Tag Archives: film

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, December 10, 2025. It’s late here, owing to Elliot and me watching a horror film from 2019 called Brightburn on Netflix. We also had dinner out at Diner Bar, in Rego Park and didn’t get home until after 8.

For those of you who like gory films, this is one is for you. I knew nothing about it other than the brief description of it on the screen. This film offers a counterstory to the origins of Superman, in which an infertile farm couple living in – of all places – the fictitious town of Brightburn, Kansas, Kyle and Tori Breyer, are shaken to the core when they discover an alien ship crash-land near their farm. Inside is a small fragile baby that they soon take in as their own and rear him as their own son. They name the human-looking boy Brandon, and everything is honkie dory until the boy turns 12 and the chaos begins.

We soon learn that this boy, Brandon, has superpowers that make him superior to any human on the planet. But instead of using his superpowers for good, he uses them to wreak vengeance on his supposed enemies. Soon people in the town wind up dead as a result of his supernormal abilities like X-ray vision, super strength, and levitation. The film stars Elizabeth Banks as Tori and David Denman as her husband Kyle who begins to suspect his son later on of committing murder. In the role of the evil Brandon, Jackson A. Dunn does a pretty good steely stare that is quite frightening. He almost looks like he’s from another planet at times.

Produced by James Gunn, written by his cousin Mark and brother Brian and directed by David Yarovesky, the film delivers a nice take on the Superman origin story but takes it to another level altogether. This is the screenplay that asks, “What if Clark Kent wasn’t such a nice boy?” There are several moments of gruesome and horrifying violence, though, that might turn off some viewers. I hereby warn you here. But I do recommend the film with some reservations. It seemed more less developed than it could have been.

The burgeoning boat attack controversy is not going away for this liar in chief, as well as the Epstein scandal, as the president backtracked over releasing the video of the September 2 attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea that killed two survivors, according to an ABC News article entitled “Trump backtracks on releasing boat strike video, distances himself from controversy,” by Hannah Demissie, Justin Gomez, and Allison Pecorin.

First the lying cheat said he had “no problem” with releasing that video, but is now reversing course and deferring to his Nazi Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.

When pressed on Monday by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott about his December 3 comments, he claimed, “I didn’t say that.” He then added, “Whatever Hegseth wants to do is OK with me.”

In an interview with Politico, published on Tuesday morning, Dump further distanced himself from the controversy when asked if he believed the second strike on the survivors was necessary.

A number of Senate repugnicans said on Tuesday that they’d like to see the full video of the September 2 strike released to the public.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis said, “We’ve got to release the video. Look, we have got to get the Epstein files released. We’ve got to get any videos that do not in any way compromise mission integrity out there. Just get the stuff out there.”

Some Democrats and legal experts have suggested that the killing of survivors could constitute a war crime.

Members of Congress are attempting to pass new legislation to force Hegseth to provide lawmakers the unedited footage of the strike.

Tillis on Tuesday said that releasing the video would clear up discrepancies about what it depicts.

The September 2 boat strike is part of what this cruel administration has called its “war” on drug cartels without offering a shred of evidence to substantiate their claims. There have been more than 20 military assaults against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific, killing more than 80 people. I say this should enrage all Americans as this regime resorts to murder for no darn reason other than claiming these men were going to sell drugs to Americans.

Demonstrating more clearly that he’s out of touch with ordinary Americans, the billionaire president offered more of a stupid rant about nothing at a rally in Pennsylvania the other night. No one can believe what this idiot said in a rambling 90-minute discourse on what was supposed to allay the fears of Americans’ economic worries. Instead, he went off course as usual and made as much as sense as a inebriated dumb ass.

Thus in a Reuters online article, the babbling of this crazy man took center stage in “Trump veers off-script and does little to calm Republican nerves,” written by Anthony Zurcher.

Grump’s handlers expected him to address concerns around affordability and the state of the U.S. economy which he has tanked personally on his own since taking office.

Over the course of his cringeworthy address, he talked a little about the economy, but he also talked about immigration, his Democratic critics, Venezuelan boat strikes, windmills, and golfing.

“If some Republicans, and his White House aides were hoping for a focused message that the party could use to deflect repeated Democratic attacks over the economy, the president did little to deliver,” according to the article.

What it was was a typical “weave,” the term coined to indicate any of Dump’s longwinded, nonsensical speeches.

At first, he made a gaffe in calling his Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, Susie “Trump,” when he said she instructed him to focus on the economy. So here he couldn’t even remember the name of his own fucking chief of staff.

When he did talk about the economy, he resorted to blaming his predecessor for the bad economy we’re in right now, which is another fucking lie since the economy was actually better under Joe Biden. Even though people didn’t believe so then.

Against all of the experts, Grump defended his dumb tariffs, even though some economists have cited them as contributing to cost-of-living woes.

Harkening back to ridiculous comments he made earlier, Grump repeated the dumb comment about getting by with fewer pencils and dolls as Americans deal with buying fewer cheap products from China. What the fuck does this have anything to do with soaring costs at grocery stores, department stores, gas stations, and wherever? Again, the idiot said, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter.” “Two or three are nice.” Who really buys 37 dolls for their daughter? one must ask.

I think I can’t continue with his comments here as I’m about to retch and it’s getting later. Just know that this dumb fuck let loose on refugees from “third world” countries, calling Somalia “about the worst country in the world,” as he brazenly gloried in his own festering xenophobia. He even double downed on Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant and naturalized citizen by saying “throw her the hell out,” and that “she does nothing but complain,” forgetting for the moment that this is what he does best – complain, complain, complain.

No wonder that this shit bag is the laughingstock of the world! How he has any damn supporters after this speech is totally beyond me!

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, November 16, 2025. As I indicated on Friday, I was going to be absent from this page on Saturday because I had a playdate with my longterm friend “Jake,” who has been my friend since high school. As expected, Jake and I had a very lengthy playdate beginning as early as 1:30 p.m. and ending almost 12 hours later, at 12:35 a.m. You must wonder how we spent this time together: well, there was a lot to catch up on since we last saw each other way back in June. Over snacks and ginger ale, the two of us spent several hours reviewing what occurred in each other’s lives during that time and then we discussed seeing Bugonia, the new film starring Emma Stone and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, who has directed the star in several blockbuster films of late. Jake hadn’t heard about the film, but he certainly knew of Stone. He agreed to go with me to the Kew Gardens Cinema at 4:15 to see the 4:45 show.

