I wasn’t uninterested in or indifferent to last night’s insanity, and particularly the protest resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, “the last adult in the room”; I just couldn’t think of anything to add. Dust and shrapnel, incoming missiles, lashing out, wheels coming off.

It’s too much to cram into one tight paragraph…U.S. troop departure from Syria and forthcoming 50% Afghanistan pullouts, Russia advantage and “malign actors,” an impending government shutdown over the wall because Trump fears the apocalyptic wrath of the Ann Coulter / Freedom Caucus righties, the eroding or tumbling stock market…it’s just wild instability and bunker-mentality chaos…a madman tailspin.

Filed last night by N.Y. Times reporter Nicholas Fandos: “Hawkish Republican lawmakers, still reeling from President Trump’s decision on Wednesday to yank American forces from Syria, found fresh cause for alarm on Thursday, after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned in protest and reports circulated that the president was preparing to pull thousands of troops out of Afghanistan.

“Coming on the same day that Mr. Trump balked at an agreement to avert an imminent government shutdown, the rapid-fire developments prompted rare warnings from within Mr. Trump’s own party that his foreign policy could be leading toward dangerous instability on the global stage.

“In perhaps the most surprising response, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the usually circumspect majority leader, issued a cutting and lengthy statement, saying: ‘It’s essential that the United States maintain and strengthen the post-World War II alliances that have been carefully built by leaders in both parties. We must also maintain a clear-eyed understanding of our friends and foes, and recognize that nations like Russia are among the latter.’

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A recollection about the late Penny Marshall, posted on Facebook by director-screenwriter Alan Spencer — 12.18, 9:39 pm:

“Penny Marshall was authentic. What you saw is what you got. When we first met I was a young writer on the Paramount lot and she was a huge star, but didn’t act like one. She was humble.

“Penny was a master of physical comedy. I marveled at an episode of Laverne & Shirley where she played a nurse struggling to change a bed with a corpulent patient in it. She tugged on a sheet that wouldn’t budge, slid all the way under the bed and halfway across the floor. Penny executed this gag with the skill of Chaplin.

“Penny choreographed much of her slapstick on the show, often telling the writers to simply create a predicament and she’d do the rest. This inventiveness was an early indicator of directing prowess.

“Penny was frank. When she saw an old friend who’d put on a dangerous amount of weight, she drolly asked in that inimitable voice whether he’d ‘heard of something called a salad?‘ Another time, when an A-list actor approached her at a party, asking why he’d never been cast in her films, Penny said ‘because I hear you don’t know your lines or show up on time.’ The star left slack-jawed.

“Penny was a tough lady who knew how to take care of herself, but also took care of others — family, friends, coworkers. She was charitable, but never publicized her good deeds. After 9/11, she gave a lot of time and money towards rebuilding as well as first responders. And unlike other celebrities, Penny was able to move through tough areas of town. This street cred was proven by gang members who called out ‘Laverne’ whenever she walked past. She was a working-class hero.

“Penny smoked like a chimney. You could smoke meats in her living room. Nonsmoking laws didn’t apply to her as she’d light up in restaurants and nobody dared stop her.

“Penny had one of the first boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts upon their arrival in California. She had all the best pizza parlors on speed dial and never lost an eBay auction for a Beanie Baby. She was fun and unpretentious.

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Men in Black International (aka MIB Paychecks) is “an upcoming American science-fiction action comedy film directed by F. Gary Gray and written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Liam Neeson, Kumail Nanjiani, Rafe Spall, Rebecca Ferguson and Emma Thompson” — Wiki boilerplate.

“I know I’ve been accused of being heavy-handed and whatnot, but the world we’re living in today is not the time to be subtle. It’s not the time. It’s my opinion that this upcoming [election]…two years is gonna go like that, two years is around the corner, two years is tomorrow…this upcoming Presidential election in two years is [gonna be] a battle for the soul of America…that’s what it’s gonna come down yo…it’s gonna be a battle for the soul and direction of the United States of America….I’m convinced of that…it’s gonna be a holy war, love against hate…Radio Raheem…Robert Mitchum with those tattoos on his fingers and Radio Raheem wearing those rings.” — Spike Lee speaking two weeks ago in an Indiewire Toolkit Podcast. Here’s the mp3.

