With ample justification, Democratic National Committee chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz has thrown herself under the bus at the behest of the Clinton campaign. She’ll resign at the end of the week after the Democratic convention ends in Philadelphia.

Schultz’s resignation was forced by recently revealed Wikileaks emails that proved that the DNC actively conspired against the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Please raise your hand if you think the Clinton campaign wasn’t 100% supportive of Schultz and the DNC’s gross impartiality. Please raise your hand if you think Wasserman Schultz would have resigned today if it hadn’t been for the Wikileaks revelations. Please raise your hand if you don’t think Wasserman Schultz will be booed when she speaks at the convention.

Is there any way this isn’t another bad thing for Hillary? Her campaign’s tacit support of the DNC’s anti-Bernie bias is another indication that she’s conniving and untrustworthy.

Donna Brazile will be the interim chairwoman through the election.

I’ve been split on Hillary Clinton since she vanquished Bernie Sanders. Half of me accepts that I have to vote for her sensible, pragmatic, Obama-continuing wonkery (along with her hawkish foreign policy instincts), and the other half can’t stand her — her cautious sidestepping of the Bernie revolution, that cackle, the Wall Street ties, the testiness, her liberal-leaning but weather-vane-ish political values, the just-revealed DNC connivance against Bernie, the eye bags, the eff-you to the Berners with her selection of Tim Kaine, her compulsively secretive nature.

My allegiance to sanity nonetheless compels me to vote for her. I want her to win despite her many flaws, and I expect that despite all the debits she’ll probably nudge out a victory. But it speaks volumes about Clinton’s appeal that even if the Gods are with her, Hillary may not manage a decisive victory against the most appalling major-party presidential candidate in American history.

And now Michael Moore‘s just-posted essay, “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win,” has given me pause. It has really put a chill into my lower backbone. As noted, I’m inclined to believe that Hillary will probably be elected, but after reading Moore’s piece I’m wondering how solid that prediction is.

Boiled down, the five reasons favoring Trump’s election, in Moore’s view: (a) the rust-belt yokels are going to vote for Trump by a lopsided margin, and this may result in his winning four major, very decisive rust-belt states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin; (b) white guys will vote against her en masse as a kind of Alamo-like last stand against the femme-Nazis, LGBTs, multiculturals; (c) A lot of people despise Hillary and particularly the dynastic establishment politics she represents; (d) the depressed Bernie vote; and (e) despite their disagreement or even distaste for Trump, disenfranchised Americans are crazy enough to vote for him as a fuck-you to the system, just as Minnesota voters voted for Jessie Ventura.

Hillary Problem as explained by Moore: “Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump — it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. The kids [in general] don’t like her, and young women are among her biggest detractors.

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The massive smoke clouds from the Santa Clarita fire (which I snapped a couple of shots of when I was in Studio City last evening) are casting a muddy glowing amber light over everything. If Vittorio Storaro was here (and for all I know he is) he’d be in pig heaven. Any photographer worth his or her salt is shooting this right now. Certain portions of the soot-and-ash flooded sky are more Apocalypse Now than Apocalypse Now.

These and other worn-down little photos are taped on the inside of a living-room door leading to an office-supplies room. If I was serious (and some day I will be) I would of course scan them.

My late mom and I in a San Francisco cafe, way back when.

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I know I’m supposed to be jazzed about Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman (Warner Bros., 6.2) because of Gal Gadot, who delivered the only stand-out current in the otherwise regrettable Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But this trailer…I don’t hate it but it feels a little cheesy. I’m so sick of origin stories! Yes, it’s somewhat interesting to set the story in the era of World War I, agreed, but this trailer doesn’t seem to have that commanding, totally together feeling that you can always sense from films that have that “extra”-ness. My personal suspicion is that the appearance of Danny Huston constitutes a huge “forget it…this isn’t going to be that good.” Huston is fine but the only truly exceptional big-league film he’s costarred in was Children of Men.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts‘ Kong: Skull Island (Warner Bros., 3.17) is obviously going to be at least half-decent. The Vietnam-era touches (especially dp Larry Fong‘s deliberate attempt to recreate Vittoro Storaro‘s photography in Apocalypse Now) give it an extra dimension. Tom Hiddleswift…sorry, Hiddleston and Brie Larson plus the always-barking Samuel L. Jackson plus Toby “Messala” Kebbell, Tom Wilkinson, John Goodman and John C. Reilly. Who took Michael Keaton‘s role? Wilkinson?

