"Make mental note to watch 'My Dinner with Andre' again soon."

That's something I blogged on July 6, 2005, in a post called "My declining NYT habit."

I was stunned to see that in the top post of a search of my archive this morning, 2 days after re-watching "My Dinner With Andre," and one day after blogging "A big theme in this movie is whether, when things connect up, it's not just a coincidence but something mystical and important...."

What do you think? Mystical and important?!

I don't know, but what I was searching for was the topic of habit. In the movie, there's some discussion — blogged here yesterday — of the problem of doing things out of habit. There is, one person thought, "a great danger" of "fall[ing] into a trance" and no longer "seeing, feeling, remembering."

Well, I was just wishing I'd created a tag for "habit," because it would collect some good material, and it's a topic I want to think about. I like my habits. I think my habits are good.

"[E]ven if we spend another year between now and the election carefully analyzing the structure and shape of the madhouse we’re locked in, it’s still a madhouse."

"As infuriating as it is to admit the electorate may choose another Trump term, the only answer may be to hold on to that truth. Rejecting reality only replicates Republicans’ errors that led to Trump’s rise. Exercise your reason, stay informed, understand what’s happening in all its detail. But at those times when you want to scream in fear and anger, don’t think you’re being foolish or irrational. It just means you can see what’s in front of you."

Writes Paul Waldman, in "How not to have a psychic meltdown when you see new Trump-Biden poll numbers/As infuriating as it is to admit the electorate may choose another Trump term, the only answer may be to hold on to that truth" (MSNBC).

I can barely understand what Waldman in trying to say. He stresses "truth" and "reality," yet the truth/reality that he claims to see is that our country is a "madhouse." So hold onto that and never forget: We're locked in a madhouse! 

I guess one could approach life this way: I'm not crazy, the world is crazy. It allows you to distance yourself from other people: They're not worth understanding or even respect. You're right to fear and hate them. 

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince links to this:

  

And Quaestor adds:

"Everyone kept saying I was going to kill Michael Moore but that’s not true. [PAUSE] It isn’t a bad idea."

"I think once years ago somebody asked me what would I do if a guy like him came to my house with a whole film crew and started filming away like he did with Charlton Heston. Unfortunately, Charlton Heston was ill at the time with Alzheimer’s. But I thought if somebody was on your property, you could shoot him."

Said Clint Eastwood, quoted at The Guardian.

At Salon, Sophia A. McClennen — a professor who "writes on the intersections between culture, politics, and society" — takes a shot:

Eastwood’s aggressive cowboy bravado has come to stand for a tremendously vicious attitude among a loud faction of the GOP. These extremists return again and again to the idea that, if you disagree with someone, shooting them might be the best option. Recall, for instance, that Sarah Palin had a website called “Target of Opportunity” that used gun-sight symbols over contested congressional districts. One of those districts was the one belonging to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at point-blank range during a meet and greet event in a Tucson-area Safeway parking lot...

Death threat jokes like Eastwood’s and Palin’s are clearly a sign of not-so-repressed desires for violence.....

What is most disturbing about this turn in U.S. politics is that extremist Republicans now bully, threaten, and aggressively attack anyone they disagree with....

I know Eastwood has played a cowboy in a number of motion pictures — some pretty great movies — but I read his remark about Charlton Heston as not cowboy at all. It seems gently caring about an ailing old man. And Heston — in that Michael Moore documentary — came across not as any kind of bully but as an amiable old man who might have thought nice people had come to visit with him. It was Moore who tricked his way in with ill intentions to get footage that could be edited against Heston. Here's what Moore extracted for his movie "Bowling for Columbine" that prompted Eastwood to go a little edgy with a gun-related joke:

"The only thing I ever walked out of was ‘Dr. Doolittle’ with Eddie Murphy. It’s remarkable what I’ll sit through — it really is."

