Almost every ATM I’ve used in this country, Europe and/or Africa (and we’re talking hundreds) has refused to give me the cash until I withdraw the debit card, which always quickly spits out after you punch in the data. Bank of America ATMS are the only ones in the world that give you the cash first and then, very slowly, spit the card out.

The B of A people know that people who are scatterbrained and in a hurry tend to grab the cash and run and forget the card. They obviously know this, and for years they’ve refused to change the machines so they’ll work like all the others.

As I’m scatterbrained and always in a hurry, I’ve lost ATM cards four or five times with the help of Bank of America technology. This happened three weeks ago and again today, and both times when I tried to retrieve the cards from the B of A staffers in the adjoining bank they’d disappeared. My fault, of course, but it’s really B of A’s.

Pet peeve #2: People who get into their car inside a crowded parking structure, obviously aware that a driver is waiting to take their spot when they leave, and don’t leave. They get into the car and futz around, taking their sweet time before finally (sometimes a full minute or 90 seconds later) starting the car and backing out. And the guy/gal looking to take the spot is still waiting and blocking other cars, and no one thinks to go around him/her and before you know it it’s a total logjam with nothing happening, all because of the guy sitting in in his car and doing nothing. I never do this. When I get into my car in a crowded parking lot I get the hell out of there right away so as not to cause trouble.

But being able to beat L.A. traffic on the scooter is such a joy. I can get around almost twice as quickly as I can in the car.

This Best Buy Exclusive Bluray of Midnight Cowboy came out last May, and I guess with Cannes and everything it slipped between the cracks or something. I happened to spot it on a rack last night at a Best Buy on La Brea. The film looks exactly as it should, like a moderately grainy 1969 film that was deliberately under-exposed by dp Adam Hollender, who wanted a verite, un-prettified, grubby-Manhattan-streets aesthetic. And he got that. And I’m fine with it. The Oscar-winning classic has never looked better.

I tried to write a 30 Minutes or Less review three times over the last five or six days, and it wouldn’t come. Mainly because I just sat in my seat and pretty much waited for it to be over. It’s strenuous but almost entirely unfunny — I know that much. I knew going in that I didn’t want to see a movie about a guy forced to assist in a robbery because a device with plastic explosive is strapped to his chest because it happened for real in ’03 and the guy died. Sue me but I just didn’t want to see it. Not into chest bombs.

As it turned out there was one thing I laughed at. One. I wrote about it seven days ago. Otherwise the film is thin. Strained and thin and kind of drab.

I just sat there feeling a little badly for Jesse Eisenberg. Well, not that badly (he’ll be fine) but what a cliff-drop after The Social Network. I guess it all boils down to my Danny McBride problem. I haven’t much a choice, of course, but I really don’t want to see his morlock/warlock eyes in another comedy again…really. He’s not funny. And director Ruben Fleischer ‘s stock is surely worth a lot less now that it was in the wake of Zombieland. Because the comic inspiration that fed into that Bill Murray zombie sequence is nowhere to be found in 30 Minutes. It’s not a funny idea, not a funny script…I’d just like to forget it if it’s all the same. Just let it go.

The bargain-basement, almost comically fake monsters in Attack the Block are harbingers of a new wave, I think. Aren’t we all sick of movie-club monsters that cost millions and take months to design? I want to see movie stars earnestly fighting “ironic” monsters that look borderline fake and stupid…but not entirely. Monsters that honestly admit to being creations. Almost in the vein of those stupid Toho monsters from the ’60s. To go by Guillermo del Toro‘s description of his Pacific Rim monsters, I don’t think he’s into this.

Forrest Wilder‘s 8.3 Texas Observer piece about the ties between Texas Gov. Rick Perry and a Pentecostal-on-steroids holy-roller nutbag sect called the New Apostolic Reformation doesn’t exactly say Perry is in the tank for these guys…but he’s clearly winking at them a lot. In Perry the NAR “may have found their vessel,” he writes, “and the interest appears to be mutual.

“Why would Perry throw in with this crowd?,” Wilder asks. “One possible answer is that he’s an opportunistic politician running for president who’s trying to get right, if not with Jesus, with a particular slice of the GOP base. Perry is a white southern conservative male who may end up running against a black president. It doesn’t take a prophet to see that he could use friends like these.

“There’s one other possible reason for Perry’s flirtation with the apostles, and it has nothing to do with politics. He could be a true believer. He’s certainly convinced the movement’s leaders. ‘He’s a very deep man of faith and I know that sometimes causes problems for people because they think he’s making decisions based on his faith,’ says Texas pastor Tom Schlueter. ‘Well, I hope so.’

“But the danger of associating with extremists is apparent even to Schlueter, the man who took God’s message to Perry in September 2009. “It could be political suicide to do what he’s doing,” Schlueter says. “Man, this is the last thing he’d want to do if it were concerning a presidential bid. It could be very risky.”

