Barbenheimer moniker that blends the two? Okay, I’ve got one: Maestroleon.

Seriously — can someone please get to work on a Maestroleon poster concept?

Maestro will begin streaming on Netflix on 12.20.23. It will probably be given a special premiere showing at the 2023 New York Film Festival…maybe.

“All great black leaders get killed.” — quote from Warren Beatty‘s Bulworth (’98).

As it turns out Beatty’s Senator Jay Bulworth, one of the blackest white politicians who ever served in a fictional feature, gets killed also — shot by an insurance industry villain played by Paul Sorvino.

Bulworth is a Democrat from California and a total liberal establishment guy with all the usual noble sentiments and allegiances (photos of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King on his office wall) that have never amounted to much.

The film begins with Bulworth in deep despair and sick of all the bullshit. The film is basically about Bulworth saying “fuck it” and and just stating plain and straight how things really are, and hang the freakin’ consequences.

Friendo: “Last night I rewatched Bulworth for the first time since it came out in 1998 — a quarter-century ago. Very funny, totally outrageous, sometimes cringe-worthy and…oh, yeah, Halle Berry was totally hot.

“I got to thinking how this film would be received today. I know you’re gonna say the wokesters would go off on it, but maybe, just maybe, they’d see it for the satire it is. And maybe they’d understand that it asks the question ‘What would happen if a politician finally told the honest truth about our political system?’

“On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 76% approval rating, but not one of the critics listed is black. So how did black critics (outside of Elvis Mitchell) view it? How many influential black critics were even around back then?

“I know that black audiences didn’t attend screenings of Bulworth in droves, despite its focus upon black culture and featuring quite a few black characters. Maybe they felt vaguely alienated by Bulworth’s remarks about black behaviors (‘If you don’t put down the malt liquor and chicken wings and get behind someone other than a running back who stabs his wife, you’re never gonna get rid of someone like me!’). Or maybe not.

“Either way Bulworth, which cost round $30 million to produce, ended up with a relative slender gross of $29 million. It obviously didn’t connect with certain segments of the public for certain reasons. The only segment that seemed to support it were white, well-educated urban liberals.

“Bulworth has to be one of the most audacious mainstream films ever made. I think it deserves a reassessment.”