I took Jake to the car parked on 112th Street and drove to the movie house. I asked if Jake had driven in our new car which is not so new anymore: it will mark a year with us on November 30 which is not that far into the future. I can’t believe it’s almost a year old myself. Like I can’t believe I’m a septuagenarian as of November 8.

Anyway, we got to the cinema close to 4:45, and we missed a few of the previews. Now to the movie that is quite a thrill ride. Emma Stone plays a Forbes list big pharmaceutical chief executive who is kidnapped by raging conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz, here played by a more streamlined Jesse Plemons. Teddy is given reluctant assistance by his too-soft-for-the world cousin Donny to kidnap Stone’s Michelle Fuller. I’m not sure if the actor himself, Aidan Delbis, as Donny, is on the spectrum, but I just checked and discover that he really is.

Therefore, Teddy strongly believes Stone to be an alien from the Andromedan species, covertly controlling humanity and killing the bees. Teddy, by the way, is an amateur apiarist who keeps bees on his dilapidated farm. Teddy is also an employee of Stone’s firm, working on the factory level as a wrapper.

Once the pair steel themselves for the object of seizing the pharmaceutical executive, they abduct her from her worksite and bring her to their house where they shave her head to prevent her from communicating with her intergalactic peers. They then lock her in the basement and insist she arrange a meeting with her Andromedans before a lunar eclipse allows an invasion of earth.

The rest of the film consists of Stone and Teddy squaring off in pyschological person-to-person combat in which Stone first denies she’s an alien and that she’s responsible for the damage to the planet that Teddy accuses her of and that he’s just enwrapped himself in Internet conspiracy theories, which I believed was Lanthimos’s critique of our very divided political climate of the moment. But this turns into much, much more as the plot develops to its shattering climax that I won’t divulge here.

We soon learn another reason for Teddy’s anger directed toward Stone as Fuller: flashbacks reveal that Auxolith – Michelle’s pharmaceutical company – recruited Teddy’s mother as a test subject for one of their drugs, which left her in a coma.

All I’ll say is Jake didn’t enjoy the film as much as I did. Actually, I’m still wondering if I did enjoy it, given the shocking conclusion. I did throughly enjoy the acting of the principals: Stone, Plemons, and, even, Beldis, in his very first role, as Donny, Teddy’s cousin. Plemons is very believable in his crazy thinking until it isn’t; and Stone is magnificent as a hostage who uses psychological manipulation initially and then accedes to the fantasy that is supposedly at the core of her captor’s mindset. Go see it and tell me what you think of the denouement.

For those of you who are as curious as I was about the origins of the title of the film, I looked it up on Google. Thus “bugonia” refers to an ancient Greek term for the belief that bees spontaneously generated from the carcass of a sacrificed ox. It’s seen as a symbol of death and renewal, with the idea that new life could emerge from death. If you do see this film, you will see manifestations of this in the very last image displayed on the screen. You’ll be all “abuzz” that you saw this very controversial film with a very talented cast.

After the film, we walked to the Village Diner for dinner. We mused over the film one more time and then scanned the menu to choose something to nourish our bodies. Jake ordered a chicken souvlaki, while I ordered a cup of chicken rice soup and then meatloaf as my entree. Of course, I had coffee with my meal.

When we left the diner, rain started to fall, so we walked briskly back to the car. I drove back to the building, having to park in our garage. I took my blue umbrella from the Subaru back to the apartment building.

Upstairs, I offered Jake milk and a slice of the chocolate fudge cake I baked on Friday. He pronounced the cake “very good” and asked for a second slice. I heated some water for tea.

We met Elliot who was home and had mentioned that he saw Bugonia at the same theater, but at 2. He gave the film a thumbs up and then settled back into the bedroom, while I entertained Jake in the living room.

The rest of the night was spent watching another film on Hulu, one that I saw before, but I was willing to rewatch it: Longlegs starring Nicolas Cage as the most deranged, bizarre serial killer there ever was.

Again, Jake was not too impressed even with this film. From there, I turned off the set and we chatted until almost 12:30 when I announced it was late already. Jake got the hint and began bundling himself up for the ride home. I walked him to the elevator and bid him adieu.

Now that Jake has departed, I’m left with snacks I don’t need like potato chips and Tostitos. Anyone want some?

Since it’s the weekend, I won’t go on a rant against this brutal regime, but just wanted to remind everyone that pressure is building for this “dys”-administration to release the Epstein files immediately. Hell, even former Dump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene has aligned herself with Democrats who are forcefully pushing for its release, and that must be bad for the adjudicated sexual predator in the White House! Maybe the cracks are appearing in the MAGA fortress, finally. Let more of these MAGA lawmakers abandon ship before 2026! This will be great for us- and for democracy as a whole.

Have a great week.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, October 31, 2025. Happy Halloween, ghosties! As you know, I was going to brave the brutal weather yesterday in seeing Psycho in concert at the David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic playing the inimitable score of Bernard Herrmann on stage. For those not familiar with Hermann’s scores, I’ll provide you some background information on this man’s illustrious career later on.

Yesterday the weather was quite rainy and windy, and I had no intention of giving up my ticket to this groundbreaking film that gave birth to the modern horror film by staying home. So I took my trusty pink umbrella, put on my blue-zippered jacket, and left the borough around 3. I was scheduled to meet my friend “Harvey” at The Smith, located on 63rd Street and Broadway, around 4:15. However, I got to the West Side earlier than scheduled, so I darted into Breads Bakery for a cup of coffee and a croissant. Yes, I could still have dinner at 4:30 or 4:45 or even later after nibbling on a croissant just several minutes before.

As I was drinking my third cup of coffee, my phone rings, and it’s Harvey who says he’s already inside The Smith having a beer at the bar. I mentioned I was directly adjacent to the restaurant and that I would come by once I was finished with my repast.

After finishing my coffee and croissant, I walked directly across the street to the restaurant and spoke to a hostess inside. I mentioned that I had a 4:30 reservation and that someone could be here already. I saw Harvey right away; there weren’t that many customers having drinks at the bar at that time, and he started coming toward me.

We were ushered then to a table where we examined the menu and exchanged stories about traveling in this terrible weather. I mentioned I couldn’t believe how my umbrella didn’t self-destruct in these blustery winds.

