A riff about depression and escape from depression in the midst of the pandemic, originally posted on 8.17.20:

Yesterday it was hot all across the Southwest, Los Angeles included. Hot and somewhat humid. I showered quickly around 5 pm, and despite the air-conditioned living room climate I had to wait and wait for my hair to dry.

I needed a drive on the rumblehog, I decided. I went downstairs, turned the ignition key, revved the engine. I then decided on the spur that it was too hot to wear headgear. So I took off with my white helmet under the seat….”fuck it.”

With my faintly damp hair getting whipped around as I motored north through quiet, tree-lined streets, it was one of the most glorious sensations I’ve felt in months.

The angel on my right shoulder was saying “okay, you’ve had your fun, now pull over and put the helmet on.” But the devil on my left shoulder said, “No, don’t…this is way too pleasurable, let’s keep going.”

Block after block, slowly cruising, my eyes peeled for the bulls. I became braver and braver. I crossed La Cienega and ducked into another side street. I was ecstatic about the wind fluttering through my Prague follicles; the feeling of coolness and the scent of this and that…absolute heaven.

After a while I began to think that getting a ticket might not be so bad. Well, it would have been but I was so delighted to re-experience a portion of what it was like to be 16. It used to be okay to ride around without a helmet. California’s mandatory helmet law kicked in on 1.1.92. Warren Beatty rides his Triumph without one in Shampoo.

Posted eight years ago: One of the healthiest things you can say about anything that’s over and done with is “okay, that happened.” Unless, of course, you’re talking about a stretch in a World War II concentration camp or something equally ghastly. Otherwise you have to be accepting, past it.

Especially when it comes to ex-girlfriends. We went there, it happened, nobody was right or wrong, that was then and we’re here now…let’s get a coffee and catch up.

All my life I’ve been friends with exes, or have at least been open to same. And they’ve been open to ease and friendship with me. Except for one.

She was (and most likely still is) a whipsmart blonde with a great ass, a toothy smile and a kind of young Katharine Hepburn vibe. She’d been raised in Brooklyn but always reminded me of a Fairfield County gal.

She’s married now and living in Pasadena; her husband — a slightly stocky, gray-haired guy of some means — doesn’t resemble me or her first husband (a doobie-toking small-business owner who owned a Harley) at all. Whatever attributes or nice qualities he’s brought to the table, he’s clearly a swing away from the past.

I gave up trying to be in touch with her toward the end of Barack Obama’s first term. She really wants to erase that part of her life — the first marriage (which began in the summer of ’96) and the affair with me that began in early ’98 and lasted two and two-thirds years, ending in late September 2000.

We last spoke in ’12. The most emotionally significant thing that happened before that was her friending me on Facebook, but what is that?

Our thing began at the ’98 Sundance Film Festival and finally ran out of gas in late ’00 when her husband found out.

Do you want a truly affecting parable about otherness and suffering derision for being different?…a sad, affecting, human-scaled drama about a young person bullied and ostracized for having shamrock green hair? Watch Joseph Losey’s The Boy With Green Hair (1948).

Idina Menzel and Cynthia Erivo? Meet 12-year-old Dean Stockwell.

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“The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you touch with your hand, and the kind you feel in your heart, your soul…the spiritual side. And you know, the worst of the two is the spiritual.”

I used to constantly argue with myself which parent was the worst, dad or mom. They were both punishers, prison wardens…”no” was their mantra, their middle name.

Imsgine seeing Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master for the first time, and just blurting out tweets as you walked home…just pouring it out, fast and unrefined.

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This is probably a minority opinion, but speaking as one who’s been dropped cold or given the casual brush-off by several women during my hound-dog heyday (mid ’70s through late ’90s, not counting my four-year marriage from ’87 to ’91), it’s a bit more painful to dump than to get dumped.

I can think of eight or nine times when I suffered terrible heartache after getting the heave-ho. Bottom of the well, my life is over, “Can’t live if livin’ is without you,” etc.

I can recall at least two times when I was so devastated by “love lost at such a cost” that I succumbed to something close to clinical depression. One time in late ’79 I was so bummed that I slept in my West 4th Street apartment for a whole week straight, getting up only for meals or to watch an occasional TV show.

I gradually learned after suffering through these breakups that you can’t negotiate or plead or beg your way out of them. When you’ve been dumped by a woman of character or conviction, the game is over. Nothing you can say or do will change her mind.

The best you can hope for is to persuade her to agree to continue having sex while you both hunt around for the next romantic opportunity. But even that rarely happens because by the time she’s told you she wants to fly solo or see other people she’s probably already found a replacement.

