And Wednesday, 11.6 is only going to get better as the hours progress, even with the coming farcical Congressional challenges to Biden’s electoral victory plus the violent Trumpian goons in the streets of D.C., howling at the way it’s all turning out and quaking with rage.

David Simon‘s “Under The Influence” piece about Paths of Glory sppeared two and a half years ago, but I somehow missed it until tonight [Tuesday, 1.5].

What Simon says is so spare, eloquent and well-honed that it made me want to watch Stanley Kubrick‘s 1957 classic yet again, and I’ve seen it at least 15 or 20 times.

Simon: “[It’s been said] that every time you set out to make an anti-war film, it ends up being a war film. There are very few films that stay in the pocket of souring you on war. The suffering is so heroic, the characters are so vibrant, and everything matters…it’s so dramatic. All the Marines I knew from doing Generation Kill, they all loved to do the dialogue from Full Metal Jacket. There’s something about the camaraderie of war that undercuts every anti-war message.

“But not Paths of Glory. Maybe because it’s not strictly an anti-war film…it’s an anti-authority film.”

The more HE readers try to to goad me into watching all 60 episodes of The Wire, the more determined I am to resist. I’m even more determined right now. I’ve seen four or five episodes; I’ll see the other 55 at a time of my own choosing.

6:30 am: Hark, the herald angels sing & dearest God almighty — Warnock and Osoff have both won, although official declarations on Osoff’s behalf won’t come until later today. Last night’s riveting, tension-fraught, at times unsettling tabulation was brilliantly reported by MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki — what a superstar that guy is! What a heroic workhorse! What a beautiful mind! I’ve never felt a greater allegiance and affection for a TV news reporter & vote analyzer in my life.

8:31 pm: Warnock has pulled ahead of Loeffler, and Osoff is inching (and I mean inching) his way to overtaking Perdue — the Osoff-Perdue vote is now 50-50, but right now [8:44 pm] Osoff is behind by only 450 votes and with more votes to come. I’m presuming that Osoff will finish in the lead, but the final count won’t be known until sometime tomorrow.

A vote almost entirely along racial lines — on one hand “great!”, but on the other hand what kind of venality drove the pro-Loeffler and pro-Perdue white vote? What kind of rotted souls do these people have? Nothing short of appalling. Or do I mean disgusting? Probably the latter.

7:05 pm: DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties will most likely save the day for Warnock and Osoff. But it’ll come in late-ish. I don’t know if I can stand the tension. Question: Why is Steve Kornacki pronouncing DeKalb as “DeCab”?

6:17 pm: Oh, dear God…Perdue is leading Osoff, 50.2% to 49.8%. And Loeffler-Warnock are at 50-50….no! But a projected (not yet tallied) 36% of the total outstanding vote will come from four Democratic counties — DeKalb, Gwinnett, Fulton, Cobb. Not to mention uncounted mail-in votes that could either be added tonight or tomorrow.

6 pm (Pacific) update: This is getting close. I’m a little worried about Osoff-Perdue. The Warnock-Loeffler race is moderately encouraging, but overall it’s really tight.

Earlier: This doesn’t look like a super-tight race to me. At the very least the vote is decisively leaning in Jon Osoff and Raphael Warnock’s favor. What’s the basis for pessimism? Tell me how this isn’t going to end with a double Democrat touchdown and the fall of Mitch McConnell?

How Kenosha County district attorney prosecutor Michael D. Graveley could decide not to prosecute Rusten Sheskey, the cop who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back outside an apartment building last August, is beyond me. But at least this decision represents an opportunity. If BLM demonstrators can mobilize and start trashing Kenosha storefronts quickly enough, they might be able to depress the pro-Warnock and Osoff vote in Georgia. It might be too late, I realize, but they could at least give it the old college try.

Like everyone else I wish this could be an actual live event that everyone could attend, but of course it can’t be. This is but one more aspect of Hollywood life that used to be but no longer “is” in any kind of physical sense.

From Peter Bradshaw’s 9.22 Guardian review: “Supernova at first reminded me uneasily of The Leisure Seeker, a syrupy picture in which Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland play a squabbling old married couple taking a last Winnebago road-trip in the shadow of dementia and mortality.

