Okay, so Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet, having slain in Telluride and now having won the TIFF People’s Choice Award, is the frontrunner to win the 2025 Best Picture Oscar early next year. No argument, no quibbles….it’s a pretty clear=cut scenario.

The other big contenders are Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another, which I’m hoping to see in Manhattan on Tuesday morning (pretty please?), Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value (which I loved after catching in in Cannes) and — to hear it from the Ryan Coogler-deserves-this-because he’s-Ryan Coogler identity mob — Sinners. If Hamnet has it in the bag, fine. If PTA comes close to winning, great — excellent for his career, no longer the red-ink guy.

Either way Sinners hasn’t a chance, and thank the Lord God for that fact.

…I’ll be fairly content. Who wouldn’t be? Last night a N.Y. Times podcast contributor called Severance “exahusting”…agreed. The last White Lotus (Thailand) was regarded almost worldwide as profoundly disappointing. And everyone is sick of The Bear winning stuff…enough!

I listened to David Marchese’s N.Y. Times interview with Cameron Crowe (“What Happened to Cameron Crowe? He Has Answers”) last night while i was driving on the 95. Crowe’s responses to the delicately phrased questions struck me as highly articulate, affecting, transporting, enobling….all in all a totally relaxing pleasure to wade into.

Wait…I thought the Anya Taylor Joy and Meryl Streep castings for Crowe’s Joni Mitchell film, which begins shooting next year, were more or less confirmed?

We all know how to pronounced the word “cause” — the cause we believe in, the apparent cause of something that’s happened, the causeway we drive upon, etc.

It’s pronounced “cawz” — everyone agrees with this. But when people say “because”, younger people especially, they say “beCUZZ.”

I first noticed this seven or eight years ago when listening to Kris Tapley, a Millennial, say the word. Me: “The fuck?”

Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden: “Becawz, BECAWZ he wanted to own me and bring me up like some little snot-nosed kid!”

The Beatles were totally cawz when they sang the Abbey Road track “Because”.

I swear to God that JFK never once said “beCUZZ.” He was a cawz guy all the way.

HE stands foursquare with the cawz community and against the cuzz brigade. Who’s with me?

Interview with neighbor of Tyler Robinson and Lance Twiggs saying they acted like a gay couple by holding hands and kissing with Lance visibly transitioning to a trans woman. pic.twitter.com/YgzPiXbbTP

— All is One and One is All (@vrajadev) September 13, 2025

The New York Post’s Josh Christendon and Georgia Worrell are reporting similarly, citing a “law enforcement source.”

1:55 p.m.: This morning the N.Y. Times finally threw in the towel by reporting that Tyler Robinson has “been in a romantic relationship with a partner who was in the process of transitioning from male to female.”

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…and by “panning out” I mean if the N.Y. Times grudgingly admits down the road that Tyler Robinson‘s reportedly transgender partner Lance Twiggs, who’s reportedly been cooperating with the FBI, is in fact a transgender person….if it’s apparently a factual situation…if this is legtimately real-deal, the trans community will never wash this off.

It isn’t at all clear that the Robinson-Twiggs entanglement was romantic or merely a roommate arrangement, but it sure doesn’t look good, general impression-wise, for the trans community as we speak. If these reports really and truly pan out, I mean…if it all comes out in the wash.

Various reports say that 22-year-old Twiggs is a biomale who’s apparently transitioning (or has transitioned) into womanhood. He and Robinson reportedly shared a three-bedroom apartment in the Fossil Hills housing complex in St. George, Utah.

Let no one dispute that Lance Twiggs is a great-sounding name for a young gay guy. Lance Twiggs could have been the name of a Times Square or Union Square hustler out of a 1969 Andy Warhol-Paul Morrissey film. If Twiggs, obviously quite attractive, had been around back then Morrissey would’ve definitely cast him in Lonesome Cowboys.

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “One story says roommate, not partner. Right now this is rightwing bait for mouthbreathers such as yourself, desperate to assign trans people as the menace to society. Fuck off.”

HE: “You’re in denial, bruh. True, it’s mainly the conservative press reporting this story, but you can’t be thinking this is total poppycock. The Daily Mail has apparently done some real reporting.”

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “You’re a bigot. You’re part of the problem.”

HE: “I’ve never vibed any trans people with hate or bigotry. EVER. I’m a turn-the—other-cheek kinda guy. Comme ci comme ca. Don’t judge, go easy. But these reports are social cancer, if true.”

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “You’re full of shit. You’ve been filled with hate since your life blew up.”

HE: “I wasn’t cancelled by transies. I was cancelled by revenge-minded female publicists and certain female journos. I was cancelled by a #MeToo hit squad. Without my having said or done anything actionable.”

Trans-favoring Lefty Millennial: “Blocking this convo. Keep this filth to yourself.”

HE: “The side that shoots someone in the neck is the side full of hate…I think that’s fair to say.”

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The limo job, which I’m happy to have, blends well with daily HE input because it’s colorful and episodic and improvisational, and certainly isn’t a soul-numbing 8 to 5 thing. Every journey is an adventure.

The hours can be demanding but are demand-dependent, and therefore erratic (afternoons, evenings) and catch-as-catch-can.

Serious discipline and concentration are essential, but chill-time gaps between jobs always allow for HE filings, and driving around is nothing if not a constant oppprtunity for reflection, meditation and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ohm-ing, and I’m always listening to podcasts and music on the one-ear headphones.

Five days on, two days off (Tuesday and Wednesday) plus I can always get furloughs if I submit written requests a few days in advance.

But yesterday was too long (5:15 am wake-up, didn’t return home until 10:30 pm) and grinding, and aside from one morning post about the national Charley Kirk trauma I just couldn’t generate much in my head.

I was briefly diverted by Matt Belloni’s “Attack of the Rotten Tomatoes” Puck piece, but only that. So RT management is cooking the books on top of the standard “”what else is new?” about most critics being corporate-kowtowing, blow-with-the-wind whores, tap-dancers and equivocaters? Haven’t we all been saying this for years?

My own responses plus RT plus Metacritic plus what certain trusted colleagues are saying plus the HE commentariat…this combination has always sufficed.

Let’s hope Charlie Kirk‘s young assassin, reportedly now in custody, is a garden-variety sociopath and not a committed partisan wokey.

Because I’m wondering if some MAGA nutters out there are thinking about avenging Kirk by shooting a prominent Washington progressive in the neck.

Turn it down, don’t inflame. Is Trump calling for calm? Nope.

On the strength of Hustle and Flow (’05) and Dolemite Is My Name (’19), I definitely trust and admire director Craig Brewer, and so I’m cautiously down with Song Sung Blue (Focus Features, 12.25).

Yes, I would normally be horrified by the prospect of watching a flick about a real-life husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute band from Milwaukee.

But the Brewer factor plus the chops and conviction of the long-of-tooth Hugh Jackman (who plays Mike Sardinia) plus Kate Hudson (a little voice is teLling me Claire Sardinia might be her best role since Penny Lane in Almost Famous) plus supporting players Michael Imperioli, Fisher Stevens and Jim Belushi…you can sense the combustion.

But if it’s as good as it seems, why is Focus waiting until 12.25 to release it?