My rough understanding is that the House repeal of Obamacare, enacted today by a slim majority of Republican assholes, (a) will not survive the Senate, and (b) may trigger a decisive backlash that will cost a lot of Republican Congresspersons their seats. Hell, it may even cost those fuckers their House majority and thereby pave the way for an eventual Trump impeachment.

From N.Y. Times account: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate leader, called the bill a “breathtakingly irresponsible piece of legislation that would endanger the health of tens of millions of Americans.”

“Members have been asked to vote for a bill that is particularly treacherous, that is going nowhere in the Senate,” said Representative Charlie Dent, the Pennsylvania Republican who has led the opposition among moderates. “This legislation will be gutted and we will have voted for a bill that will never become law. Will it cause headaches for people? Absolutely.”

“The upside for Republicans is that they can return to their districts and tell G.O.P. voters that they acted on a campaign promise,” said Nathan Gonzales, the editor of Inside Elections. “The downside is that the alternative may not go far enough for base Republicans, may go too far for moderate voters, and create a backlash that puts the House majority at risk in 2018.”

Morning Joe‘s Joe Scarborough and Mika Breszinki got engaged last weekend at the Hotel du Cap. Page Six‘s Emily Smith broke the news in the wee hours — Vanity Fair‘s Emily Jane Fox posted an exclusive interview piece at 9 am.

Morning Joe began in ’07, at which point the co-hosts were married to other people. At some point something began to happen, Scarborough divorced his second wife in ’13, and then Brzezinski divorced her husband in ’15. (Although it was first reported in June ’16.) Fox reports that Joe and Mika “are adamant that there was no impropriety in their relationship, that their marriages ended of natural causes.”

I’m sorry but that’s almost certainly bullshit. I’m not saying Joe and Mika did the deed before their divorces were finalized, but extra-marital wanderings are often decisive factors in any marriage headed for dissolution. Marriages almost never end without some degree of subterfuge and/or dishonesty about what’s really going on. Nobody gets a divorce and then embraces the next romantic partner in this sequence — things almost always happen the other way around, and more often than not in an untidy way.

It usually goes like this: (a) destined-to-be romantic partners feel the chemistry, strike a match, throw a little kindling on, (b) extra-marital currents get stronger and stronger, and then it’s suddenly a “thing,” (c) the infidel frets about how to break the news, and then frets and frets some more, (d) the infidel’s divided feelings are sensed, of course, by his/her partner, (e) eventually arguments ignite and the woundings increase, and (f) a divorce finally happens, especially if the extra-marital thing is any kind of bonfire.

Yesterday afternoon I wrote that I was crestfallen over an aspect of HE 2.0, which uses a wider column (640 pixels) than classic HE (460 pixels). It broke my heart that thousands of photos posted over the last 13 years (August 2004 to early May 2017) would henceforth be sitting flush left with a big dumb white space sitting to the right. Well, right after that Louisville-based WordPress specialist Dominic Eardley suggested a CSS solution, and 90 minutes later the great Sasha Stone figured out a fix. All classic HE photos will now be centered when HE 2.0 steps out of the cage, which may be later today. Or tomorrow. Playing it by ear.

Barack Obama‘s video endorsement of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron popped a few hours ago. Good call, but here’s the passage that got me: “I have admired the campaign that Emmannuel Macron has run…he has stood up for liberal values.” Does anyone remember Obama celebrating liberal values at any time during his eight-year presidency? I recall his avoiding the “l” word like the plague. Am I wrong? It’s nice, in any event, to hear him acknowledge the badge.

Nice jacket, Charlie. Looks warm. I think I saw it in Barney’s last December. Obviously not in keeping with apparel commonly worn by Arthur and his mates, but Guy Ritchie is reimagining that period…tossing the salad. Which goes hand in hand with the Led Zeppelin tracks. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Warner Bros., 5.12) will screen next week in New York and Los Angeles (and perhaps elsewhere) for people on my level.

In a just-posted interview with GQ‘s Michael Paterniti, Brad Pitt announces that he’s turned away from booze and (I think) pot, which Pitt legendarily inhaled for 25-plus years. The interview is like an AA confession. Clean and sober, a new life…for now. Pitt calls it a “season” that he has to “run off a cliff,” but good for him anyway. I knew six days in (my sobriety began on 3.20.12) that I’d be clean for life, but we all follow our peculiar paths.

Pitt: “I do remember a few spots along the road where I’ve become absolutely tired of myself. And this is a big one. These moments have always been a huge generator for change. And I’m quite grateful for it.”

HE Overview:  Everybody drinks and parties for 20, 25 years. From their late teens to their early to mid 40s. But you can’t keep that shit up. Cut back, dial it down, embrace sobriety…whatever. But if you don’t rethink it or downshift to some extent, you’re likely to be in some kind of trouble by your early 50s. I speak from experience.

