Tag Archives: film

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, June 6, 2025. It’s late here owing to Elliot and I having dinner out with our friend “Patricia” on the occasion of her birthday this coming Wednesday and our watching the second and final episode of a marvelous documentary on the late Paul Reubens, better known as his alter ego, Pee-wee Herman. The documentary is being screened on HBO as Pee-wee as Himself and is only two episodes long. It’s a fascinating, expansive examination of the artist and performer Paul Reubens who achieved stunning success portraying the character of Pee-wee Herman and the devastating fall from grace experienced during the period in the early 90s when he was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult movie house in Sarasota, Florida, where his parents lived. If any of you were a fan of the absurd character known as Pee-wee Herman, this documentary is for you. For me, I was mildly interested in knowing his story. I was not a viewer of Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the iconic show he launched on CBS in the 1980s which ran for five seasons, as I found out. I haven’t watched any of his films either, but I was interested in seeing this documentary since it is narrated by the late actor right before his death on July 30, 2023, at the tender age of 70. The documentary revealed that the actor never told anyone that he was in failing health because that was the type of person he was: secretive. He was also secretive about his personal life since he was gay and this would not score too well with his millions of fans way back then if he were in character as Pee-wee. In the film, Reubens does acknowledge he was in a gay relationship with a painter named Guy Brown that ended before the painter died from the complications of AIDS in the 80s. This is a highly entertaining and ultimately sad portrait of someone who eschewed his true identity in order to pursue the trappings of fame and notoriety. It’s a fitting documentary to be shown in the month of Pride.

In the latest dictatorial move made by this lawless president, the Dump regime has deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to California as a result of ongoing protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for doing their job in Los Angeles. An online article in The Washington Post covers this breaking story and it’s entitled “Trump activates National Guard in L.A. area protests” and it’s written by Maeve Reston and Emily Davies.

This move is strongly condemned by California Governor Gavin Newsom, calling it “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”

Dump immigration czar Tom Homan said authorities were mobilizing “to address violence and destruction” near locations that were raided on Saturday, in an interview – where else? – on Fox News.

This measure can only be seen as Dump making his promise a reality which he posted on the campaign trail that, if elected, he would crack down on Democrat-run cities and states that offered “sanctuary” to undocumented immigrants.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed that “violent mobs have attacked ICE Officers and Federal Law Enforcement Agents carrying out basic deportation operations in Los Angeles.”

“Federal immigration officials began the series of sweeps in Los Angeles County on Friday, including in the fashion district downtown.” Demonstrators began gathering in Paramount, California – about 20 minutes outside of Los Angeles – after a Saturday morning raid near a Home Depot. In a separate clash with police on Friday in downtown Los Angeles, officers reported that a small group of violent individuals were throwing large pieces of concrete.

Newsom stated that the federal government’s move to nationalize the California guard to respond to protests was unwarranted. He claimed that local authorities were handling the protests that unfolded in Paramount.

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which handles law enforcement operations in Paramount, did urge the public to “exercise the right to protest peacefully with respect for the safety of all community members.”

Don’t you really think this is an unnecessary move on the part of this would-be autocrat who really wants to show his muscle here with respect to a few protests that have not devolved into acts of violence? Their assessment of these protesters as “violent mobs” is just Trump-speak, nothing else! We should not be duped by their overexaggerations of reality in this case.

Have a good Sunday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, May 29, 2025. Today will be brief since it’s late here owing to my watching an HBO special starring openly out comedian Jerrod Carmichael whose special was called Don’t Be Gay and it revels in dirty jokes about his relationship with his white boyfriend and his frustration with his parents. All of the jokes emanate from his examination of his attitude toward himself and his acceptance of his gay identity. But he begins the special with expressing his inadequacy toward having a white boyfriend and how he had to enter therapy to deal with this. The show just has Carmichael stand on the stage at New York’s West Side YMCA in front of a gold curtain where he tells well-written, well-performed jokes. At one point, he admits he has an open relationship with his boyfriend and that his boyfriend fucks a guy with a dick that has “a lot of heft to it.” I thought this was quite funny. Then he slams all mothers for being crazy at one point; his mother, he admits, has become very religious. While his father has stopped talking to a large degree. He notices the difference between gay people who openly admit to being horny, while straight men have to do things like call Sydney Sweeney [a relatively new actress] “attractive” without admitting that they would love to bonk her. Carmichael basically revels in this honesty, while admitting he has issues with expressing feelings of inferiority toward white people. In 2024, this up-and-coming comedian starred in his own reality show called Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show on HBO; I watched some episodes from this series sometime ago and enjoyed what I saw. His humor might not be for everyone since it’s quite raw and contains vulgar language. But what comedian isn’t like this these days? Carmichael was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

After watching this special, I indulged in watching a horror film from 2020: Final Destination which has spawned an entire franchise. This is the film that has as its theme can death be cheated after being tapped to die after a group of young teens bound for Paris exit a jet that eventually blows up in the sky, killing everyone onboard. It is Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) who has a premonition that the plane was going to explode in midair, so he and six other classmates get off the plane and watch it actually explode shortly after takeoff. He and the other survivors have thus cheated death, but will not be able to evade their fate for very long. One by one, the survivors fall prey to ingenious ways of dying. The only actor I recognized in this initial Final Destination film was Tony Todd who was the title character of Candyman some years back. In this movie, he plays a mortician. Of course, Rotten Tomatoes gave this horror entry a very low rating. I thought some of the death scenes were ingenious, but a little too farfetched to be believed.

Anyway, it’s getting late here.

Have a good Friday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, May, 3, 2025. Boy, I’ve been away since Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Elliot and I got into our apartment yesterday just around now, which is close to 9:30. And today we commuted to Princeton to attend a 2nd-year birthday party for my closest friend’s granddaughter. Thank God we decided to take mass transit instead of driving to New Jersey. This was a better choice for us as we hadn’t even settled into our usual routine since we just arrived in Queens less than 24 hours earlier.

