…that the odds of this kind of emotionally galvanizing moment at the Oscars are not only dropping by the day but (be honest) will probably happen more and more infrequently if at all, in part because the ranks of charismatic home-run “brand” hitters like Jack Nicholson are thinning out. Will you listen to that crowd and feel those vibes? Will you consider that skipping across the stage? It didn’t seem like some stupendous emotional moment when it happened 23 years ago, but post-Soderbergh death knell it sure feels like one now.

I haven’t been to a Dodgers game since the late ’90s. I was thinking last weekend about going again. (Tatiana’s never seen a baseball game.) Maybe the Dodgers vs. the Mariners on Tuesday, 5.11. But I can’t do the nosebleed section. I don’t have to sit along the baselines or behind home plate, but I have to be able to smell the grass and the dirt…aromas (including the hot dogs and those big plastic cups of beer) are everything to me.

So I checked with seatgeek.com and Jumpin’ Jeezus! $197 to $232 each or $400 to $460 a pair! These are Covid prices — the teams have to charge more, I’m told, because fewer seats are being sold due to safe spacing — but still.

A 2002 ticket-price graph (converted to ’02 dollars) says that the average 1920 ballgame ticket cost around $9 (in ’02 dollars). By 1950 the average price was $11.50 (again, in ’02 dollars). In 1985 the average price was $10.15. In 2001 the average ducat cost $18.60.

In May 2016 I bought three tickets to a Mets-Giants game for $230 (Jett, Cait and myself). The weather was so horrific we didn’t go.

I asked Jett what he’s recently paid for a New York-area game. “I pay like $150 for really shitty NY Giants tickets,” he replied. “It varies from game to game, section to section. It costs $38 for nosebleeds to see the Reds @ the Dodgers.”

I’m sorry but Oslo (HBO, 5.29), J. T. Rogers and Bartlett Sher‘s film (originally a 2016 play) about the backchannel process that led to the Oslo Peace Accords of ’93 and ’95 strikes me as Israeli propaganda, or not much more than that.

However welcome and applauded they may have been 26 and 28 years ago, the Oslo Accords were an incremental step in a long process that has steadily been about Palestinian disenfranchisement, oppression, humiliation and generally getting the shit end of the stick.

The Oslo Accords ratified a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, founded upon recognition by the Palestine Liberation Organization of the State of Israel (as in “the right to exist”) and a recognition by Israel of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people (“self-rule”) and as a partner in negotiations, etc.

The Oslo process was significant in its day, but since then there has been a steady encroachment and usurpation of Palestinian West Bank territory by Israeli settlers and the Israeli military, and the Palestinian pie slices have gotten thinner and thinner.

In 1975 U.N. resolution 3379 declared that Zionism was “a form of racism,” and even though 3379 was renounced in ’91, the ’75 resolution stands as a historical statement of widely-shared opinion.

Today Israel controls well over 60% of the West Bank, and Palestinian economic development has been stymied and/or obstructed. Please watch “Israeli settlements, explained | Settlements Part I,” a 2016 Vox report.

I have to be myself — the sum total of genes and upbringing and opportunities missed and seized, the small percentage of movies I’ve seen (hundreds as opposed to thousands) that are truly bracing or soul-soothing or a combination of both, fortunate good health (genes again), a flood of cultural and political (not to mention sensual, sexual, musical and spiritual) influences, a life of dreams and longings and drudgery and occasional adventure, decades of struggle and hand-to-mouth survival, the “stink of L.A. in your bones” (Charles Bukowski line) and the aromas of Paris, Hanoi, London, exurban Fairfield County, Prague and Savannah, endless car tune-ups and repairs and public transportations, mostly hard work and little slivers of leisure, the stink and horror of Twitter, ups and downs, Italian fashion and European restaurant solace, highs and lows and earphones…it is what it fucking is. A poor thing perhaps, but mine own.

So if the HE package doesn’t rock the rafters of this or that movie-savoring clique or tribe or realm with certain specific agendas and world-views, there’s probably not much I can do about it.

