This is two months old — from a 3.13.22 Bill Maher-Ben Shapiro podcast discussion. The main reason we’re afraid to talk about obesity is that a hefty percentage of obese people in this country…forget it. I’ll just get smacked. Forget I mentioned it.

Tweeted four days ago:

Absolutely incredible pic.twitter.com/ZprAxIRhyu

— Abner Pastoll (@abnerpastoll) May 6, 2022

Earlier today The Ankler‘s Jeff Sneider announced that one of the gloomiest and dreariest flicks in the history of cinema — Mark Romanek, Alex Garland and Kazuo Ishiguro‘s Never Let Me Go (’10) — is being relaunched as an FX series under the guidance of DNA Films & TV”s Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich. What a perfectly dreadful idea. I’m in instant mourning.

August 2010 HE commentary: It’s not a very well-kept secret that Never Let Me Go deals with a grim-fate dynamic — an oppressive, locked-down situation in which “a long and happy life” isn’t in the cards for the main characters, who have been raised to be organ donors for the rich.

There’s a famous saying about how “the clarity of mind that comes to a man standing on the gallows is wonderful.” As in face facts, sharpen your mind, prioritize.

I’ve always been one, however, to take it a step further and not just prioritize and all that, but to first and foremost revel and rejoice in the immediacy of the symphony of life.

Death is something to be accepted, okay, but primarily fought and strategized against, frequently laughed at, lampooned and pooh-poohed, acknowledged but simultaneously “ignored” (in a manner of speaking), dismissed, despised and raged against (in Dylan Thomas‘s words) right to the end.

There is only life, only the continuance, only the fuel and the fire…only the next step, the next breath, the next meal, the next sip of water, the next hill to climb, the next perfect pair of courdoruy pants, the next adventure, the next hypnotizing woman, the next splash of salt spray in your face, the next staircase to run down two or three steps at a time, the next rental car and the next winding road to concentrate on and carefully negotiate, etc.

Crimes of the Future director-writer David Cronenberg has been predicting Cannes Film Festival walkouts as a kind of taunt. He’s basically asking cineastes if they have the necessary sand. Are you men or milquetoasts? How deep is your ocean? How long is your toleration fuse?

Viewers who bolt out of a Crimes screening, in short, might be frail, anxious, overly self-protecting. The first requirement of a devotional cineaste is an absolute willingness to submit, of course, and if you can’t endure a little psychic disturbance by way of simulated body horror, what good are you?

Fuck all that. In the name of all the tepid souls and conventional comfort-seekers of the movie realm I am ready to whine and howl and kvetch over Crimes of the Future. Deep down I have always been a ponce, a nancy boy. I go to movies to feel more alive and self-aware and connected to the universe, and I’ve never gotten how depictions of body mutilation are in any way edifying or nutritious.

Sitting through scenes of body horror and mutilation over the years, “real” or imagined…Cronenberg’s Videodrome, The Brood, Crash, Dead Ringers and The Fly, not to mention Stuart Gordon’s Re–Animator and Alex Garland’s Never Let Me Go…yes, these scenes have enhanced or enriched or added dimension to my moviegoing life. At the very least I’m glad I’ve seen them.

But did I enjoy watching them during the actual moment of exposure? Nope — I winced through each wincing moment, and I haven’t re-watched any of these except Re–Animator, mainly because of the humor. The only Cronenberg film I’ve watched several times is The Dead Zone.

Cronenberg himself has claimed that his films are “funny,” but only in a dry, perverse, no-laugh-funny sense.

Will I be man enough to handle the grisly stuff in Crimes of the Future? I may be, but I know right now I’ll be groaning.

Top Gun: Maverick is a totally square, totally flash, right down the middle, Tom Cruise-worshipping, un-woke, stiff-saluting, high-velocity, bull’s-eye popcorn pleasure machine….yeah, yeah, YEAH!

My call sign is MUSTANG, according to a Top Gun: Maverick press link. I’m sorry but my preferred call sign is COYOTE.

A more fully considered HE review will post on Thursday morning.

Why even bother with Bluray players? Because I own an impressive Bluray library (over 350, the finest films, 30 + Criterions) and I can’t abandon this history. I can’t and I won’t. Hence the purchase of a new Bluray player, which I figured would be fairly inexpensive with just about everyone ignoring physical media these days.

Two days ago I ordered a Sony BDP–S6700 4K Bluray player for $149 — a mistake as it turned out. It’s a lightweight unit that’s only a step or two up from a plastic Crackerjacks figure.

It seemed okay at first, but yesterday morning I had a sudden interest in listening to a George Gershwin CD. I popped it into the new Bluray player, which is connected to the TV sound bar, and why not? I’d done the exact same thing a few times back in West Hollywood with no issues.

Alas, the Sony BDP-S6700 had an instant seizure seconds after attempting to play the CD. The entire system froze — no music, no ejecting the disc, no movie app streaming, a complete meltdown.

I finally persuaded the unit to cough up the CD. I then inserted a Scarface Bluray to see if basic functions were okay. It froze again and then refused to eject the disc. The player has been returned to Amazon with Tony Montana stuck inside.

Thanks, Sony, for manufacturing a device made of cheap-ass plastic, nickle-and-dime tech, a couple of rubber bands and a micro-sized hamster wheel.

They can obviously be inventive, exciting, emotional, symphonic, etc. But we’re still talking about various kinds of formulaic sausage.