However, I would like to expound on my trip to Los Angeles last week to take in the TCM Film Festival from Thursday, April 24, through Sunday, April 27. I arrived a whole day earlier, on Wednesday, April 23, and had a little problem checking into my home away from home for five nights. The name of the “hotel” where I stayed was called the Fenix Hotel, but upon closer examination, it turned out to be an Airbnb instead of a traditional hotel. Of course, it behooved me to check it out before agreeing to stay there, but I really didn’t give it much thought – until I had trouble getting to my room around 8:30 or so. I was under the mistaken belief that I needed an access code for my room only, but I actually required two more codes: for the outside gate and an inner door. Since this was not your traditional hotel, management was not on the premises; I was left with only a telephone number with which to contact them. So with a great stroke of luck, I met a woman coming into the complex at the same time as I was trying to do, and she graciously gave me the two codes that I needed to gain access to the establishment and to my room. I took a picture of the original email they sent me with only my room code and added the two additional codes, which I referred to any time I found myself outside the “hotel.” Thus I had no issue with this place after my initial problem getting in. I even called the number left with me on the email and got speedy assistance when a staff person knocked on my door and told me what I was doing wrong with the coffee maker and gave me additional hangers.

Now to the film festival which didn’t get under way until Thursday, April 24, with the screening of George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back, the second film in the Star Wars series. This almost three-hour film provided us with a long, rambling interview with the creator of the franchise himself, George Lucas, conducted before the screening with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. This was a total delight, but I was not a fan of the franchise, so I had trouble staying up for the entire length of the film. This was the only film I saw that night since by the time it ended, it was close to 10, I believe. I went across the street to have a light bite at the restaurant attached to the festival’s venue, the Roosevelt Hotel.

The next day I made up for this anemic start to the festival by seeing five films. I also took a tumble on the slippery sidewalk after a brief spot of rain early in the morning. This was a rare event since it usually doesn’t rain for these festivals, but that day, it did. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt beyond my pride and, as expected, no one came to my aid at the time of my fall. I ditched seeing the first film at the Egyptian Theatre owing to my tumble since the theater was on Hollywood Boulevard which is where I slipped. Thus I went across to one of the Chinese Multiplex Theaters and saw my first movie: 1965’s Thunderball, James Bond’s third film in the series. As a treat, Luciana Paluzzi was interviewed by one of the hosts of the channel. She admitted to being 87 years young. She looked remarkably young considering her true age. Most of the film takes place under water, if you recall, and the action sequences were quite extraordinary, given that the third James Bond entry came out in 1965. Paluzzi played Bond villainess Fiona Volpe which is “fox” in Italian. During the interview, she mentioned she auditioned for the role of the good Bond girl, “Domino” Petacchi, but got the role of the “bad” girl instead.

Other films I saw included a lesser known film from 1934 called Servants’ Entrance starring Janet Gaynor and Lew Ayres who had a long-term film and television career. This was a pre-Code film but had no racy scenes that I could think of. It was a ditzy romantic comedy having Gaynor playing the pampered daughter of an automobile tycoon who falls on hard times and who devises an ingenious plot to disguise herself as a servant for another well-off family where she falls in love with the family’s chauffeur, here played by a very young Ayres. For this film, the inestimable Walt Disney inserted an animated sequence that, to me, was superfluous, given the action of the film.

Other films I saw on Friday were a tense drama from 1957 called Edge of the City which starred Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes. This film was totally dissimilar to the last one I saw at the Egyptian Theatre, as it was a powerful depiction of an interracial friendship on the docks of New York harbor where Cassavetes played a man who was running from his past and Poitier portrayed a family man just trying to make a buck while being in the crosshairs of a racist foreman, here played by Jack Warden. This was directed by Martin Ritt who was known for his gritty style of filmmaking.

One of the highlights of that day was seeing 1990’s Misery and hearing an interview of director Rob Reiner and star Kathy Bates conducted by Ben Mankiewicz. One of the memorable quotes she made during the interview was when Mankiewicz mentioned if Bates were ever in a psychotic relationship depicted on the screen in Stephen King’s adaptation of his work and she quipped, “No, but there’s time!”

My last film was a hoot: 1975’s The Rocky Horror Show which was scheduled to go on at 11:59 pm. but didn’t start until 12:20 or so. There one of the stars of the film, Barry Bostwick, was interviewed by Alicia Malone, another host of the channel. Thank God he was interviewed before the screening since it went past 2 a.m. I haven’t seen this film with an audience for many years, and I sensed that the TCM audience was a little restrained, given the looniness of the audience members who generally see this at theaters at 12 midnight. We were given a bag of props to wear and hoist around, but there was no throwing anything at the screen. There was also a shadow cast performing in front of the screen as the story unfolded before our eyes. The way this screening was much tamer than ones playing around the country was that I actually heard more of the dialogue this time. Usually, you can’t hear the dialogue over the screaming from those in the audience. That morning I didn’t get to bed until after 3.

Saturday I saw only four films, not five. In the morning, I saw two sci-fi classics: Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and Colossus: The Forbin Project, released in 1970, and way ahead of its time, as it portrays the pernicious effects of AI over 50 years ago. This film stars an unknown Eric Braeden who was cast as Dr. Charles Forbin, who develops a supercomputer named Colossus which was supposed to control U.S. weapons systems, but as it so happens, it has designs of its very own that include murder and the control of the world that it was initially designed to protect. Here Braeden provided the only political comment of the entire festival as he urged voters to choose their leaders wisely the next time.

My last film of the day was seeing Humphrey Bogart in a lighthearted comedy from 1955: We’re No Angels where he costarred with Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray. Here Bogart, Ustinov, and Ray play three Devil’s Island escapees who meddle in the affairs of a failing shopkeeper, Leo G. Carroll and his wife, played by Joan Bennett. They are experiencing financial difficulties at the hand of their malicious cousin, here played by Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone, and this is when the “angels” set things right with their holy meddling. This film was shown in its initial VistaVision print and the jokes were fast and furious. When I’ve seen it by myself, I never laughed as heartedly as I did while seeing it with a huge audience.

It’s getting late here, so I’ll end with the highlight of the last day of the festival when the 30th-anniversary of 1995’s Heat was shown with an appearance by its director, Michael Mann, and its major star, Al Pacino, at the beginning of the film. What sets this film apart from others is that Robert De Niro and Pacino share screen time together for the first time. Although they previously costarred in Godfather Part II, they never appeared on screen together – until 1995. The film is memorably known for its extended shootout scene in downtown Los Angeles which seemed so damn real.

I haven’t even mentioned going to Arizona on Monday where I met Elliot in Phoenix and we stayed with our cousin “Joan” in Scottsdale. Tomorrow could be Part II then.

