On top of which I don’t like his bee-stung nose…I never have.

Schneider: “Not that the Oscars count anyway. It used to be 100 million [viewers]…remember when they were really the Academy Awards? Barbara Walters interviewing Sean Connery or whomever was nominated that year and you’d watch with your parents and it was like ‘this is amazing!’

“And now the Academy is saying you have to have 40 percent LGBTQ-plus handicapped whatever…people who are challenged, emotionally challenged…it’s kind of like people have checked out…this isn’t really the best any more…it’s about how much they can suck up to this particular ideology of idiocy….it just turns people off…it turns me off. I haven’t watched [the Oscars] in years.”

Please start watching at 37:43 — Carolla answers with a riff about excellence in sports that is spot-on.

For whatever dumb reason I thought it was important to be able to covertly smoke cigarettes inside Wilton High School when I was 17 and 18. Talk about a stupid bullshit distraction but in my infinite infantile wisdom I thought it was cool to light up in the boy’s bathrooms (there were two or three) and get away with it. Four or five friends felt the same away.

But then we were busted by the head English teacher (his last name was Moore) and then a week or two later by the head disciplinarian, Richard Sell. We were told we’d be suspended if it happened again. I couldn’t risk this so I came up with a new plan — cigarettes in the girl’s room! I proposed the idea one day to a couple of 17 year-old female friendos and they said “sure, c’mon inside, no worries.” So I caught a smoke or two in their girls-only sanctuary, and of course I was busted again.

But this time the stink of tobacco wasn’t the problem. For I was immediately suspected by Sell, you see, of possibly taking unwelcome liberties with the girls and, you know, acting inappropriately. Sell privately questioned two or three who were there at the time, asking “did Jeff say or do anything that made you feel funny or otherwise crossed a line?” No, they all said — he was just looking to light up without being caught. For a day or two this was actually a thing.

The idiotic stuff that wraps you up and ties you down in high school…amazing.

This morning I watched portions of the new Titanic 4K UHD Bluray (12.5), and I was seriously impressed by the super-sharp detail, enhanced compositions and generally exquisite fine-grain clarity.

My eyes recall very clearly what the film looked like 26 years ago (I saw it five or six times), and James Cameron‘s classic looks appreciably upgraded. It’s relatively rare for a 4K disc to deliver this kind of bump, but this one qualifies. The downside is that they’re charging $30 but I’m thinking I might pop for it.

@DemetriosPatsiaris (12.11): “As someone who worked on the 2011/2012 restoration/stereo conversion of Titanic, I can tell you that the raw scans looked very clean and well preserved. This UHD accurately reflects what was there, but better.”

@rmn070 (12.14): “Every review has given it a perfect score, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. As nitpicky as it sounds but I’m pretty disappointed that the changes made in 2012 have been carried over. That original sunset would have looked glorious on 4K, but looks like it will stay in SD for the rest of time. Preservation purposes, you know?”

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“The N.Y. Times’ problem has metastasized from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether. All the empathy and humility in the world will not mean much against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without an invaluable quality that Sulzberger did not emphasise: courage.” — from James Bennet‘s “When the New York Times Lost Its Way.” posted on 12.14.23 in 1843 magazine.

Bennet’s article is a rehash of what happened during the woke Times upheaval of mid July of 2020 (“Weiss Exits Over Woke Torquemada Brutality“), or roughly two months after the George Floyd riots that began in late May of 2020.

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“History is brutal, sad and full of wrongs. Was it unjust that even a single Arab family was forced to move upon the [1948] founding of the Jewish state? Yes. But it’s also not rare. Happening all through history, all over the world, and mostly what people do is make the best of it. Eventually everybody comes to an accomodation.”

“[But] it’s hard to negotiate when the other side’s position is ‘you all die and disappear.'”

Honest Ukraine question: We all know that the Ukraine-Russian war (which began in February 2022) almost certainly won’t with the complete rout of Russian forces. Putin’s willingness to sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of Russian troops in a conflict that can’t end with Russia triumphing absolutely…the death and destruction toll is sickening. But how does it eventually end?

I’m sorry but this “Overtime” passage made me feel good and settled and among friends. It mnade me feel the exact opposite of how I usually feel when I consider 50% or 60% of the acrimonious denial brigade on HE any given day.

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Imagine being honestly, sincerely persuaded that May December is 2023’s finest film…imagine.

It is HE’s solemn opinion that anyone arriving at this conclusion is in the grip of a serious aesthetic fetish or an obsessive imbalance of some kind.

HE is earnestly supportive of Fallen Leaves (#4) and half-heartedly supportive of Showing Up (#2), Killers of The Flower Moon (#3) as far as it goes, Pacifiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Afire and The Zone of Interest (#5 through #8).

On 12.8 Ava DuVernay‘s Origin, an instructional drama about a writer exploring the racial caste system in this country, opened theatrically.

I had instinctively decided against seeing it because I regard DuVernay first and foremost as an agenda filmmaker — she has racial scores to settle and is not open to cosmic light and happenstance, at least by my understanding of the term.

On 12.13 Variety‘s Clayton Davis lamented the apparent fact that Origin is getting the cold shoulder from award-season handicappers.

Last night The Hot Mike‘s John Rocha and Jeff Sneider discussed Origin and Clayton’s column. The discussion happens between the 70-minute and 82-minute mark.

HE opinion: Ava DuVernay was seriously damaged after A Wrinkle in Time and has never recovered. She’s made her own reputational bed, and people are pretty much persuaded that she’s an agenda-driven filmmaker who isn’t fully honest (which Selma wasn’t, and one can at least question When They See Us in terms of characterizing the Central Park Five as utterly blameless victims), and who basically makes Black-favoring instructionals which stack the deck or otherwise put her thumb on the scale against historical and present-day racism.

DuVernay is basically a professional-grade woke Black female filmmaker and a symbol of fighting the power. And if you don’t like her films then YOU’RE a racist. People know who she is, and that, I believe, is why they’re not giving Origin the time of day.

Ava is about valiantly fighting the wrongs and the psychological plagues of racism perpetrated by white shitheads, the only problem being that she’s into anti-white portraiture more than honesty. And the industry can smell another Ava harangue in Origin.

Friendo: “I think it’s significant that the REVERSE example — that is, one line uttered by a sympathetic WHITE character that maligned the integrity of blacks (eg., ‘Don’t trust anyone, especially black people’) — would NEVER be excused or brushed aside by the likes of Glen Runciter. Not in a million years.

“We have different rules of behavior for people based on skin tone. And the fact that more of us don’t see how culturally destructive this is…this is absolutely mind-boggling.

“I mean, where do the Glen Runciters of the world see this going eventually? Anyplace good?”

pic.twitter.com/WxyIYmzGOH— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 11, 2023

Immediately after Matthew Perry‘s passing a friendly narrative began circulating — Perry was no longer using, and was clean and on the mend. Well, not so much.