My day-to-day is always solitary and monk-like, and at the same time I always feel tethered to everyone and everything. Reviews, recollections, rants, counterpunchings, confessions. I’m used to the focus and the discipline. And of course I love reading and watching films on my 4K 65-incher.

But now that the usual social activities (press screenings, movie theatres, parties, restaurants, cafe-sittings, film festivals, travelling, roaming around shopping centers) are off the table, I feel as if I’m sitting on the outer rim of an extinct volcano, with a very steep slope in front of me. And that all I’d have to do is lean forward a bit in order to slide down to the bottom.

In short, I feel thisclose to being hugely depressed. Because life without the above-described activities seems incredibly barren. I still have hiking and rumble-hogging, and I can still hit Pavilions and Gelsons and the Farmer’s Market when the need arises. But man, I’m feeling blue.

Friend to HE: “Not enough tests yet, which is why they’re sticking to only symptomatic testing. Yes, another Trump screwup.

“Your own test? Easy. Take your temperature. If it’s normal, you’re fine. If it’s high, you’re potentially symptomatic and you get a test.

“Have you got a mask? That and gloves before you walk out the door. And disposed of after one wearing. Even on the bike. This is the new normal.”

Paul Mazursky‘s An Unmarried Woman (’78) captured what was happening among women of a liberal urban feminist bent in the mid to late ’70s. In some ways it felt like a remake of Mazursky’s Blume in Love — a transitional situation dramedy triggered by infidelity and divorce, only this time from the perspective of a 30something Manhattan woman (Jill Clayburgh‘s Erica Benton) rather than a male Beverly Hills divorce lawyer (George Segal‘s Stephen Blume).

Woman was more of a meditative cultural collage than a story-driven thing, especially considering the fact that Clayburgh’s character was relatively vague and unformed, even at the conclusion. Erica feels shattered and cynical when her husband (Michael Murphy) leaves her for a younger woman in Act One, and then she does a lot of flirting and floundering around before falling in love with a somewhat older British painter (Alan Bates).

But the Bates relationship doesn’t deliver a happy-ever-after as much as a “who knows what’s next?” finale that kind of leaves you wondering or hanging or something in that realm.

Mazursky delivered an approvable film that everyone had to see and talk about back then, and Clayburgh wound up with a Best Actress nomination from the Academy. She lost the Oscar to Jane Fonda in Coming Home, but Erica was known forevermore as her signature performance.

Clayburgh’s hot streak lasted for eight years, starting with Silver Streak (’76) and Semi-Tough (’77) and peaking with An Unmarried Woman, La Luna (’79), Starting Over (’79) and It’s My Turn (’80). Then came First Monday in October (’81, playing a conservative-minded Supreme Court judge) and I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can (’82). I knew after watching her irksome performance in Costa Gavras‘s Hanna K. that her “surfing the cultural zeitgeist” days were over.

Clayburgh became afflicted with chronic lymphocytic leukemia around 1990. She passed from the disease in 2010, at age 66.

The 4K Criterion Bluray of An Unmarried Woman pops on 6.9.20.

Open-air markets in which wild animals were caged and sold for food — otherwise known as “wet” markets — are (or were) primarily a Chinese cultural phenomenon. So while COVID-19 is a bat virus, the unsanitary conditions that allowed for its contagious spread stemmed from the widespread presence and cultural acceptance of wet markets in China.

From “Why ‘Wet Markets’ Persisted In China Despite Disease And Hygiene Concerns“, a 1.22.20 NPR interview. NPR’s Ailsa Chang talks with Zhenzhong Si, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo, about why China’s “wet markets” remain popular despite public health concerns tied to disease outbreaks.”

.@RichardEngel: "This is a virus that came from the territory of China but came from bats. This is a bat virus, not a China virus. It doesn't speak Chinese. It doesn't target Chinese people. It targets human beings who happen to touch their eyes, nose or mouth." pic.twitter.com/ljQeT7UQam

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 18, 2020

Zhenzhong Si: “And you can see from the catalog, they have almost 50 different kinds of species of wild animals being sold. And you can see the price as well. So it’s…”

Chang: “Like what kind of wild animals?”

