Sick

Popeye (King Features)

When you were a kid, you stayed home from school when you were sick. School was boring and it was more fun to watch cartoons. On the other hand, you had to deal with your symptoms, whether fever, coughing and sneezing or even diarrhea. Such vacations from the normal order of things have almost no appeal for adults, who like to reassure themselves of their longevity and the degree to which they're survivors who can brave the elements. Some people even have a need to demonstrate their ability endure under the most adverse of conditions. The weak shall inherit the earth is not their mantra, until something happens.

The Whopper

There's a new Whopper in town. Go to the Met or anywhere on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, have a salad in the cafeteria, and you'll get Legionaire's Disease and cyclosporiasis--which is not something you want to contract in your peloton. Everyone says  Legionaire's is not contagious, plus you don't have to get eat raw vegetables, which are where the cyclosporiasis bacteria reside. Legionaire's is found is microscopic droplets and lettuce can be sautéed, but let's take a best case scenario. You are in a space capsule, a la Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), or on the Mars mission that NASA has been touting. You eat the lettuce, since there is no time to sauté it. Which way will the powerful diarrhea propel you, towards the red planet or earth?

Denial

signing of Versailles Treaty  (June 28, 1919)

One (and there are many) ways  to explain the phenomenon of Trump is denial. Climate change is a hoax. Even as the rivers overflow and the forests burn away, the easy thing is to say it isn’t happening, to wish it away. That's why gaslighting Trump's favorite rhetorical device. The same thing happened in Weimar Germany. In that case the villain was the Versailles treaty with its onerous sanctions. Hitler's Willing Executioners is the title of the Goldhagen book. The Germans particularly the lumpenproletariat, who paid the price economically,  were on board with a messianic unifying message which blamed the Jews. You don’t have a Trump or for that matter a Jim Jones, unless you  have followers. 

Algae

c

cyanobacteria on Lake Erie

There has been a tidal wave of humanity engulfing the East End of Long Island a new form algae that is flowing along the highways. It has been preceded by flocks of sickly Canadian geese. You know something is wrong when you see a goose or bird standing motionlessly along the shoulder of a road, but as another kind of roadkill are the visitors with their horrendously blank expressions, faces that are airport runways in a vanishing perspective. Flocks of expensive cars drown out the tweeting of birds. Who are these people? What do they want? You might think it's pleasure, but the expressions aremean spirited and filled with exasperation at having to wait in line. "Where have all the flowers gone?"--sang Pete Seeger.

Poltergeist

"Hamlet and His Father's Ghost" (William Blake, 1806)

Ghosting is a pregnant notion. Of course people have rejected each other by refusing to answer calls, or even walking right past them without saying hello, but with the explosion of social media and now AI, the possibilities are relentless. Do you want to create damage or merely dodge bullets? The best way to accomplish either is to refuse to acknowledge their existence. It's definitely a great way to inflict a wound. If you just want to be, bothered you get a twofer. After all, the kind of person you want to stay away from is generally someone who is annoying--and even though you don't really have an axe to grind, it's fun to give them a dose of their own medicine, ie annoyance.

The Invite

 

Olivia Wilde's The Invite is Strindberg on Xanax, one of the drugs that's actually taken by Wilde herself playing the characterAngela as she attempts to quell the anxiety-producing prospect of couples swapping. Actual it's Miss Julie and The Father tinctured with Scenes From a Marriage. The conceit is simple, the old married couple upstairs hears their younger counterparts going at it. To be diplomatic  they decide to invite Penelope Cruz (Pina) and Ed Norton (Hawk) down for snacks. Cruz is a sex therapist married to a former firefighter who Rolfs for a living. The combination is funny and sexy as Cruz and Norton unleash their "menu" which includes pegging with strap-ons and DP, (double penetration). Anagnorisis is recognition in Greek tragedy, but here it may refer the list of paraphilias the film rolls out to the cackles of the audience. Seth Rogen (Joe), a failed musician who gloats in his misery is the last to come on board, but the comedy soon gives way to self-revelation, as Rogen's back spasm stops the orgy before it even starts. Rogen is brilliantly funny and the acting, of this dialogue driven movie is totally on point. The Invite is a chamber film and its brilliance lies in the way it juxtaposes slapstick with inevitability, as the plot leads to the sweet pathos of a piano duo.

Only Fans of Flesh

David Szalay

Flesh was exuberantly Booked or Booker (ed), but it is also soft core porn. Titillation is the lingua franca and the message is not particularly mediated by a self-consciousness about its own manipulations. Istvan our feckless hero is seduced by the upstairs neighbor as a teenager (the author is keen to note the hair running from her vagina to her belly button). The protagonist then murders the neighbor's husband, an act that could be viewed as random or intentional depend how you view it. He joins the army and shows his mettle. He's good with his hands and with women and ends up marrying the wealthy widow of his benefactor. Her friends sunbathe topless by the pool of the estate in which the couple live, their breasts described in some degree of detail. Around every corner lies a seduction. There is a rather graphic for The New Yorker set of photos (shot by Katy Grannan) accompanying a piece on OnlyFans by Jennifer Wilson. That's soft core porn too.