Dinner was quite good; it consisted of us sharing crispy calamari and my having ricotta gnocchi, while Harvey had oysters initially. I eschewed dessert, but Harvey couldn’t resist the ice cream.

After dinner, we had some time to kill so we walked further uptown and, to our surprise, discovered another Strand Bookstore on 67th Street, I believe. Thus we browsed inside for a while before deciding it was time to head back to Lincoln Center. I almost bought an old Norman Mailer book on the Used Book shelves, but thought better of it.

Now to the concert that began a little after 7:30. The young conductor of the orchestra was Stephen Mulligan and there was a principal violinist by the name of Hae-Young Ham. They appeared on stage, while a large screen loomed behind them. That’s where we watched this 1960 thriller.

We were on the Second Tier, Door 22, Row DD, seats 2 and 3. We were in the last row in the back of the theater. That is the reason, I think, that we found the sound from the orchestra not as overpowering as we thought it would be. Also, the instruments used for the score were all strings here, and a note in the program explains why Herrmann decided to go this way instead of using a full-throttle orchestra for the menacing score heard throughout the shocker. The reason he did this, according to the program, is that he wanted “to complement the black-and-white photography of the film with a black-and-white score,” thus the use of strings only without the employment of woodwinds, brass, or percussion. In fact, Harvey asked me why there weren’t other types of instruments used in this show, and I pointed out Herrmann’s philosophy as the explanation.

Anyway, it seems as the audience thoroughly enjoyed this version of the film. I’m very curious to know how many audience members had seen this film for the first time last night. As I scanned the audience, I couldn’t make out many younger folk – like those in their 20s or 30s. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

As I mentioned, Bernard Herrmann provided six scores for the temperamental director. He started with scoring Hitchcock’s 1955 principal comedy, The Trouble with Harry, 1956’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, also from 1956, 1958’s Vertigo, the espionage caper North by Northwest, from 1959, and 1963’s The Birds.

Herrmann was New York-born and bred and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx (my former childhood birthplace), New York University, and The Juilliard School. He formed his own ensemble in 1931, the New Chamber Orchestra, to explore avant-garde repertoire. In 1934, he joined the staff of CBS as an arranger and rehearsal conductor. His scores for Orson Welles’s radio shows led to an invitation to write the music for two of that director’s films, Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Thus began a 35-year record of writing musical scores for film and television that kept the composer quite busy. Herrmann died the night he finished scoring the music for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1975). In total, Herrmann composed the scores for 51 films, not to mention a good many radio productions, television shows, concert shows, and even an opera.

As for Psycho, the film “set a horror standard for generations to come,” according to our program. It also depicted frank discussions of sexual situations and even mentioned transvestism at the end of the movie, which was quite unusual for commercial films at the time. Also, this was the first time a toilet was actually flushed in a film, when the doomed heroine, Marion Crane, portrayed by Janet Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother, flushes a piece of paper down the toilet in her cabin, Cabin 1. This happens just before the shocking and infamous shower scene. If you really examine the thrusting of the knife here, you will actually see that the knife does not penetrate Leigh’s skin at all. This is so different from slasher movies today that depict the most graphic effects of being knifed by dastardly characters all the time.

Anyway, this was Halloween and you wouldn’t know it. We met Elliot’s daughter in Rockville Centre at Press 195, a sandwich and burger joint, where “Emily” paid for our lunch. She wanted to honor both Elliot’s and my upcoming birthday in November.

From lunch, we drove to see “Joseph” at the rehab center where he’s still staying and recovering from surgery on a broken hip sustained in a fall at the center. We stayed about an hour and brought him a slice of pizza and three Diet Coke bottles. He was very appreciative of that. Within 20 minutes or so, we were joined by his wife, “Mary.” This was our cue to leave.

It’s getting late here, so have a good weekend.

Oh, tomorrow Elliot and I will be attending a dinner at Beth-El, in Jersey City, a gala dedicated to Elliot’s late aunt’s estate funding of a refurbished community center opening tomorrow, so I’ll not be writing my blog on Saturday. The event starts at 7, and I don’t expect to be home before 11. I’ll see you on Sunday, November 2.

And so it went!

Here’s the auditorium early on before the film began at 7:30.

Here is the playbill from the program at Lincoln Center.

Here is a view from down below. Maybe I could be suffering from “Vertigo” by looking down.

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, October 5, 2025. Yesterday was quite a busy day for Elliot and me, as we sallied forth early in the morning to meet “Seth” at Jax Inn Diner, in Jackson Heights. Originally, I was going to meet Seth alone, but I decided we could both go because I intended to go to Lincoln Center to purchase tickets for the Psycho concert on October 30. We could then drive to the nearest subway station together and park the car there and pick it up later, which is what we did. We then were going to see a new film at the Angelika Theater called The History of Sound, a gay romantic movie punctuated by the inevitable heartache and loss, much in the vein of Brokeback Mountain, made 20 years ago.

After having a very filling breakfast at the diner (I had a bowl of oatmeal and a short stack of pancakes, which is the diner’s specialty) which was so busy when we got there that we had to find parking on the street, Seth made the proclamation that he was going to Lincoln Center also in order to purchase tickets for Ragtime at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. We arranged a time where we would meet each other after everyone bought their tickets.

So we said our goodbyes outside the diner, while we got into our car and drove to 46th Street and Broadway to take the R train downtown. We got off at 57th Street and 7th Avenue and then walked to Lincoln Center. When we neared the David Geffen Hall where I had to buy the tickets, I left Elliot on a bench across the street from the performing hall.

I asked someone inside the cavernous lobby where the ticket booth was, and she pointed across the hall where the ticket station was. The line was nonexistent, so I waited briefly and stepped up to the ticket agent. I asked for two tickets, since I asked my newfound friend “Harvey” if he wanted to go with me, and he said yes. I interacted with a pleasant-looking agent who indulged my blathering on the new Netflix series on the inspiration for Anthony Perkins’ character in Psycho, Ed Gein. He didn’t hear of it and said he would investigate it.

A few moments later, I spotted Seth by the Lincoln Center fountain and I accompanied him into the next theater where he bought tickets for Ragtime. He also had no trouble buying tickets for a performance in November, I believe.

Before going to the Angelika together, Seth and I made one last-ditch attempt to get tickets for Oh, Mary at the Lincoln Center TKTS booth. By the time we got to the ticket booth, only one ticket was available for the 5 p.m. performance, but there weren’t two tickets available for the 7:30 performance. We exited the line and made plans then to see the film at the Angelika.