And so it went!

This is TCM host Ben Mankiewicz.

This is Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings introducing a rare film from 1933 called Moonlight and Pretzels on Sunday which was a knockoff of Forty-Second Street, which was more successful and had a better-known cast than this Broadway musical.

This is the late Natalie Wood’s daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, and her daughter, Clover, born in 2012. They were interviewed by Alicia Malone on the screening of Wood’s 1961 tearjerker Splendor in the Grass costarring heartthrob Warren Beatty. This film was shown in all of its restored glory in one of the Chinese Multiplex Theaters.

Here are Rob Reiner and Kathy Bates being interviewed by Dave Karger.

Here is “Brad,” Barry Bostwick, from The Rocky Horror Show.

Here is George Lucas being interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz.

Here are Michael Mann and the great Al Pacino being grilled by Ben Mankiewicz.

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, April 10, 2025. It’s getting late here owing to Elliot and I watching several things on television after my returning from Manhattan and seeing a new gayrom called A Nice Indian Boy with my newish friend “Harry” and having lunch with him at an Italian restaurant just opposite the Quad Theatre, on West 13th Street. Originally, we were going to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant on West 14th Street, but thanks to my late decision to call them before leaving to meet Harry at around 1:45 p.m. and finding out that it had closed permanently, we had to decide on anther place very quickly. As I walked to the Quad Theatre, I discovered the restaurant called Da Andrea that looked quite nice from the outside. The film was supposed to go on at 3:15, so there really was no time to meander to look for another place to have lunch. Thus we met across the street at Da Andrea and entered the restaurant and sought a table.

For lunch, Harry and I shared an appetizer, polpettine di vitello (veal meatballs, tomato basil, and ricotta), then we ordered separate entrees: I ordered gnocchetti al pomodoro, while Harry ordered some clam dish. Everything tasted quite good, even though the prices were a little steep, but this is Manhattan. For dessert, Harry ordered gelato consisting of three flavors: chocolate, cherry, and vanilla. I actually eschewed dessert this rare time. I just had coffee throughout the meal.

After paying the bill, we just darted across the street to enter the cinema. We had a few minutes before the start of the film. Now to the film: as a reviewer stated in MetroWeekly, the film “spares no layer of sentiment.” It is the love story of two nice Indian boys, one being Naveen Gavaskar (Karan Soni), a doctor, with an overbearing mother and a quiet father, and a sarcastic, moody sister, and an American, actually, Jay Kurundkar, here played by Broadway’s Jonathan Groff, who actually was an orphan adopted by an older Indian couple. The two men meet, incidentally, in a temple while praying to the deity of Ganesh. For them, it’s love practically at first sight. The pair meet again in Naveen’s hospital, where Jay is working as a photographer who is tasked with taking pictures of the staff. Here they make a more serious connection and agree to go on a first date.

All throughout the film, it’s Naveen who is guarded and a little withdrawn in front of his traditional parents, Megha (stand-up comedian Zarna Garg) and Archit (Harish Patel), and his sullen older sister, Arundhathi (Sunita Mani), who was married in a gaudy Indian wedding six years prior to the events of Naveen and Jay’s budding romance.

The only true conflict in the film revolves around Naveen’s bringing home his boyfriend to meet his parents, even though they both know that their only son is gay. The progressive couple are so tolerant of their son’s gay identity that they are seen watching OUTtv to broaden their understanding of queer life. It is Naveen’s mother who draws the most laughs as she tells him in one scene about the movie Milk that she’s watched with her husband.

It is Naveen’s father, Archit, who is a little more stolid and quiet on his gay son’s life since he’s hidden his gayness from him in a consistent manner. The Gavaskars have never seen their son be gay around a partner, as Jay is the first boyfriend he brings home to them.

Overall, I thought the film lacked more depth and texture. There is no description of Naveen’s life as a doctor; we just see him in the hospital jabbering away with his Asian doctor friend over other dates and there’s no specifics on where the film is set. At the end, after scanning the credits, we discover it was shot in Canada – where else? Also, the film lacked true chemistry between the two principals, with not one scene of bare flesh in the whole film. Not that we needed to see the two having sweaty sex, but it might have helped. The film seems to have been marketed to a straight audience who would have winced if more skin was shown at all during its very short length.

Anyway, the film is inoffensive and sweet and it does end with a wedding. It is directed by Roshan Sethi and is based on a play (which I’ve never heard of) by Madhuri Shekar and a screenplay by Shekar and Eric Randall.

Today the Supreme Court delivered a blow to the Dump administration in their ruling requiring that his administration must “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, but stopped short of requiring the government to return him to the United States.

Here the high court said that the administration must try to – not “must” – return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian national who was deported on March 15.

The administration incorrectly asserted that Abrego Garcia was a “ranking member” of the MS-13 gang, but no evidence was provided by Big Brother in this case. His lawyers have continuously stressed that heir client has no criminal background in Maryland, or anywhere else. They have also denied his involvement in MS-13.

So who knows what has happened to this poor man since he was deported. His case just illustrates how lawless the Dump administration is and how no one – I mean, no one – is safe from being whisked out of this country in the present time. Think of that one, folks!

By the way, it’s only Day 81 in the Chump administration, which seems more like way, way longer like 2 years, really.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Yes, I was absent from this spot yesterday, as I said I might be. Elliot and I commuted out to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, in order to meet Elliot’s first girlfriend, “Deborah,” at the Cobble Hill Cinema to see the new Bong Joon Ho-directed sci-fi comedy Mickey 17 at 2. We eschewed driving to Brooklyn this time and took the subway instead. We didn’t have to take more than one train, the F, where we got off at Bergen Street. From there, it was about a 7-minute walk to the movie theater. We stopped at a bagel emporium on the way since we got to the region a little after 1. In the bagel joint on Warren Street, we saw a pair of young women in the store where one of them was cradling a kitten in her arms. Elliot accosted the one who was holding the kitten and asked her how old her cat was. I believe she answered that she was eight days old.

Then we walked to Court Street where the cinema is located. We espied Deborah who was buying her ticket to the film at the box office. We crossed the street and announced ourselves. We then bought our tickets which cost only $13 each. It wasn’t two yet, so we spent the next few moments in two toy stores in which Deborah saw a friend of hers with her young granddaughter. Deborah introduced us to her friend in one of the stores in which Elliot bought a few items for his grandchild, “Sally.” One of the things he bought her, I think, was a yo-yo.