Zhenzhong Si: “For example, hedgehogs and peacocks and wild rabbits and snakes, deer. Crocodiles as well. Many of these wild animals, they’re not necessarily caught in the wild, right? So they can be farmed animals. They’re just exotic food that’s not very commonly found.”

Chang: “And why are wild animals so popular as a delicacy in China?

Zhenzhong Si: “Eating wild animal is considered a symbol of wealth because they are more rare and expensive. And wild animals is also considered more natural and, thus, nutritious, compared to farmed meat. It’s a belief in traditional Chinese medicine that it can boost the immune system, you know? Of course, some people eat wild animals just because they were driven by curiosity. It’s really difficult to change the mindset of, you know, eating wild animals is better than eating farmed animals. But it’s a common kind of mindset in many parts of China.”

HE: “Greetings, [name]. Just returned from Austin. Strict hygienic observance, wore gloves and mask during the flights. I feel totally fine. But I’m married, as you know, and I’d like to get tested for COVID-19. I understand that clinics are only testing people who are showing symptoms, which argues with the basic idea behind the concept of responsible preventative testing (which authorities have been implementing in South Korea). Can you refer me to a clinic where I can get tested?”

Primary Care Physician: “Unfortunately I am unaware of any such place. You can not get tested at this time. [But then] the tests aren’t really useful if you don’t have a fever, as it may provide a false negative.”

HE: “I can’t even PAY to have a test done? The absence of widespread testing of non-symptomatic as well as symptomatic people is precisely why it’s spreading. People who are infected but haven’t yet experienced symptoms are walking around and spreading it obliviously.”

Primary Care Physician: “Correct. It is a systemic failure, and nowhere is it harder than on the front lines, where I am currently sitting. There isn’t really a point in testing anymore for individual purposes. Everybody should be isolated at home anyways. If you have a fever, you should assume you have COVID.”

HE: “I have nothing wrong with me — no fever, chills, congestion, coughing…zip. Remember when we first met and I told you that I have a very strong constitution and rarely get sick? And that while no one is bulletproof I’m pretty close to that?”

Primary Care Physician: “Nobody is bulletproof. Stay inside.”

HE: “Check, thanks, be well.”

So basically we’re all living the life of Harvey Weinstein. Or of Burt Lancaster in Birdman of Alcatraz. Confined, locked down. Watching and listening but not really doing anything outside of TV, computers and phone activity plus sleeping and eating. But I will not abandon rumble-hogging around town. I will continue to do that in a careful way.

This is a great reminder of how Trump lied about and ignored a clear and present danger to his fellow Americans: pic.twitter.com/ZEMm0OkMoe

— Shomik Dutta (@shomikdutta) March 17, 2020

The most fetching photo of Ana de Armas ever posted anywhere, by anyone. I think it was taken by Ben Affleck. Posted on AdA’s Instagram page.

Not many travelers on my Austin-to-Dallas Southwest flight, which leaves at 5:50 pm. Two hand washings so far, a few more to come. The second lap (Dallas to LAX) arrives sometime around 9:15 pm. 8:35 pm update: Flying over Palm Springs, likely LAX touchdown at 9 pm.

Stuart Whitman‘s life and career peaked when he starred in Guy Green‘s The Mark (’61), a bracingly frank, well-crafted drama about an ex-con trying to integrate into society and get his life going again. The title refers to his sexually odious history. Whitman was riveting — his strongest performance by far.

Otherwise he enjoyed a fairy successful career as a working actor throughout the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and beyond. The Comancheros and The Longest Day come to mind, but Whitman never soared again after The Mark. I don’t know what else to say except that he deserves a respectful salute on this, the day of his passing at age 92.

What store is this? Why wouldn’t they disperse these in a more orderly manner?

Whoever added those sound effects tho 💀 pic.twitter.com/mcbsJFbRtI

— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) March 17, 2020

An apparition standing in grassy weeds on the other side of a river. No words, movement, gestures. Like a mannequin, and in bright sunlight yet. And then she’s gone.

All my life I’ve felt vaguely creeped out by this scene in Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents (’61). Alas, your typical horror fan wouldn’t so much as raise an eyebrow if a director had the nerve (or the foolishness) to insert something like this in a contemporary fright flick.