We took the subway down to Broadway-Lafayette Street on the F train and then purchased our tickets inside since there isn’t an agent outside anymore. We were a little shocked over the price ($17.50 for senior tickets. I was afraid to ask what the general adult price was).

The film, from director Oliver Hermanus and writer Ben Shattuck, concerns itself with the brief but impactful relationship between two musical students at the Boston Conservatory in 1917. They are Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal) and David White (Josh O’Connor) who not only share an attraction to the same sex but also share a passion for folk music in particular. Lionel is the more withdrawn and shy of the two; he is from poor folk in rural Kentucky and has been endowed with a vivid aural style and natural vocal ability. At a bar in Boston, he is surprised to hear another student playing and singing a familiar tune from his childhood on the piano. The young man, David, is a charming composition major with a passion for “collecting songs.” This means he travels across remote regions to gather and learn people’s local songs. The two instantly bond over this shared interest, and that night they have sex in David’s sparsely decorated apartment. Their emotional bond grows progressively intimate as they continue to meet weekly, only for their affair to end abruptly when David leaves for Europe to fight in World War I. At that time, the U.S.’s entry in the war leads to the indefinite cancellation of classes, so Lionel reluctantly returns to the family farm.

After the war ends, Lionel hears from David who proposes that he accompany him on a song-collecting trip throughout Maine where they will record the songs of Maine’s villages and farms with a wax cylinder phonograph, and where they will spend their nights camping in the woods. The viewer realizes that this time between the two lovers/friends is truly a high mark in their association with one another, but towards the end of their song-collecting venture, it is David who is grows distant towards the end of the trip. It appears that the horrors of war has traumatized David to the point where he’s unable to give voice to what he has experienced. Lionel eventually leaves Kentucky to pursue a career in music which takes him to Rome eventually and to Oxford where he enters into a relationship with a woman.

The film progresses at a very slow pace and it is here where viewers might have a problem with identifying with the events described within. It is very apparent, however, that Lionel and David’s relationship is tender and endearing from the start, but as time progresses and a reunion becomes less plausible, the seismic impact of David on Lionel’s life becomes increasingly clear, and the weight of the loss grows heavier, until Lionel realizes that this brief episode of his youth has bestowed happiness on him that he will never feel again.

The two principals, Mescal and O’Connor, are quite convincing as very different people. Mescal is more reserved and withdrawn than O’Connor who had more of a worldly upbringing. He mentions that he was raised by an uncle in England after his parents both die. As already mentioned, Mescal is the only son of Kentucky farmers. In the film, he uses his pleasant voice to great effect. O’Connor, however, is more outgoing and charismatic, and emanates a low-level nervous energy through employing gestures like constantly fiddling with cigarettes and putting on amiable, yet somehow uncomfortable-seeming, smiles. His natural charm, however, serves to conceal a well of pain over his homosexuality and his experiences in the Great War.

In an epilogue, Lionel is portrayed as a much older man by Chris Cooper, who has achieved much success as a musicologist, lecturer, and writer living in Boston. It is his reaction to finally receiving those long-lost tapes of songs recorded by him and David in Maine’s hinterlands that should bring a tear to the most hardened among us watching in the audience.

After seeing the film, the three of us walked to Veselka Restaurant on 2nd Avenue and 9th Street where we met Seth’s husband, “Jerry.” He came into the city just to meet us for dinner. When we got to the Ukrainian eatery, he was waiting for us on the corner.

We waited on line for a short while before we were escorted to a table inside. The restaurant was quite busy. Everyone was bustling over us, but a waiter did approach our table within minutes and took our orders. The preferred dish at our table appeared to be pirogies, so we all delighted in having them. I also had mushroom and barley soup first.

This was the end of the ride. After dinner, we said our final goodbyes to Seth and Jerry who took an Uber back to Astoria, while we dealt with the subway. We had to remember to get off at 46th Street and Broadway to pick up our car, not to take the E or F back to Forest Hills. And we did!

I have good news concerning our television set: it’s going to be finally returned tomorrow by “Ernest” who has restored it to its former glory. We’ve only been without it for more than two weeks. There’s certainly more worse things than not having a TV for two weeks, that’s for sure.

As a corollary to seeing Hitchcock’s much-sanitized version of the nefarious doings of Ed Gein in Psycho, here renamed Norman Bates, on October 30, I’ve started watching the series on Netflix. It stars Charlie Hunnam as the “monster,” Ed Gein, living in the nondescript town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Hunnam plays the serial killer as a shy, withdrawn, mother-obsessed, simple man. He speaks in a very low whisper. As his religious fanatic of a mother, Augusta Gein, is Laura Metcalf who harangues poor Ed continuously with the wages of sin and having carnal relations with women. She is possibly the true monster in the whole grisly sequence of events that unfolded in that sleepy town more than 60 years ago.

The episodes veer from the past chronicling Ed’s descent into madness and to the present day (late 1950s through 1960s) when Hitchcock receives word of such a character from meeting with writer Robert Bloch, the creator of Psycho, to depictions of Anthony Perkins who would be cast as the Gein stand-in, Norman Bates. Here Perkins is wrestling with his own debilitating secret, the secret of homosexuality. He is shown in one scene in the bedroom with 1950s heartthrob, Tab Hunter. Alfred Hitchcock is here played by an anorexic Tom Hollander, who I don’t think looks or sounds like the real Hitch.

Anyway, I do intend to watch the series, which is eight episodes long.

Have a good week.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, August 1, 2025. Yesterday I was absent from this venue because I decided to see a film at the IFC Center in Manhattan at the last moment, even though weather forecasters were predicting flash flooding for most of the day. I waited until about 5:15 to reserve my ticket to see a 25-year-old parody of beach and slasher flicks called Psycho Beach Party starring the inimitable Charles Busch, Lauren Ambrose, and a very young Amy Adams. Last night marked the second night it was being shown and I couldn’t resist seeing a panel of the actor/screenwriter himself and the director of the production, Robert Lee King, after the movie was screened. I bought a senior membership ticket for the 7 o’clock show online at 5:15, so it was time to leave already.

The theater the film was being screened in was the largest auditorium in the venue, so I found an aisle seat a few rows from the stage. A young, perky woman introduced herself as the publicity director of the theater and said that the Q&A would proceed at film’s end.