Now to the movie, which the three of us were divided over: Deborah didn’t much like it (but I believe she’s not much of a fantasy/sci-fi fan), and Elliot and I were not overly fond of, but thought there were some thought-provoking items in it. I felt the film could have resonated more if there was a tighter edit made of it: we thought it was far too long – at two hours, 17 minutes.

The film stars Robert Pattinson as sad-sack Mickey Barnes who flees earth with his Korean friend Timo (Steven Yeun) after they are irretrievably bound to a loan shark for reneging on paying back a loan for a macaron shop that fails. The film is set in the year 2054, and this time, the main character, Barnes signs up to become an “expendable,” in which he becomes a guinea pig in experiments being conducted on a spaceship on a mission to colonize another planet, Niflheim. As an expendable, he suffers sixteen deaths in which he is “reprinted” after every time he dies. He is reprinted with all of his data encoded in the next iteration.

On the ship, he meets Nasha (Naomi Ackie) during the journey. They fall deeply in love during the mission to save lives on the ship whether it’s from Barnes dying from a toxin discovered in space or from dying of a new vaccine created to eradicate a novel disease. The true fun begins when Mickey 17 survives a fall into some ice cave on the planet and survives being chowed down by the native inhabitants of the planet, some sort of slug-like, sand worm creature. When he returns to his cabin, he’s immediately shocked to see another Mickey in his bed: thus Pattinson becomes two distinct characters: Mickey 17 and, now, Mickey 18. From then on, the two interact throughout with hilarious results. Mickey 17 is weaker, funnier, and milder than Mickey 18 who is more forceful, angrier, and impulsive.

On the ship are two villainous humans, one former senator Kenneth Marshall (played snarlingly well by Mark Ruffalo) and his wife, Ylfa Marshall (Toni Collette), who are the stand-ins for the current buffoonish president, Donald Dump, and his vanishing First Lady, “Melanoma” Dump. Here they rule the ship with an iron fist and Ruffalo as Marshall displays the same self-obsessed, messianic importance that afflicts the current Orange Ogre in the White House.

As I already stated, the beginning of the film gets off to a slow start and uses too much narration to get to what it wants to say. However, this movie lands squarely in a time when many world governments are trending towards autocracy, even with ours right now. With the planet that the earthlings are supposed to colonize, the inhabitants there, now dubbed “creepers” because of their shape and form, serve as the scapegoats of history, think of indigenous Americans and Australian aborigines, for example, who are plundered and conquered. Bong adds strong political themes into the story, even if they’re a little too apparent.

All in all, I’d say this was a good but flawed film. There is a lot of food for thought here like the question of mortality and identity that are thrown in here. Pattinson as Mickey is always asked by his shipmates what’s it like to die and he always answers the same way: it’s painful. But he always gets to be reborn anyway.

After the film, we went to a traditional bar to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Deborah drove us to O’Keefe’s Bar & Grill, located on Court Street. There we all ordered corned beef and cabbage and I had a cup of their lentil and cabbage soup.

For dessert, we went back to Deborah’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights for coffee and cookies.

We then bid our friend adieu and walked to the subway where we took the 7 train the wrong way: we were heading out to Brooklyn rather than back to Manhattan, so we got off the next stop to get the 7 back to Manhattan. We got off at Times Square to take a Queens-bound train. We did eventually get home after 9, I believe.

When we got home, we began watching a film from 1990 on TCM that I taped: An Angel at My Table which chronicles the life story of New Zealand writer Janet Frame. The film was directed by Jane Campion. We didn’t finish the movie since it’s close to three hours long.

Tomorrow I will be meeting my Manhattan cousins “Rivka” and Dillon” with Elliot for dinner at 7. I doubt that I will writing my blog here after the rendezvous since we generally consume three hours or more for supper and conversation, then we have to travel home. This time I’m positive we won’t be traveling in the wrong direction. Tomorrow we’re meeting Rivka and Dillon at 83rd Street and 1st Avenue at a restaurant called AOC East.

So I should be back on Thursday, God willing.

Have a good Wednesday, everyone.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is January 26, 2025. Today Elliot and I took out items from our 14-year-old car that we are giving to Elliot’s daughter, “Emily,” and her husband “Allan” on Wednesday, January 29. In fact, we’re going to effect the transfer of the title and car to Emily actually on Thursday, January 30. We’ll spend Wednesday driving down to Wilmington, Delaware, where we will break up the 5-hour drive by spending one night at the Residence Inn in Downton Wilmington. Then we will take the car to Emily and her husband on Thursday, whereupon we’ll spend one night in Silver Spring before taking the train back to New York on Friday. This will be our last road trip with the Nissan Altima. And when I left the car on the street later in the afternoon after transferring items to the new car, our Subaru Forester Sport, I looked longingly at the car, feeling the moment of letting go of the automobile in just a few days.

Other than having breakfast out with Elliot at Jackson Hole, today was very sedate, compared to my long day out with my friend “Seth” yesterday.

Also today I received my first critical text for launching my political group that is supposed to be meeting tomorrow in the afternoon. The only good thing about it was that it wasn’t nasty and it didn’t contain vulgarities like so many posts seem to have on social media platforms. The user just wrote this: “You got to be kidding! Trump the best man for the job! He defends my democracy clearly. Grin and bear it.” I had no intention of engaging with this person, so I did not answer her.

As of yesterday, I had 14 members. However, only one other person is supposedly attending the meeting tomorrow. I did call the restaurant just to give a heads-up about the potential conclave, but who knows, it might suffer the same fate as last week’s nonmeeting. Only time will tell. I also received one other critical text from someone who found the time, 1:30, not conducive for working people and suggested it was not a good time to convene this type of organization. I never thought of that when I scheduled the meeting for a Monday afternoon. Maybe I just figured that anyone interested in the group would be retired and have the time to attend a meeting during the afternoon. Now I might have to reconsider when to have these meetings. Would I need to move up the beginning time of the gatherings to early or late evening or even have them over the weekend instead? It will be certainly interesting.

When we take the car down to Wilmington on Wednesday, it will mark the end of shifting the car back and forth on Thursdays and Fridays. I will not miss those days at all. It will be easier then to have just the one car, and we will cancel the insurance on the Nissan on the last day of January.

