After attending last night’s Paul Simon concert at the Hollywood Bowl, journalist Joel Stein tweeted that “The Boxer“, a 1969 tune from Bridge Over Troubled Water, presented a problem for the delicate ears of his nine-year-old son.

The song “isn’t too smooth with the way [Simon] desperately works in his confession that he had sex with prostitutes,” Stein tweeted. “Thanks, Paul Simon, for not playing it at my 9 year-old son’s first rock concert.” Perhaps Simon didn’t play “The Boxer” last night, but why wouldn’t he have? Simon did two or three nights ago [scroll to 11:30 mark on below video] and sang the lyric in question, “I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there” — i.e., with “the whores on Seventh Avenue.”

Imagine a nine-year-old boy being raised by a dad who wants to protect him from a mild little lyric like Simon’s. I was leafing through nudie mags when I was eight and feasting my eyes on bodacious ta-ta’s. Stein’s son is in for a rough patch when he hits his teen years. His dad is a pearl-clutcher.

HE nemesis Nick Schager, who declared last October that Bong Joon-ho‘s Okja was 2017’s third best film and James Gray‘s The Lost City of Z the fifth best (outrageous opinions), has posted a lowbrow assessment of Ari Aster‘s Hereditary — i.e., not wild or crazy or gorey enough. Something tells me that mainstream (i.e., grunt-level) horror fans will be saying the same thing when it opens, following in the path of The Verge’s Tasha Robinson.

Schager: “As a lifelong horror junkie, I readily confess that my own calloused constitution for the grisly and the macabre is greater than most, sometimes to a fault. Still, no matter that nor the rapturous praise that’s preceded its premiere, Aster’s maiden feature employs meticulous design and lots of screaming to drum up only so-so suspense, convinced that creeping pans through constricting architecture and random suggestions of paranormal activity will put one on edge—or, at least, keep one engaged until the final five minutes, when all hell breaks loose. By the time that mayhem arrives, however, you’ll be forgiven for having lost interest in this patchwork-quilt concoction of ghoulish cliches and Toni Collette freak-outs.”

HE review, posted on 5.22.18: “Either you get what serious, classy, smarthouse horror films are up to, or you don’t. Either you understand that when a certain scare switch is flipped by way of hint, suggestion or implication (such as that little-ping moment in Rosemary’s Baby when Mia Farrow reads the journal of a recently-deceased victim of Roman and Minnie Castevet and comes upon the phrase “I can no longer associate myself…”), it connects with convulsive, deep-rooted terrors that are far more disturbing than anything you might find in It.

You know that some cable or streaming broadcaster is going to rush in and attempt to acquire Racist Rosanne and re-launch the show ASAP. I don’t know who but someone will; maybe two or three. It’s obviously a hot-button show, and a good 30% of the country swears by her bullshit. The hoo-hah happened after Rosanne tweeted an offensive description of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarett, to wit: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Rosanne is a Trumpster, and Trumpism is about pushing back against the Wily Pathan. This is partly why the show is popular. Rosanne lives in blue territory but she’s “one of them” — a rural bumblefuck. ABC execs are cut from a different cloth. When has a huge hit show been so quickly and abruptly cancelled? This is pretty much without precedent.

I know I’m expected to be a Marvel hater, but I’m totally tuned into this July 6th release. I loved the original Ant-Man, and I fully expect to have a great time with the newbie. By the way: Michelle Pfeiffer has a role as Janet van Dyne — wife of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), mother of Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and the original Wasp. Lost in the “quantum realm” years ago during a mission with Pym years ago, but presumably returning. Where could Janet’s head be after being all alone in some nebulous micro-realm for God knows how many years?

A woman you’ve just met can find you extremely handsome or fetching or fuckable, but you can’t be of the same opinion. You’ve been looking at yourself for too long, and you’re all too aware of the fears and anxieties and unsettling undercurrents that lie beneath those facial features. I applaud anyone who would say they’re completely pleased or at least at peace with their face because it conveys a good attitude — accept yourself and your life thus far without guilt or judgment, and keep the door open for better chapters around the corner. This is how I see myself, and so I completely get what Isabelle Huppert was saying when she said there’s “nothing” about her appearance that bothers her. She’s lying, of course, but in a healthy way.

History has noted a fair number of female criminals and desperadoes (Bonnie Parker, Ma Barker, Belle Starr, Ulrike Meinhof, Sandra Avila Beltran, Phoolan Devi, Griselda Blanco, Shashikala Patankar, Seema Parihar) over the decades, but has there ever been an upscale, John Robie-styled female thief of any kind? More to the point, has there ever been a gang of women thieves? Or a female gang of any kind who joined forces to commit a major crime?

I’m just asking.

Lord knows there have been dozens of male gangs who’ve attempted this or that robbery, but to my knowledge women have never done this, not even once. If this presumption is in fact true, the natural question is “why not?” There have been loner lady outlaws over the decades, as noted, so why has there never been a gang of them? Update: Apologies — I’d overlooked Forty Elephants.

Conclusion: It would seem that in today’s context, no offense, that Ocean’s 8 is a masturbatory, patriarchal-pushback, Hollywood wish-fulfillment fantasy from the get-go, completely divorced from human behavior as observed and recorded by 20th or 21st Century journalists, historians and crime novelists. If I’m wrong, please inform.

I’ve been encouraged by the complaints about Solo‘s overly-dark cinematography, which of course is the doing of Bradford Young, the most somber and pea-soupy cinematographer on the planet. In other words, popular opinion seems to be catching up to mine, and from here on people will be “on” to Young…good! It needs to be understood that Young’s murky palettes are markedly different than the pitch-black shadow stylings of the late Gordon Willis, the legendary “prince of darkness” whose work I’ve long admired.

