Another Week: Number 162

Winter continues to keep me on house arrest. Temperatures have ranged from the single digits to the teens. Once or twice a day, an extremely light layer of snow falls, and I get 20 or 30 minutes of weak exercise pushing it asid. I make occasional runs for groceries or a haircut.

Back indoors, cable news is on my TV screen most of the time, as the nation digests the executions of two American citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis. In between, there are ads for a bewildering assortment of pharmaceuticals with allusive names and harrowing side effects that sometimes involve the perineum.

One way or another, I guess I’m pretty much cornered.

Meanwhile, the Donald Trump clown show keeps spinning out new whirlwinds of chaos every day or two.

On Wednesday, for instance, the FBI raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present. Sure — let’s put our elections under the control our international spy chief, Russia’s girlfriend. 

On Thursday night and Friday morning, federal agents arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort because they covered a protest inside a Minneapolis church ten days previous.

On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the release of three million more pages of the Epstein files — so only half of them, six weeks late — and declared that the Justice Department is now done with the matter.

This was also the week I learned what Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian, thought his song “Ring of Fire” was about — and on Friday, news broke that Catherine O’Hara had died. I have loved her work since I was 16.

I walked zero miles this week.

Penn Jillette on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Penn & Teller‘s appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the late 1980s delighted me. Amy and I saw them at the Chicago Theatre. Later, Penn Jillette became a frequent guest on The Steve Dahl Show. He always struck me as an exceptionally intelligent and generous guy.

On Sunday morning, I listened to his recent conversation with Billy Corgan and it did not disappoint. He discussed his love of music and offered some keen analysis of the singing mastery of Frank Sinatra vs. Bob Dylan — as well as one of John Lennon’s more clueless moments. (Jillette’s dismissal of Bruce Springsteen, however, was just as clueless.)

He talked of his early years as a vagabond juggler. He described the slowing of time that occurred on his first Letterman appearance. He expressed profound respect for every member of his audience.

And he shared some observations regarding Donald Trump:

Trump is stupid — I mean profoundly stupid. His processing power is limited. You explain something to him, he does not understand it. And he will say anything that he believes will get the end he wants.

And if I told you right now, that you could have whatever you wanted in the world — now I’m not talking about material stuff, I’m talking about love, anything you really need in your life, you could have it — all you had to do was never again, for the rest of your life, admit you were wrong in any situation; I believe you couldn’t do it.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (2025)

I’ve been a Bruce Springsteen fan since 1975. His 1982 Nebraska album was spine-chilling. I read Warren Zanes’ book about it two years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two seasons of The Bear.

The idea of that book being adapted into a movie with The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White portraying Springsteen sounded fraught. When Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere was released, the general reaction made me wait for it to start streaming. Now it has landed on Hulu/Disney, so I watched it with my mom — herself a big fan of both Springsteen and White — on Sunday night.

It was fine.

The brooding Jeremy Allen White comes across as a brooding Jeremy Allen White, not Bruce Springsteen, although they share some similarities. As Springsteen’s steadfast manager Jon Landau, Succession’s Jeremy Strong is almost comically earnest. The real Springsteen and Landau both exhibit more humor than is depicted here.

Especially problematic is the way the seeds of Nebraska are compressed, and the process of releasing it is protracted. The ghosts of Springsteen’s childhood (like his late aunt Virginia) are simplified here into mundane father-son competition flashbacks. The Charles Starkweather murder spree zips by in movie clips and newspaper headlines, but we never see Bruce, for instance, interviewing journalist Ninette Beaver. Far too much time is devoted to the album’s incomprehensible mastering process and its bare minimum promotional campaign.

The thing that struck my mom the most was the Flannery O’Connor quote at the end:

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (2025)

There’s something about Rose Byrne that just spellbinds me, so when I heard the acclaim that her she was receiving for her performance in this movie, I looked forward to its streaming release on HBO Max. Mom and I watched it on Saturday night.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You is a psychological comedy-drama directed by Mary Bronstein, and — as a big fan of 1970s Diary of a Mad Housewife — it felt very familiar to me. Byrne’s character Linda is a mother besieged by crises big and small while her husband is remote and uninvolved. Instead of two bratty daughters, Linda only has one — and this girl is on a feeding tube to recover from an eating disorder. We don’t see her, we just hear her freaking out over every single thing.

Linda is trying to hold it together as her world ruptures around her, and she’s simultaneously trying to help others cope because — wait for it — she’s a psychotherapist! She’s also seeking professional help herself from her colleague, played by a very dour and disgusted Conan O’Brien in a one-note, unremarkable role.

The chaos in this movie is relentless, and it becomes exhausting. The only relief is provided by James, a motel superintendent played by ASAP Rocky. He’s really engaging and should have been developed more.

While Rose Byrne is outstanding, the movie itself is too much noise and not enough story. Diary remains the classic.