Pitt: “I can’t remember a day since I got out of college when I wasn’t boozing or had a spliff, or something. Something. And you realize that a lot of it is, uhm…cigarettes, you know, pacifiers. And I’m running from feelings. I’m really, really happy to be done with all of that. I mean I stopped everything except boozing when I started my family. But even this last year, you know…things I wasn’t dealing with. I was boozing too much. It’s just become a problem.

The redesigned Hollywood Elsewhere, which may pop later today or tomorrow, has a wider column width than the classic version. HE classic photos were 460 pixels wide; the new HE will features photos that are 640 pixels wide. Which is no biggie as far as future posts are concerned, but every jpeg photo in every previous post (August 2004 to May 2017) is going to be sitting flush left with a big dumb white space sitting to the right. All notions of eye-pleasing balance will be out the window.

The way jpegs and posts have looked on this site for nearly 13 years — the image perfectly balanced in accordance with the width of the column.

The way these same jpegs will look henceforth — 13 years of painstaking effort desecrated.

I can’t resize 13 years worth of photos but I’d to at least try to figure out if I can center them within the new wider (640 pixel) posts. The flush left thing is AWFUL. I’m told that a solution may be found in WordPress, that I can make “sweeping changes” to the style template I’ve been using. “But if you enter them manually those sizes are set by you,” I’ve been warned. “And they remain set by you.”

I don’t want to fuck with WordPress settings — I’m too much of a klutz. Which basically means that I’m fucked, or at least that the solution to this too-small, flush-left problem is unknown as we speak.

Posted from Cinemacon on 3.28.17, in response to footage from Nikolaj Arcel, Stephen King and Akiva Goldsman‘s The Dark Tower (Columbia, 8.4): “This is seemingly another simplistic, CG-driven dreamscape action fantasy…more big-delivery jizz-whizz with Idris Elba as the heroic, gun-blasting Roland Deschain, Matthew McConaughey as bad-guy sorcerer Walter Padick and Tom Taylor as an 11 year-old kid who bonds with Deschain as they face various dangers…zzzzz. Same old tune, same old yarn, same blighted-landscape mythology.

The Dark Tower is based on an eight-book Stephen King series that began in 1982. It also feels deja vu-ish as a motherfucker, and for good reason. It’s another name for Barad-dur, the fortress of Suaron in J.R.R. Tolkien‘s “The Lord of the Rings.” It’s the title of a 1987 horror flick starring Jenny Agutter. It’s the name of an early ’80s board game. Ditto a 1943 British thriller starring Herbert Lom.

Which is probably why, sight unseen and no offense, I feel all Dark Tower-ed out.

GRAHAM: "Is it fair to say that the Russian government is still involved in American politics?"

COMEY: "Yes." —via @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/TFrNp4cXGO

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 3, 2017

Donald Trump hasn’t fallen into a deranged mental state. This is a permanent condition, or more precisely an ongoing ill-informed, brain-fart response to any and all topics. You can be dismissive by calling him an egoistic, know-nothing six year-old, but the Morning Joe guys are suggesting that he’s gotten worse lately, that he’s downswirling. He’s not. Trump is the exact same guy he’s always been — the same full-of-shit, living-in-his-own-realm blowhard who likes to swagger around and be nervy and impertinent. He listens to his swollen gut and improvises from moment to moment, unimpeded by facts that are not to his liking.

You’re an Anglo-Saxon girl going out with a Pakistani guy. A few weeks of increasing closeness and commitment lead to love. Then you discover that his demanding, traditionalist mom has been trying to set him up with a series of Muslim women over dinners. He’s not into this at all — he’s into you — but he’s been secretly going along with the charade to placate mom. So yes, he’s been lying to you but he hasn’t been unfaithful, or not really. He should have copped to the dinners, of course, but he was too chicken, too cowed.

Question: If you were the white girl, would you maybe cut your dishonest Pakistani boyfriend a little slack? You could tell him to fuck off for weeks on end just to make him sweat, but if he kept apologizing and trying to gently win you back…maybe? I’m no Middle-Eastern scholar, but even I know that Pakistani parents are very strict when it comes to their children staying within the Muslim flock. If I were the white girl, I doubt if I’d be completely destroyed when the truth was revealed. Rather than go nuclear I would probably ease up and try to “understand”, I think.

Initial Wells reaction: “The Big Sick was the second best film I saw at Sundance (Call Me By Your Name was #1) — a dry, diverting romantic saga that feels very authentic in a low-key way. You never really know where it’s going, and that’s just how I like it. Droll, low-key humor for smarties & hipsters. And it really does come together emotionally during the last 25% or 30%. I loved the ISIS and 9/11 terrorist jokes. Kumail Nanjiani embroiders with a unique tone and sensibility, certainly within the realm of a modern American love story. He and Zoe Kazan hold things together for the first 40%, but it’s Ray Romano and Holly Hunter (as Kazan’s parents) who bring it home.”