A BEAUTIFUL DAY

 

It is a beautiful day in Southern California… too cold for me, of course, but almost 70 degrees with the sun shining and… on this Sunday afternoon… smack dab between volatile windstorms.

When I was a kid out here in the greater LA area, I remember looking forward to the Santa Ana (so-called) “Devil Winds.” It was so special… the hot wind blowing in from the desert in the middle of January, warming everything up and clearing out the smog from our city and suburban skies as the wind patterns were reversed from the norm, now flowing from land to sea, instead of the usual offshore marine layer coming over the basin to cool everything down.

If you went to the beach during those days of the Santa Anas, the skies were the bluest you could ever remember seeing, but out there on the horizon, there was a black horizontal Crayola-like line that was all the gunk that the winds had taken from our city and deposited at sea.

There was something very sensual and downright sexy about it as well. At least that is what I remember from my teenage years. In fact, I cannot recall anything but welcoming thoughts about those winds… until now.

I am out here in the land of my birth, recovering from a surgical procedure. The repairs to the Fisher Island sea wall and other infrastructure upgrades made the decision to leave my Florida island a little easier… especially when Thanksgiving and Christmas were factored in along with my kids and theirs, who almost all reside in Southern California. What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The alarm to evacuate the small Studio City house where I have been recuperating came unexpectedly. I made the (I thought) very educated choice to reserve a room at a hotel in downtown LA… far from any of the madness of the multiple fire zones plaguing the area. My thought was, with thousands of newly homeless people coming into town from the beaches and the Palisades, the nearby hotels of Beverly Hills would be jammed. Score one for me. There was plenty of room at the inn downtown.

The night in that hotel bed was less comfortable than I had hoped as I began to remember the things I probably should have taken with me. Then came the dawn with the “All Clear” from Studio City… the evacuation of my neighborhood was no longer mandatory.

People had lost their homes… some, their lives. I continued to live under the lucky star that has been there in the heavens my entire life.

Back at the Studio City house I began to watch MSNBC’s Katy Tur. Turns out she was born and raised in California’s Pacific Palisades and now she was back there in that Southern California residential community on assignment in what looked like something we have all become accustomed to seeing in reports from the Gaza Strip. Her interviews with contemporaries who had been living in the community she once occupied… who had children in the schools she once attended… were made even more poignant by the unhappy fact that this community… those schools… were now all rubble that would take years to reconstruct.

There on TV was failed mayoral candidate, Rick Caruso, blaming his former opponent, the current mayor, for failures of preparation for a disaster the likes of which had never been seen in any American city in history. The Palisades fire alone (one of several such blazes in Southern California) covered a larger geographic space than the entire borough of Manhattan in New York. There was the fire in Altadena which was also massive in a community that had never had anything of this magnitude happen in its past. A large fire in Woodland Hills and one in the hills of Hollywood as well.

Caruso reminded me of our recent national elections and of my oft-stated thesis that we get the kind of leadership we get because, if nothing else, Americans are good at watching television and these bombastic blamers and shamers make for good TV.

There is something else we, as a people, are very good at, and that is evading or avoiding paying taxes. As a society, we have all pretty much agreed that if there is a loophole… take it. Face it, few ever say, if there is a loophole, fill it; correct it for the greater good of all.

The current LA mayor, who has been in office less than two years, should not be the target for malfeasance. It is us, and our parents… and their parents… who continually and perpetually squeezed politicians and government coffers so as not to allow for the kind of infrastructure to be constructed that would support the ever increasing/sprawling population of a place such as Southern California.

The damns, the aqueducts, the methods of supplying sufficient water for emergencies such as fires, the burying of power lines underground, the recognition of a thing called Global Warming and doing something about it… all these things cost money, and government gets its money from taxes, which seemingly all its citizens want to lower… or not pay at all. News flash: you cannot have it both ways.

Readers of these missives know I have recently driven across the country… 24 days on the blue lane highways from Miami Beach to Los Angeles. I can report that the worst roads I encountered on that trip were in Southern California. Potholes, cracked sidewalks, and a failing infrastructure are evident throughout LA. It has been a long time since Ronald Reagan made it okay to disregard the true function of government with his too-clever-by-half remark:  

“…the nine most terrifying words in the English language are I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Our 40^th President spoke those words, and since that time, nearly every US politician has had to heed the “wisdom” of that mocking comment, or face the consequences at election time.

