This absurd TikTok fantasy reminds me of an actual, real-life infidelity episode. Or so I was told by a friend of Gerry Seitz, a Connecticut guy I knew and palled around with way back when. Gerry didn’t pass it along first-hand, but I believed the story then and I believe it now. (Partly because I want to believe it, I suppose.). True or false, I’ve never forgotten it.

It happened in the early to mid ’70s, somewhere in Southern Florida (Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood, Boca Raton). A college grad, Seitz was working part-time in construction, and he was having an affair with the extremely hot wife of a co-worker (or a friend of a co-worker, something like that).

No dates, no motel assignations — Gerry would occasionally visit the unemployed wife at home around lunch hour or the early afternoon, and then, just to be safe, skedaddle around 3 or 4 pm. Hubby was usually home by 6 or 6:30 pm.

You know how this goes. Gerry and the wife were in bed around 3 pm when they heard the sound of a car outside, the jingle of keys, the front door opening, etc. It happened too quickly for Gerry to manage an escape. He tossed his clothes and footwear under the bed and slipped buck naked into the bedroom closet.

The husband walks in, a bit surprised to find his wife under the covers with (what is that?) a certain aroma in the air. She says something about wanting to take a shower or a sudden urge to take a nap…whatever comes to mind. Turned-on hubby gets flirty and handsy and takes off his T-shirt. The guilt-stricken wife feels she has no choice but to respond.

Gerry, listening from the closet, is quietly freaking. He figures it would have been one thing if the husband had walked in on him and the wife — an alarming trauma that probably would have turned violent. But the husband’s reaction would be much more ferocious, Gerry was imagining, if he discovers Gerry in the closet after he and the wife have had sex. The guy might shoot him if that happens.

Gerry is weighing the odds, sweating it out and struggling to stay as silent as possible. Before the husband and wife start to actually do it, Gerry decides he can’t stand the tension and opens the closet door and announces himself, dangling schlong and all…”I’m really sorry and I’m leaving.” Husband freaks, strong words, slaps and fisticuffs. But at least Gerry didn’t get shot.

Posted on 12.24.17: Remember those dim-bulb Academy members who harangued Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio after that first Wolf of Wall Street Academy screening because they didn’t get the satirical thrust behind all the coarse vulgarity (which was delivered both literally and within “quotes”)? And how Scorsese and DiCaprio had to attend screening after screening and patiently explain that they were depicting the louche adventures of Jordan Belfort and his cronies to make a point about the character of the buccaneers who have fleeced this country and will definitely fleece again? Remember the brief shining moment of Hope Holiday

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The object of justified feminist scorn on The Dick Cavett Show so many decades ago was George Gilder, a Republican speechwriter who had written a Ripon Societys piece that defended President Richard Nixon’s veto of a day-care bill that had been sponsored by Senators Walter Mondale and Jacob Javits. He was fired as editor as a result. To defend himself, he appeared on Firing Line and then the Cavett show. Robert Shaw delivered the fatal stab wound.

Friendo: “So prescient, a discussion you could have today…but Robert Shaw would be needed.”

This is several weeks late, but there’s a reason I decided against watching One Perfect Shot, a six-episode HBO Max series hosted by Ava DuVernay.

The director-friendly doc focuses on ambitious, well-executed shots in six films, shots that the producers believe are worthy of special praise. They’re from Jon Chu‘s Crazy Rich Asians (’18), Michael Mann‘s Heat (’95), Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman (’17), Malcolm Lee‘s Girls Trip (’17), Kasi Lemmons‘ Harriet (’19) and Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (’20).

The problem, obviously, is that only two of these warrant in-depth study — Heat and Chicago 7.

The other four were chosen for the usual inclusive woke-Hollywood reasons…tributing black artists who are pals with DuVernay, saluting #MeToo progressivism. Girls Trip was mildly enjoyable fun but forget any notions of it containing a perfect shot. Everyone regards Harriet as a negligible thing — second-rate, historically inauthentic, flat-out terrible in some respects. Wonder Woman is a decent enough superhero flick and Jenkins did a fine job for the most part (it’s way better than Wonder Woman 1984), but it’s not my idea of top-tier and certainly isn’t even close to Heat‘s level. And Crazy Rich Asians is appalling…a synthetic wealth-porn romcom.

It’s actually an insult to Mann and Sorkin that their films (especially Mann’s) have been lumped in with the riff-raff.

