I recently read somewhere that most U.S. citizens have never visited more than eight states. It goes without saying that most of us who drive or fly around tend to avoid the poor land-locked states or those known for bumblefuck, hee-haw, shotgun-rack mindsets. We also tend to favor the coastal states or those with extra-beautiful scenery (Colorado, Utah, Montana, northern California).

The states I’ve visited (36) are boldfaced below with certain designations. My faves are California, New York, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Florida, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Georgia.

U = have visited, driven through, meh
V = have lived there for years
W = have never visited, and probably never will
X = visited, liked the architecture and/or atmosphere, liked the people and the vibe, would like to return.
Y = briefly visited because I wanted to leave as quickly as possible, and did.
Z = have flown over.

Alabama / Y; Alaska / W; Arizona / X; Arkansas / W; California / V; Colorado / X; Connecticut / V; Delaware / Y; Florida / X (Miami, Key West); Georgia / X; (Savannah, I mean); Hawaii / X; Idaho / U; Illinois / U; Indiana / U; Iowa / Z

No one remembers or cares about Carol Reed‘s The Running Man, but the poster reminds that there’s nothing worse than for a lead actor known for a full head of intensely dark hair to suddenly dye it blonde.

Some actors have gotten away with this, I suppose, but it was certainly a terrible thing for Laurence Harvey to have done.

Yeah, I know…Laurence who? The poor man died 46 years ago, but he really had the lightning for a six-year period. His hot streak began with Room at the Top (’59) and continued with Expresso Bongo, The Alamo, Butterfield 8, Summer and Smoke, Walk on the Wild Side, The Manchurian Candidate, The Running Man (which wasn’t half bad if you ignored Harvey’s dye job), Of Human Bondage, Darling, The Outrage and Life at the Top (’65). His career didn’t die from that point on but it sort of withered. The fire began to flicker, and the quality of his films declined.

Wiki excerpt: “A heavy smoker and drinker, Harvey died at the age of 45 from stomach cancer in Hampstead, London, on Sunday, 11.25.73. His daughter Domino, who later became a bounty hunter, was only four years old at the time; she died at age 35 in 2005 after overdosing on painkillers. They are buried together in Santa Barbara Cemetery in Santa Barbara, California.”

Born in Lithuania in 1928, Harvey’s given name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne.

The best man in the Democratic race for President — the smartest, the most pragmatically left-centrist and the most generationally dynamic guy to potentially succeed Donald Trump in 2021 — hasn’t the faintest prayer of winning because of African-American voters. A CNN poll released on 7.1 showed that Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana mayor, has “continued to receive zero support” from this constituency.

By the same token Senator Bernie Sanders was also zotzed by African-American voters, particularly after winning only 14% of the black vote vs 86% for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 South Carolina primary. (In an inter-campaign memo read by the N.Y. Times, Sanders staffers wrote that “the margin by which we lost the African-American vote has got to be — at the very least — cut in half or there simply is no path to victory.”)

Basic math tells us that Buttigieg’s situation is even worse.

And so, because of African-American voters, we have three admirable but vaguely unsettling choices — Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. All are fine in terms of who they are and the humanist policies they’d pursue, but a seat-of-the-pants feeling tells me that Warren and Harris, admirable as they are, might not prevail against Trump (although they also might), and that Typewriter Joe, if he wins, will be at best a doddering one-termer. Biden is a good man and a far better human being than Donald Trump, but he’s the wrong guy to steer the sip in the 2020s. Because baby, baby, baby he’s out of time.

What is there to celebrate? We’re in the middle of a national authoritarian, verging-on-fascism nightmare — the lowest ebb that U.S. Democracy has known since 1776. Trump has turned an occasion for traditional patriotism into celebration of rightism and, of course, his own Mussolini-ness. Carole King has stated that she’s not participating in a Trump celebration, but if I were her I wouldn’t go anywhere near the nation’s capital today. I mean, good God.

What aspects of this once-great nation really deserve celebration? Presently speaking, I mean. The good would-be leaders (Buttigieg, Warren, Harris, O’Rourke), the native music (rock, jazz), the great movies and plays, the humor, kindness and neighborliness from everyday folks, the natural scenic beauty, etc. Not the military might (although that’s obviously essential for a world power), not the tanks and jets, not the drums and rifles. Everyone enjoys the comfort and privilege that comes with American citizenship, but who’s actually proud of being the Romans of our time — a rogue state that strikes when and where we please? I feel warm surges of patriotism whenever I watch The American Experience on PBS, but not so much when I look around today, and especially when I think of the the redhats standing behind Trump.