Something wiser was said a few years before Reagan by a cartoon character named Pogo when he uttered, “…We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

 “…Each country has the government it deserves”, Winston Churchill said. He might well have added… “and is willing to pay for.”

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Try having that in the 21^st century without a flushing toilet, or running water, or adequate protection from wind-driven flames. Hell, most of us have discovered we cannot have those basic things without a cellphone.

There is an old show business joke--- the punchline is “…pay the two dollars.” Until we are willing to do just that… to ante up and collectively pay the toll that our modern society requires… the depressing, life-altering, awful consequence that has hit my old hometown in the past few days will be merely the Coming Attractions… events that will be “coming soon” to a community near you.

Barney Rosenzweig

A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

A good-sized book could be written with a title such as Whatever Happened to Bob Zemeckis?

Who?

He is the guy who directed Forrest Gump, Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit… all films which anyone could be proud of having made. Gump… all by itself… is enough of a career milestone to establish any director in the pantheon of great American filmmaking.

Bob Zemeckis might well have been crowned his generation’s Frank Capra. Trust me, higher praise than that is rarely dispensed.

Here is the rub: what those films have in common besides director Zemeckis is they were each made in the latter part of the 20^th century. What happened after that gets us back to the reason for the book, Whatever Happened to Bob Zemeckis?

For reasons about which I am not qualified to pontificate, in 2004 with his production of The Polar Express, director Zemeckis walked away from the things that were at the core of his great movies; increasingly focusing on the technological---rather than the human---aspects of storytelling and filmmaking.

There have been 10 Zemeckis films made in the 21^st century, culminating with the currently-in-release HERE. These motion pictures illustrate one of the major left turns ever taken by any artist anywhere at any time. Imagine Van Gogh deciding to give up painting to become a cabinet maker, or Frank Lloyd Wright turning his attention to designing highways instead of buildings.

It is not as if Mr. Zemeckis has had any real amount of success with this new passion of his. Every movie he has made in the last twenty years combined, from Polar Express to HERE… has not had the box office or critical acclaim of the singular Forrest Gump.

I am not going to go on. This deserves a major psychological treatise by someone much more qualified than I. Let me simply close out this unhappy chapter with this review: HERE is a terrible movie, a waste of time for its audience and the artists that participated in its construction. Frankly, it makes me angry that someone with the talent of Bob Zemeckis has somehow descended to this kind of drivel.

A note to anyone out there who decides to do the definitive analysis on the Zemeckis demise; contact me. I do have one small piece of insight that might provide a clue to any biographer.

On the other side of the current movie scene is A Complete Unknown. It is a good movie and well worth your time. Timothee Chalamet is an authentic movie star, and he is totally believable as the young Bob Dylan. Edward Norton is perfect as Pete Seeger. James Mangold directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks based on the book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald.

I came late to Dylan’s music and lyrics, but even though a bit old for the folk music scene of the 60s, I remember being impressed by the wit and wisdom of some of the rhymes that were attributed to this young genius. The movie only disappoints in that not all of Dylan’s words and music are heard in the film. Too much to include? I would have settled for the addition of a few bars of Tangled up in Blue.

Hit Man and The Last Showgirl could be teamed as a classic double bill. Two totally different movies that somehow complement each other… yet are just about good enough to stand alone. Hit man is a modest comedy that turns into a sexy romance and thence into a thriller. Not Double Indemnity, but smart enough to be in that company. The Last Showgirl sometimes receives criticism for being “thin” in its storytelling. Let me go with its strengths. A wonderful/gutsy performance by Pamela Anderson and a terrific tour de force by Jamie Lee Curtis. Both, Hit Man and The Last Showgirl, are worthy of your time.

Saturday Night takes its viewers behind the scenes at Rockefeller Center during the 90 minutes before the very first presentation of what would become NBC’s iconic television series, Saturday Night Live. Would you believe the date is October 11, 1975? That’s right, folks. This year, 2025, will be the 50^th anniversary of the show everyone knows about… even without watching.

As you might expect, the movie is loaded with what are now nostalgic references to things, people, and places, and it does manage to capture, with some verisimilitude, the show must go on… but will it?... freneticism of something as groundbreaking as what a then 30-year-old Lorne Michaels was attempting to bring to a national audience on network TV.