A guy named Terry Notary is playing Kong via mo-cap.

No glimpses of Kong’s face but we know for sure he won’t have those deliciously unreal white eyeballs that the original bruiser had in the 1933 original. Here’s how I put it on 9.19.10:

“Cooper’s Kong didn’t look like any gorilla, chimp or orangutan that had ever walked the earth. He was something between a prehistoric hybrid and an imaginary monster of the id…a raging nightmare beast designed to scare the bejeesus out of 1933 moviegoers.

“Willis O’Brien, the legendary stop-motion photography pioneer, used three slightly different-looking Kong models during filming, but for me the master stroke was deciding to give his Kong a set of gleaming white teeth and a pair of very bright white eyes.

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Dangling doubt, bothersome situation (for me at least): If I want to help save our country from an egoistic, sociopathic blowhard who revels in dysfunction and his own smug ignorance I have to vote for a cold, calculating, uncharismatic harpy who was no music in her soul and whom I really and truly do not like. Obviously I have no choice but to vote for Hillary Clinton. And yes, I recognize that charisma and excitement can be deceiving and that they shouldn’t be the final measure of things for semi-mature, non-ADD sufferers, but voters nonetheless have always responded to star quality, snap and pizazz — that extra punch in the punch. This is certainly what got John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama elected.

Stolen from last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

The fact is that by choosing nice-guy Tim Kaine, principled sailor that he is, Hillary has smothered what might have been. Spirit-lifting, Obama-like music, fire and poetry are not going to emanate from the Democratic ticket between now and early November — that’s for sure. Despite the fact that voters tend to support candidates who project something more than wonkish, forward-looking pragmatism. Bottom line: I hate Hillary for being more into her own notions of comfort and security than in recognizing the grave seriousness of her personal deficiencies and lack of appeal, which she’s now doubled down upon with the choosing of Kaine.

Update: I’ve just watched Kaine’s speech in Miami earlier today. He’s not bad. I like his Spanish. Maybe he’s a little better than I’ve been saying.

Ditto.

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Yesterday on a Facebook thread I was chatting with an old friend about high school. I said I was living in a kind of hell back then. A mostly tolerable, mild-mannered, negotiable hell with no bills to pay. Obviously I survived. But it was pretty bad. I was walking around with a kind of blanket over my head.

The friend said he didn’t know things were so terrible for me back then, and I replied that they weren’t. My head was just in a mildly miserable place — the difference between terrible (a.k.a. horrible) and mildly miserable having been explained by that old Woody Allen joke.

Anyone who claims that their high school experience was soothing or ecstatic or emotionally fulfilling apart from the sporadic highs of parties, beer-chugging and camaraderie is either (a) lying or (b) wasn’t paying close attention back then. If they were truly surging and delighted in their mid to late teens then I fear that the ancient Chinese curse “may you peak in high school” might apply in their case. (And I’m sorry about that.)

As I said, my unhappiness was manageable and not “oppressive” per se but I was walking around with a pall in my soul. I was living in my dreams with input from movies, music, TV shows, books, magazines. And no mind-bending substances. (That came later.) I didn’t know much when I was 17 and 18 but I knew for damn bloody sure I didn’t want a life like my father’s — that decision was carved in stone.

Most fearfully, I was living with the chilling idea that things might get better but they might not — who knew? Well, they did and thank God for that. Because they almost didn’t. I’m not actually thanking “God” for things having turned out well. I’m thanking…well, maybe I am.

Donald Trump‘s acceptance speech aside, Thursday night’s big story was about rightwing radio host Alex Jones and conservative slimer/provocateur Roger Stone invading a Young Turks taping at the RNC and getting into a shouting confrontation with TYT host Cenk Uygur. I watch TYT daily but I missed this fracas, and then yesterday I was so depressed and furious about Hillary Clinton giving the finger to liberal progressives by picking the principled-but-boring Tim Kaine as her vp partner (plus I was buried in filing six other stories) that it just flew by me. I finally paid attention this morning. With Jones and Stone having invaded and tried to take over a TYT show in progress, I don’t blame Uygur in the least for getting blowing his stack. That said, the most amusing part of the video is the body language of TYT co-host Ben Mankiewicz.

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