N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis, posted on Thursday, 3.19: “With social distancing, quarantines and self-isolation, many of us are now physically alone. I am fervently hoping for the best for us all. When we at last can go out again and be with one another, I hope that we flood cinemas, watching every single movie, from the most rarefied art film to the silliest Hollywood offering. The movies can be exasperating and worse, but they have seen us through a lot, including economic bad times and wars. And there is nothing like watching a movie, leaving the world while being rooted in it alongside friends, family and everyone else. I miss that, I miss you.”

HE reaction, posted on 3.20: The COV-19 solitude feeds my depression and vice versa. I know my life isn’t over, but it’s easy to feel that way. All you have to do is let go and slide down into the pit. We’re all hoping for the best, but the idea of living like this for two, three or even four or five months is shattering.

I’m also having trouble believing that Manohla really wants to watch movies with the unwashed rabble again. The negatives have always seemed to far outweigh the positives of seeing a film with ticket buyers, especially in the big Manhattan plexes. The cultivation levels have plummeted over the last 30 years. As Paul Schrader said on Facebook a year or two ago, it wasn’t just the films that were better in the ’70s but the audiences.

I’ll always love going to invitational screenings, large and small. Ditto screenings at the American Cinematheque Aero and Egyptian, which attract a better clientele. Ditto the Arclight cinemas, to some extent. And there’s nothing better than watching an HD Bluray of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance on my 4K HDR 65-incher.

But seeing movies with Average Joes at the Grove can be tedious and at times off-putting. I’ll never miss seeing films with 21st Century knuckle-draggers. Manohla misses you — I don’t. Not for nothing is the invisible motto of this site “hell is other people.” If I could eliminate die-hard fans of the Fast & Furious franchise by clapping my hands three times, I would clap my hands three times.

Last Saturday Dylan and I listened to Joe Rogan’s discussion with public-health scientist and infectious-disease expert Michael Osterholm. It was taped as little more than a week ago. The bottom line, Osterholm said, is (a) We ain’t seen nothin’ yet, (b) This could be ten times worse than seasonal flu and just shy of the death rates of the 1918 Spanish flu, (c) It’s gonna stay around for months, (d) the most vulnerable are older people (75-plus) + those with obesity, high blood pressure, respiratory issues, drinking problems…those who smoke.

Translation: If you’re healthy, washing your hands often, in relatively decent shape (i.e., not obese) and getting good sleep, you’re less likely to succumb than sea lions who smoke, drink and have respiratory issues. As 70 million adults in U.S. are obese (35 million men and 35 million women) and 99 million are overweight (45 million women and 54 million men), roughly 40% of Americans are especially vulnerable.

Those clinging to notions that COVID-19 didn’t come from a bat virus in Wuhan “wet” markets are advised to scroll forward to 1:02 (one hour, two minutes).

Three hours ago I got in touch with my UCLA-affiliated primary care giver.

HE: What about giving me a prescription for hydroxy chloroquine? An antiviral malaria medication known by the CDC to be effective as treatment and prevention for SARS, with three new studies allegedly showing strong anti-Covid19 effects.

UCLA doctor/primary caregiver: I’m aware of this. We’re not recommending it.

HE: May I ask why? It’s an “old” malaria preventative. Been around forever. Trump is no medical authority, but he did mention it today. Why not?

UCLA doctor/primary caregiver: There is not actually data that it works. I discussed it extensively with a top expert in the field today who said absolutely not. The only time they may consider it in the future is for hospitalized patients with recent diagnosis. It is not a benign medication and may end up doing more harm than good. Also, it is bad for the community as it may mask symptoms. The idea is isolation. I appreciate your strong your desire to want to take action. Believe me, I wish there was something I could do besides educating people. But really there is exactly one way to prevent getting this virus and it is to socially isolate. Which works EXTREMELY well.

During a Thursday press conference, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a “Safer At Home” Emergency Order. All L.A. residents are hereby ordered to stay inside their homes, and immediately limit all movement beyond what is absolutely necessary to take care of essential needs (i.e., visits to the market and CVS and the gas station). He described “Safer At Home” as a “more rigorous form of social distancing.”

Quote: “Los Angeles, this is our moment to lead with love and protect those lives that mean everything to us. This is not a request, this is an order.”

I’d forgotten how shrill and angry this Deconstructing Harry scene between Judy Davis and Woody Allen is. I’d forgotten how scalding it is, the constant currents of rage and self-loathing and hand-wringing. The truth is that I’ve forgotten much of this film, period. I mainly recall Allen’s visit to hell.

The reason it’s not spoken about all that much, I gather, is because of the harsh, abrasive and unpleasant tone throughout much of the film. Right?

I was seized with an impulse to watch it, of course, especially with my life having been pathetically reduced to stuff I can do at home. So I went to Amazon and found instant disappointment. Quote: “Our agreements with the content provider don’t allow purchases of this title at this time.” Terrific.

In fact COVID-19 was an act of bats. An act of live animal (or “wet”) markets in Wuhan, which is to say an act of the culture that supported their existence. It pains me to acknowledge that on this one point Trump is more or less correct.

