Snapped in the fall of ‘87…a two-bedroom, top half of a hillside home at 8682 Franklin Ave., hundreds of feet north of the Strip (corner of Sunset and Kings) with coyotes galore…my very first desktop computer outside of any workplace…the software was Wordstar, and it really wasn’t easy to figure out at first.
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“When was the last year that the internet felt good to you? I think everybody has different answers to this. Mine, I think, go fairly far back, maybe to the heyday of blogging. ‘Words and getting up to 40,000 hits on his blog a day’. At least before the moment when Twitter and Facebook went algorithmic.” — Ezra Klein‘s intro for “We Didn’t Ask for This Internet“, which was posted on 2.6.26.
I feel so grateful that I was around and column-ing back in the internet heyday of the late ’90s and early aughts. Every day I felt such a profound sense of peace and well-being…a sense of being plugged in and belonging to a soothing, crackling worldwide fraternity, and never did I feel so good about internet life as I did in the early to mid aughts, and particularly when I visited Paris internet cafes. There used to be dozens of them all over town. Some are still in business even today, although mainly for gaming.
One of my all-time favorites was located on rue Raivgnan, maybe a block north of rue d’Abesses. From 2000 to 2007 or ’08 it felt like one of the happiest places on the globe. Heavenly. I would plop down in front of a large screen with a good speedy modem and a just-purchased cappucino on a nearby table, and I wouldn’t leave for three or four hours. All was well. Ten years before the woke terror plague, which was triggered by #MeToo. No fear, only freedom. Connectivity itself felt like a wonderful Neverland paradise…a place for constant intrigue and adventure, and without algorithms or predatory extraction schemes.
Multiple persons of interest, are there?
Was the roly-poly fathead kidnapper alone? Was he / she wearing mascara?? Where are the accomplices?
I can’t wait to hate-watch Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights (Warner Bros., 2.13). I’m tasting the resins as we speak. Nobody despises 21st Century woke presentism in English historical dramas (i.e., the Bridgerton syndrome) more than yours truly. I almost feel tumescent about this.
THR’s David Rooney:
The New Yorker’s Justin Chang:
JB Pritzker will not push Gavin Newsom aside in the 2028 Democratic nomination race because deep down American voters (even the corpulent ones) just can’t settle into electing a serious beefalo chunkbod for U.S. President.
Before Donald “Jabba the Hut” Trump the last seriously overweight Oval Office occupant was William Howard Taft. The relatively trim aesthetic lasted all the way from Teddy Roosevelt to Joe Biden. There’s a reason for that.
HE to Joseph McBride (Facebook, early this morning):
At the beginning of his big angry red-felt pool table explanation rant, Sydney Pollack twice repeats the word “let’s.” Three times in all. He says “okay, Bill, let’s…let’s…let’s cut the bullshit, okay?”
And you left out that odd spitty sound…that Bix Beiderbicke pursed-trumpet-lips “pyht!”…call it a conclusive emphasis sound…Pollack says “her door was locked from the inside, the police are happy, end of story…pyht!”
We’re not allowed to say it, but the possibility of wipeouts is why breakneck downhill racing and bobsledding are high-interest events. I don’t want anyone to suffer agonizing bone snaps, but if I’m being nakedly honest something inside me…something a bit cruel goes “yes!” when a gifted downhill racer wipes out at 85 mph.
I also love it when big-wave surfers lose their luck or their curl groove and get eaten by the wave.
Posted four or five hours ago: “Veteran homicide investigator Paul Ciolino, who has worked with 48 Hours and CBS News as an on-air expert, says key elements of a true kidnapping aren’t present in the Nancy Guthrie case. With more than 25 years appearing on hundreds of programs across major U.S. and Canadian networks, Ciolino points to the lack of negotiations, forensic evidence, and planning signs as major red flags.”
But I found the basic Latin-X signature…the spirit of it…the Central- or Caribbean-American, Puerto Rican or Cuban sugar-cane-cutting atmosphere quite enjoyable and electric…I admired the boldness of the zero-apologies, we’re-not-Kid-Rock-Americans-and-we-don’t-wanna-be attitude.
Trump hated it, of course, but Bad Bunny’s horribly-tailored white pants aside, it was fine.
I wasn’t able to sit down and watch the Super Bowl last night in real time, but the out-of-nowhere teaser for David Fincher‘s The Adventures of Cliff Booth…that woke me up. The Peter Gunn theme especially.
Set in the late ’70s, the teaser is presenting the Quentin Tarantino-written “comedy-drama” as a hardball action piece that football fans will enjoy…muscle cars, screeching tires, edgy-looking black and Hispanic dudes with moustaches, six-foot-two Elizabeth Debicki towering over the five-eleven Pitt.
Cliff Booth is supposed to be an Eddie Mannix-like fixer or problem-solver for the big studios. But I don’t see any studios or movie stars. All I’m getting is a standard L.A. mean-streets atmosphere and a Then Came Bronson vibe.
I’m doubling down on my heartfelt thanks to all the good people who dropped dough into HE’s Cannes and Venice GoFundMe cookie jar.
A total of $6K has been raised ($4K from GoFundMe, another $2K sent to HE’s Venmo). Both apartments have been rented and locked down. I’ve yet to purchase the air fares and figure out certain logistics., but it’s all good.
It would be nice to raise another $2K for this and that, given that festival trips always wind up costing more than anticipated. (Last year’s stolen-wallet episode, which necessitated a three-day stay in Milan, certainly wasn’t expected.) I’ll probably post another ask in late March or early April….just a one-week quickie.
For those who haven’t yet contributed, please remember that I’m not “begging” for dough, as a few haters have claimed. I’m simply attempting to attract donations in a different, far less draining manner than the monthly method used by other webzines and columnists. I’m just asking for a one-off gimmee of $25 or $50 and whatever feels right. HE stopped paywalling this site a couple of years ago, and so the regularly refreshed content is entirely free and wide open, and this — this! — is the only pitch I’m making.
Not that a Fargo ending (victim killed, bad guys killed or captured) would be anything but horrific for all concerned.
But what if the Guthrie case ends without an ending? What if there’s never a solve or a final resolution? What if Nancy Guthrie‘s disappearance becomes Peter Weir‘s Picnic at Hanging Rock? What if this beloved 84-year-old, this proverbial mom who was young in the 1950s and early ’60s…what if she just gets swallowed up by the void? If she simply becomes vapor and nobody ever learns what really happened?
HE is hoping for a Man on Fire ending, but with Creasy unharmed.
