All been said, once more for emphasis…

I suddenly felt sorry this morning for my distressed leather shoulder bag, which I used to lug around everywhere. It’s big enough to carry two 15″ computers plus cords and batteries and whatnot, and I was thinking in a kind of dopey, children’s book sort of way that the bag must feel so unloved these days. Because all it does is sit there on top of a small faux-leather chest and collect dust.

I really love this rugged-looking saddlebag, and wish I could talk to it and say that it looks and feels (and smells!) so cool. If John Wayne‘s Tom Dunson needed a computer bag at the start of the cattle drive in Red River, he would have chosen this without hesitation.

Yes, it’s moronic to feel badly about a leather bag being left alone and ignored, but as strange as it sounds I feel the same way about this bag that my little brother used to feel about “fig fat”, a stuffed Panda bear that he used to carry around.

Forgive me but I’ll be taking the rest of the afternoon off in order to (a) watch a very big movie (a June release) and also (b) re-paint a couple of doors. What difference does it make?

How did it get to be Friday already? Last weekend ended only a day or two ago.

Bill Bramhall‘s latest alludes to the sudden dropping of all charges against Michael Flynn, carried out by Attorney General William Barr at the behest of President Donald Trump. For context, please read “The Appalling Damage of Dropping the Michael Flynn Case,” a N.Y. Times op-ed by Georgetown law professors Neal K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer.

I’ve been down with Saul Bass tributes for so long they look like up to me. The man with the golden arm (or the golden eye or pen of what-have-you) was born 100 years ago today, and passed just over 24 years ago at age 76. My three favorite Bass-designed title sequences remain the same (and in this order): Ocean’s 11 (’60), North by Northwest (’59), The Man With The Golden Arm (’55). And one of best tributes ever, I feel, was the decision to go solely with the crooked-arm visual on the marquee of Times Square’s Victoria theatre. That was enough, United Artists believed.

In “False Prophet,” the object of Dylan’s derision seems to be some kind of slick, double-talking Beelzebub. Donald Trump? Himself? You tell me. “I’m the enemy of treason / Enemy of strife/ Enemy of the unlived meaningless life / I ain’t no false prophet / I just know what I know / I go where only the lonely can go.” Roy Orbison?

I love the choppy, bluesy rhythm guitar…bah-dahm, bah-dahm. Cuts right through.

My beloved Souplantation, a citadel of nutrition and communal comfort eating, is no more. The self-serve cafeteria chain, which launched in San Diego in 1978, has been killed by COVID-19, or by an FDA regulation that says communal salad and soup bars are too dangerous in the current environment.

I began eating at my favorite Souplantations (11911 San Vicente Blvd. in Brentwood, the other at 100 No. La Cienega Blvd. or inside the Beverly Grove complex) sometime in the early ’90s. Those salads, soups, blueberry muffins and pasta bowls, and especially the soft ice cream covered with chopped nuts and chocolate syrup!

In the summer of ’97 (or was it’ 98?) O.J. Simpson and two or three pallies strolled into the Brentwood location, where I also happened to be. Scooped up vittles, sat and joked and smiled. Everyone did a reasonably good job of pretending they weren’t thinking what they were thinking. Quite the moment.

Over the last decade or so my Souplantation visits were less frequent. Maybe two or three times a year, if that. But it was nice knowing I could go there almost any time and not have to spend much for a nice healthy salad and a tall glass of lemonade, etc. I’m very, very sorry that this beloved chain is dead and buried.

You can feel the current right away. Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island (Universal, 6.12) is first and foremost a New York extreme-behavior borough movie with tattoos and firemen…that much is obvious. And a real-deal movie about flawed or constipated or otherwise damaged or disappointed human beings trying to ignore or work through their histories and hang-ups and trepidations, and being randomly funny or nervy or guilty or fucked-up in the margins but…aahh, what do I know from a trailer? I’ll tell you what I can sense. This film is not smug or lazy or camped out in its own rectum but ambitious and probing…a go-for-broker.

“You make everyone around you crazy…you gotta get your shit together…time is passing by really quickly.”

A month ago I abandoned my Joe Rogan allegiance when he said he’d “rather vote for Trump than Biden” due to concerns about cognitive issues — that was a horrible take, a repulsive thing to say. But his view of the Adele weight-loss thing (a couple of days old) is sensible and straight. Only in our deranged p.c. culture would an obviously healthy thing be responded to with anger and dismay.