“But that was hammy and sugary: Supernova, for all its occasional heartstring-plucking and button-pushing, is much more restrained, both in the relative calm of the performances and in the unadorned way the countryside is shot.

“Tucci and Firth have a sweet and gentle chemistry…they have an almost Eric-and-Ernie rapport. Elsewhere, Macqueen interestingly builds on the established personae of his leading men to show how their various mannerisms have been brought into play to deflect or neutralize difficult topics. Firth’s Sam is dry, reticent and pretty English; Tucci’s Tusker is quizzically amused and amusing in ways we have seen from him many times before — which makes a key scene, when his voice quivers on the verge of tears, even more affecting.

“The key issue, as with all movies about dementia, is the exit strategy: this was famously an agonis\zing moment in Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s Still Alice, with Julianne Moore, and even more agonis\zing in Michael Haneke’s Amour, with Emmanuelle Riva dwindling into immobility and silence after a stroke.”

…if you’re Harry Styles, a super-rich pop star, Vogue cover icon, movie actor and occasional cross-dressing fashion plate. Very easy. No sweat. You just need to glide along and feel the fizzy, dreamy mood, which, for Styles, currently includes an ongoing romantic rapture with Olivia Wilde.

Nobody wants the company of toxic males, of course, but how many guys look, live and dress like Styles? Be honest. When the wages have stopped and the pressure is on, it’s generally very, very hard to “be” Harry…to fly anywhere, wear anything, try on this or that ball gown or pearl necklace or adopt this or that identity with coolness and confidence…it’s very hard (if not damn near impossible) for struggling 20somethings of whatever sexual persuasion to wear that Styles profile.

Wilde to People‘s Ale Russian, in a 1.4.21 piece: “To me, [Harry is] very modern, and I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has — truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity — is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world. I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”

At least from my perspective…

HE: Tomorrow is the big one. If Ossoff and Warnock win, everyone gets $2000 checks. If not, $600 and go fuck yourself.

A win will mean legislative opportunity for Biden-Harris for at least two years and a temporary end to the malignant turtle reign of Mitch McConnell; if they both lose the general Republican insanity will continue unabated.

Friendo: Ossoff and Warnock are going to win. Trump has convinced Republican voters that the voting system is rigged against them and so there’s no point in voting.

HE: I hope you’re right. They’re slightly ahead in the polls but I think you’re right — it’s going to come down to Republicans staying home.Friendo: A majority of Republicans in Georgia actually believe their vote got scrubbed, deleted, or something like that during the 11.3 election count.

Latest 538 projection, by Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley:

“What We Know About the Voting in Georgia So Far,” N.Y. Times, 1.4.21, reported by Lisa Lerer: “Three million people have already voted in the runoff races, nearly 40 percent of all the registered voters in the state, according to data compiled by the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project. That total surpasses the 2.1 million ballots cast in the state’s last Senate runoff election, which happened in 2008.

“The early voting data suggests that the races are very competitive. There are some indications that Democrats had a bigger share of the early-voting electorate than they did in the general election, raising hopes for a party that has traditionally been the underdog in runoff races. The Atlanta area, the Democrats’ political base, has seen some of the highest turnout rates in the state’s early voting.

“The outcome now depends on whether Republicans can overcome the Democrats’ early gains when they head to the polls on Tuesday. Rates of early voting have been lowest in the conservative northwest corner of the state, worrying some Republicans. But others argue that their supporters typically vote in higher numbers on election day and hope that President Trump’s rally on Monday in Dalton, a city in the northwest, will push more Republicans to the polls.

“Democrats’ early voting advantage helped them beat Mr. Trump in the November election, when Mr. Biden won nearly 400,000 more absentee ballots in the state.”

The Boston Tea Party (which ran from early ’67 to early ’71, and was really cooking during ‘69 and ‘70) was arguably the most glorious, super-charged small venue for live rock bands ever…smaller than the two Fillmores and with one serious headliner after another, or at least part of the time.

Here’s the whole four-year schedule. Three-night bookings for the most part. During one two-night engagement in May ’69 they actually had the Allman Brothers open for the Velvet Underground.

The first BTP venue was at 53 Berkeley St, Boston, MA 02116. In July ’69 they moved to 15 Landsdowne Street, near Kenmore Square.