I love the culture of the great American cities, of course (including the one I live in), and I love the great natural wonders of this country. And pretty much every small rural town I’ve ever visited. But I’ve always felt happier in Paris, Rome, Prague, Bern, Munich, Lauterbrunnen, Berlin, Hanoi, Belize, the Pyrenees, the Italian Alps, southeastern Spain…anywhere across the pond. Especially these days. As far as I’m concerned this is a National Day of Mourning. Our Democratic traditions are being dismantled, and 40% or more of the populace thinks that’s just fine.

When I’m feeling down and low I sometimes browse the Daily Mail and check out photos (and sometimes videos) of hot rich couples vacationing and lying on beaches and bopping around. Like, for example, former model, reality star, designer and businesswoman Heidi Klum, 46, and her 29 year-old fiance Tom Kaulitz, the German-born lead guitarist for Tokio Hotel.

They’re in Paris (or were a day or two ago) while Klum was shooting footage for “Making The Cut“, an Amazon fashion competition series with her Project Runway collaborator Tim Gunn.

What the hell am I doing, sitting in my home on a Sunday afternoon and writing about Heidi Klum and Tom effing Kaulitz? I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m sighing and shaking my head over the fact that she and Kaulitz visited Paris Disneyland (presumably for the benefit of her kids as no ostensibly hip, ahead-of-the-curve, self-respecting traveller visits that nightmare destination) as well as the Louvre (which ISN’T pronounced “Loov-RAH” any more than ensemble is pronounced “ehn-sahm-BLUH”), and the video they posted was in portrait mode. Klum has been rubbing shoulders with sophistos for a quarter-century, and even SHE shoots videos like a high-school kid roaming around a North Carolina shopping mall.

Our natural eyesight delivers a Cinerama- or IMAX-like panorama, for several decades movies and TV shows have delivered images that are more wide than tall, and just about everything of a visual presentational nature over the last several centuries has been more wide than tall. And yet when people shoot video on their phones they default to effing portrait mode, which instantly eradicates any semblance of visual intrigue. What kind of submental impulse leads people in this direction?

Before shooting video you need to (a) hold your phone vertically and then (b) tip it 90 degrees to the left so you’re shooting with a 16 x 9 aspect ratio. How hard is that? Where’s the difficulty? I’m asking.

We all understand what will most likely happen next year with Pete Buttigieg. Unless, that is, he somehow flips African-American opinions over his handling of the Eric Logan shooting. What are the odds of that?

Pete may or may not do well in Iowa (2.3.20) and New Hampshire (2.11), but African-American voters are most likely going to shut him down in the South Carolina primary (2.29). They’ll go with either Joe Biden for his Obama administration cred (just like they went for Hillary Clinton in ’16) and general currents of trust and familiarity, or they’ll support Kamala Harris (works for me) or Elizabeth Warren.

A bit more than three weeks after the South Carolina primary, the 14-state Super Tuesday primary (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia) happens on 3.3.20.

If it can’t be Pete and has to be either Biden, Harris or Warren, I’m split between the latter two. A friend insisted yesterday that Harris can’t make it with hinterland voters. I don’t believe that. I think Harris’s no-nonsense, tough-prosecutor handle might catch on but who knows?

What if Harris or Warren can’t assemble sufficient delegates to top Biden? Then we’re stuck with him. I’ll vote for Joe, of course. We all will. But what a drag if it comes down to this.

The more I think about what’s coming, the more scared I get.

Mayor Pete’s African-American problem stems from what happened in March 2012, of course. The 29-year-old Buttigieg, no doubt facing all kinds of internal pressure from upper-echelon allies of South Bend’s white police ranks, fired South Bend police chief Darryl Boykins over an illegal phone recording incident. This plus Pete’s not demanding the badge of Sgt. Ryan O’Neill over the veteran police offer’s failure to turn on his bodycam prior to the Logan shooting.

Yesterday’s news about legendary producer Joel Silver, 66, leaving Silver Pictures didn’t seem to add up.

A onetime protege and producing partner of Larry Gordon, Silver launched the company in ’80, built it into a strong and successful action-flick shop, co-pioneered the whammy-chart approach to action films, earned hundreds of millions for Warner Bros. (the Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and Matrix franchises, Predator, The Last Boy Scout, Assassins, Swordfish, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, V for Vendetta, The Nice Guys). Things began to wind down when Silver’s longstanding partnership with Warner Bros. ended, and then a subsequent Universal deal didn’t pan out. Silver then partnered with Canadian private equity financier Daryl Katz.

But how does a guy who blazed his own high-powered trail and created his own self-named fiefdom…how and why does the commandant of Silver Pictures wind up leaving Silver Pictures?