Rogan: “If you’re an Adele fan, wouldn’t you want her to be healthier? Yet people are mad…[they’re saying] ‘I don’t want her to be applauded for losing weight.” The below clip was posted earlier today.

Given the likelihood that theatregoing will be a spotty if not verboten activity for the next few months and the Academy’s proclamation that streaming-only films will be eligible for the 2020 Oscars, it seems inevitable that several forthcoming Netflix films (all dated for 2020) stand a better-than-decent chance of becoming hot Oscar contenders, and almost certainly in the case of David Fincher‘s Mank, Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy, Andrew Dominik‘s Blonde and Edoardo Ponti‘s The Life Ahead.

Not to mention Spike Lee‘s Da Five Bloods, George C. Wolfe‘s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Charlie Kaufman‘s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Ryan Murphy‘s The Prom, David Dobkin‘s Eurovision, Ben Wheatley‘s Rebecca remake, George Clooney‘s The Midnight Sky and Antonio Campos‘ The Devil All The Time. 12 in all.

By my estimation the first four will almost certainly emerge as Best Picture finalists. I know that the Mank script (penned by Fincher’s dad Jack) is brilliant, and that Fincher and Gary Oldman (as Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz) will do it justice. I suspect that Hillbilly Elegy may strike a chord as a kind of “lefty Hollywood reaches out to rural Bumblefucks to try and understand their plight” type of deal. I haven’t read Blonde but I’ve been hearing good things (as in good, crazy, out there) for years. My enthusiasm for The Life Ahead is strictly gut-level.

By the way it’s just been announced that Da Five Bloods will debut on Netflix five weeks hence — June 12th. So where’s the trailer?

Gary Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz in David Fincher’s Mank.

This evening I intend to watch Andrew Ahn‘s Driveways (RT 100%, Metacritic 80%), the late Brian Dennehy‘s final film and, to go by reviews, an occasion for one of his best performances.

Set in suburbia (and filmed in Poughkeepsie), Driveways appears to be a kinder, gentler Gran Torino — a relationship flick about a young Asian-American kid (Lucas Jaye‘s “Cody”) and a crusty but benign Korean War vet (Dennehy’s “Del”) who lives next door.

Driveways began streaming today (5.7) on Amazon and iTunes.

From 4.19 San Francisco Chronicle review by G. Allen Johnson: “On its own, Driveways would be a sweet, understated masterpiece, simply told, of human connection. But with the recent death of longtime distinguished stage and movie actor Brian Dennehy, director Andrew Ahn allows us to say a proper goodbye to the big fella, who gets the final six minutes of the movie all to himself.

“Dennehy plays Del, an octogenarian widower and veteran who forms a grandfatherly relationship with the fatherless Cody (Lucas Jaye), the 8-year-old son of Kathy (Hong Chau, Downsizing, Watchmen), a single mother who, one gets the sense, doesn’t really like being a mother.

“Kathy and Cody enter Del’s life when they arrive from out of town to handle the estate of Kathy’s sister, which is mainly the run-down house next door to Del’s.

“After Cody and Del first exchange pleasantries, the standoffish Kathy gruffly warns Del, ‘I told him not to talk to strangers.’ Replies Del: ‘Good idea.’

“But Cody, craving a male figure in his life, is undeterred. With Kathy constantly preoccupied, Del and Cody bond. They talk life, and he even teaches Cody to drive (well, a riding mower). Bingo at the veterans hall is a big ninth-birthday treat for Cody.

“Although it’s not explicitly spelled out, Del sets an example for Kathy, too. She can see the change in Cody, and as she becomes more comfortable around Del, she becomes a better mother. Parenting isn’t her natural thing, but she’s warming to the idea.

Fuckface Von Clownstick obviously told Attorney General Barr to find some excuse to drop all charges against confessed Russiagate liar Michael Flynn, and now it’s happened. This way Trump doesn’t have to pardon the guy.

Not being the least bit stupid or gullible, Megyn Kelly surely understands that Tara Reade is almost certainly a liar and that the facts don’t begin to support her allegation against Joe Biden. But she’s interviewed Reade anyway because it gets her back in the game, and because conservatives will admire her for this. And because she’ll acquire a whole new nationwide fan base of Berners.

MK EXCLUSIVE: Will Tara Reade go under oath or take a polygraph? pic.twitter.com/aBXohhg14n

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) May 7, 2020