The plot involves Florence Forrest (Lauren Ambrose), a sixteen-year-old high school senior looking forward to summer vacation on the beach in Malibu, California, who wants to hang out with the boys, and wants to learn how to surf, even though she’s a girl. Before you can say Gidget, Florence becomes involved with the cool boys on the beach. There’s surfer guru Kanaka (Thomas Gibson), surfers Yo-Yo (Nick Cornish), Provolone (Andrew Levitas), and B-movie actress Bettina Barnes (Kimberley Davies) who’s hiding out in a beach house from her studio that’s supposedly haunted.

Soon Ambrose is dubbed “Chicklet” by her on-again, off-again boyfriend Starcat (Nicholas Brendon), who suggests that she’s not even a real chick since she seems not to be interested in sex. She begins to take surfing lessons from Kanaka, and before long, a series of gruesome murders occurs. Florence becomes a suspect in these murders, as she experiences puzzling blackouts where she adopts another personality, that of Ann Bowman, an angry, lewd bondage enthusiast who makes Kanaka her willing submissive slave.

In this film, there are so many send-ups, primarily of 50s and 60s stock types and psycho killer movies, that the viewer gets lost in the mashup. Busch comes in as police captain Monica Stark who is charged with investigating the murders. It soon becomes known that Stark had an affair with Kanaka years ago before making captain.

The cast is extensive here; there’s Florence’s tightly wound mother Ruth (Beth Broderick) who plays her Donna Reed persona to the hilt. Even Amy Adams is a hanger-on among the beach denizens of this Southern California community. This certainly was one of her first film roles, and I had trouble initially identifying her. There’s also a Swedish exchange student named Lars (Matt Keesler) who is living with the Forrests.

The film works as high camp and it’s not necessary to think too much of its exalted aims; it’s just very funny as it pokes fun at these genres with a very light touch.

The interviews after the film were informative. Ben Brantley, originally from The New York Times, interviewed King and Busch. Busch appeared as himself (not in drag) and was dressed all in white. Busch mentioned that the film was adapted from his 1987 off-off Broadway play and that it was determined that more of a plot had to be inserted into the 2000 film adaptation. Busch also stated that the play was formless; there was no serial murder plot which was now added to the King-directed film. The use of Ambrose was mentioned by either King or Busch as they looked at many actresses for the role of Florence Forrest. I wanted to ask a question concerning Adams being in the film, but I lost my chance. However, her casting was addressed by both King and Busch. The director mentioned how she was a good dancer and that in one scene where there was some sort of dance competition among the beach kids, her better dancing skills had to be toned down a bit to suit her character.

The news out of Washington these days is so awful that I don’t know where to begin commenting on every horrible story. The Jeffrey Epstein scandal just gets weirder and weirder every day, what with the bizarre announcement today that convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, who was serving a 20-year prison sentence in a maximum security facility, was moved to a lower-security federal prison camp in Texas. This move comes a week after Maxwell met in private with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tallahassee. Details of that meeting have suspiciously not been made public. If this latest action by Dump’s private justice department doesn’t seem a bit suspicious, then we are all morons for not thinking there’s a rotting fish here.

Family members of Virginia Guiffre – one of the women who accused Epstein of sex trafficking and who died by suicide earlier this year – and other accusers of Maxwell and Epstein reacted to the news with “horror and outrage,” saying that it “smacks of a cover-up.” Cover-up indeed. They accused this president of sending a message that “pedophiles deserve preferential treatment and their victims do not matter.” When will Dump’s enablers finally sit down and realize how awful their Supreme Leader is and start putting up some resistance to him? I wonder if that day will ever come.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

And so it went!

Here is former Times critic Ben Brantley and Charles Busch next to him on the right.

Here is Robert Lee King on the left, Brantley in the middle, and Busch on the right.

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, July 21, 2025. It’s late here owing to Elliot and I watching a wonderful film on Netflix, Sinners, from early 2025. We tried to watch it before, but had some trouble understanding the dialogue. We successfully watched the entire film tonight.

Set in rural Mississippi around 1932, the movie stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to their southern town to open a juke joint, in their parlance, after trying to make it in Chicago as gangsters. They recruit their cousin Sammie (a breakout role for Miles Caton) who plays a mean guitar and sings the blues. Most of the early scenes reflect the brothers’ setting up a rundown mill and turning it into a money-making endeavor. They buy the property from a bigoted white man by warning him if he ever tries to bring the Ku Klux Klan there, they will shoot dead everyone who attempts to shatter their peace.

it’s not until much later that the film descends into a confrontation between those behind the doors of the juke joint and the vampires who are outside and trying to get in. This culminates in much gore, with plenty of stabbing and shooting and blood gushing.

Before the gore fest enthusiastically begins, the film makes a statement about music and how it connects generations of humans. A prologue tells the story of mythical figures throughout history with the ability to connect their ancestors and descendants – all the world, really – through music. In one of the movie’s best sequences, Sammie’s performance at the club transcends a singular musical moment to become a culmination of all that has come before and all that will be. You see dancers from ancient cultures in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere make their way through the 1930s crowd, while a modern man suddenly appears next to Sammie to bolster his blues with the buzz of an electric guitar. When you see this, you don’t wag your head in bewilderment because you realize the connection the director Ryan Coogler is making of the universality of music here.

Even the vampires appreciate music here as well, which is a rarity seen in any other vampire horror entry. In this film, the leader of the vampires is a white man called Remmick (Jack O’Connell) who galvanizes his growing horde with Irish music and dance, and his interest in Sammie comes from the perceived power of Sammie’s musical ability. He desires to not only take Sammie’s music for his own (“I want your music,” he growls at one point, “I want your stories”) but to use it to reunite with his own heritage, something he has been robbed of because of his vampiric nature.

Some people might think it takes a long time for the horror aspects of the story to break out, but when they do, they are immensely satisfactory to all horror fans. The film works as a melange of genres and it is very worthwhile to see on Netflix.

Today was an entirely ordinary day, given that Elliot and I will be leaving – once more – for Florida on Thursday to help celebrate my son’s imminent 40th birthday by taking him on a Disney cruise over the weekend of July 25th through the 28th, his actual birthday. No, he’s not regressing. The reason for this kind of excursion is that “Joshua’s” close friend and former boss has arranged this trip with me and he’s bringing his wife and two small children on the ship. This marks my first Disney cruise, so I’m sure this particular kind of cruise will have many darling amenities.

