I’d never heard of these magazines until late yesterday morning (Sunday, 2.4). They were sitting on a checkout rack at a ShopRite market in West Orange — a ten-minute drive from Jett, Cait and Sutton’s home.

The reason for their absence from HE radar is that my most-visited food haunts over the last two years — Wilton’s Village Market and WeHo Pavilions — wouldn’t dare offer them because this would suggest that Trumpers and obesity-sufferers are regular shoppers, which is somewhat degrading from a cultural standpoint.

The irony is that there’s nothing overtly coarse or downmarket about the ShopRite in question. And yet someone in ShopRite management figured these rags would appeal to customers. Do the math.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s “The Theatrical Success of Anyone but You Sends a Message: Has Streaming Become a Form of Stockholm Syndrome?“:

“Last fall, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man was one of the hits of the Venice Film Festival. It was a critical darling built around a charismatic performance by an up-and-coming star named…Glen Powell. Distributors were hot for it, and it was bought for $20 million.

“Here we are five months later, and Glen Powell is a star, and Hit Man, set to come out in June, will certainly advantage of all the marquee capital that Powell built up in Anyone but You. Which is a distributor’s dream, right?

“Wrong. Because it’s actually not going to happen that way.

“Hit Man was bought by Netflix, so no one was ever going to see it in a theater. And no one will see it in a theater now. Hit Man was a festival sensation that had the makings of an indie hit, but now it will be another movie that vanishes into the Bermuda Triangle of the streaming ocean.”

Very few major-league Hollywood stars have suffered such an abrupt and precipitous hair decline as James Stewart, and it all happened during his service as a bombardier squadron leader during World War II.

Before the war the rail-thin, tousle-haired Stewart looked fairly boyish; when he returned in ’45 he had developed widows’ peaks and stress fissures, and soon after (probably during filming of It’s A Wonderful Life or certainly before Call Northside 777) began to wear toupees. By the mid ’50s his hair was mostly gray and barely hanging in there.

Without the rug the older Stewart looked like an aging middle-management businessman or an Air Force General (which he was); with the rug he definitely looked younger but also like an actor wearing a rug.

Why didn’t Stewart take care of things “in Prague” via micro scalp implants? Because the technology didn’t really come into being until the ’90s or the early 21st Century.

Ayo Edebiri to Nikki Haley: “I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with an S and ends with a lavery?”

Haley to Edebiri: “Yep, I probably should have said that the first time.”

Yesterday HE gifted Sutton Wells with a 30-inch, red-and-white kids guitar — made by Master Play, Fender Stratocaster-resembling, etc. A totally decent little axe, and inexpensive to boot.

During the drive down from Connecticut HE was hit with an engine problem. The engine was coughing, struggling. I found a friendly West Orange garage. Everything’s fine now, but the total damage is/was $570.00.

HE is more or less down with this Joe Rogan rant.

Rogan on 70% of HE commentariat: “They know who and what they are…they won’t admit it but they’re in a cult…the very definition of a cult…they’ll attack you.”

The historic, first-time-ever arrival of the Beatles on U.S. soil happened on Friday, 2.7.64 — just shy of 60 years ago. They had left London Airport, which wasn’t renamed Heathrow until September 1966. early that morning, and arrived at the recently rechristened Kennedy Airport, known for decades as Idlewild Airport until l2.24.63, or only six weeks earlier. The Beatles flight, Pan Am # 101, touched down around 1:40 pm.

Ten minutes later they were inside a small press lounge inside the Pan Am terminal and answering a series of taunting, goof-off questions from local journalists (print and broadcast). Most of us have seen the footage (as burned into the mind as newsreel capturings of the JFK assassination chaos, which had happened only ten weeks prior), and heard the group’s wise-ass responses. You can feel the irreverent energy and giddy vibes. Something fresh and shifty was happening. Whatever was left of that gloomy, lingering hangover from the shock of Dealey Plaza…all of that was suddenly gone.

Earlier today I was looking for some restored news footage — HD, 4K, perhaps even a 60 fps makeover or at least deliciously restored with enhanced sound — that I was sure someone had created. To my gradual surprise I was surprised to discover that except for some cruddy-looking colorized footage nobody has done squat. The same footage that was broadcast later that day on local news channels is all you can find. Strange. You’d think someone along the way would have done something to intensify those iconic sounds and images, but no.

I wouldn’t say that Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” has fallen victim to presentism, as that sounds vaguely negative. Any way you slice it this new Hallmark version is a perplexing fantasy. The question arises, “To what end?”

Suggestion: Embrace reality — the researched and documented historical truth. It may seem difficult at times, but it’ll never let you down. Social fantasy is fine but it only gets you so far, and then what?

Carl Weathers has passed at age 76. Apollo Creed in the first four Rocky films (1976–1985), Colonel Al Dillon in Predator (1987), Combat Carl in the Toy Story franchise, Det. Beaudreaux in Street Justice (1991–1993), etc. He had a recurring role as Greef Karga in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian (2019–2023). Good man…sorry.

Don Murray, who died today at age 94, peaked in the ’50s and early ’60s (Bus Stop, A Hatful of Rain, The Bachelor Party, The Hoodlum Priest, Advise and Consent, Baby The Rain Must Fall).

Murray had a certain intensity — he knew how to convey anxiety, inner turmoil, uncertainty. His heroin-addicted Johnny Pope in A Hatful of Rain was his best moment. He was Oscar-nommed for Bus Stop, but that performance annoyed me.

The now-admitted-to relationship between Fani Willis and Nathan Wade has no bearing at the charges against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators, but it’s mind-boggling that Willis and Wade calculated that no one (particularly Trump investigators) would discover that they went on trips together and would use this info to weaken Willis’s authority and legitimacy …their stupidity was radiant.