Is it as good a film as Network, or as good as any episode of The Newsroom, or Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? I don’t think so… but how many shows can meet that standard? Will you be entertained while viewing this inside baseball yarn? I would be surprised if you report in as a negative.

The cast is a large one and I will not go through them all but do feel I should single out Nicholas Braun, who does a flawless Andy Kaufman, Cooper Hoffman… who, if memory serves, is spot on to what I remember of junior network executive, Dick Ebersol, and… Wm. Dafoe, who although I didn’t know the menacing, meddling TV exec Dave Tebet he plays, gave me chills by reminding me what those types were (still are?) like.

One of my earliest recollections is sitting in my parent’s living room in front of the radio and listening to a wonderful presentation of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

Almost as terrific as that nearly 80-year-old memory is the current rendition of the quintessential story of betrayal and revenge in this three-hour motion picture (yep… count ‘em… a very full 179 minutes). These guys… I do not name them here because I am sure my readers have never heard of them… really know how to make a movie.

This is the way Hollywood used to at least try to make films in the “good old days.” Unfortunately, not so much anymore.

The Count of Monte Cristo has everything you want in an old-fashioned adventure movie… beautiful people saying beautiful and profound things, gorgeous costumes, vile villains, a noble (albeit understandably flawed) hero, sets that are ultra lush, settings that are even better, dynamic music, thrilling action sequences, duels at dawn, fabulous moments of suspense, moral dilemmas. Trust me, it has been a long time since you have seen a movie this fulsome, let alone this well made.

One final moment of applause: Let’s hear it for Alexandre Dumas. I don’t know how many times his 19^th century tale has been depicted… Google says “countless,” but does go on to mention productions in 1934, 1954, 1975, and 2002 (without including dates on more than a dozen others… let alone the modern-day homage known as The Shawshank Redemption).

This is not necessarily Oscar material… but, I have to say, somewhere other than heaven, there should be some major awards for good stories… well told. Until then, warm up that choir of angels for this latest version of The Count of Monte Cristo.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

Confession/Obsession and a Voice

 

Conclave is a lushly produced, nicely directed motion picture about one of the world’s more publicized events, the election of a new Pope. It stars such fine actors as Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci and does not skimp on sets, costumes, or any other important production value.

All that being accounted for, candor forces me to admit that I fell asleep at least twice… or maybe three times…while the movie droned on. Here is my confession: I am not Catholic and unless you are, do not bet a lot of money that you can keep your eyelids open for the entire two-hour running time of this movie.

Admittedly the story is one with which anyone in the western world can identify, there is conflict aplenty, and there are enough contemporary references to make the movie relevant. That leaves me to guess that you may have to be Catholic (or, alternatively, not recovering from surgery) to really give a damn. But then, maybe it’s just me. Peacock has this motion picture for streaming, or you can purchase through Amazon.

While I believe myself to be very pro LBGTQ (at least as much as this 87-year-old can keep up with the alphabet soup of identity politics) I am also a heterosexual, which might account for some of the lack of empathy while watching Queer, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey. My general disinterest in the film went beyond an inability to identify or empathize. I just thought the movie was more weird than queer and I have trouble imagining what drew any of the principals to this piece of material in the first place. That said, for what it is worth, all the performances are excellent, and the photography is… for the most part… quite lush, as are the Latin American settings of the 1950s. Still, the movie, which will eventually stream on MAX, is not worth your time unless you are one of those who have a yen to experience what it was like to go to an art house flick at midnight in the middle of the last century. If only Queer was shot in black and white it would be a pretty fair imitation of one of those entrees.

Wallace & Gromit have been perennial Oscar winners in their category, but mostly that is when entered only as animated short films. This one (Vengeance Most Fowl) is feature length and it simply does not have the wit nor the wisdom of its shorter predecessors. This one can soon be streamed on Netflix.

Among favorites in the Oscar sweepstakes, is Nicole Kidman in Babygirl.  The actress holds nothing back in this tale of desire, infidelity, and lust. It is hard to imagine Antonio Banderas as a cuckold, but the actor is spot on in his lesser role as husband to Kidman. That leaves the third part of the triangle… an actor, new to me, by the name of Harris Dickinson… who I found less impressive but, in fairness, I feel it only right to qualify my judgment due to the very real possibility of my simply being jealous of his on-screen domination of Ms. Kidman.