According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit, the big-spending Silver (owner and renovator of Auldbrass, a South Carolina plantation estate built by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as a former owner of the Wright-designed Storer House as well as a Wright-designed 1941 Lincoln Continental) more or less torpedoed himself by blowing too much dough while failing to produce enough hit films.

“It is unclear whether Silver was fired or left on his own accord,” Kit reports.

“Silver rose to prominence in the era of the non-writing movie producer, a time when he and peers like Jerry Bruckheimer could command $2.5 million plus a cut of first-dollar gross on a studio film. Warner Bros. was a home to him, advancing him money when he needed it and assigning him big-budget features to develop and produce. As he rose in prominence, Silver purchased homes in Brentwood, Malibu and South Carolina, as well as an art collection he once valued at $17 million, courtside Lakers seats and the architecturally significant Venice Post Office property near the ocean in Venice Beach.”

I was chummy with Silver for a couple of years in the early ’90s — late ’92 through ’94. Then relations chilled. Too complex to recite here. Silver has a legendary temper. He was the real-life model for Saul Rubinek‘s Lee Donowitz character in True Romance. It’s also been said that Silver was a partial model for Tom Cruise‘s Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.

Posted on 4.26.07: “The late Dan Cracchiolo, the hot shot get-around who worked as Joel Silver‘s top guy in the mid to late ’90s and a little beyond, once told me about a conversation he and Silver had about the size of the craniums of big movie stars. He said that Silver told him, ‘Dan, all big stars have really big heads.’ Physically, he meant.”

At a recent Planned Parenthood convention in South Carolina, “several groups of chanting supporters marched their candidates into the auditorium. On Saturday morning, Kamala Harris came down an escalator accompanied by a cheering throng and a high school drum line. Later, boisterous backers of Cory Booker streamed in behind him from one end of the convention center, only to meet dozens of raucous Beto O’Rourke fans coming from the other. They came together in the middle, attempting to drown each other out with chants like rival gangs in a good-natured musical.

“Shortly after that, a group of Joe Biden supporters gathered to march into the main hall. Biden wasn’t with them, but they planned to enter as he appeared onstage. There were 20 or 30 people, a smaller group than those accompanying Harris, Booker or O’Rourke, and despite a few earnest woo-hoos, they weren’t nearly as loud as the others.

“An ability to draw crowds isn’t everything — a tepid vote counts the same as a passionate one. Biden’s supporters are older than those of other Democrats, which gives his campaign less visible energy but a more reliable voting base. Still, as recent elections have shown, enthusiasm matters. Anyone convinced that Biden is the safe choice should go see him for themselves.” — from Michelle Goldberg‘s “Joe Biden Doesn’t Look So Electable in Person,” posted on 6.24.19.

During the final episode of season #2 of The Sopranos, Tony (James Gandolfini) tells his sister Janice (Aida Turturro) that they were both emotionally scarred by their mother Livia (Nancy Marchand). One of her most malignant traits, Tony says, was her inability to experience joy. The psychoanalytic term is anhedonia, which of course was the original title of Woody Allen‘s Annie Hall.

The other day somebody called me a Livia-like grump, and that I’m always scowling and complaining and whatnot.

My stock response is to remind people of a riff I wrote five years ago, and reposted in ’17. It was called “Like, Want, Need.”

“I’ll tell you what I want,” I began. “I want to walk around New York City at a fairly vigorous clip. I want to love and support my wife Tatyana and my sons every way I can. I want to sail into the mystic. I want to stay in touch with everyone and offer as much offer affection, trust, intellectual engagement and friendship as I reasonably can. I want to live forever. I want good health, and to me that also means good spiritual health. I want to keep most of my hair and never grow breasts or a pot belly. I want Japanese or South Korean-level wifi wherever I go. I want to read and know everything. I want to bask in love, family, friendship and the purring of my cats until the end of time.

“I also want several pairs of slim ass-hugging jeans, and I want to be clean shaven. I want well-made shoes, preferably Italian suede or Bruno Magli or John Varvatos. I want to keep all my Blurays forever. I want color, aromas, travel. I want challenging hiking trails in high Swiss places. I know it’s not possible, but I’d prefer to always be in the company of slender people. I want to zoom around on my Majesty and use the Mini Cooper only when it rains or when I need to buy a lot of groceries. I want mobility and adaptability and the smell of great humming, rumbling cities. I want European-style subways, buses, trains, rental cars. I want a long Norman Lloyd-type life, and I insist that my mental faculties stay electric and crackling forever.” And so on and so forth.

You can say these are the words of a hopeless sourpuss, but they’re not. You can say I’m being dishonest or otherwise covering up, but I’m not. I’m no Livia and no Woody. Life is nothing without joy, and joy is nothing unless you embrace it…unless you jump into the pool with your clothes on.

