Hollywood Elsewhere and the rumble hog rarely pay for underground parking. In the vast majority of cases there’s enough room to squirm past the plastic white barrier gate; ditto on the way out. This is one of the many delights of two-wheeled travel in this town.

Before last night’s Irishman premiere the three of us (Tatyana, myself and the Yamaha Majesty) managed to barely squeeze past the barrier going in, but upon leaving the space to the right of the gate looked too tight. (Or so it seemed at the moment.) So I maneuvered right behind a scruffy Toyota or Honda of some kind. The guy paid, the gate want up and I followed him right out — standard opportunistic procedure in parking lots across the globe, I presume.

There was a security guy (white shirt, black tie, badge) who was standing around. As Tatyana and I sped off, I could hear the security guy express alarm (“heeeeyyyy!”) but even with my helmet on and the engine roaring I could sense he wasn’t that into it. Maybe he was amused. He gets paid either way.

In the worldwide box-office realm, Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix‘s Joker has become the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. It has so far earned a grand tally of $788 million. Until today Deadpool‘s worldwide tally of $738 million had established it as the top-earning R-rated film from Bangkok to Bangor to Marseilles and beyond.

But domestically speaking, Mel Gibson‘s The Passion of the Christ (’04) is still Numero Uno with earnings of $370 million. Joker‘s U.S. tally is currently around $259 million.

Instant victory, hands down, don’t even debate it.

Bruce provides the humanity, name value and a general proletariat compassion and liberal inclination approach. Pete delivers the smart, sleeves-rolled-up implementation of non-woke, non-crazy, forward-looking Millennial practicality.

And if homophobic African-American voters (of which there are quite a few) want to stay home and not vote, fuck ‘em. Bruce and Pete will win in a walk either way.

Everyone I know is slightly concerned about Warren’s chances against Trump, and a lot of people feel a little funny about the schoolmarm thing. (Don’t even mention the prevailing bumblefuck attitudes about Medicare for all.). And Droolin’ Joe is finished, of course. Pete should top the ticket, of course, but the homophobes are ass-draggers.

Everyone I speak to is in full-on worship mode for Bong Joon-ho‘s Parasite, and that’s fine. But Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse (A24, 10.18) is so much better, so much more of a carefully composed, immaculate gourmet banquet feast than Parasite, it really isn’t funny. Parasite is very good; The Lighthouse is a masterwork.

Ten effing days? If I was in charge of how much time Felicity Huffman would do for the college admissions scandal, I would have given her a firm 30 days minimum. No time off for good behavior or because she’s a rich celebrity — grim up, do the time, Robert Mitchum up.

I would have also insisted that each day Huffman and ten or twelve of her fellow inmates form a circle in the exercise yard with each inmate placing a hand on the shoulder of the inmate in front of her, and then they’d start tromping round and round like in an old Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy movie.

As God is my witness, I hate it when the system caters to wealth, celebrity and privilege.

During last night’s Irishman premiere after-party the subject turned to the Best Supporting Actor race. It’ll obviously be between Al Pacino‘s Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman and Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. “They’re both so great and it hurts too much to choose,” I replied. “So the Best Supporting Actor Oscar race should end in a tie. Like it did in 1969 when both Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn won for Best Actress. It’ll feel really bad and wrong if either Pacino or Pitt lose. I’m serious — they both have to take it.”

Near the end of Martin Scorsese‘s The Irishman an 80something Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) is being questioned about his criminal past by a couple of dark-suited guys — not necessarily cops, possibly journalists or biographers. Sheeran doesn’t want to talk despite the fact that everyone he’s ever dealt with in a criminal capacity is dead, as one of the inquisitors points out.

In a decade-old draft of Steven Zallian‘s Irishman script, the inquiring journo-biographers are used as a framing device. The script begins and ends (not precisely but near the end) with questions for Sheeran that are left unanswered or deflected. The below dialogue constitutes the first two and half pages of the ’09 draft. Scorsese may have shot it but it didn’t make the final cut. No regrets or laments as the film unfolds and pays off like a symphony, but the dialogue is good and true.

When the spirit is upon him, which is often, nobody can hold a candle to William Jefferson Clinton. This (along with the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot) is why he beat George H.W. Bush in ’92. But I have to be honest. My primary impression as I watched him speak about the great Elijah Cummings this morning was that he looks and sounds weak and frail — like a guy in his mid ’80s rather than his mid ’70s. He looks and sounds older than Joe Biden, and Biden was born four years earlier than Clinton. Think of the tough, steely bearing of Bernie Sanders — 78 and recovering from a heart attack, but seemingly a lot stronger and flintier than Clinton.

A Buzzfeed story by Amber Jamieson explains it all. It happened at the Downtime Bar (25 Avenue B, between 2nd and 3rd). Harvey and some actor pallies at a table, looking down and pretending it wasn’t happening, etc. But it was. It did.

It was announced two days ago (10.22) that Lori Loughlin, her husband Mossimo Giannulli and nine other well-heeled parents are now being charged with conspiring “to commit federal program bribery by bribing employees of the University of Southern California (USC) to facilitate their children’s admission.” Loughlin and Giannulli were previously indicted on one count each of money laundering and honest services fraud for allegedly paying bribes to get their daughters into USC as fake crew recruits. Obviously the prosecutors are trying to pressre Loughlin and the others into pleading guilty.

There’s something vaguely satisfying about the notion of elite one-percenters doing time in the Big House along with Cody Jarrett — exercising in the yard, talking to visitors through a glass partition, eating the same crappy food as regular hardened blue-collar cons, etc. I haven’t figured why this scenario seems agreeable on some level, but it does.

It’ll be a late night for hundreds of industry operators and finaglers this evening. Netflix insists that the 7pm Irishman premiere at the Chinese will start on time (as premiere screenings always start a good half-hour later than announced). If it actually starts on time, which I doubt, it’ll be over at 10:30 pm. I’m figuring more like a 7:15 pm launch and a 10:45 pm conclusion. And then comes a big party at the Roosevelt, which will likely endure until 1 am if not later. I can’t wait to see it again. The first time is for recognition of quality, of course, but it’s mainly about getting wet, swimming the required number of laps and then towelling off. The second time is always the meditative charm.