This is a very sexy movie and one that is well made, although it wraps up a bit quickly and overly tidy for my taste. It will eventually stream on MAX.

They do not give Oscars for performances in television series… even those streaming on HBO via MAX… but if they did you would be wise not to bet against Colin Farrell in The Penguin. He is simply brilliant in this self-effacing role as… well as… thanks to a major make-up job… being totally unrecognizable. The supporting cast are all uniformly excellent and the cinematography and sets are gorgeous.

Finally, there is Maria, starring Angelina Jolie who is, without a doubt, the front runner and the one to try to overtake in this year’s Oscar sweepstakes. It is as if the actress has been waiting her entire career to play this part of prima donna, Maria Callas, and she does so with total confidence in her own ability and physicality. The picture is beautiful to look at and a joy to hear… although, I am betting one does not have to be an Opera aficionado to appreciate this standout motion picture, which can currently be streamed on Netflix.

One more word for Ms. Jolie as Maria Callas: Brava!

 

Barney Rosenzweig

December Song

It would appear that any recovery from surgery impacts heavily on the aging process. Imagine not one, but two surgeries in less than half a year. My beard is shaggy, but it is not so much that unkemptness that distresses as I look into my bathroom’s mirror.

Four score and seven years ago, Myrtle Rosenzweig brought forth, upon this continent her first son and right now, I am looking every hour of that epoch.

“It all begins to turn to shit at 85” might well be true for most folks, but add a couple of years to that, plus those two hernia operations, and the doctor one might most want to seek out has a PHD after his name rather than the more ubiquitous MD. I mean, c’mon, old folks have egos too.

So far it seems that surgery number two went much better than number one. Of course, it is early yet, and I reserve the right to further recovery and more follow-up exams in four or five weeks.

The Doc says I may drive now, but I am inhibited from doing so by the huge car cover I placed over my car just before my operation10 days ago. Lifting, bending, employing a “core muscle” are all on the not-to-be-done list. Hard to remove a car cover without doing quite a bit on that list of the verboten.

My granddaughter’s holiday open house to show off her new LA apartment beckons. The 11 steps that lead up to the front door give me yet another item on my list of why I don’t like Christmas (as if I needed one).

Friends threaten to drop by for a visit. I discourage them. My kids and grandkids are different. I figure I always looked old to them.

Given the weeks of discomfort and pain prior to surgery number one, then weeks of minimal recovery, followed by my month-long cross-country drive before discovering I needed to go under the knife all over again, we are talking months of non-activity and being totally sedentary. This has led to a disquieting time for my accountant due to the higher than usual volume of queries he receives from my “sick bed” as well as a prolonged period of unemployment for the physical therapist whose mission seven months ago was to get me back onto the grass tennis courts of Fisher Island. Take it from the source, that ain’t happening. Just a return to my Island Paradise is at least a month away.

When not bingeing on the Academy channel for the latest “for your consideration” movies… and, honest, the attendant reviews of those flicks are coming, but as a helper for your holiday list, here are some recommendations: Do see Maria, Babygirl, A Complete Unknown, The Count of Monte Cristo, Saturday Night, and My Old Ass. Do not see: A Real Pain, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Queer, or Here.

Besides the movies, I am doing some correspondence, reading the very clever Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal, and… for me, the really good news: I am spending at least a couple of hours a day on my latest tome, Life Without Cagney & Lacey. Unlike its author… that never gets old.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

COUPLES THERAPY

Season two of the Netflix series The Diplomat is a wonderful addition to season one and the writing of the show’s very interesting marriage of its lead characters is a true highlight. The addition of Allison Janney as the American Vice President is a very real plus as well. I recommend this series highly along with Nobody Wants This, a new romantic comedy series, starring Kristen Bell, the wonderful female lead from multiple seasons of The Good Place. Her co-star, Adam Brody, also does a fine job along with a delightful supporting cast, including the always marvelous Tovah Feldshuh. Like The Diplomat, Nobody Wants This is on Netflix.