By the way: There’s nothing especially eye-poppy about Chayse Irvin‘s cinematography for BlacKkKlansman. It’s mostly a straight-ahead, dialogue-driven drama that mostly happens indoors. Which makes me wonder why Universal decided to offer it in 4K Ultra HD (in addition to regular Bluray and high-def streaming). It wasn’t that long ago that 4K was exclusively set aside for CG spectacle stuff.

If you’re running a lost-briefcase-in-the-subway scam that allows you to meet and glom onto naive Good Samaritans, why would you store all your briefcases in an easily accessible, main-floor cabinet that any visitor could accidentally open, and thereby discover your game?

Yesterday rightwing author and columnist Ann Coulter posted an essay, “GUTLESS PRESIDENT IN WALL-LESS COUNTRY“, that called Donald Trump a fraud for walking back his government shutdown threat over the mythical Mexican wall, and claimed that “what he’s doing now absolutely guarantees that the next president will be a Democrat and, given today’s Democratic Party, that president will be Kamala Harris.”

Between this and yesterday’s conservative pushback over his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, Trump is now grappling with serious criticism if not the beginnings of revolt from righties, which will alter the 2020 narrative if it continues.

Coulter excerpts: “On the basis of his self-interest alone, [Trump] must know that if he doesn’t build the wall, he has zero chance of being re-elected and a 100 percent chance of being utterly humiliated.

“But when Trump is alone with Ivanka, they seem to agree that the wall has nothing to do with it. The people just love him for who he is! In a country of 320 million people, I’m sure there are some, but I have yet to meet a person who said, Yeah, I don’t really care about immigration or trade, I just love his personality!

“[Trump] was the only one talking sense [about immigration]. Unfortunately, that’s all he does: talk. He’s not interested in doing anything that would require the tiniest bit of effort. He’s in trouble now.”

I’ve been a Bruce Springsteen fan for the last 40-odd years, like everyone else. But I never saw him live, not once. The ticket situation always seemed so damn competitive and pricey. I forget how many months ago a Los Angeles attorney friend paid God knows how many hundreds of dollars to catch his one-man Broadway show; even if I could have afforded that I wouldn’t have felt very good about it. There are limits to the value of watching someone perform.

But last night I watched the Springsteen on Broadway show on Netflix, and it got me. But good. I was seriously impressed by the depth of the writing and the caressing emotions I felt as this 69 year-old guy recalled his New Jersey-based life — the childhood, the conflicts, the rock ‘n’ roll salvation. It was like being with a good friend or something, and listening to him unload.

I’m not a passionate “New Jersey guy” the way Springsteen is, but it felt to me like great heart-touching poetry. For the first time in my life I felt myself melting as I listened to this and that song. The New Jersey I knew as a kid and a teenager was horrific in some ways — I was actually delighted to move to Connecticut, once I got to know it — but for some reason I was feeling the old pangs anyway. That’s Bruce for you — his stuff reaches out and takes hold.

It’s a journey, this show…a ride and a walk into the past, and a sad, shared appreciation of a whole lot of things about American life, about the after-taste of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and how much of the home-grown fibre has been tainted or swallowed by corporatism or narcotized by opioids over the last 35 or 40 years.

I somehow didn’t realize that Bruce’s between-song patter would be so skillfully written and performed just so. It’s his story and his heart and everything he’s seen and been through, but he’s sharing it as a “performance.” He’s acting but at the same just being.

I don’t know at what precise point the show began to get to me, but I it might have been during his low-key delivery of “My Hometown.” Also “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”, “The Rising,” “Dancing in the Dark”…hell, all of it.

The show runs 153 minutes — it feels like 70 or 80.

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Clint Eastwood is pushing 89 but still has a nice clean jawline. I don’t meant to sound obsessive, but Joe “turkey wattle” Biden, 76, needs to “Clint up” before he announces his Presidential candidacy sometime next year. Joe knows what to do. He’s been no stranger to this and procedure over the years. He was a hair-plug pioneer way back in the late ’80s or thereabouts, and it probably helped him a lot.