The recent stupid decision by Chump to pardon ALL of the January 6 defendants has received intense backlash from many corners, including from – gasp! – some Republicans even, and one former MSNBC commentator had these words for Democrats in an online article for AlterNet entitled “Mehdi Hasan suggests Dems ‘shut down as a political party’ if they don’t ‘run on’ this Trump move” by Maya Boddie. The decision to do this was met with criticism even from former Senate Minority Leader “Bitch” McConnell (R-KY). Finally finding his voice, McConnell said, “No one should excuse violence. And particularly violence against police officers.”

On Saturday night, the jerk known as Donald Chump bragged about the pardons to a Las Vegas crowd of MAGA supporters, but now, Democrats are being urged to rally against the president’s move.

Ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan has urged Democrats to take advantage of the outrageous action carried out by Dump, which former U.S. District Judge Shira Sheindlin called “legally authorized but constitutionally unpardonable.”

Hasan indicated, “If Democrats can’t run on this, can’t use this to their advantage, then they should shut down as a political party and give up doing politics.” Hasan wrote this on X.

Well, that’s it for now. We tried to watch one of the nominated movies for Best Picture of 2024 which is on Netflix: Emilia Perez that stars Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, and trans actor Karla Sofia Gascon who plays a Mexican cartel leader who enlists the aid of a lawyer (Saldana) to help her transition into a woman. Gascon is the first openly trans woman to be nominated for Best Actress in this film that has garnered 13 nominations. What is strange about the film is that it’s a musical, with most of the numbers sung in Spanish. We managed only to watch a little over an hour of the film, which is over 2 hours. So far, it’s received tremendous backlash from the trans community and from other quarters. I heard two online video reviews of it in which both critics gave it a stunning thumbs-down. How could the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences be so wrong in determining the quality of its films? Of course, the film which is directed by a Frenchman, Jacques Audiard, hits all of the correct culture war buttons: emphasis on LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender issues (which this new administration is hellbent on unrecognizing), focus on Latin America and its social ills, the drug cartels, and its many hapless victims. Anyway, we will have to decide to continue watching the film, despite how we feel about it.

Have a good week.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, January 5, 2025. Today marks the first-year anniversary of Atticus’s adoption by us from the North Shore Animal League, along with our neighbor/friend “Diane,” who was with us – and even selected him for us – when we adopted the little rascal. It’s amazing to believe that Atticus is with us for a year already. He’s been a constant source of joy to the two of us over these last 12 months. He now expresses affection by jumping on the bed in the morning and nuzzling near the two of us. At first, he shied away from doing this. He was always busy with jumping from the top of my dresser to another dresser where the television set is situated. He particularly enjoyed going in back of the set for some inexplicable reason, so I would have to chase him off from there. But now he seems to be slowing down a little bit; he’s not as frenetic when we first brought him home. Well, he is close to two years old, which is approximately 24 human years, according to the notation in Google. According to what Google states, “the first year of a cat’s life is considered the equivalent of 15 human years.” So Atticus is close to being a young adult now. After the second year, each additional human year is four “cat years,” i.e., age 3 will be 28 human years, and so on. So we wish Atticus a very long and joyful life with us for many years to come.

Talking about joy, I’m now directing you to a Netflix film with that exact same title that dramatizes the heartache and strain experienced by the three British members of the scientific community who came up with the procedure known as in vitro fertilization (IVF) that culminated in the first-ever “test-tube baby” in July 1978: a little girl named Louise Brown (middle name Joy). Elliot and I scrolled down all of the choices on Netflix to watch and this film seemed the most watchable. This is why I’m late today. This is ultimately a very inspiring and heartwarming film; I recommend you see it.

There is sympathy, warmth, and directness in this intensely British true story that made headlines and changed lives around the world. The screenplay was written by Jack Thorne and Ben Taylor helmed the film in which the decades-long effort to produce success showed obvious strain on the three principals involved in the research and experimentation leading to that one glorious breakthrough in 1978. Within this triumvirate there is pioneering biologist Robert Edwards, here played by James Norton, who is seen as a bullish Cambridge scientist impatient with establishment resistance to his ideas; there is Dr. Patrick Steptoe, a seasoned obstetrician, whose revolutionary technique could make Edwards’ new ideas a reality, and he’s played by Bill Nighy, who radiates his usual reticent elegance and gentle aplomb here; and, most of all, there is embryologist nurse Jean Purdy who is played winningly by Thomasin McKenzie who is shown as the driving force of the entire project, which she carried out primarily while caring for her ailing mum.

Edwards, Steptoe, and Purdy emerge from this film as the intellectual odd-throuple of fertility science, and there is a very likable, easy onscreen rapport between Norton, Nighy, and McKenzie. Throughout the film, the trio plug doggedly through failure after failure while commuting between Cambridge – where Edwards and Purdy were based – and Oldham, where Steptoe was based.

Not only is the trio facing underfunding from the medical community, they are also facing professional scorn for their efforts from the reactionary press and the Church. The medical establishment, in the form of the Medical Research Council, shrugs at their work, wondering that there aren’t so many people affected with infertility, and that overpopulation should be a consideration that the trio should consider before trying to bring more babies into the world. At one point, Edwards demands to know if the council would be more interested if it was a “male” issue, which is a shrewd point.

It is Purdy who faces a personal crisis in pursuing the research into IVF as she is a church-going young woman who goes against her mother’s staunch religious principles by continuing her efforts with her two team members. We also learn that Purdy herself is childless because of severe endometriosis, which makes her efforts to bring “joy” to infertile couples all the more poignant.

As the film ends, we learn how many millions of babies were born as a result of the procedure and how Purdy herself died at the early age of 39 from cancer. She lived long enough to see hundreds of children born around the world via IVF, but not the many millions that followed. The audience also learns that Purdy was excluded from the official record of the lead researchers who perfected the procedure for many decades; she was only listed just recently, the end credits state, and that is an abomination. The only reason for this glaring omission can be traced to rank misogyny in my opinion.

I believe this film will resonate with all of those couples out there who have had any fertility issues in their marital history and will come to appreciate the determination of these three people to truly effect change in many people’s lives, despite the scorn heaped on them by journalists and the medical establishment alike. They were denounced as sinners by the church and were also labeled as “Frankenstein” by the press. It just shows that any kind of medical breakthrough always produces some sort of pushback from many conservative circles initially and that patience and doggedness seem to eventually pay off if you have the right formula for success.

