Owning a pair of white Mickey Mouse gloves (three fingers and a thumb) used to be a cool thing, but no longer, I fear — not in this century.

Mickey Mouse was a seminal 20th Century cartoon character, but culturally he mattered for only about 40 or 50 years. He began with Steamboat Willie (’28), grew in stature with Fantasia (’40), peaked with the Mickey Mouse Club TV series and the building of Disneyland in ’55.

I was going to buy some Mickey gloves for Sutton, but I don’t think she’d “get it.”

I again feel compelled to discuss the passing of Chance Browne, a renowned cartoonist (“Hi and Lois“) and musician and painter…an all-around good fellow.

Chance died from pancreatic cancer a little more than three months ago (3.1.24). For nearly my entire life he was one of my dearest friends. We’d bonded in the mid ’60s and held fast friendship-wise through the many decades that followed. It’s unusual to hold onto amigos for this long — for one reason or another friendo fondness tends to fade or weaken or simply run out of spirit. But not when it came to Chance.

Me to Chance’s widow, Debbie, when I first heard: “Mike Connors told me the devastating news just now. I’m so sorry, Deb. I feel truly broken…state of shock…so sorry for you and the girls. Despite the horror of the woke plague and how that affected my relationship with poor Chance, we had over 50 good years together — warm years, bountiful years…so much hilarity and spirit. My heart is shattered. Please keep me in the loop regarding any memorials or gatherings. I’m soooo sorry. Doesn’t feel real.”

I’ve mentioned once or twice that Chance became an unregenerate woke scold sometime in mid ’21, and that he began accusing me of horrendous attitudes and behaviors that had no basis in fact, emotional or otherwise.

No exaggeration, it was the single most appalling episode of my emotional life. On 9.24.22 I tapped out a longish piece about a traumatic encounter I had with him inside Wilton’s Village Market.

During that stand-off Chance looked me right in the eye and called me a piece of shit, right to my face, literally shoving a knife into our half-century-old friendship.

When he passed I decided to try and focus on the good decades and let the woke insanity go. But now the shit-stirring is back slightly because the Browne family has invited old pals to drop by the homestead later this month and share memories and probably do a bit of hugging. Given Chance’s decision in ’21 to turn into Donald Sutherland‘s character in the final scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (’78), I didn’t expect an invite. And that’s fine. Our shared past can’t be fiddled with or diminished. It lives.

And yet a guy I loved for over half a century is being remembered and toasted, but because I was kicked off the bus due to not being a card-carrying wokester…aahh, let it go.

Yesterday I barely summoned the energy to catch a theatrical showing of Tony Goldwyn and Tony Spiradakis‘ Ezra…barely. Inner meditation: “Do I really want to wade through a family-conflict drama about an autistic lad in his mid teens? Really? I have to watch this fucking thing?”

But I did, and I have to admit that I found it somewhere between tolerable and decent, and at times even affecting. It’s a good, pro-level film as far as it goes. Did it bother me somewhat? Here and there, yeah, but not to a fatal degree.

The eccentric, bespectacled Ezra (played by William Fitzgerald, a real-life Asperger’s kid) exhibits all the usual Raymond Babbit traits — no touching, no eye contact, insightful, uncomfortable with emotional intensity. His divorced parents — Max (Bobby Cannavale), an excitable and immature aspiring comedian, and Jenna (Rose Byrne), a conservative, worry-wart mom — are arguing about whether Ezra needs to attend a special-needs school and maybe take suppressive medication.

Jenna and boyfriend Bruce (Goldwyn) lean towards regulation and meds while Max wants Ezra to be a free improvisational soul…the kind who wears loose shoes and thinks on his feet and even allows himself to be hugged.

There’s also Stan (Robert DeNiro), Max’s feisty dad who supports his son despite concerns about his hyper personality. (DeNiro looks better in the film, by the way. than he did at that recent lower Manhattan press conference in front of the Trump-vs.-Alvin Bragg courthouse.) There’s also Max’s friendly manager (Whoopi Goldberg), old friend Grace (Vera Farmiga), childhood pal Nick (Rainn Wilson, who’s really lost some hair and packed on the pounds), some FBI guys and even Jimmy Kimmel and Geraldo, who furtively appear in the third act.

I can’t fucking do this. It’s draining my soul as I try and summarize the anxious and busy plot, which of course involves a coast-to-coast road trip. I’m feeling weaker and weaker, I mean. The sand is running out of the hourglass.