My last blog this week will be on Wednesday then.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, July 20, 2025. Elliot and I have returned from our second minitrip, this time driving upstate, to Sullivan Country, specifically the hamlet of Phillipsport, located in the town of Mamakating, which is part of the Shawangunk Mountains Scenic Byway. We were visiting Elliot’s old girlfriend from the Lower East Side who now resides over 20 years in rural upstate. We spent about 24 hours visiting “Sue” at the former bungalow county where Elliot spent idyllic summers there over 60 years ago.

We had breakfast on the way, on Route 17, in New Jersey, at the Suburban Diner. Then we took the New England Thruway to Sullivan County and to Sue’s country abode. There she spends her days with her aging companion, Baxter, who barked his welcome at us as we walked down the grassy path to her front door.

After having bagels and cream cheese, Elliot and I took a short drive to Ellenville, the neighboring town, where we visited a local bookstore called The Common Good. Sue decided to stay home with Baxter. This time I resisted the temptation to buy another book that would just sit on the shelf. Even though I was attracted to a nonfiction book on the Christian far right and how it’s destroyed America. I forgot the name of the book and didn’t snap a picture of it, so I will now have to locate it in other bookstores under “new books.” I think this will not be such a tragedy if I can’t track it down.

Close to 7, we went out again to Wurtsboro to an Italian restaurant called Pasta D’Oro that had a very ecletic menu – everything from fish to steak au poivre. Their portions were astounding. Sue’s salad could have been easily shared among three people, let alone just one famished patron. I ordered the polpettini and the veal sorentino which was not only delicious but also bountiful. Elliot ordered nonna’s lasagna which he termed the “best he’s ever eaten.” Sue ordered the veal sorentino like me and was also very impressed with it. All of us had doggie bags brought to us. We eschewed dessert this time to have just coffee and cappuccino.

We left the restaurant after 9 and I was a little apprehensive about Elliot driving home on these dark country roads, fearing an encounter with deer or other animals along the way. Luckily, we had no such encounter last night.

When we got home, we turned on the television to watch a 1949 film based on a William Faulkner novel, Intruder in the Dust. By this time, Sue left us to retire upstairs. I stayed to watch the entire film, as Elliot left after an hour or so. The film was set in Faulkner’s own town of Oxford, Mississippi. The plot concerns the jailing of a strong, proud African-American by the name of Lucas Beauchamp who is accused of murdering a white man in small-town Mississippi in the 1940s. As the town’s white, bigoted residents prepare to lynch this innocent man, a teenage boy named Chick (Claude Jarman, Jr.) joins forces with an elderly morally leaning woman by the name of Mrs. Haversham (Elizabeth Patterson) and another Black youth whom Chick hangs out with to clear Lucas’s name and find the real killer. Of course, the true murderer turns out to be a white business partner of the murdered man.

An aside to the casting of Patterson as the elderly woman convinced of Lucas’s innocence. I thought she looked quite familiar and it turned out that Patterson portrayed Mrs. Trumble on the I Love Lucy series in the 50s. When the film ended, Eddie Mueller, the host of Noir Alley on TCM, provided this interesting tidbit on Patterson: during the latter years of her life, she maintained a residence at the famed Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, the site of all of the TCM festivals. Pretty interesting, eh?

Surprisingly, I stayed up past 1 when I trundled upstairs to sleep in the spare bedroom next to Sue’s. I managed to read and finish The Day of the Locust and was quite happy.

The next morning, we slept until past 10 and had breakfast with Sue in the dining room. We had more of the bagels that Sue bought. Then I let Sue and Elliot reminisce over 60 years of fond memories. We left around 12:30 or so.

We drove to Ellenville where we had coffee and rugelach (I had it, not Elliot!) at Cohen’s Bakery, the local bakery that attracts visitors far and wide. It was quite crowded before 1 and we had to wait on line to get our food. Elliot bought their famous pumpernickel bread.

Now we prepared ourselves to drive back to Queens, which took a long time (almost 3 hours) to do so. Elliot took the scenic route where we had a wonderful vista of the valley below. This added more time to our drive.

We finally got home about 6 since we stopped at Uncle Bill’s diner, in Flushing, to have a lite bite before getting to Forest Hills.

It’s late here owing to Elliot and my watching an intriguing horror film from 2019 called Saint Maud on Hulu. The story is set in a seaside town in the U.K. and concerns the travails of a private nurse called Maud (Morfydd Clark) who is sent to look after a dying patient, Amanda Kohl (Jennifer Ehle), an imperious “dancer, choreographer and minor celebrity,” as Maude intones in a voice-over when she arrives at her house.

Soon an instant power battle ensues between nurse and patient. You see, Maud is on a self-appointed mission to save Amanda’s soul before she loses her mortal coil. But Amanda has no religious beliefs like Maud. At one point, Amanda scoffs at her and says, “You know it’s all not true. He doesn’t exist.” This sets off Maud, naturally.

This debut feature by Rose Glass brilliantly captures Maud’s descent into religious mania amid elements of self-mutilation, rumbling noises heard on the soundtrack, insects scuttling on the wall, and even a little levitation in Maud’s dingy one-room apartment.

This film is not everyone’s cup of tea since it moves at a glacial pace, and you wonder where this movie will lead the audience. You do get your reward, but this only arrives at the last few moments of the film.

Another week is almost upon us.

Have a good week.

And so it goes!

Here is faithful Baxter lying on the floor in the living room. I think the sneakers there belong to Sue.

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, July 12, 2025. It’s late here, owing to Elliot and I watching a film on Tubi, a 1986 crime thriller directed by John Frankenheimer called 52 Pick-up starring Roy Scheider in a more mature, sleazier role than his character in Jaws and Ann-Margret. The film is based on a book by crime novelist Elmore Leonard who adapted his book for the screen. Scheider plays Harry Mitchell, a wealthy businessman whose life is upended when he he’s blackmailed after being caught in an affair with a much younger woman. Margret portrays his wife who is running for city council and is initially not aware of her husband’s adulterous affair. Scheider decides to play along with his blackmailers but doesn’t intend to pay, which sets up a cycle of escalating violence and threats. The core of the film revolves around the blackmail scheme and Harry’s attempts to outsmart the criminals. We both enjoyed the film but did not enjoy the numerous commercial breaks delivered on Tubi from which we watched the movie.