Have a good week.

And so it went!

Here’s a great pic of the birthday boy, courtesy of our cat sitter, “Laura.”

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, January 4, 2025. As you might recall, I was absent from this venue because Elliot and I had a rendezvous with one of New York’s premiere steakhouses, Peter Luger’s, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After that, I browsed the bookstores in Williamsburg and discovered, to my huge fortune, that a favorite restaurant that we both frequented and has since shut down, has reopened. I learned this from the cashier at Black Spring Books, located at 672 Driggs Avenue. I was bringing up a book and paying for it when I engaged the young woman in a conversation about the dining scene in Williamsburg and this is when she told me that Egg, the restaurant that we so fondly remembered, has returned under a new name. It’s now known as Egg Shop and is located not too far from its earlier location, on 138 North 8th Street. It was located originally on 3rd Street, opposite Book Thug Nation, a unique secondhand bookstore I frequently visited when I ate at Egg across the street.

Oh, the book I bought for only $6 was a chronicle of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which primarily chronicles the adaptation of the early 60s film starring Audrey Hepburn in her star-making role, that of Capote’s prostitute with a heart, Holly Golightly, but that particular feature of the main character of Capote’s novella was watered down for the film costarring George Peppard and Mickey Rooney in a cringeworthy turn as a Japanese neighbor of Golightly’s who was always complaining of the noise emanating from her apartment. You see, she was always entertaining men and throwing these wild parties. The name of this book is called Fifth Avenue, 5 a.m.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, written by Sam Wasson. I have the sneaky suspicion that I’ve read this book already, but as a library book, not as one of my books on my shelves.

Elliot drove home, leaving me to wander the streets on my own. Eventually, I took the “youth express,” the L to Manhattan and got off at 14th Street to walk to the IFC Center, where I bought a ticket for the 8 p.m. showing of Oh, Canada starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, and Jacob Elordi as the young principal character portrayed by Gere, Leonard Fife.

I was attracted to the film because it starred Gere and it was written and directed by Paul Schrader who cast Gere 44 years ago in his homage to the American Gigolo, way back in 1980. It is now 2023 and Gere plays well-respected documentarian Leonard Fife living in Canada but who is dying of some unnamed form of cancer. The film, as I wrote yesterday, is based on the late Russell Banks’ 2021 novel, Foregone. Now that I’ve seen the film, I’m inspired to read the book so as to get more out of it.

The film stars a much older Gere who really looks the part of a dying filmmaker. He is married to Uma Thurman who is considerably younger than he. The movie opens with a camera crew invading the inner sanctum of Fife to make a documentary on him before he ultimately succumbs to his disease. He is being filmed by a former student, Malcolm, who is portrayed by Michael Imperioli (formerly of The Sopranos) and his wife, Diana. Soon the crew, his wife, and the audience out there in the dark are privy to his memories – some quite confusing, given his condition – of growing up in Vermont and being the swain of several women. He ends up marrying several of these women, having a baby with one young woman called Alicia (Kristine Froseth), back in 1968, when Fife was only 22. It is here during this time that Fife is offered a life-changing job by his father-in-law to become the chief executive officer of the company he owned. But that would mean that Fife and his young bride would have to stay in Virginia which he didn’t want to do. He was going to buy a house in another state and start a job as a university professor. Instead of accepting the job offer, he abandons his wife and unborn child and emigrates to Canada as a “draft refugee.” In quick succession, he’s thrust into the world of documentary filmmaking when he produces his first film on the misuse of Agent Orange by the United States in New Brunswick. But as he looks back on his past, Fife’s memories become increasingly confused. In scenes depicting him as a young man, Gere is seen as himself instead of his younger stand-in, Elordi, which just makes the scene more confusing to the viewer.

The film that Fife consents to is supposed to be a confession to his wife of thirty years, Emma (Uma Thurman), who judges her husband’s memories as the delusions of an ailing and dying man. Gere suitably rages against his decaying body and the inevitability awaiting all of us: the specter of death. Also Schrader goes for intentional ambiguity in deciphering what are the true memories of this man who has definitely abandoned a son over thirty years ago. There is a scene with this now-thirtyish son who tracks his father down at a film festival in which his films are being honored and who confronts him with the truth of who he is. But Gere denies that he is the young man’s father. This leads to Fife’s abandoned son to meet surreptitiously with Fife’s wife. There is no further explanation as to why Fife denies his grown-up son’s existence after that initial scene at the film festival.

After the film ended, which was close to 10, I briefly entertained the idea of going to a local gay bar, but I quickly abandoned that idea. I didn’t want to be riding the subway that late. So I came home instead.

I’m not so sure if I would recommend this film since there are no standout performances, except for Gere who handles his restricted role fairly well. He exudes impatience, intolerance, anger, and disgust exceedingly well as he’s wheeled in and out of the camera’s eye. It’s also quite a shock to see this actor known for his physicality in previous roles reduced to a man in decline forced to confront his mortality. To me, just taking the role is an act of bravery in my opinion.

Elliot is waiting for me to watch something, so I will end right here.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, December 26, 2024. Elliot and I are back from our three-day holiday sojourn with “Jeff” and “Sandy” and their two daughters, plus three cats, in Easton, Pennsylvania. The three days, as I must say, certainly went by very fast.

We arrived in the late afternoon on Thursday and we left today after 12:15 or whereabouts. We stopped in town at the Quadrant Book Mart & Coffee Shop, on North 3rd Street. I even got to parallel park the new car since I was told by a local that the spot we easily got into around the corner from the coffee shop wasn’t a legitimate spot, so I parked the car in a legal spot instead, while Elliot walked to the shop after parking it initially. However, the major driving was done by Elliot all the way up and down from Easton. I did drive to Jackson Hole on Tuesday, though. That’s where we had breakfast before journeying to Pennsylvania. We made no other stops than where we ate breakfast. We got to Easton actually a half hour early, so we looked for a place to have coffee, and by golly, there wasn’t much open then since it was close to Christmas Eve. One place that looked open wasn’t, really, when we walked in to sample their high-priced coffee, and we were told by a worker there that they were closing at that time: it was almost 4.