But at least Ezra ends pleasantly, and I have to acknowledge that Cannavale, his face covered with Yasser Arafat salt-and-pepper whiskers, gives an affecting performance, even though he taxes your patience at times. HE to Cannavale: Will you please calm the fuck down? Asperger kids don’t like excessive emotionality, and neither do I.

For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg‘s tastiest and wickedest film — intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing and yet highly cerebral, dramatically complex and certainly perverse.

I watched it again last night, and whoa, mama…Vincent Cassel‘s Otto Gross (1877-1920), a real-life Austrian psychoanalyst and sensualist outlaw, is easily the most fascinating character.

Not to take anything away from the carefully calibrated performances of co-leads Michael Fassbender (Carl Jung), Keira Knightley (Sabina Spielrein) and Viggo Mortensen (Sigmund Freud), but they’re made of earnest dramatic fibre. Cassell’s Gross is a pure groin rebel, and serving of dessert.

Cassel to Le Soir: “The character of Otto Gross is special, a kind of trap…a kind of Trojan Horse! That is to say, we send him for something and he does something else. I find my character very modern. It’s a bit like the manager of the Rolling Stones finding himself dropped into a period film. And, above all, he has very good lines. So, all in all, I couldn’t refuse. I had to play this role.”

Brad Pitt has been sober for nearly eight years, but because he lost his alcoholic temper during that infamous chartered flight (on 9.14.16) and was physically abusive to Maddox, one of the six Jolie-Pitt kids…because he was a belligerent drunken dick that one time, at least two of his daughters, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, 18, and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, 15, are convinced that he’s a living embodiment of Satan and want the Pitt struck from their last names.

Shiloh has in fact filed legal papers to change her name to a Pitt-less Shiloh Jolie. Perhaps Vivienne will follow suit when she turns 18.

We all understand teens who feel estranged from their parents (I was one), but who goes into court and says in effect “strike my father’s last name from my legal history!…he doesn’t exist, his name is anathema!…I judge him damned with the devil and condemn him to molten-lava hell with all the other fallen angels, where he will writhe in terrible pain for all eternity.”

What kind of nutbag daughter thinks this way?

Why is the divorce initiated by Angelina Jolie against William Bradley Pitt still ongoing and unresolved eight years later? Sane exes don’t behave this way as a rule.

Trust me — I’m not the first person on planet earth to rhetorically ask “what exactly is Angelina’s basic psychological malfunction?”

Then again I may be thinking too narrowly. Perhaps Pitt is the devil incarnate, and therefore deserves to be hunted down with clubs and spears and burned like Joan of Arc or Oliver Reed’s Father Grandier from Ken Russell’s The Devils?

…if a movie about a struggling family dealing with a life-is-no-picnic situation…wouldn’t it be amazing if such a film wasn’t named after or didn’t focus on a character with special needs or a special affliction? Or who wasn’t strugglng with his or her sexuality and wasn’t an immigrant or a person of color or an aspiring 10-year-old drag queen or a kid dealing with his queer parents’ unhappy marriage due to one of them being in transition and the other committed to his/her natural biological cards…?

Wouldn’t it be amazing, in short, if an occasional family- or community-related movie came along that wasn’t about any of this SJW-minded, attention-demanding, vaguely woke-driven bullshit and was just about…you know, an average kid dealing with normal difficult shit…difficult because nothing is easy for kids in their early to late teens and yet the problems are more or less par for the course?

Example: What if a family movie was about an average non-homophobic straight teenaged male whose parents are reasonably stable and decent types…and who (fasten your seat belts!) likes girls but whose grades aren’t very good and who lives a life of random distractions and daydreams but at the same time is a bit of a lady-killer, a bit of an Alfie…God in heaven!! Call out the Strelnikovs!!

I wasn’t going to say anything about Sasha Stone’s Manhattan mishap, which happened two days ago (Thursday, 5.30) in the early morning while walking on those mean, pushy, move-it-or-lose-it concrete streets with her two dogs, who travel with her everywhere.

But now that she’s announced her misfortune on Instagram, it’s olly olly in come free.

Sasha and her daughter Emma, bunked in a NYC rental somewhere in the mid 30s, had agreed to meet me and Jody Jasser and a mutual friend for dinner at Novita (102 E. 22nd Street) at 7 pm that evening. We’d arranged things a week or so earlier, when I was still in Cannes.

Sasha had in fact asked if Jody could join us, as they’d never met and this was a rare opportunity, etc. Plus she would feel socially safer with a non-pro at the table. Sasha is a “just folks” kinda gal — she gets nervous if there any too many wise guys and hot shots (i.e., people like me) in the room.