From “President Donald Trump’s poor mental health is grounds for impeachment,” a 5.31 USA Today opinion piece by John Gartner (psychologist and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School), Dr. David Reiss (practicing psychiatrist for more than 30 years, specializing in fitness evaluations), and Dr. Steven Buser (clinical psychiatrist practicing in Asheville, North Carolina, and a former Air Force psychiatrist. Gartner and Buser are editors of “Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump“:

I knew Tommy Lee Jones would be a star of some magnitude after watching him play Coley Blake, a hard-luck loser and accused murderer, in Michael Miller‘s Jackson County Jail.

An above-average exploitation flick, Jail was produced by Roger Corman and released by New World into subruns and drive-ins in the spring of ’76.

Donald E. Stewart‘s script is about a Los Angeles ad exec named Dinah Hunter (Yvette Mimieux) who’s wrongfully arrested in shitkicker country and then raped in a small-town jail cell. She and Blake break out of the slam and go on the run. It gradually becomes apparent that Blake, who wears the shell of an outlaw nihilist, carries shreds of decency and compassion.

Blake’s bitter signature line, spoken to a surly cop, is “I’ll play what’s dealt.”

Jones’ big climactic scene happens at the end of the clip (starting around 8:30). Blake is running from the law during a small-town 4th of July celebration. The cops shoot him two or three times in the back. He staggers and falls to the pavement alongside an American flag. Blake dies with a long exhalation of breath, just like Stephen Boyd‘s Messala in Ben-Hur.

When the film ended I knew right away that Jones, 29 when the film was shot, was X-factor and waiting to happen.

You can stream Jackson County Jail on Amazon, but only in standard def.

If you want a fast-and-hard assessment of Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, which I attempted to convey two or three hours ago, it goes like this: Four-fifths of this half-century-old Hollywood fantasy is lightly amusing, in and out, yes and no, decent and diverting as far as it goes. But the final fifth is payoff time — a taut, time-clocky, here-we-go, edge-of-the-seat finale that is absolutely insane, exuberant, take-charge and fucking-ass nuts.

I could boil it all down and simply call the last half-hour a “happy” ending, except the craziness is so balls-out unhinged…I’m obviously having trouble describing it. I have my tastes and standards and you all have yours, but by the measuring stick of Hollywood Elsewhere the finale is really, really great. As in laugh-out-loud, hard-thigh-slap, whoo-whoo satisfying. Do I dare use the term good-vibey? And the very end (as in the last two minutes) is…naahh, that’ll do.

But most of the film (the aforementioned 80%) is what most of us would call an okay, good-enough, sometimes sluggish, oddly digressive, highly restrictive wallow in the world of B-level Hollywood at the dawn of the Nixon administration.

By which I mean OUATIH is pretty much tension-free and not all that juicy except for two brawny-fisticuff scenes involving Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth, a laid-back, muscle-bound, serenely cool stunt man. Take no notice of any critic who claims Pitt isn’t the star of this baby and then some. Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Rick Dalton, a late-30ish actor stuck in a career slide and freaking badly, is all nerves and anxiety, a smoker of too many cigarettes and a slurper of way too much alcohol.

Who are these guys? And how will Dalton, a fading TV actor with a backpack full of fear and trepidation, find a way out of the thicket? And what role, if any, will Booth, Rick’s sidekick, stunt man and best bruh, play in turning things around, if in fact that is in the cards?

And what about those motley, zombie-like hippie weirdos encamped at the dusty Spahn Movie Ranch out in Chatsworth, whom Cliff immediately recognizes as bad ones? And how, if at all, will Rick ever break into A-level movies and thereby rub shoulders with the likes of Roman Polanski, aka Mr. Rosemary’s Baby, and his dishy wife Sharon Tate?

I wasn’t irritated or put off by the first four-fifths but I was waiting, waiting, waiting. I was fine with it being a relatively decent, often wise-assed, sometimes hugely enjoyable attitude and atmosphere smorgasbord of period aroma, jokes, flip humor, character-building, asides and “those were the days.”

But with the exception of those two hugely enjoyable stand-up-and-kick-ass scenes (Cliff vs. Bruce Lee on a movie set, Cliff vs. the mostly-female Manson family at the Spahn ranch), all I was feeling was a kind of second-gear sensation…an “okay, okay, okay but where’s the tension, what’s with all the digressions and when the hell is this movie going to step up and kick into third if not fourth gear?”

It’s not really Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, of course, but Once Upon A Time in Quentin’s Non-Historical Hollywood Memory Kit Bag.