We were forced to drive to a small shopping mall where we parked near a McDonald’s and that’s where I had a cup of coffee. I must say for $1.79 or whereabouts, the coffee was quite good. Then we made our way to Sandy and Rich’s ranch-style house.

We arrived right on time: about 4:30 or a little after and we went directly into the kitchen where Sandy was paying host to two students from Madagascar whom she invited for Christmas dinner (Sandy works at the local college, Lafayette, for the past 20 years in a tech capacity, but she also deals with foreign students as well). Soon the house filled up with two sisters and their families, cousins, one eight-year-old nephew, and various other guests. All in all, I was told there were 16 or 17 of us around the dinner table that night. This is more people than I have seen in quite some time.

We brought the kugel and the ricotta cheesecake, and from what I could ascertain, both were hits with those surrounding the dinner table. There was enough to eat, as there was lasagna cooked by Sandy, a very appetizing arugula salad, various vegetables, cookies, and Elliot’s noodle pudding and my cheesecake.

The next day we all enjoyed a hearty breakfast prepared by Sandy who is an excellent cook and baker. We had eggs, roasted potatoes, and hot, steaming coffee. Then four of us – Sandy and her two daughters, “Elly” and “Roxanne” – drove to a nature trail not too far away and we took a robust, scenic walk after parking Sandy’s Crosstrek in the parking lot. Elliot preferred to stay home and watch something on television.

By 3:30, we decided to drive to the historic Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas, located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, located on the first floor of the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks. The old, shuttered Bethlehem Steelworks Factory is just a stone’s throw from the movie house. We decided to see the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown starring the hottest star in Hollywood at the moment, Timothee Chalamet. Sandy particularly wanted to see the film and we couldn’t say no to this movie that has gotten Oscar buzz already.

After seeing the film in a packed house, no less, all I have to say is go see this marvelously acted chronicle of one of the 20th-century’s most acclaimed musicians and performers. From its start in 1961 when a complete unknown, Bob aka Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota, hitches a ride to New Jersey to see his musical idol, Woody Guthrie, who at that time was suffering from Huntington’s chorea, and his chance meeting with legendary folk singer Pete Seeger (here masterfully played by Edward Norton who gets his mannerisms and folksy nature down pat) at Guthrie’s bedside, the film takes you through the early and middle 60s and through the incredible transformation of this shambling, shy musician with an acoustic guitar to an icon of musical greatness.

The director James Mangold convincingly recreates the Greenwich Village of the early 60s as a young Dylan (he’s about 20 when he starts his musical pilgrimage in New York) first performs a song for the bedridden Guthrie (who’s lost his ability to speak and is in a wheelchair) and Seeger in the New Jersey hospital and is taken under the wing of Seeger who sees potential in this young songwriter. From there, he soon meets a young, politically active artist named Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) who is actually modeled after one of Dylan’s early New York City girlfriends named Suze Rotolo who wrote a book in 2008 about their relationship called A Freewheelin’ Time, which I’ve read some years back).

When Sylvie leaves the country on a painting trip, Dylan meets a more credentialed folksinger, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), whose work was focused on political activism involving the growing United States military presence in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and social injustice issues. It is here that Dylan’s music is strongly influenced by his new association with Baez.

Throughout the film, we are treated to Chalamet’s own singing voice and guitar playing, I think (my friend Jeff thinks that was not him strumming on a guitar, that it was done digitally somehow, but I don’t know for sure), as he sings all of the old standards Dylan is known for, songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin,'” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” Girl From the North Country,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and many more.

One fault that I found with the film is that Chalamet as Dylan comes across as an enigma from start to finish. His early personal life is just hinted at very briefly, when he has an argument with his early girlfriend Sylvie about details from his past. She says she has told him everything about her past, but he hasn’t. This is when Chalamet says something to the effect that everyone lies about their past, this isn’t new. Also, Chalamet maintains an air of aloofness all throughout the 2 hours, 21 minutes of the film, even as his music speaks volumes about social injustice and the like. Chalamet’s voice is often a mumble and his emotions frequently come off as muted. However, this affectation would probably have been construed as a deliberate design by the filmmaker to maintain that mystery about Dylan even to this day, 60 years or more since he arrived on the musical scene.

The film still showcases remarkable acting from all of the principals in it, especially from Norton as Seeger and Chalamet as Dylan. Barbaro as Baez similarly captures the singer’s firebrand image and even sings a lot like her if you know her voice.

I couldn’t believe the auditorium was so crowded that Elliot, Sandy, and I had to split up. I sought a seat in the last row, while Sandy and Elliot found two separate seats in order to see the production. And this was Christmas evening. Maybe people were tired of those family dinners from the night before.

When we got home, we had leftovers for dinner and that was fine. Our hosts were exhausted from entertaining the evening before, so they went to bed quite early. I watched another horrible Christmas film on television called Four Christmases starring a heavy Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. This Christmas rom-com doesn’t deserve even a reprise of what’s in it, just to announce that it wastes the talents of such powerhouse actors as Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Robert Duvall, and Jon Voight.

The next morning, we got up before our hosts, even, and that was a first. We waited for Sandy to wake up and then had breakfast together. We thought we would treat Sandy to breakfast, but she demurred. So she made an omelet and served the potatoes from two nights ago. We participated in the 20-year tradition of taking the Christmas photo of me, Jeff, and Elliot, which I think we started in 2006 or thereabouts. This is always a hoot; we like to see if any of us has aged since we first started taking this classic picture. I would say that we have all stood the test of time pretty well.

We left after 12 and said our goodbyes outside by the car and that’s when we drove to town to the Quadrant Book Mart & Coffee Shop.

I hope everyone had a good, safe holiday and lots of good food to eat. Also, let’s hope there were no quarrels about politics around the dinner table. That could come later.

And so it went!

These are the old smokestacks of the Bethlehem Steelworks by the cinema where we saw A Complete Unknown.

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, December 22, 2024. As I wrote yesterday, I didn’t file an entry here yesterday since I was with my Central Islip friend “Jake” for close to 12 hours. He left a little after 1 a.m. instead of at 12:30 which we agreed on the last time he spent his time with me. The reason for this is that I put on a heartwarming holiday film from 1947 that was aired on TCM called It Happened on 5th Avenue starring a cast of recognizable names from that period, names like Don DeFore, Gale Storm, Charlie Ruggles, Victor Moore, and Ann Harding.