Earlier, I found myself at the Majestic Theatre feasting my eyes on a blockbuster by the name of Gypsy starring the incomparable Audra McDonald in the title role of Mama Rose. I was able to see this overly satisfying version of a Broadway staple that has had numerous revivals over the years courtesy of Elliot’s former neighbor and friend, “Mary.” She called us two days ago to inform us that she had a ticket to Saturday’s performance and that she was unable to attend this showing. Elliot called yesterday to confirm the giveaway and she said that whoever was going just had to go to the box office and ask for her ticket. Which is what I did! I had no trouble at all. I sat in the orchestra, Row Q, and it was quite a good seat in terms of how close it was to the stage. I took a pair of binoculars, but I really didn’t need them.

How could anyone not appreciate this enduring play with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by powerhouse Stephen Sondheim, who was very young in 1959 when it first came out. There are so many memorable songs in the score like “Let Me Entertain You,” “Some People,” “Have an Egg Roll, Mr. Goldstein,” “If Momma Was Married,” “Everything Is Coming Up Roses,” “Together, Wherever We Go,” “Small World,” and the powerful finale sung by McDonald in rare form, “Rose’s Turn.” She literally brings down the house in her rendition of a backstage mother who only longed for stardom for her two talented children, but sacrificed everything for their success. At this point, both her daughters have left her to pursue their own dreams of success; her youngest, June, would go on to become the actress June Havoc, and the eldest would evolve into burlesque star and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, who also wrote books and had numerous roles in films decades ago. On the screen, she was portrayed by a young Natalie Wood. Here she is portrayed by Joy Woods who matures into her own woman who desires to escape from the clutches of her overbearing mother. Danny Burstein plays long-suffering agent Herbie who falls in love with Rose and pleads for her hand in marriage numerous times throughout the production.

For this production, critics have noted that McDonald’s classically trained voice might not always perfectly match the demands of the Gypsy score, which often calls for a more belting style. Think of the late Ethel Merman who has essayed the role of Rose on Broadway decades ago. She always belted out a song. I have to admit when I first heard McDonald sing as in her solo, “Some People,” where she’s first living with her grandfather in a hovel in Seattle, I had some reservations about her more operatic voice succeeding here, but within time, I must have warmed to her vocal style as Rose as time wore on. Her acting was titanic in this iconic role, I thought. She was certainly very memorable. I also have to say that I haven’t seen any other actor in the role on Broadway; I’ve seen the film which starred Rosalind Russell who was actually not much of a singer. Looking up the film with her in it, I did discover that she did some of the singing herself in the film, but her singing was partially dubbed by Lisa Kirk. She was more known for her acting chops.

Anyway, this is what I’ve done today. Elliot was fine staying with Atticus and then going out to a Japanese restaurant on Austin Street.

Tomorrow I’m seeing another but different kind of production, this one being an off-Broadway effort starring Lea DeLaria in something called Brunch Is Gay at 54 Below. My friend “Seth” asked me to see this with him, and I said yes. I have no idea what this show encompasses. And it does include brunch. All I know is that DeLaria is gay and a comedian who also sings. She was in the popular series Orange Is the New Black as Big Boo. Unfortunately, I never saw the series.

Have a good Sunday.

And so it went!

Here is my playbill from today’s show.

Here is Audra McDonald turning her body on stage at the end of the play.

Here’s a better picture of Audra McDonald taking her bows.

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, July 3, 2025. Elliot and I spent almost 12 hours out painting the town, as it were, beginning with having breakfast at the Ukrainian restaurant Veselka on West 9th Street and 2nd Avenue, then seeing the recently opened Jurassic World Rebirth at the Regal Theatre, on Union Square. From there, we made our way to Ninth Avenue and 43rd Street where we had dinner at an Italian restaurant, Nizza, at 5:15. What was quite marvelous about the dinner was not just the delicious food – I had the pappardelle fungi, with no appetizer, while Elliot had two appetizers – eggplant rollatini and grilled asparagus. We eschewed dessert to have something at Amy’s Bread, up on 46th Street and 9th Avenue.

Now to the play we saw, Angry Alan, starring John Krasinski in a one-man show, even though toward the end of the 85-minute production, we are treated to a young actor who portrays the title character’s son, Joe. The play is a tour de force for Krasinksi, who acted in The Office years ago and played with his real-life wife, Emily Blunt, in those Quiet Place horror films. The play is written by British playwright Penelope Skinner and is directed by Sam Gold. The theme of the play is this Midwestern character’s descent into a rabbit hole of internet hucksters who talk a good game of male victimhood at the hands of dominant women in our society. Krasinksi portrays Roger McLeod, a 45-year-old, divorced man, with a 14-year-old, and a new girlfriend, Courtney, whom we never see. He’s lost a good job working for AT&T and is now working as the dairy manager of a Kroger supermarket. Like many men his age and social status, he is struggling to pay child support and be more of a dad to his withdrawn son, Joe.

At the beginning, Roger, as played by Krasinksi, seems like any other middle-class average Joe, but as he talks about this online guru called “Angry Alan,” his tone gets progressively angrier and angrier. You see, this Angry Alan writes extensively about how women have exceeded men in today’s world and blames everything wrong with the world with something called the gynocracy (literal domination of society by women). Thus the real theme of the play is now emerging: how men can fall under the sway of the manosphere, an online community drawn together by an assortment of grievances that they broadly blame on the excesses of feminism rather than look inward to themselves. Though there are statistics thrown out in the play that are representative of the male sex these days like the shrinking share of college degrees held by men and the growing number of suicides attributed to men. These facts are irrefutable, but they have more to do with men still not being able to express their feelings more openly than women.

Krasinski’s tone throughout is unrelentingly sunny, even as Roger journeys deeper down the rabbit hole, consuming news exclusively from sources run by Angry Alan and even missing a child-support payment so he can purchase a ticket to Alan’s seminar in Detroit. Roger is proud of his “Gold Donor” status as an attendee at this seminar after sending Angry Alan more money beyond the price of admission, money that Roger probably can’t afford.

The affable tone displayed by Krasinski as Roger suddenly darkens as his son appears toward the end of the play to admit something that has consumed him for a long time. It’s Roger’s typical male reaction to his son’s confession that exposes the male toxicity that lies under Roger’s initial amiable exterior. I won’t mention what Joe tells his enraged father; I recommend you see this play just for Krasinski’s stellar acting. The play runs until August 3.

