I believe that certain establishments that offer free wifi are careful not to offer super-strong signals. They want to offer customers and guests satisfactory wifi for email and browsing, but they don’t want them to enjoy it too much or else they’ll hang around all day. So they set the wifi access at “sufficient” or “good enough” levels in order to subtly discourage people like me who need stronger wifi in order to upload photos and videos and whatnot.

I know what I sound like, but remember William Burroughs‘ definition of paranoia: “Knowing all the facts.”

I’m writing this because I had a horrible wifi morning at the Regency hotel (Park and 61st). I was sitting there fuming at management in the same way that Charles Grodin gets angry at that Miami Beach restaurant in The Heartbreak Kid when they tell him they have no pecan pie.

I went all Grodin on the world following an interview with Another Year Best Actress hopeful Lesley Manville, as well as a group chat session with Manville, costars Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, and director Mike Leigh. Unfortunately the video footage I took of our sessions is underwhelming. Is it okay to call it wretched? No, no — underwhelming will do.