It’s an uplifting paean to the bounty of friendship and what is truly essential during this overly materialistic holiday season. The plot involves a drifter by the name of Aloysius “Mac” McKeever (Victor Moore) who uses the vacant, luxury townhouse of rich businessman Mike O’Connor, here played by Charlie Ruggles, as his residence during the winter while O’Conner winters in Virginia. Soon Mac invites an unemployed veteran, Jim Bullock, played by DeFore (who played the boss of Hazel in the 60s situation comedy starring Shirley Booth) who is evicted from a building owned by O’Connor to stay with him in the mogul’s townhouse. Before long, McKeever is hosting a passel of friends of Bullock’s who are homeless like he is because of a housing shortage. Then to mix up the Irish stew of residents of O’Connor’s 5th Avenue posh address comes O’Connor’s own 18-year-old daughter who is escaping from a boarding school that her father enrolled her in; she disguises who she is and passes herself off as Trudy “Smith” and immediately falls in love with Jim Bullock. Then true mayhem ensues as the real O’Connor goes looking for his daughter and is recruited to pass himself as just another vagrant by his daughter and takes residence in his own house as an unwelcome guest. This is the kind of madcap comedy and human drama that was usually directed by Frank Capra in many 30s and 40s films. Thus this movie has what is called a Capraesque feel to it, even though it was directed by someone else. Jake and I enjoyed the film and he didn’t want to leave before the movie ended, which was at 1 or so.

Anyway, Jake arrived earlier than I expected. I’m glad I put out all of the goodies before 1, since he buzzed downstairs a little after 1. I mentioned that he was early, but he just ignored that. After the customary hugs, we sat down on the couch and caught up on the last three months or so. The conversation ranged from the trivial to preparing for one’s own demise. Pretty heavy, I would say.

At some point, I entertained Jake with my proposal for going to the Kew Gardens Cinema and seeing the new Jesse Eisenberg film A Real Pain, and he concurred it would be a good idea. He didn’t want to see Wicked which was playing there as well, as it was a far longer film than the movie I had suggested seeing, which was only about 90 minutes. The time for our film to begin was 6:45 so we talked until about 5 and headed out in the frigid cold. But we took our old car which was just parked on the next block abutting the building, so we didn’t have to walk very far to it. I would have wanted to show Jake the new car, but I didn’t want him slipping on ice on the way there.

I found a spot far up the way from Lefferts Boulevard on the right, so we had somewhat of a walk to the theater and it wasn’t easy for the two of us, given how bitterly cold it was.

We got to the theater in enough time to buy two tickets and to see all those mindless ads and trailers for new films before our intended movie began. And then the film started! What can I say about this jewel of a film? It’s quite short – as I said, about 90 minutes – but it packs a narrative wallop that will leave you quite charmed.

From an original screenplay written by Eisenberg himself, the story recounts the adventure of two mismatched cousins, played by Eisenberg as David Kaplan and Kieran Culkin as Benji. These two dissimilar young men are scheduled to fly to Poland to join a tourist group for a week, where they’ll visit historical Jewish sites, as well as the house and area their beloved grandmother – who just recently died – lived. David is all wound up, with bouts of nervousness, as Eisenberg’s usual persona generally is, while Benji is a bit of an odd duck; he’s impulsive, while David is very strait laced, Benji is enormously erratic, prone to outbursts. He vacillates between being tremendously annoying, seemingly triggered by random events, and disruptive and inconsiderate to everyone in the Holocaust group.

The acting in the film is exceptional, especially Culkin’s interpretation of this thirtyish nonconformist who still lives with his mother in her house in Binghamton and is decidedly single, while his more mature cousin, David, is married, has a job, and is a father to one little boy.

Interspersed with this intensive character story are vistas of modern-day Warsaw and the World War II Majdanek concentration camp which are unsettling, to say the least. The film is really a showcase for Culkin as the out-of-control cousin who has lost touch with his more sedate cousin who is thrust into taking this historical road trip to discover how different he is from his relative.

I’d be remiss to mention that a more mature-looking Jennifer Grey (the star of Dirty Dancing) is cast in this film as one of the people on this historical Poland adventure. She plays wistful Los Angeles divorcee Marcia (I tell you, Jake and I didn’t recognize her until the credits). Other traveling companions in this small, tight group include a boring older couple – Diana (Liza Sadovy) and Mark (Daniel Oreskes) from Shaker Heights and soft-spoken compassionate Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan) who fled the Rwandan genocide and later converted to Judaism.

The tour guide is James (Will Sharpe) who is British and an Oxford scholar, who has an intellectual understanding of the statistics of history, but who later clashes with Benji over this kind of method of just dredging up facts and not connecting with the visceral connection to these landmarks. Their dispute occurs in an old Polish cemetery and it is here where David grows more embarrassed and exasperated with his “real pain” of a cousin.

The film was not only written by Eisenberg but directed by him too. I highly recommend the film; it’s a small but deftly perceptive comedic drama that deals with the various paths to dealing with pain, loss, and suffering, accompanied by the complicated upheaval of self-discovery. So see it if you can over this holiday season before Amazon Prime gets it on December 31.

As we walked back to the car and started driving home to a warm apartment, I looked down at my left hand and noticed – Egad! – my missing star sapphire ring. I lost the ring probably due to my finger contracting in the cold and it slipping off. (I was wearing gloves over my left hand.) I mentioned this to Jake and I suddenly got somewhat ill. But I never told Jake. I had to focus on driving us both safely back to Forest Hills. Then I could panic.

When we got back to the building, I left Jake off to take shelter in the vestibule while I parked the car on the street. I found a spot near the Grand Central Parkway and it was there I looked all over the driver’s seat and in the back, hoping to find my ring. I didn’t find it in the car, so I was resigned to having lost my newish ring on this cold December night. However, when I thrust my hand in my left-hand jeans pocket, lo and behold I found the ring right there at the bottom. To me, this is a holiday miracle of sorts. Or just good luck, if you want to characterize it as such.

Anyway, I happily told Jake my good news and we went upstairs where we greeted Elliot who was home from his wanderings and I made coffee for all of us. Then he repaired to the bedroom, while we watched It Happened on 5th Avenue in the living room.

Have a good week.

And so it went!