Today was almost entirely consumed by a brutal 10 and 1/2 hour drive from Rome’s Fiumicino Airport to Messina, Sicily (including, naturally, a 25-minute ferry across the Italy-Sicily channel). Repeatedly becoming mired in slow, one-lane traffic in southern Italy’s mountainous area, hour after hour after hour, was far more stressful than I anticipated. Jett doesn’t drive a stick so I was at the wheel start to finish so I couldn’t even post from the iPhone.

Saturday, 5.22, 1:10 am

Wait…Simon Monjack died? Of “natural causes”? I pulled over to a rest stop this afternoon to ask director George Hickenlooper, who had an unpleasant experience with about Monjack over Factory Girl, for a comment.

“Its a sad and pathetic story,” he wrote back. “I loathed Monjack and what he did to Brittany Murphy. Regardless every living thing has a soul and its classless to bash someone when they’ve passed. So all I’ll say is I hope they’re both resting in peace, but not together. She deserves better company.”