Schlueter and fellow pastor Bob Long “consider themselves modern-day apostles and prophets, blessed with the same gifts as Old Testament prophets or New Testament apostles,” Wilder reports. During their September ’09 visit to Perry’s governor’s office in Austin Schlueter and Long “told him of God’s grand plan for Texas. A chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was ‘The Prophet State,’ anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role.

The day before this meeting, Schlueter “had received a prophetic message from Chuck Pierce, an influential prophet from Denton, Texas. God had apparently commanded Schlueter — through Pierce — to “pray by lifting the hand of the one I show you that is in the place of civil rule.”

Two days ago I wondered aloud if anything resembling the London riots might happen in this country. Not the underclass burning and looting but Average Joes expressing “basic fundamental rage about how the corporate elites are turning this country into South America, and how the radical legislative right has gone completely insane,” etc. Even though I said it could never happen here, I was beaten up for expressing some kind of adolescent excitement buzz. Glenn Kenny, Guy Lodge…they all piled on.

What I was basically saying, to repeat, was that street action of some kind was better than muttering into glasses of beer and making dark fatalistic jokes and watching ESPN.

Now that two MSM outlets have run discussion pieces about more or less the same topic (i.e., could it happen here?), I wonder what Kenny-Lodge will say now. “Get them too! Slap ’em down!” Or will they say, “Oh, well…maybe it’s okay to get into this topic as long as it’s these guys doing it.” Atlantic.com’s Raymond Bonner was written a relatively short piece called “Massive Riots: Britain Today, America Tomorrow?” with a subhead that reads “Joblessness, rising inequality, and a frustrated underclass are all being blamed for the violence that’s sweeping the U.K.” And the N.Y. Times has posted a Bloggingheads discussion about whether American riots could ever happen, etc.

Something’s off here. The Stiller Foundation is real and earnest, and I understand Stiller not wanting to sound overly solemn and sanctified. But the tone of this video implies the whole thing might be a put-on. And with all the talk about “See Jennifer Aniston Naked Foundation…forget it. I’m being too literal.

Without disagreeing with the views of The Association of Black Women Historians and MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry about The Help, I still maintain (as will most critics) that Viola Davis‘s performance is strong and stellar. Harris-Perry doesn’t dispute this either. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If only director Rick Mereki and his travelling buddy (i.e., the guy in the video) had made sure that the guy wore the same duds every time they shot. Then the effect would be stunning. Learn and Eat are pretty good also.

Another rightwing Christian-yokel Texas governor who has a Supercuts hair style and wears cowboy boots and fat yellow ties over blue shirts, and who talks like a shitkicker and believes in American exceptionalism? The presumption is that Gov. Rick Perry will eventually knock out Bachmann and may even prevail against Romney. (Possibly.) Republicans are actually toying with nominating a guy who’s basically Dubya with modifications?

Editor-screenwriter David Scott Smith recently sent me four episodes of Dead Island, a kind of comic video-game component. This led to me wonder if anyone has tried to create a TV or cable series about a family of flesh-eating ghouls called…I don’t know but let’s call them The Munchies. Call it a cross between The Munsters, The Addams Family, True Blood and The Flintstones.

A series about a typical suburban family living in some ghastly tract-home development (or in an upscale trailer park), except they’re zombies who need to occasionally prowl around and eat fresh victims. They could be mindlessly consumptive nouveau riche types living in a zombie McMansion. Most of the neighbors think they’re a quirky, strange-looking family with the gray skin and dead eyes and all, and one or two neighbors are starting to figure out who and what they really are. This sounds like a no-brainer to me. I’m presuming somebody has written a pilot along these lines….but maybe not.

Twenty years ago I tried to write a weekly Hannibal Lecter TV series pilot in which Lecter wanders from town to town and situation to situation like Caine in Kung Fu or Richard Kimble in The Fugitive, getting into inrigues and adventures and helping people with their problems. The stories usually boil down to this or that sympathetic character being victimized or harassed or threatened by some asshole, and Lecter solving things at the end of each episode by killing and eating the victimizer-harasser-threatener. Simple formula. Why didn’t a good screenwriter (i.e., someone unlike myself) as least try this?

I’ve learned over time that if there’s a semi-original idea or a concept I’m excited or intrigued by, the odds are that it won’t fly with producers or studio or network people. Many of my story ideas need to simmer for five or ten or even twenty years before they make sense to others. My Nothing magazine idea — “a series of snide, lighthearted riffs on the notion that glib irony and an increasing absence of sincerity or ‘meaning’ in the arts had virused into a kind of existential fast-food that everyone was consuming” — was hatched in 1979 or ’80, and only now, I think, would people really get it.