Last night I gave Hail Caesar! another shot. Having expressed my initial disappointment 2 and 1/3 years ago and moved past that like any sane person, I thought I might somehow see this period Hollywood “comedy” (i.e., one that’s actually funny in only one or two scenes) in a more approving light.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. As well-made, well-acted and handsomely designed as it obviously is, I still felt irked and underwhelmed. My re-viewing wasn’t boring. It’s still diverting in several portions (Channing Tatum‘s dance number, Aldren Ehrenreich‘s “would that it twuhhh” scene with Ralph Fiennes) but it feels oddly thin and scattershot.

Has anyone watched it again and felt differently?

I’m still hugely peeved at the Coen’s aspect-ratio wrongo. Two or three clips are screened within the film, and they’re all presented in CinemaScope-like widescreen, which of course didn’t appear until 1953 with The Robe and didn’t really kick in on a mainstream basis until ’54. Hail Caesar is happening in ’50 or ’51, given the obvious allusion to Quo Vadis. The fact is that all movies were shot and projected at 1.37 back then so we’re talking an aspect-ratio boner of stunning proportions. Unforgivable.

From my 2.3.16 review: The smarty-pants dialogue has verve and flair. The attitudes, haircuts, costumes and production design are all aces. Pic has many elements, in fact, that are sharp and zippy and loads of fun, but something is missing. Yes, if you ease up on your Coen Bros. expectations Hail, Caesar! is agreeable enough. It’s not slop and far from a trainwreck, but at best it’s a 6.5 or 7. Amusing here and there but never consistently funny in a follow-through, momentum-building sort of way.

Remember the inspired “Wheezy Joe” bit in Intolerable Cruelty (i.e., the gun mistaken for an inhaler)? There’s nothing in Caesar that comes close to that. If you ask me Inside Llewyn Davis — by any yardstick a downish, somber-attitude film — is funnier in its own studied way. John Goodman‘s back-seat performance as a junkie musician was a stone classic; ditto that “where’s his scrotum?” scene plus the moment when the amiable G.I. folk singer slurps the cereal milk. There are no bits or performances in Hail, Caesar! that deliver on this level.

Hail, Casear! is about real-life MGM general manager and vp Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) and how he deals with the kidnapping of Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a Robert Taylor-like star during the filming of a Quo Vadis-like Biblical epic called Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ.

Ethically, philosophically and attitudinally I am a daily contradiction — a war of opposing viewpoints contained in the same vessel. While I despise default bumblefuck attitudes (pro-Trump, stop the multicultural hordes from overtaking “our” country, lefties are Godless politically-correct Stalinists) with all my heart and soul, I also occasionally find myself sympathizing to some extent with these doofuses. Not “agreeing” with them as much as understanding why they feel as they do. And on a certain level of horrific premonition I’m feeling very, very scared about what might happen two years hence.

Having just watched the Munk Debate on Political Correctness and White Privilege, I am strongly sensing that the vast majority of Average Joes agree more with Jordan Peterson (“12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos“) than they do with the brilliant Michael Eric Dyson, who called Peterson “a mean and mad white man” during that recent Toronto encounter. [The rant begins at 5:15 and ends at 8:12.]

Somehow Peterson has become a kind of poster boy for pushback against the radical p.c. left in the name of calmness and common sense. And yet when Peterson asked how he was supposed to react to being perceived as a much-loathed white-privilege person, Dyson maintained that Peterson “isn’t suffering from anything except an exaggerated sense of entitlement and resentment.”

What I’m terribly afraid of is that two years from now there may be enough Average Joes in swing states who will be so turned off by the aggressive p.c. judgments and admonitions of the progressive left that they may once again vote for the most demonic and rabidly sociopathic crime-family President in this country’s history just to spite the left, even though they may agree that Trump’s authoritarian attempts to dismantle democracy have become truly horrifying.

In short I am scared shitless that in defiance of all common sense the schmoes will wind up hating the left more than Trump. Average Joes are generally furious at the idea of all white people being told to hang their heads in shame for a history of inherent genetic venality.

I for one am in the Bill Maher camp about Peterson. I believe that the levels of intimidation and career ruination at the hands of the progressive left have become ferocious and in some cases too extreme, and that standing by free speech means you should be down with the idea of occasionally giving offense in a debate. I’m just sensing that things have tipped into a kind of madness and that swing-state voters are sensing this also, and that this may become a factor in the 2020 election. I really hope it doesn’t. God help us if it does.

Last night in Paris a 22 year-old hero, an immigrant from Mali, scaled a Montmartre apartment building to save a child dangling from a balcony railing. But look at the guy from the apartment next door, right next to the kid and reaching out with his wife or girlfriend standing by. All the neighbor had to do was step around the plastic barrier that separates the balconies and pull the kid up. But he just stood there, holding the kid but not really doing anything, as the Mali guy climbed four stories like an Olympic athlete. Cheers to the rescuer but the neighbor is worthless. And where were the kid’s parents? Or his caregiver?

John McCain did a great thing when he cast the deciding vote against the repeal of Obamacare, and I confess I felt a smidgen of compassion for the poor guy when Ed Harris portrayed him in Game Change. And he did the right thing when he said “no, ma’am” to that blithering idiot who said to McCain that “I can’t trust Obama because he’s an Arab.” And he’s maintained friendly relations with Warren Beatty and other okay people. And he’s behaving with courage as he faces death, just as he behaved with courage while a prisoner in Hanoi. But McCain did a truly reckless, bordering-on-evil thing in choosing Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate in ’08, and he’s supported cruelty and selfishness time and again. I don’t think he deserves to be regarded with any kind of halo over his head.