In the spring of ’79 I was seeing a foxy West Village woman on an off-and-on basis. He or she who loves less always controls the relationship, so I guess I was the controller as my feelings for her were on the somewhat casual, come what may, comme ci comme ca side. Her feelings for me were more ardent, or so it seemed.

Then I met someone else who was prettier, hotter, sharper, classier — definitely a better catch. When the new thing began to happen I knew I had to tell the West Village lady. I wouldn’t dare try to two-time anyone. I wanted to play my cards honest and clean. No messing around.

Except when I visited the West Village, off-and-on apartment and lowered the boom, I felt awful. She began to cry a little bit and lament her awful luck with men, and all I could do was stand there and say “I’m really sorry.”

The difference between this and the terrible feeling of being dumped is that dumpees don’t feel guilty — all they have is the ache. But if you drop someone you feel guilty about having caused great emotional harm, or at the very least a bad bruise. You feel like a bad person.

Guess what? The woman I left her for dumped me six months later.

The only other time I felt like this was when a woman I’d been seeing on a fairly serious basis became aware of a little side dalliance with a married woman. (We’d met while performing in a community theatre play.) The serious relationship woman began to quake with weeping, and all of a sudden I felt like a beast who needed to be whipped. I’m sorry so sorry sorry…I’ll never do this again…please, forgive me…so sorry.

Boiled down, hurting someone feels much worse than being hurt.

Specific thoughts will be tapped out later this afternoon…

I’m planning on seeing Paris Barclay‘s Billy Preston: That’s The Way God Planned It, although not today. (Screening conflict with Wicked.) Recapping Preston’s glory years is worth the ticket price, but I’m wondering to what extent, if any, the film will get into how Preston’s heavily Christian background led to intense inner conflict over being gay, and how that seemed to usher in a pattern of drug abuse.

Preston’s highly charged performance of “That’s The Way God Planned It” during George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh is easily the highlight of Saul Swimmer’s 1972 doc.

DocNYC boilerplate: “Mega-talented keyboardist and songwriter Billy Preston was often referred to as “the best musician in the room.” Stylistically influenced by the Black church, Preston’s illustrious career includes collaborations with Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, the Beatles, etc.

“A private man who turned to drugs to dull the pain of personal trauma, Preston’s poignant story unfolds through insights from Billy Porter, Eric Clapton and whomever, complemented by rare footage and an original score by Robert Glasper.”

Wiki excerpt: “Preston had become close friends with musician Sly Stone around the same time he was engaged to actress and model Kathy Silva. Preston was devastated when he came home one day to find Stone in bed with Silva (who later married Stone on stage at Madison Square Garden). According to Preston’s manager Joyce Moore, Silva’s affair with Stone was the trigger that led Preston to stop having relationships with women. It was after this incident that he began using cocaine and having sex with men. Moore saw his drug abuse as his way of coping with the conflict he felt about his sexual urges.”

How about “some the Gold Derby gangbangers aren’t cool enough to be part of the Gate Crashers“? How about them apples?

Jeff “insneider” Sneider posted this last night:

Halfdan Ullmann Tondel’s Armand will enjoy a qualifying theatrical run in New York City on 11.29.24. A limited theatrical release will kick off on 2.7.25 with a wide theatrical break slated for 2.14.25. It runs 117 minutes.

Posted from Cannes on Sunday, 5.19: “Armand” — Best Film of the Festival So Far, Hands Down

Scott Feinberg’s Awards Chatter podcast interview with Horizon maestro Kevin Costner begins in a few minutes so distraction levels are high, but there’s no question whatsoever that Halfdan Ullmann Tondel’s Armand, which I caught early this morning, is the finest film here, and I mean way, WAY above the level of Emilia Perez.

All hail the lead performance by Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World)!

…are set for New York and Los Angeles on 11.25, and in damn near every major city across the country in early December. The review embargo lifts on Tuesday morning, December 10th.

…I immediately flashed on this legendary clip from Conan’s talk show, which was taped on 5.15.97 — 27 and 1/2 years ago. Conan, Courtney Thorne-Smith and Norm McDonald. The comedic back and forth was between Norm and Conan, of course, and Thorne-Smith was the tennis ball. Conan wasn’t the instigator, of course — Norm was. Conan mainly tried to protect Thorne-Smith, but he quickly gave up.

Thorne-Smith is now 57 or 58 years old, married to Roger Fishman, and mom to a 16 year-old son, Jacob Emerson Fishman.