Said David Sedaris, in this article that collects his comments on his favorite movies. One is "Planet of the Apes," about which he said (making me laugh out loud):

Charlton Heston has been in that pod for however many years — a long time — and he’s got a cigar stub in his mouth. They land on this new planet, and he lights this cigar stub. They’re walking through the desert, and it looks like the entire planet is going to be like this — a horrible desert. Someone calls to him, and says, “Quick, come here!” and he throws the cigar butt on the ground. And I thought: if that’s your last cigar — and he’s got like a good two inches left — are you really going to throw it out just because someone called your name? I got so hung up on that. I thought about it for the rest of the movie. I couldn’t believe anyone had let that pass. If someone had said, “Come here!” and they were holding a box of cigars, I could understand him throwing it down. But they weren’t.

A sex therapist on CNN attributes Anthony Weiner's troubles to "high levels of testosterone."

Not long after Weiner's news conference yesterday, at about 5:20, Wolf Blitzer interviewed Dr. Laura Berman, who said (my transcription):

[Weiner is] known for being very aggressive, for being very volatile. He clearly — even his hairline and his jawbone — he clearly is a man who has a tremendous amount of testosterone. That's not an excuse, but if you look at him, if you look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, if you look at most of these high power men, who are highly aggressive men, and they get into all this sexual trouble. It's often hand in hand with high levels of testosterone, which means that he has an extremely high libido.

His hairline and his jawbone, eh?

Interestingly, Berman's website calls her "America's leading expert in female sexual health." She has a show on the Oprah Winfrey Network called "In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman."

Watch as this New York Times best-selling author and a Sirius XM radio host makes house calls to help couples confront their intimacy issues head on.

House calls, eh? That's so Dame Edna's Neighborhood Watch.

Anyway. Speaking of Dame Edna and high testosterone, here's Dame Edna interviewing Charlton Heston (in 1987):



By the way, Heston talks about his gray velour g-string. "What a practical color, Chuck — gray! — isn't it?"  Not to be confused with Weiner's gray panties.

Titanic vs. Lord of the Rings. Prof. Bainbridge is responding to my challenge about whether, if there were an ensemble acting Oscar, LOTR would have won it and neither Titanic nor Ben Hur would have, thus making LOTR the biggest Oscar-winning movie ever, with 12, not just 11.

Bainbridge points out that LOTR won the SAG ensemble acting award, but Titanic didn't. The Full Monty did!

I realize now how complex this what-if question is. Bainbridge points out that the SAG ensemble award may be essentially its version of best picture: SAG only gives acting awards, so ensemble works as a way to recognize the whole picture. If that's so, and if the Oscar voters tracked the all-actor SAG voters, we could infer that the ensemble Oscar would have gone to Titanic. But it is a different group of voters, as we can tell from the way the Oscars didn't care at all about The Full Monty.

Bainbridge also theorizes that an ensemble award would be used to honor casts in movies that did not feature one or two dominant stars, that is "true ensembles." Voters might conceive of the ensemble award as a way to make up for the fact that films with large crowds of actors don't have a fair shot at the individual actor awards. Clearly, LOTR had many great actors in it, but they were in relatively small roles. But small roles can earn supporting actor awards, and it's notable that no one even had a nomination in a supporting category.

I can't speak for Ben Hur, because I've never seen it, but I'll accept that Charlton Heston was an overriding star there, and maybe the cast of thousands types would not seem to deserve any recognition.

But how about Titanic? Bainbridge says look at the posters: it's all about Kate Winslet (the sublime Kate Winslet, whom true Peter Jackson fans will love from Heavenly Creatures) and Leonardo diCaprio. But what about Kathy Bates (people love her), Victor Garber (the New Yorker thought he was the best thing in the film), Billy Zane (an acquired taste), David Warner (you want an English actor of long reputation, look at this), Francis Fisher, Jonathan Hyde (deliciously evil as Ismay), Bill Paxton, and the beloved old actress Gloria Stuart?

I say it would have won an ensemble award. What was the real competition? Not The Full Monty. Not Boogie Nights (because of the subject matter). Maybe L.A. Confidential. Considering the extreme love of the acting in Mystic River, I'd say that the ensemble award for Titanic would have been more likely than for LOTR.

UPDATE: Christopher Althouse, who's a devoted student of film, writes: "I think Titanic and Ben Hur would both have won ensemble awards, and to the extent that they could have not won, I don't think it's a given that LOTR would have won."