Do The Right Thing -- Stand Up For Excellence
September 25, 2024
I Would Have Preferred A More Challenging...Okay, A More Insulting Tone
September 25, 2024
Opposite Peas in Polish Travel Pod
September 25, 2024
During HE’s thrilling but arduous Paris-Cannes adventure (5.11 through 5.30) I somehow found the idea of paywalliing content a bridge too far, so everything was wide open for that nearly three-week period. So the paywall returns starting today. Thanks to subscribers for understanding and hanging in there. I’m even starting to figure out HE’s travel strategy for Telluride ’23, which is only three months off.
I’m repeating my conviction that Sakamoto’s Revenant score is an all-time grand slammer, and that Sakamoto himself is one of the greatest.
I passed along my deepest condolences to Inarritu after Sakaomoto’s death a couple of months ago (3.28.23), and soon after Inarritu offered to send me Travesia, a compilation of 20 Sakamoto compositions that Inarritu curated at the invitation of Milan Records’ Jean Christophe and Sakamoto’s manager, Norika Sora.
A brief essay by Inarritu is printed on one of the vinyl sleeves. Here’s an excerpt:
“I vividly recall the sensory, emotional experience I had when I first listened to Ryuichi Sakamoto in the fall of 1983. I was with A friend, Carlos Claussel, in a car in Mexico City, trapped in traffic hell in the Perferico (i.e., outer beltway) at 3 pm. Carlos put in a bootleg cassette of a Japanese composer neither of us had ever heard of.
“At first a few piano notes arrived like some kind of fresh, light rain, and from that [came] a mantric cadence and a sweet deep voice. It felt as if fingertips were penetrating my brain and giving me a cosmic massage, [one] that went through my body and dissolved everything that might have been wrong in my life back then.
“It was the theme from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and ever since that day a vital relation to Sakamoto’s music was within me. His work has become part of the soundtrack of my own existence.”
I don’t own a top-of-the-line vinyl turntable sound system at home (I make do with a Sonos sound bar), but a friend who lives nearby has an excellent sound system so that’ll be my way into this. Thanks to Alejandro for the gift, which I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. In early ’16 he also sent me a Revenant vinyl soundtrack album…thanks.
HE totally supports the firing of those two female Lululemon employees who chased a pair of shoplifters and then called the cops on them. Shoplifters (especially young men of color) are definitely entitled to steal stuff, and employees who chase them or try to bust them are nothing but vigilante troublemakers.
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I wanted to post and discuss these Barry clips before getting on yesterday’s flight, but one thing and another kept getting in the way. I still haven”t seen the Barry and Succcession finales but at least I’m back in the zone. I totally know what happens in both finales, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
I also need to see You Hurt My Feelings at the earliest opportunity.
It’s 7:20 am in West Orange, New Jersey (Jett and Cait‘s place). I woke up at 3:25 am. My French Bee flight left Orly around 7:25 pm last night; it arrived around 8:25 pm at Newark. I sat in a forward coach section…not horrible, not great. Unless you’re in first-class or business, eight-hour flights are generally agonizing as a rule.
Nobody “gives” their life in combat — they fight as best they can to achieve victory or at the very least not get killed, and sometimes fate tilts against them. That’s it — that’s all it boils down to.
Never, ever wear whitesides to an Oval Office meeting. Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries is a good hombre and a skilled operator, but in this instance he should be ashamedofhimself. If you’re sporting whitesides you might as well wear knee-length beach shorts or a silky floral print shirt. We’re speaking of plaster cracks in the once-great wall of traditional civilization here. Certain sartorial instincts should be suppressed at all costs.
I mean, will you look at those light blue, horizontally-striped “happy” socks? Seriously…imagine getting dressed for the Oval Office meeting and actually saying to yourself “yeah, these socks definitely work for a White House conference about the debt ceiling…I’ll put them on.”
If there's one must-to-avoid in terms of conversational observations about famous human beings, it's deciding who's "nice" and "not nice".
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If and when I get around to seeing TheLittle Mermaid(no way would I forsake my precious Paris time by seeing it here), I’ll probably feel underwhelmed. I’ve hated nearly every Rob Marshall film ever made (I found Nine half-tolerable), and he’s not going to change and neither am I, and this is just a live–actionrehash anyway.
Are there some hinterland trollers out there who are saying ixnay because of Halle Bailey’s casting as Ariel (i.e., standard Disney-fied diversity)? Yeah, I guess, presumably. But who believes that the shitty Rotten Tomatoesratings (top critics at 47% and ticket-buyers at 56% if you count all of them) are driven by this?
The obviously gifted Bailey seems fairly cool and appealing, but I see no genetic evidence of her being the daughter of Javier Bardem’s KingTriton, a pale-faced Spaniard by way of the deep blue sea. Why didn’t they make this aspect work? They easily could have. Not a huge deal but a deal.
It’s Sunday evening (6:15 pm), the sun won’t slip into dusk for another three hours (during the warm months night doesn’t really begin in Paris until 10 pm), and for the first time in nearly two weeks I’m finally feeling relaxed and settled down. Breathing easy.
A couple of hours ago I took my first late-afternoon nap since…I don’t know, May 10th or something. It’s amazing what a decent snooze can do for your disposition. The whole city feels casual and chill. Everyone is sharing the same dreamy mood. Blue sky, gentle sunshine, not too hot.
After nearly two weeks of mostly Cannes-generated stress, deadline pressures, way too little sleep (i.e., the snore bear), waiting in line after line for the next Salle Debussy film and regarding the usual suspects askance, feelings of serenity are finally within. Not for long but at least tonight feels right.
Alas, it all starts again late tomorrow afternoon with my 7:15 pm flight to Newark. God protect me from being seated next to a Jabba.