Jordan Ruimy: “Josh Rogin was on Joe Rogan today. The entire episode was about the lab leak. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. The most thoughtful and concise conversation about the lab leak theory thus far. Your mind will be blown numerous times. Rogin is a Trump hater but he can absolutely separate politics from the lab leak theory and recognize that we have a major problem here.”

Same subject, Bret Weinstein, recorded on 4.19.21:

Everyone knows McCabe and Mrs. Miller is mostly a shadowy, brownish-amber, earthy-looking thang…wood grain, candlelight, gaslamps, misty rain, cloudy skies, muddy streets, fallen snow, a climactic blizzard. Except, that is, in the mind of the sociopath who designed this “happy” poster. The idea was to suggest to would-be viewers that Robert Altman’s 1971 western was an upbeat package with a sunny, robust attitude…pink horse, pink buildings, burnt-orange Julie Christie, green prostitutes, yellow-tint Warren Beatty.

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From a 4.27 Paul Schrader conversation-starter on Facebook: “While progressives and liberals hailed the diverse Academy Awards as an accomplishment, I think many (most?) Americans saw it as an assault on the role of Hollywood in American culture. Can the Oscars ever regain their position as an arbiter of mainstream entertainment?”

Tim Appelo: “Maybe there is no mainstream America henceforth — in movies, TV, music, art, politics, tech has fragmented us into the Formerly United States.

Patrick Stoner: “That is prescient. In spite of the usual political spin, for those of us who have spent a lifetime covering the business, there is no mystery as to why the Oscars have had declining universal appeal (this non-event pandemic year of awards is just an asterisk): As viewing habits have increasingly altered over the past 10 years (with an explosive speedup in the last couple), we no longer are bound to all see at least one of the films nominated. In the past we would share a Godfather, an Argo, etc. but we’ve split into mostly streaming our personal preferences over films we hear we must get out to see. Forget politics. You’re right. It’s tech.”

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Posted on Facebook by WT Solley (4.25.21, 10:37 am):

It’s been 13 months since I first saw Roman Polanski’s drop-dead masterpiece, and almost 20 months since it opened at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. To the best of my knowledge English subtitles were never available on the Gaumont Bluray, and English-speaking audiences still aren’t allowed to stream it with same because distributors are still fearful of potential #MeToo pushback. (And yet a December 2019 trailer has English subs!)

The path out of this situation is not difficult: The unfortunate history of a flawed artist is one thing, but the art itself is another. Suppressing public access to high-quality art is, to put it mildly, odious — a truly bad look.

From my 3.25.20 review: “J’Accuse has been crafted with absolute surgical genius…a lucid and exacting and spot-on retelling of an infamous episode…a sublime atmospheric and textural recapturing of 1890s ‘belle epoque’ Paris, and such a meticulous, hugely engrossing reconstruction of the Dreyfus affair…a tale told lucidly…a clue-by-clue, layer-by-layer thing.

“You know what J’Accuse is? A bedtime comfort flick — comforting because it’s so damned good.

“It’s my idea of a perfect film in every respect — Polanski and Robert Harris‘s brilliant screenplay, the ace-level production design by Jean Rabasse and art direction by Dominique Moisan, Pawel Edelman‘s naturally lighted cinematography, Alexandre Desplat‘s music…every single element is aces.

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The New Yorker has posted an eight-year-old video essay about NRA chief Wayne La Pierre and his wife Susan on a bungled elephant hunt. Every hunting video is disgusting, but this…

After the first elephant drops to the ground, shot by Wayne but alive and groaning, somebody in La Pierre’s party chuckles. Alas, Wayne can’t shoot. It takes three or four more shots to finish the deed. Wayne exhales, grins, accepts congratulations.

Excerpt: “After guides tracked down an elephant for her, Susan killed it, cut off its tail, and held it in the air. ‘Victory!’ she shouted, laughing. ‘That’s my elephant tail. Way cool.'”