“Quietly unnerving” lost its currency a long time ago, I’m afraid. I’m not sure it ever had any real currency to begin with. Today’s elevated horror genre (Personal Shopper, Hereditary, A Quiet Place, The Babadook) demands bigger jolts. The only recent films that operated close to this level were Robert Eggers‘ The Lighthouse and The Witch, and even they dealt crazier cards than Clayton did.

The woman in the weeds (i.e., “Miss Jessel”) was played by Clytie Jessop.

There’s also a moment or two with Quint at the window. He was portrayed by Peter Wyngarde, who died two years ago.

Nothing is opening theatrically for the time being. Every theatrically-dependent heavyweight flick is being bumped until further notice. The latest to be heave-ho’ed is Disney/Marvel’s Black Widow, which had been scheduled to open on 5.1. Also drop-kicked are Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Copperfield (Searchlight, previously set for a 5.8 opening) and Joe Wright‘s The Woman in the Window (20th Century, previously slated to open on 5.15). It’s unclear when any of the films will be released. Disney has already delayed Mulan, The New Mutants and Antlers. You know that Wonder Woman 1984 (Warner Bros., 6.5) will be bumped before long. Ditto the Cannes Film Festival.

Please, God…let’s try and wrap this up by mid-summer so we can get rolling with the fall festivals. I would be totally shattered if Telluride and Toronto don’t happen.

Essentially repeating a post from three days ago: HE agrees that Trump calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” doesn’t help anyone or anything. CDC officials are correct in saying that this kind of terminology “stigmatizes residents” of China, etc. 

But it’s also fair to note that with the exception of H1N1 and maybe one or two others, nearly all viruses over the last few decades have been routinely identified by their geographical origin.

There’s no denying that COVID-19 is widely believed to have originated in a “wet” wildlife market in Wuhan, and specifically from bats or snakes. Trump has earned his racist credentials over and over, but if he’d used the term “Wuhan virus” he wouldn’t have been wrong.

Was it stigmatizing to acknowledge that the Ebola virus partly originated in Yambuku (Democratic Republic of the Congo), “a village near the Ebola River from which the disease takes its name”? Or to acknowledge that the Zika virus came “from the Ziika Forest of Uganda, where the virus was first isolated in 1947”? Or to say that the West Nile virus “was discovered in Uganda in 1937″?

Was there an anti-white-person motive when Lyme disease “was diagnosed as a separate condition for the first time in 1975 in Old Lyme, Connecticut”? Have CDC officials ever said that the term “stigmatizes” residents of that Connecticut town? Just asking.

Joseph McBride, posted yesterday on Facebook: “Some God-fearing woman said today that in this crisis we should take comfort that God means good for us. I asked her the age-old question of why then [does] He lets bad things happen to good people if he is supposed to be all-powerful. I am awaiting a response.”

Answer: I don’t believe in the concept of a sentient, all-knowing, all-powerful God any more than I believe in Santa Claus, but I’ll go there for the sake of your question. God allows bad things to happen to good people — hell, to all people of whatever stripe — because living through horror, pain and frogs falling from the skies builds character. Obviously not everyone emerges from horrid times in a better place and we all know how dysfunction often breeds more of the same, but the basic idea from God’s vantage point, which has always been that of an absentee landlord, is that terror, agony and adversity are ultimately good for the soul.

As Aeschylus and Bobby Kennedy put it, “Even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair. against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

If you insist on defining God as some kind of sentient being with an interest or awareness of what humans go through on a daily basis, God is basically defaulting to the same rationale offered by Johnny Cash‘s absentee father, the “dirty mangey dog” who “kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile”, about why he named his son Sue.

In short, God allows all kinds of brutality and anguish to define human existence in order to make us wiser and stronger. God to Cash: “So I gave you that pain and said goodbye…I knew you’d have to get tough or die.”

That said, and just to repeat: There is no “God” in any kind of moral or compassionate sense. The universe is obviously bound together by a certain unified energy and intelligent design, but human-behavior-wise it’s a total crapshoot.