Having now finished season two of The Old Man on Hulu I can commend that as well. The show features some terrific action sequences, convoluted spy plotting, and sharp dialogue, but it is the relationships that make the series soar. Jeff Bridges and Amy Brenneman as lovers, with Bridges and John Lithgow as life-long allies, fellow spies, and adoptive parents of Alia Shawkat. Jessica Harper and Janet McTeer move things along as current and former spouses to Lithgow, while Navid Negahban reunites as Shawkat’s “real” dad. I could reveal who Joel Grey is coupled up with but that would require a major spoiler alert, or, in the parlance of the CIA, if I told you, I would have to kill you.

I was disappointed with the new Ted Danson comedy, A Man on the Inside. The idea is strong enough, but the writing is lame, the pace is laborious, and just perhaps the absence of a strong co-star contributes to the demise of this well-intentioned Netflix series. Danson does his best, which should be plenty good enough, but I had to turn this off after two episodes. It really made my teeth hurt. Oh yes, Sally Struthers (Archie Bunker’s daughter in that famed series of yesteryear) has a nice, albeit small part and does well by it.

A Real Pain is a motion picture starring Kieran Culkin, the Emmy winner for Succession, and Jesse Eisenberg, who also directs. I got into a fair amount of trouble the last time I reviewed one of these third generation Holocaust movies and so I re-enter this arena with some trepidation.

I am sorry… I just do not have much of an idea what this movie is supposed to be or why anyone would take the time/trouble to make it. And Culkin? I had grown weary of his scatological speech patterns in Succession long before his “triumph” of the final season. Now I discover… this is what he does. He is playing that same “I don’t finish my sentences” character in this movie that paved his way to an Emmy in the HBO series… only this time in Bermuda shorts. Forgive me while I pass.

Black Doves on Netflix is an action spy series all about relationships with some terrific acting made all the more necessary by the really over the top plotting… even for an international spy thriller. The weird thing is that despite the extreme stretching of any kind of credulity at all, the thing works… really well… and it owes it all to this very solid cast who take their roles seriously and never once look at the camera to ask if any of us are following this thing. To the Producer’s credit, every so often, the show bounces backward in time to a partial flashback to sort of explain what the heck it was we had viewed twenty or thirty minutes before.

Keira Knightley is the principal lead (and one of the Executive Producers) in this series, and she is very credible in what really is a not very credible role. Her naïve husband (Andrew Buchan) gets my award for TV’s most sound sleeper, a quality which enables him to remain oblivious to all of his wife’s various shenanigans. Ben Whishaw is wonderful in supplying support as well as humor and a little romance.

I could not understand one word said by Sarah Lancashire as the very British boss of the spy team but, in the end, it really did not matter that I could not get my subtitles to work. Somehow, I managed to understand enough of her part in the plot to get by without her help. The remainder of the show’s ensemble is particularly good. I highly recommend this and, if I am wrong and you hate it, the good news is you will figure that out in the first hour of the series and you can turn it off with little time lost.

For something totally different, let me also recommend a tiny motion picture just released in theatres and on Amazon Prime, unhappily titled, My Old Ass.

It is a small, coming of age movie that deserves a better title. Maisy Stella, who is new on the scene to me, is particularly good. No pyrotechnics, nothing earth shattering. Just a sweet story, nicely told. Percy Hynes White is about as cute a leading man as his name might indicate. I think you will thank me for the recommendation.

That’s it from me for a while, I am off for the redux of last summer’s hernia surgery. Should give me lots of time for more TV bingeing.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

 

 

 

 

PARADISE LOST

The thing about referring to the place you live as “paradise,” is that everyplace else you find yourself… isn’t.

My current locale… far from my joy-filled home on Florida’s Fisher Island… is Southern California. My place of birth, home of the once mighty Trojan football team, the self-proclaimed entertainment capital of the world. Well, anyway, whatever else, it still remains the place of my birth.

I have been here in Los Angeles much longer than I intended or desired because that pain in my abdomen is not just the healing process of my hernia operation of three months ago; it is that self-same surgery gone bad and needing a do-over.

All that poking and prodding because of my complaints of continuing pain, and all those various physicians’ explanations that I would soon be fine, are now in the past. I must have the surgery again. Can you visualize my palms to face? My frustration with the medical establishment?

Of course it is different this time. Now there is scar tissue to deal with, plus the fact of failure the first time. This second surgery is going to take longer… and more fact findings will be required such as CT scans and cardiology clearances. This is not like before with 30 minutes of “twilight.” This is going to be three to four hours of anesthesia on an 87-year-old guy with a pacemaker.