But sometime around breakfast hour and while basking in the glow of midtown sunlight, Sasha was presumably walking her mutts and then suddenly, to borrow a colorful expression from Daniel Day Lewis’s “Bill the Butcher” in Gangs of New York…whoopsy daisy!…she tripped over a curb or the dogs lurched and caused her to somehow lose her balance or whatever…Sasha “face-planted” (her term) on the sidewalk, and in so doing busted her right arm.

She texted the bad news from an emergency room, including a photo of her somewhat swollen features with a bloody upper lip. I responded with “holy shit!” surprise and friendo concern. Traumatized or at least shook up with an achey-breaky limb, Sasha didn’t formally withdraw from the Novita dinner, which of course was unnecessary. I’ve been there.

I advised recuperation and caution. I told Sasha she was risking possible trouble by driving her rental car back to Ohio to drop Emma off and then pushing on to Los Angeles, and doing it all with one arm and one hand (her left).

She’s doing it anyway as we speak. I admire her bravery. She’s a good driver. I just hope nothing dicey happens, forcing Sasha to react quickly and decisively without both hands on the wheel.

Everyone needs to wish her well and urge her to drive extra-carefully.

In general terms, Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man (Netflix, 6.7) is about Gary (Glenn Powell), a 30something guy who works for a big-city police department (New Orleans) in an undercover capacity.

The story kicks in when Gary falls in love with Maddy (Adria Arjona), a beautiful Latina woman who’s been involved with a not-so-nice guy named Ray (Evan Holtzman) and is also kind of a target of the police, except Gary can’t tell Maddy for procedural and security reasons that he’s with the fuzz.

The story tension is about when and how Gary will come clean with Maddy, and how her troubled relationship with Ray will be resolved (i.e., come to an end) so that she and Gary will have some kind of chance together.

Without divulging what I felt about Hit Man, I need to mention how much it reminded me, in certain ways, of John Badham‘s Stakeout (’87), which was a kind of cop sitcom thriller with a strong emotional pull.

The lead character was Chris (Richard Dreyfuss), a 30something detective who works for a big city police department (Seattle). He and partner Bill (Emilio Estevez) are assigned to spy on Maria (Madeleine Stowe), a beautiful Latina woman who’s been involved with a not-so-nice guy named Stick (Aidan Quinn). Stick has recently escaped from prison and, cops suspect, may be visiting Maria soon.

The story kicks in when Chris falls in love with Maria, but can’t tell her for procedural and security reasons that he’s with the cops. Plus he’s doubly deceived her by pretending to be a phone company technician so he can plant a bug in her phone.

The story tension is about when and how Chris will come clean with Maria, and how her troubled relationship with Stick will be resolved (i.e., come to an end) so that she and Chris will have some kind of chance together.

The storylines of Hit Man and Stakeout don’t line up precisely and diverge in significant ways, but the above described similarities are legit.

Again without tipping my hand about Hit Man, which I caught yesterday afternoon, I have to say that I liked Stakeout a lot more when I saw it…Jesus, 37 years ago? Yeah, it was. Reagan times, Iran-Contra, etc.

When I was young I didn’t like the way elderly types smelled. I was tutored by a 70something retired guy when I was 11 or 12 or thereabouts (my grades when it came to math and science were always poor as I cared only for English and history) and I recall sitting in his study and wondering “what’s up with this guy?” He smelled like something spicy and withered and mildewy. Like rotting bread. Plus he had bony, crinkly, liver-spotted hands.

On top of which I didn’t like him personally — he was snappy and brittle-mannered. I only lasted three or four sessions with the guy, partly because he was soon letting me know that he found me slow on the pickup and therefore irritating. Except the main reason I wasn’t paying close attention is that I couldn’t stop thinking how funny he smelled and how much I wanted to get out of there. Eff you, gramps.

Ever since Sutton came along in mid-November of ’21, the aroma thing has been my greatest fear. I’m terrified that she’ll think of me the way I thought about that bent-over, white-haired scold who smelled like an attic. I’m therefore always careful to wash scrupulously when I’m visiting her, and to always wear white musk cologne or Aqua Velva after-shave in her presence.

Hence my feeling of enormous relief and elation last weekend when I was carrying Sutton in a recreational park and she said, “Poppa, I like your hair.” The color or the texture, I presumed she meant, but perhaps also the scent. It was one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten in my life…wow!

One of my earliest girlfriends (the summer after graduating from high school) told me she loved my eyes, and a certain Manhattan girlfriend told me back in ’79 or thereabouts that she liked my washboard abs and to never let my mid-section get flabby. But until last weekend nobody had ever complimented my hair. I’ll never forget this.