I don’t know what I doing on the night of Friday, 6.25.93, but I was probably drinking my second or third vodka and lemonade of the evening and watching a laser disc movie in my living room. Maybe the kids were visiting that weekend….can’t remember. But for damn sure I wasn’t watching the final airing of Late Night with David Letterman — Dave’s last night on NBC before moving over to The Late Show on CBS.

It’s been 28 years, and all this time I’ve never watched this clip of Bruce Springsteen, teamed with Paul Shaffer & The World’s Most Dangerous Band, playing fucking “Glory Days.” That might be the best rock performance I’ve ever seen on a regular TV show, including Saturday Night Live.

Otherwise it’s the same grim, shadowy, rain-soaked, Gotham City noir shit…the same bowl of foreboding, the same Batman ghoulash…re-heated and re-served and re-garnished for brawny, strapping, grown-up Zoomers and clinging-to-youth Millennials, who are gradually panicking about approaching middle age and desperate to hang on to classic mythologies.

Q: “Who are you under there?” A “I’m vengeance.” Yeah, we figured that out over 30 years ago, back in the good old dawning days of 1989. And now it’s 32 years later and we’re wading through the same marsh.

Absolute respect and admiration for Matt Reeves, whose films HE has admired going back to Let Me In (’10). I just don’t get this one. I don’t see the need. I dont think anyone does. I think it’s just a cash grab. And I say that with full props for Reeves. He went for the money, and there’s nothing “wrong” with that.

Randy Newman said it 20 years ago: “I have nothin’ more to say / I’m gonna say it anyway.”

Two weeks shy of Halloween and it’s beach weather — 85 degrees in West Hollywood. People in easy moods, shuffling around in T-shirts and flip-flops, basking in the warmth and no loud, coarse workmen singing their hearts out to ranchero music. And the cloudless sky is a pure bright blue.

Why am I seemingly the only person in WeHo wearing a high-thread-count T-shirt, faded slim jeans and Beatle boots? I can’t answer that, but I can state without hesitancy that it’s 68 degrees in Manhattan, 49 degrees in Paris and 67 degrees in Hanoi. Life is good if you turn your mind off and float downstream and forget about people like LexG and Glenn Kenny.

“If Chappelle was white, there would be no dilemma…he’d be cancelled full stop, and The Closer would be taken off the air”…well?

Jump to https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2021/10/sage-words/2/

Smiling faces and two-faced enemies. Or, in Marlon Brando terminology, one-eyed jacks. Some actual friends or “friendos,” of course (and thank God for those few) but mostly fair-weather types, transactional allies, etc. Like any other big-city racket. Grow up.

Ridley Scott‘s The Last Duel (20th Century, 10.15) is a good, sturdy feminist film, and there’s one person who carries it — not Matt “mullet” Damon, not Adam “horseface” Driver and not Ben “Blondie” Affleck. The carrier is Jodie Comer, and I’m telling you that she’s Grace Kelly in her prime…skill, class, poise, passion, refinement.

The guys are fine but Comer (26 or 27 when the film was shot) is the keeper. Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress…whatever works. She’s got it within, and she looks great besides.

Repeating: We all understand that Duel is a medieval #MeToo yarn about conflicting recollections of a brutal rape.

Two depictions are shown, one from the perspective of the victim, Comer’s Marguerite de Carrouges, and a second from the perspective of the rogue perpetrator, Driver’s Jacques Le Gris. A third account from Marguerite’s husband, Damon’s Jean de Carrouges, is passed along but not visualized as he wasn’t there.

But there’s another sexual assualt scene that really throttles you, and it’s between a mare and a stallion. A white mare “in season” is in a corral, bnd suddenly a black stallion races into the paddock and mounts her like that, and Scott offers a fast glimpse of his 20-inch black baseball bat…God! Now that‘s a savage rape scene, I told myself. The neighing steeds have it all over the heavy breathing humans in this respect.

I was disturbed by Damon’s mullet hair all through the film — in every Damon scene it was a problem. Why did Scott insist on his lead actor wearing a rural Pennsylvania, Trump-supporting mullet in this thing?

And I didn’t care for the muted blue-gray color scheme — it bothered me start to finish.

It’s 2:45 pm and I have to leave for two or three hours. I’ll pick up later on…

There’s a Latino apartment renovation crew working in the building next door, three or four guys, and they’re being (what else?) obnoxious — shouting to the extent that their voices sound like sonic booms, playing loud sombrero ballads and singing along and occasionally going “whooo-whooo!” And it’s awful to listen to. It’s hell.

I asked myself if I should walk over to the worksite and ask these guys to consider the fact that this is West Hollywood and not East L.A. and would they mind giving the neighborhood a break with their awful Tijuana border crossing music, etc. But that wouldn’t accomplish much.

I’ve been all around the block with coarse Latinos so don’t tell me. My battles with the Hispanic Party Elephant in North Bergen. The “Loud Latinos” piece that I posted from Brooklyn in June 2010, and got in trouble over.

Audio Player

Getting older is not a felony but this OK! cover shot of Tom Cruise threw me. An occasional bad photo is par for the course, but I froze in my tracks when I saw this last night in a WeHo Pavillions checkout line. What am I seeing? Facial filler? Cruise has sturdy features — he’s a handsome dude and the “worn and weathered” thing (the Jerry Maguire look + 25) is the way to go. And he should grow his hair out a bit. “Barry Nerd” short hair can work against you, depending on the particulars.

Wokesters are not letting the Dave Chappelle-Ted Sarandos–Closer thing go. They’re all piling on, the whole Film Twitter mob. All trying to get Netflix to pull The Closer and censor Chappelle, etc. Truly odious bastards. It’s so disgusting that this is the modern-day left. This is why I self-identify as a sensible left-center contrarian.

Then again a whole lot of people are watching the show, I’m presuming.

HE to Sarandos: You are the good guy, the freedom guy, the truth guy, the integrity guy…you are doing the right thing, and God adores you for it. Can anyone imagine Dave Chappelle calling for Hannah Gadsby to be flogged or excommunicated? The Closer cuts right through the woke smoke. It doesn’t deliver final, ultimate truth, but it’s honest, perceptive, fair and straight-up. And it’s certainly Chappelle’s truth. And you’re right to defend it, Ted. In the twinkling of an eye, you’ve become a man among men.