A message from Vice Chair @RepLizCheney about Thursday’s hearing. pic.twitter.com/SsnOOEnyVq

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 14, 2022

Tom Hanks to N.Y. Times interviewer David Marchese:

Another 2022 taboo: No major-league black actor (someone as big now as Denzel Washington was in ‘93) would agree to play a homophobe today. Too much negative signaling as everyone knows about real-life homophobia among blacks (just ask Pete Buttigieg) and therefore guaranteed antagonism from gay community. Am I wrong?

Despite dicey gossip stating that Amber Heard‘s Mera appears in several scenes in the forthcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (Warner Bros., 3.23), JustJared is reporting that she’s been cut from the film and that another actress will replace her.

I’ll believe it when I hear it from the trades, but that’s what’s being reported.

5:25 pm update:

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Last weekend’s Elvis screening didn’t happen at the actual Graceland, but at The Guest House at Graceland, a super-sized, Vegas-styled hotel resort-slash-tourist trap located a quarter-mile north of Graceland.

Roughly 40 junketeers plus some TikTok influencers were taken around Memphis and shown Beale Street, the original Sun Records studio, etc. But what about the Lorraine Motel?

After the screening three Presley women — Priscilla, Lisa Marie (former beard wife for Michael Jackson) + Riley Keough — took the stage along with Baz Luhrmann, Austin Butler, Tom Hanks and others and showered the film with praise.

What were they gonna do…say it was not bad or pretty good or an in-and-outer? They’re following the script because the film enhances the Elvis brand…that’s it.

Elvis opens on 6.24. The big question is, how will Millennials and Zoomers react? Because Elvis isn’t as much fun as Bohemian Rhapsody — not with Hanks’ performance as Col. Tom Parker bringing everyone down.

@alecia_davis Priscilla & Lisa Marie Presley on the new Baz Luhrmann biopic, ELVIS. #priscillapresley #lisamarie #austinbutler #tomhanks #elvis #elvismovie ♬ original sound – Alecia Davis

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Let it never be said that Baltimore-based Daily Beast contributor Kyndall Cunningham is any kind of woke pronoun dilletante. She is in fact totally hardcore, and not just in her sentences but her headlines.

The latest example is a Cunningham/Beast story about poor, crazy Ezra Miller, who’s been flaming out for a while now. Here’s the headline:

My first response was “yo…brave Kyndall!…set the standards, blaze a trail!” Would the N.Y. Times, the Washington Post or the Daily Guardian run such a headline? Perhaps not, but this shouldn’t be Kyndall’s concern. For she appears to be the first woke soldier over the wire, our very own Sgt. Alvin York…clenched teeth, fixed bayonet….Ezra Miller is not only non-binary, but he may contain multitudes…he’s a community of souls within a single body…aarrggghhh!

The last time HE considered Cunningham’s history-altering use of woke gender pronouns in a news story was just over two months ago (4.8.22). In an article called “Pronoun Monsters on Maple Street,” I went into cardiac arrest over a Cunningham sentence written for a Daily Beast piece about Miller’s shenanigans.

Here’s the sentence:

HE reaction: I know this sounds abrupt but all of a sudden the pronoun thing — a re-ordering of the English language due to political activism on the part of one-half of 1% of the population, and driven by an attempt to show respect and establish boundaries that will benefit the ambiguous gender-fluid community — strikes me as fundamentally INSANE, or at least in this context.

Say it loud and proud: We cannot and must not use they/them to refer to an individual and a group of people within a single sentence.

Let’s not forget how Cunningham hit the roof last March when Power of the Dog director Jane Campion praised Venus and Serena Williams in the wrong way at the Spirit Awards. Nobody outside of Cunningham’s deranged woke enclave gave a shit, but she sure flipped out!

Posted today (Tuesday, 6.14) by the Washington Post’s Max Boot. I’m wondering if this has been Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s chickenshit plan all along — to do nothing and let the Jan. 6 committee reiterate the obvious case and then step in after it finishes.

Amber Heard won’t or can’t turn the page, and so the pain pageant continues. She wants sympathy and understanding, of course, but is this also a plea to Hollywood casting directors? I’m honestly more interested in seeing Heard in a feature now than I ever was before. She never made an impression as an actress (I didn’t even watch Aquaman), but now she has. Has becoming an ignominious figure upped her thespian game?

Streets on 8.9.22: