I will not subject myself to cheap, shallow tripe…period, end of story,

Earlier today I explained that a certain friend is for Trump not because she thinks he’s a good guy, and certainly not because of who or what he is as a political administrator. She does, however, see him as an antidote to the deranged progressive cultists on the left.

She sees this raging fatass as a form of therapeutic punishment — a battering ram — that needs to happen…a brute who will bring pain and anguish to the radical woke nutters (especially those who continue to advocate giving puberty blockers to minors and approving gender-altering surgeries for same) and force them to realize how crazy and skewed their identity-driven thinking has become.

And she’s absolutely right in this particular respect. The left has gone seriously mental in a diseased, cult-like way. As Bill Maher observed a year ago, they’ve more or less become Chinese Communists in the tradition of Mao’s great cultural revolution of the mid ‘60s, shaming and canceling those who aren’t fully on board with their anti-meritocracy program.

The problem with DEI as a social philosophy and program for social advancement is that it’s generally opposed to meritocracy, and therefore can’t be anything other than fundamentally unfair — a top-down ideology that discriminates against Average Joes of fair minds and good will or a facsimile of same.    

I differ with my friend in that I don’t think a second Trump term will provide the kind of traumatic social corrective that will cure the left’s insanity. The wacko left, remember, was inspired or manifested by Trump’s election in 2016. I think they’ll only dig their heels in deeper if Trump, whom I regard as a sociopathic, foam-at-the-mouth animal, is re-elected.

After decades of only half-listening to Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, I suddenly became a convert about three or four months ago. I actually bought three albums. Strange but that’s how it goes sometimes. You suddenly awaken and there’s no explaining why it took you as long as it did. I guess I felt removed from the blue-collar Michigan experience…something like that.

I was raised as an Episcopalian, and as much as I hated Sunday school when I was eight and nine the boilerplate teachings of Christianity must have somehow seeped into my head. Because via the profound transportation of lysergic acid diathylamide I sought out spirituality in my early 20s, and this resulted in my becoming a kind of upper-middle-class Hindu in flared jeans and Brooks Brothers shirts, led along by by the saga of Arjuna and Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.

So I’ve always felt a certain affinity for satori and holiness and spiritual ritual (candles, incense, singing of dreary hymns). Sometime in the ’90s I attended a Catholic mass service inside Notre Dame in Paris, and on some level it felt right. I attended another one in Rome around the turn of the century — same feeling when it ended. I’m no Christian, mind — I’m an LSD mystic by way of Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, Baba Ram Dass, Sri Chinmoy, Alan Watts, George Harrison and John Lennon.

But I’m not Bill Maher either. I respect what the faith of Christianity has at least tried to do as far as guiding or influencing the flock in the direction of kindness and occasional charity and whatnot.

But dear God, I felt such intense nausea when I watched the Ru Paul-ish drag show parody of the Last Supper during the opening ceremonies for the Paris Olympics. Pissing on Christianity! I sat there and felt sick. That morbidly obese chick with the silver-halo crown around her head, making a heart shape with her hands…I’ll never forget that Porky Pig face as long as I live. Jesus H. Christ! And that blue Dionysus guy! The trans community has really and truly shit all over itself this time. An obscenity.

News bulletin for full-of-themselves trans exhibitionists worldwide: There is more to life than gender switch-offs and sexual identity. You’ve just stamped your own ticket, guys. Your time of benign cultural favor has just ended. The world is disgusted. No offense but people hate you.

…bears a certain resemblance to Andy Serkis’s Gollum. There’s no debating this. This may not be a fair or kindly observation, but it’s certainly a valid one. And if you think Average Joe voters won’t come to the same conclusion you need to sit down and think again.

A former astronaut and the husband of former U.S. Senator Gabby Giffords, Kelly is a thoroughly decent and respectable fellow but in my humble opinion he’s more than a little unexciting. This plus the Gollum thing means Harris should perhaps think twice about picking him. Nobody wants a bald, pointy-eared gremlin one heartbeat away from the presidency.

Francis Coppola is an older rich white guy, and a decent percentage of urban progressive women (teens to mid 30s and perhaps beyond) would just as soon explode his life into smithereens as look at him.

I’m not kidding. Guys like Coppola are deer, and it’s deer hunting season everywhere right now, and if the Coppolas of the world want to be dead all they have to do is give the “hunters” a reason to get out their high-powered social media rifles and fire at them.

…I naturally think of (a) Miriam Karlin‘s “Catlady” Weathers (green leotard, white stockings, razor-sharp vocal chords) in A Clockwork Orange and (b) Edith Beale and her daughter in Albert and David Maysles‘ Grey Gardens

I personally relate as I’ve been a cat lover all my life.

J.D. Vance quote from 2021: “The U.S. is being run by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”

…after visiting 11 or 12 times and living there for an entire summer in ’03, I wouldn’t be there for the Olympics right now…not for anything….must to avoid. Tourists and lookie-lous are bad for the soul.

I love this reel because (a) it’s in 1080 HD 60fps, and therefore looks better now than it did on the best-quality TV in ’65, and (b) because the guys look so young. When you get older youth itself can seem indescribably beautiful.

Azazel Jacobs‘ His Three Daughters (Netflic, 9.6) is about a trio of estranged sisters “who come back together to care for their aging father.”

Fine, but where’s deathbed dad?

Imagine a film about three estranged daughters who decide to pool forces to rip off millions from a Middle Eastern sex trafficker, and then the movie goes “agghh, forget the sex-trafficking…let’s just focus on the actresses playing the daughters, show how good their acting chops are, that line of country.”

MGM’s 2011 Bluray of John Ford’s The Horse Soldiers (‘59) has a perfectly satisfactory 1.66 aspect ratio, but leave it to Kino Lorber to fuck things up by slicing off the tops and bottoms of the image for its 4K Bluray version, which came out a couple of years ago and which I just bought. Bastards. Presenting this profoundly handsome film within a 1.85 aspect ratio is an act of pure malice. Zero respect, nothing but condemnation.