Oh, the newest installment of the Jurassic dinosaur series was just adequate. I miss the stars that populated the original series like Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill. This latest installment stars Scarlett Johansson, my fave Jonathan Bailey (he from Fellow Travelers), Mahershala Ali, and Rupert Friend as the prototypical bad guy. The film follows a group of adventurers who travel to the remote regions of the equator where most of the remaining dinosaurs now hold sway. The expedition is led by troubled mercenary Zora (Johansson), paleontologist Henry (Jonathan Bailey), and Martin (Rupert Friend) who hires the first two to acquire blood samples from three representative dinosaurs supposedly for a cure for heart disease. Also in tow is Zora’s friend Duncan (Mahershala Ali) and a family that gets caught up in the mayhem accompanying the expedition to the island.

Halfway through the film, I was able to predict which characters would be chomped into bits by the big, bad dinosaurs, so the film lacks any serious tension or suspense. I just enjoyed seeing one gay actor (Bailey) portraying a real he-man adventurer. My recommendation is that you wait to see this unimpressive Jurassic entry on a streaming service.

The big news that I was terrified of hearing was that Diaper Don’s “big, beautiful bill” was passed in the House today. I hate Dump so much that it hursts! I do hope that this signals all repugnicans’ death warrants in terms of their careers in 2026. I read that there were only two repugnicans who defected and voted no. The roll call was very tight, 218-214. I applaud Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries who delayed voting for this “death” bill by holding the floor for more than eight hours with a record-breaking speech against the bill. Kudos, Mr. Jeffries! Now Democrats have one role to play until the midterms: to denounce the effects of this terrible bill and what it will mean to average Americans across the country. An online article in today’s Daily News lays out the horrible reality of what’s in the bill: $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the uberrich, some $350 billion in “national security,” which I take it to include more fucking money for ICE, nothing else, funds to develop Diaper Don’s “Golden Dome” defensive system, $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, and a major rollback of green energy tax credits.

“The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.”

If you think this is a big, beautiful bill after this true accounting of the effects of this bill on mostly everyone excluding the billionaire set, then you’re stupider than I thought.

How any repugnican can justify this bill without choking on their own words is beyond me!

As for tomorrow, July 4th, there is no need to celebrate in the land. What is there to celebrate? I ask. As Democrats so direly pointed out, this bill will result in lives lost. “Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would ‘rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors.'”

Even after writing this, I have to say that we have been invited anyway to our Woodmere friends, “Mary” and “Joseph,” for a barbecue tomorrow. This is scheduled for 6.

I’m not sure if I will be writing my blog tomorrow. It all depends on long we stay.

And so it went!

Here is the playbill from today’s play: Angry Alan.

And So It Goes

Today is June 14, 2025, Flag Day, and the day when millions of fed-up Americans took to the streets to rise up against an unproclaimed king, Donald J. Chump. I won’t even mention his fucking “perade” (this is how the clown in chief spelled the word on his social platform) that he threw for himself in Washington, D.C., that cost millions in taxpayer dollars. Did anyone even watch it?

So I’m back from protesting with possibly 250,000 angry New Yorkers in the intermittent rain. Unlike Los Angeles, we had no pushback from the scores of police officers assigned to the march. Everyone was courteous, friendly, and feeling a little soggy from the rain that fell from 2 through about 4:20, the time when I finally reached Madison Square Park. When the march was over, I experienced a fallen flag (it fell off its pole), a sign that slipped from my grasp (the one that said, “No kings are welcomed here!” with a picture of Dump in full military regalia goose-stepping on a missile that I cut from an article in The Week), and what I thought to be a broken umbrella. Thank God it functioned after the demonstration was over. It was very difficult to keep one sign aloft as I marched with thousands of New Yorkers down Fifth Avenue. I tried to make the best of it. I was supposed to have met up with a member from my phantom group and, as expected, I never met him. I got to Cha Cha Matcha before 1:45 and waited until about 2 before I waded into the line of protesters.

After the march, I had to grab a little lunch, so I walked into a McDonald’s on 23rd Street. I walked down to Barnes & Noble on 16th Street to use the restroom and then walked to 13th Street to buy a ticket for 1980’s Cruising at the Quad Theater. The film was scheduled to go on at 7, so I walked to the Donut Pub for a cup of coffee and an old-fashioned donut.

This is the film that drew waves of protest when it opened 45 years ago, in which Al Pacino portrays straight patrolman Steve Burns who is offered an assignment by the chief of police (Paul Sorvino) to go undercover to apprehend a sicko who is stabbing homosexuals in the S&M leather underworld. Seeing this many years later, I thought Pacino was very underwhelming and restrained as the officer who is involved with Karen Allen on the side, but undergoes some sort of metamorphosis as he is expected to perform in his novel guise as a promiscuous gay man. He cannot tell his girlfriend, Nancy (Allen) about his new, dangerous assignment. You never really see Pacino doing anything with his hookups. He was too big a star to have him shed his clothes for an on-screen sexual encounter. I’m not sure if the original film was rated X; this copy received an R rating. Overall, the film is not very satisfying, even, as a procedural or as a thriller. The cinematography is very grainy too. But it’s still a surprise that the movie was directed by William Friedkin who directed The Exorcist in 1973. He did have, however, an early iconic gay film success in The Boys in the Band from 1969. I’m glad, however, I saw this artifact from 45 years ago during Pride Month.

Now I’m tired from this exhausting day. One good thing about the weather, if you can say it, is that it wasn’t warm as it was on April 19. I could have done without the rain, though.

As you know, this day began terribly with the killings of two lawmakers in Minnesota. “This is an act of targeted political violence,” as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has indicated. A masked gunman disguised as a police officer killed the state representative and her husband and wounded a state senator and his wife. The suspect has now been identified as a 57-year-old man. Blame for this repulsive act should be directed toward the occupant in the White House whose own rhetoric is so inflammatory that he has allowed extremism in his far-right supporters to flourish and fester throughout the land! It’s time that ALL elected lawmakers take a stand against this awful trend.

Anyway, that’s enough from me on this very long day! For those who celebrate, have a great Father’s Day tomorrow.

And so it went!

Don’t you just love this sign? I talked to this woman at the end of the demonstration.

This shot was taken at the end of the march, in Madison Square Park.

Here’s some view of the size of the crowd at today’s “No Kings” protest.

This is one of the best signs I saw today at the protest.

These young women didn’t mind my taking a picture of their faces and their creative sign.

I do like the “Flush Trump” sign, don’t you?