I am easy about all of it. What upsets me is that I am in California and this procedure requires six weeks of inactivity post op; meaning that instead of returning to Miami and my Island Paradise before mid-December, I very likely will not be home until February.

I could go back to Miami and have the same team as before have another whack at my torso, but Fisher Island is under repair… and my building is going through major (read noisy and dirty) work with a resultant loss of privacy on my wrap-around deck and environs until the end of January. That unhappy fact, plus a plethora of funerals, is what brought me to California in the first place.

Is it any wonder that suicide comes to mind? Even as a fleeting thought? My body is betraying me, and at 87, there are naught but prospects drear. Do I really want to spend months of however much time is left on this planet in recuperation? The damp, grey clouds of California in the middle of winter, the all-that-is-left B-list lunches, the traffic, and the fact of everything out here being far away from everything else… including a parking place. It is a lot with which to cope.

Until it isn’t. I do not have a lot of skill sets, but among those I do possess is resiliency. A built-in tendency to bounce back.

It does not mean I don’t hate being out here on the west coast so much longer than I planned … especially at Christmas time. I am a Jewish kid, born in 1937 on December 23. That is 87 years of competing with Baby Jesus for attention at birthday time… something that is particularly tough in this part of the country where half my family are ardent Catholics.

My complexion is not the only thing around here that is green. Everywhere there are wreaths and decorated trees. The only thing that isn’t verdant is garishly crimson. This does not happen as much in The Sunshine State. Probably because the red and green combo clashes with the aqua and orange décor that dominates the neighborhoods of South Florida and my Island Paradise.

All that said, my mood is better. Markedly better. 24 hours of sulking and now my spirits have been revived. You may well ask how that is accomplished. By coming to view this catastrophe as opportunity, that’s how.

It came to me out of the darkness that there is the fact of my latest tome… an autobiography… languishing in my “to-do” file for months. Not a single word written since Spring, not one comma altered. The surgery, the cross-country trip, my general lack of motivation, let alone ambition, have conspired to have the book lie dormant.

My life story without the stuff already written in Cagney & Lacey… and Me (as ever, still available via Amazon or iTunes). It is appropriately enough entitled Life Without Cagney & Lacey and its conceit is that the reader has already devoured the aforementioned memoir and now wants to know what happened before and after that singular success.

It would all be so much easier if I were Steven Spielberg… or even George Lucas. Then, at least, I would figure there was an audience for such a book. I remain just enough of a producer to be concerned about box office receipts and just who this work is for.

What got me started on this opus was realizing that my life has been long enough to be of some interest. The pertinent question is to whom?

I have come to realize the trick is not to give a damn. 87 years later, it is my turn and a terrific way to fill days of recuperation (six weeks of them, to be specific) in a reclining chair with nothing better to do than complete those pages that I have spent a lifetime creating.

A nine-year-old washing dishes at a downtown restaurant, Yell King at the University of Southern California, three marriages, Frank Sinatra, Fess Parker, Daniel Boone, Paul Newman, Lolita, Steve McQueen, Paddy Chayefsky, Marlon Brando, Doris Day, David Wolper, Charlie’s Angels, Farrah Fawcett, Spelling/Goldberg, Ned Beatty, Marty Ritt, Jane Seymour, Tony Richardson, East of Eden, Christie, The American Dream, The Trials of Rosie O’Neill…

Just a few hundred pages between me and my Island Paradise.

 

Barney Rosenzweig

View from the West Coast

 

It is not because I am unhappy with the result. Not because I predicted the outcome more than once. No. I will not spend too much time on the recent national election because I have come to a place where I have seriously taken in the reality that such stuff is no longer about me… even when I want it to be… it just isn’t. Anymore.

I suppose I can take pride in having written more than once that America is a land where people watch TV and that Donald Trump… if nothing else… is good TV. What I didn’t see was much beyond the horizon of my own special Island.

Some of my readers might remember that even before The Donald came onto the political scene, I railed about the gulf between our economic classes being too wide and that it should surprise no one if it resulted in revolution.

The majority of my fellow citizens here off the coast of Miami and the Beaches vote Republican and they are mostly of an age and/or an economic class where that could arguably make sense (or, at least, might have in its day). But it is my own limited vision that I have put under scrutiny.