Spike Lee, quoted by Variety: “I would like to say this: I wish he would stop saying ‘the Chinese virus’. The president of the United States needs to stop calling this the Chinese virus. Please stop doing that. He’s putting Asian Americans in this country in danger. Stop saying Chinese virus. There’s nobody around him to say, ‘You can’t say this anymore’? That isn’t helping at all. Hopefully his base will understand. You just can’t say that.”

HE to Lee: Calling it COVID-19 should suffice all around, but the corona virus did originate in Wuhan, China. That’s a fact.

Did you speak out against the use of the term West Nile virus, which stigmatized Eastern Africa (and was first identified in 1937 in Uganda)? Did you warn against using the term Ebola virus when it first came into use in 2014, the disease hgving begun in West Africa? What about the stigmatizing that the citizens of Old Lyme, Connecticut, have had to deal with since Lyme disease was diagnosed as having originated in that town in 1975?

The Cannes Film Festival team is obviously gambling that the COVID-19 pandemic will recede by late June. But what are the odds of this happening?

Yesterday I asked a local CVS manager when the next toilet-paper shipment would arrive. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Very early in the morning, but the shelves won’t be stacked until 9 or 10 am.”

I showed up this morning at 9:30 am, and discovered that employees hadn’t even attempted to put paper products on the shelves. Several large open boxes were just sitting on the floor, and customers were emptying them willy nilly — ripping the tops, lunging, grabbing — savage wolves tearing a sheep into shreds.

I didn’t want to be a hog so I just grabbed a single package of four rolls, which turned out to be the limit anyway.

I’ve decided that whatever the risks, face masks have to be worn just below the nostrils. You can breathe better that way, and it looks better besides.

In November 2016 Timothee Chalamet reportedly participated in a reading of a John Patrick Shanley play called “Tennessee.” (This is apparently not to be confused with Chalamet’s performance in Shanley’s Prodigal Son, which opened at the Manhattan Theatre Club on 2.9.16. Or is it?) One of his character’s lines included the word “dyke,” which Chalamet naturally read with whatever gusto was required.

A tape of this reading got around a couple of days ago, and a twitter community of LGBTQ wokester lunatics, offended by the “d” slur, decided that Chalamet needed to be cancelled for using a bigoted term. Again, having failed to grasp that he was reading lines from a play.

I show you the times. I show you the insanity. I show you the rabid mob. You can’t make this stuff up.

HE doesn’t believe in cancel culture, but Chalamet needed to be caned — sternly chastised — for blindly throwing Woody Allen under the bus.

for those wondering why #timothéechalametisoverparty is trending — here’s another short clip from the same read from john patrick shanley’s “tennessee” feat. caitlin fitzgerald as well

we need to stop policing artists in this way. their role in our culture is to push boundaries! pic.twitter.com/pdr9n8KcZg

— timothée in prodigal son (@prodigalsontimo) March 18, 2020

Late this afternoon I asked a manager of a nearby CVS if he’s trying to stop hoarding of toilet paper by forbidding bulk purchases. He said he’s been limiting customers to six rolls each for roughly a week now.

“The main concern, at least from my point of view, is corporate management,” he said. “They’re not hugely concerned about hoarding or rationing. All they know is that toilet paper is flying off the shelves, and that looks great on the books. In fact they’re cutting back on overhead to make the toilet-paper windfall look even better in the spring quarter and thereby increase their bonuses.”

The upside of this mess is that West Hollywood traffic is maybe 15% or 20% of what it usually is. It reminds me of the traffic levels in the below Sunset Strip video, which was taken in the summer of ’64.

The video of customers waiting to get into WeHo Pavilions (Santa Monica Blvd. and Robertson) was taken around 7 pm.

In a piece called “Woody Allen Meets The Cancel Culture,” N.Y. Times columnist Bret Stephens divulges that he’s read Allen’s unpublished autobiography, “Apropos of Nothing.” The book was recently deep-sixed by Hachette after #MeToo wokesters staged a Hachette walkout.

Stephens: “Allen’s book alleges that Mia Farrow not only brainwashed Dylan [Farrow] into believing she had been molested but also that she victimized some of her adopted children physically and psychologically, claims Moses Farrow and Soon-Yi fully corroborate.

“In one instance, according to Moses, Mia once locked up her adopted paraplegic son Thaddeus in ‘an outdoor shed overnight over a minor transgression.’

“If Mia, Dylan or Ronan Farrow were to write a book rebutting Allen’s charges — only for the publisher to buy the book and then quash it at the last minute — there would surely be an outcry. Rightly so.

“So why does any of this matter in this virus-bitten moment?

“The answer isn’t censorship: Hachette is a business that must take account of its market, while Allen is still free to shop his book to another publisher. Nor is the answer that the memoir is some priceless literary treasure that must see the light of day. Much as I enjoyed it, it isn’t.

“It matters because cancel culture threatens our collective well-being in multiple and fundamental ways: The banishment of unpopular people; the unwillingness to examine contrary threads of evidence and entertain opposing points of view; the automatic conflation of accusation with guilt; the failure of nerve by people entrusted with preserving the institutions of liberal culture; the growing power of digital mobs; the fear these mobs instill in any would-be contrarian or gadfly who thinks to venture a heterodox view. These threats go to the heart of what it means to sustain the habits of a free society.”