HE to seasoned rock journalist: “Big-arena concerts allegedly didn’t become a major thing until ‘71 or ‘72 or thereabouts. Small venues like the two Fillmores and the Boston Tea Party flourished during a certain window that began in ‘67 and ended around ‘71, which is when major groups began declining these venues because there was so much more dough in big arenas.

During Led Zeppelin’s January ’69 engagement

“Do I have this right? You were right in the thick of it back then.

“The golden era for the Tea Party was ‘69 and ‘70. My God, look at the acts they had! The BTP was the size of a typical high-school gymnasium. Maybe a tad smaller. I caught three or four shows at the Fillmore East but nothing compared with the sheer physical closeness of the Tea Party…you could get close enough to smell their sweat. It was glorious, tangible, alive.

Seasoned rock journalist to HE: “You’re pretty accurate with this. The big arena shows started around ’69 too, with the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin usually being the ones who pushed the envelope into stadiums later, around ’73.

“Tea Party was famously one of the hot places where the audience and band could [groove as one]. The Fillmores, of course. The Grande Ballroom in Detroit was also one of those small, hot places where the British bands would often play…bands like Jeff Beck Group and they’d blow the roof off. Santa Monica Civic on the West Coast was in between, a little bigger, but amazing for crowd/music/intimacy, like David Bowie’s first show there.

“Also one of the small rooms that bands loved was the Warehouse in New Orleans, home of many explosive small-room nights. The Allman Brothers Band would tear it up at a place like that. Basically, even through the mid-70’s, you might catch a big band playing one of those smaller places just to blow off steam and have a no-pressure gig or record something live with a smaller, great crowd.”

From BTP archive:

“The BTP closed it in early 1971 as the face of rock & roll was changing to larger venues. The Tea Party’s demise followed that of Philadelphia’s Electric Factory and shortly preceded the same for the two Fillmore’s.”

1.5.21, 7:15 am: Tanya Roberts has sadly passed for good this time. No mistakes or take-backs. Sorry.

1.4.21: Although View To A Kill costar and Sheena: Queen of the Jungle star Tonya Roberts is reportedly in dire condition, she is nonetheless alive. Late last night Variety‘s Naman Ramachandran reported that Roberts had died after being stricken with something or other on Christmas Eve. But this afternoon Variety‘s Pat Saperstein reported that Roberts is still with us. Hollywood Elsewhere is pleased to hear this, and hopes that Roberts, 65, will survive whatever it is that’s threatening her life.

“In an ideal world, this [Oscar] year would bust up the well-oiled machine and allow for a wide variety of films to be let in the door. We’re not quite there yet, partly because Hollywood is still in the grips of what might be best described as a kind of woke scare, which is like the Red Scare only it’s about monitoring films for potentially ‘problematic’ concepts and themes, [some being that] the casting may be ‘too white‘ or the directors are male or someone has a history of ‘problematic’ behavior, etc.

“Twitter is the judge and jury but no one wants to be seen as complicit [in anything outside the approved wokester safety zone, and so] they vote accordingly.

“Thus, the bloggers and critics are modulating for this potential blowback with [careful] choices. We’re all predicting the Oscar using the same method. In an ordinary year we might pick a movie [that] Oscar voters would likely go for, given what we know of the Academy’s taste. This year, we compensate for the ‘woke scare’ and we say ‘this is the movie they might go for if they are wanting to send a message that they are not racists or sexists or transphobes.’

“This was, after all, the year the Academy announced they would be mandating inclusivity in their productions and narratives going forward. That means they will likely be voting from a place of defending themselves from potential attacks.” — from Sasha Stone‘s “Best Picture – Films that Reflect The Story of America in 2020,” posted today.

A friend has warned me to watch my back. “As a white man you are vulnerable, and thus you must modulate as anyone would,” he said. “Okay, it’s not quite as bad as [a threat of] being thrown in jail but it is like blacklisting, for sure.” Which is obviously a kind of jail except that you’re not kept in but locked out.

In other words, give the Khmer Rouge a reason to slit your throat and they will slit your throat without blinking an eye. Or…you know, they’ll slip a blue plastic bag over your head. I’m not exaggerating.