I sit on my Island where gasoline prices are not much of an issue… not directly. Hell, we don’t even have a place on the island that sells gas. My monthly dues have certainly increased… and once a year (maybe twice) the price of a hamburger on the Island is raised. That is more noticeable than the cost of a piece of sushi going up… I am none too sure why that is, but I think it is true.

My 401K has repaired nicely since Biden has been in office. The value of my unit on Fisher Island has soared. Medicare is great… covers just about all my needs. Hey, the economy is fine with this old guy.

I went to London earlier in the year. Everything there, from ice cream to hotel rooms, to theatre tickets, and (yes) petrol, was much more expensive than in the US. Biden/Harris must be doing a great job… right?

Obviously, folks … those out there off-Island… did not think so, and my view was proven to be myopic.

What can I say? I am not going to bust a gut over this… except, I have. That hernia surgery I had in mid-August did not hold and I need more surgery to repair what was done not so well in the first place. The good news? I am not a hypochondriac. My pain is real. The bad news? My pain is real.

The election, the aftermath, the failings of this nearly 87-year-old body are distracting me from such things as theatre… I turned down two potentially delightful trips to New York and have yet to see the latest version of Sunset Blvd. or the latest opening, A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical. I understand both are terrific. But you cannot take my word for it. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. At least for a while.

The about to be hernia operation #2 will take place here in LA which means a delay in my return to my Island paradise. It is just as well. My Island is undergoing major renovations and upgrades to stay ahead of government edicts and the rising seas. I hope to get back home sometime in January, meaning I will be forced to spend Christmas among folks I know who like that holiday a whole lot better than I.

I became aware of at least two box office hits, Deadpool & Wolverine and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and decided to be conscientious and prepare myself for giving these reviews by seeing a prequel to the Deadpool genre (the original Deadpool, for instance) and the first Beetlejuice … another one of those box office wonders I had never seen.

I didn’t like either one. Will probably not get around to watching Deadpool & Wolverine, let alone Beetlejuice Beetlejuice since I have herein debased my own credibility in this idiom. Millions… Billions maybe… have been spent by folks who love this stuff. I didn’t like sophomoric humor when I was a sophomore. Sorry. Go to the movies and judge for yourselves or, do what I am doing and keep watching MSNBC for clues.

The Diplomat (Netflix) is back for a second season. I liked season one, so I turned it on… have seen one episode. I intend to see more but I warn you… Do not do this without revisiting at least the last one or two episodes of season one to get you up to speed. These show runners are taking no prisoners and acting as if no time has passed since season one ended and season two began. Well, on screen … in their story… that is accurate. In actuality though… some of us have had lives and something like two years have gone by since the final episode of season one ended. I have friends who, because of the long wait, decided to watch season one all over again before diving into the new episodes. They liked it even better the second time. You might want to try that in lieu of Beetlejuice.

The Old Man is finally back for its second season on HULU and FX. Same thing applies here as it does to the above on The Diplomat but not as much. You have been warned.

The Academy channel provided me with the opportunity to view Three Daughters. Neither William Shakespeare nor Lear, his King, should fear replacement.

Amazon is presenting a post war English series, The Bletchley Circle, which I found wanting. The idea is worthy, the blatant sexism nicely introduced, but I have never seen so many women occupy so much screen time with so little sexuality. Even with an aching back, I missed that essential ingredient.

Scarlett Johansson stars in Fly Me to the Moon. It is either my aching back, my hernia, or Ms. Johansson’s semi-recent marriage but here again… even a superstar such as Ms. Johansson comes off as so much less sensual than usual… and this clever little movie suffers for it. I am going to blame the costume designer who went full bore (double entendre intended) to dress Ms. Johansson in the worst collection of 70s chic I have ever seen. It had to be deliberate. If Doris Day could look great in that kind of stuff why not Scarlett Johansson? Were I Mrs. Colin Jost, I would make it a standard clause in all future contracts that costume designer Mary Zophres not be allowed near any picture in which I had to appear wearing clothes.

Finally… in desperation… I turned on TMC and Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters. Not much to say, save for the fact that it is one of his best, that Barbara Hershey is sexier than all the best parts of all the above-mentioned women in all the aforementioned movies put together, and that Ms. Zophres might do well to study up Ms. Hershey’s look before damaging yet another movie.

Have you noticed what a better mood I am in when writing this stuff from my Island paradise? Just curious.