The Tragedy That Is Goad

[I wrote this about 25 or so years ago when learning Debbie Goad had died. Today I heard the news Jim Goad has died, so figured might as well dust it off. . .]

George: Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference, eh toots? Eh?

The woman struggles to lift herself from the bathtub. She has to take baths, now. It is too tiring to stand under the shower. And the jets of water feel like liquid darts pricking her skin and aggravating her assaulted-by-chemotherapy, ultra-sensitive nerve endings.

She stands naked in front of a mirror. Aged beyond her years, bald, emaciated, veins shining green through her pale, nearly translucent skin. Ah, that skin--that little bit of flesh that does remain to cover her bones--it is so moribund it can only hang loose and sag. Sag to the earth. The gravity of death literally pulling her flesh down into the grave.

It is impossible that while she stood there examining her naked body she did not observe to herself how closely she resembled a concentration camp victim.

The woman had concluded her essay I Hate Being A Jew (and it certainly must be ranked as one of the two or three greatest essays of the 20th century. . .the brilliant but ghastly humor of self-and-family loathing delivered in the author's peculiar narrative voice. . .an eerily bland voice. . .a creepy monotone of matter-of-fact moroseness) with the following:

"I wish there was a perfume I could sprinkle on myself to mask the Hebraic stench. I even have a name for it: Final Solution. But the oppressive smell won't go away until I'm stone-cold dead, a lifeless Jewess in my own private Auschwitz."

There is a stench to everyone, whether they be Jew or Greek. But the Final Solution won't mask that foul stink.

George: Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference, eh toots? Eh?

Franz Stangl, Treblinka Kommandant, was asked when he first stopped thinking of the victims as human: "I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity--it couldn't have; it was a mass--a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said, 'what shall we do with this garbage?' I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo. . .I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always a huge mass. I sometimes stood on the wall and saw them in the tube. But, how can I explain it, they were naked, packed together, running, being driven with whips."

It is a disturbing thought, and yet, what of those not covered by the Blood of Christ? Surely they will be exited from The Judgment in a more dignified manner. . .but their eternal place of residence, the Lake of Fire. . .it is a fearsome thought. . .what is the Totenlager compared to the Lake of Fire? But in this world of lying vanities, man does not see himself as the garbage he truly is. In the end, the one great mystery is the love of God. That the Almighty would put on the flesh of man and condescend to inhabit man's garbage dump and willingly suffer the indignities of the Cross--all the while knowing the vast majority of mankind would laugh as His Spilled Blood. Beyond understanding. . .but thank you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Already the effects of the hot bath begin to wear off. The chill returns. She takes one last look at herself in the mirror. . .trying to determine how much more death she has put on since yesterday. Perhaps the cheeks seem a trifle more hollow? She steps into a pair of slippers and wraps herself in a warm robe. She painstakingly pads to the kitchen, stopping only to nudge the thermostat from 74 to 76.

The woman takes a dirty glass and a bottle of wine from the kitchen and eases her way into the bedroom. She sits at a desk in front of a computer. On the computer desktop there is a text file titled *me.* It is her story. Her autobiography. She double-clicks *me.* She gulps wine as she reads her most recent entries.

George: Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference, eh toots? Eh?

Everybody wants to tell their story. Most people tell it to you everyday--whether you want to hear it or not. Co-workers, relatives, *friends,* they rape your ear with their version of their life. It is an urge they cannot control. God spoke the world into existence. The creature, cut off from the Creator and doomed to death, tries to save himself with his own stories. He tries to speak his version of his life into existence. But it is a lie. An unnatural story. It violates the Law of Creation. So when a *friend* corners you at a *party* and tells you their side of the story, you know their sterile words will just float through space. Float out into the dark and cold universe until the words drift to close to a black hole. . .where they will be sucked into an astronomical prison and compressed, along with all the other sides of all the other stories, into a microscopic dot of untruth.

There is an earthly prison not too many miles from where the woman sits drinking and thinking about her story. Her ex-husband resides in this prison, pencil in hand, and works on his story. As husband and wife they attained a degree of notoriety. Thus, their personal tribulations and failures became matters of public debate--in contrast to the lives of you and I, who comprise that indistinguishable mass of humanity whose own failures are noised no further than the apartment building or neighborhood they occur in. Therefore, you and I ad lib monologues of justification to the handful who have witnessed the anonymous failure that is our life, whereas the husband and wife will craft books, public records, meant to express their side of the spectacle that is Goad. Of course, in escaping the flat plane of drab humanity in which you and I reside, the Goad's story becomes three dimensional. And so there is a third side to the story.

George: Truth and illusion. Who knows the difference, eh toots? Eh?

The Goad marriage was barren. Their union produced no offspring. They were the George and Martha of zines. The Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George and Martha of zines. Of course, one would not cast Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as Jim and Debbie Goad. Being the George and Martha of zines is of a considerable magnitude less than being the symbolic First Family of the nation, as the George and Martha of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? are. Hence, John Saxon and Kay Lenz would make a suitable Goad cast.

In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George and Martha compensated for their infertile marriage by birthing an imaginary son. He existed exclusively in words. . .in the conversations between George and Martha. They spoke him into being.

Zinedom's first family had an imaginary daughter. The third side of the story. Unfortunately, Jim and Debbie Goad's imaginary daughter had a little more flesh and blood than George's and Martha's imaginary son.

We read the following in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?:

GEORGE: . . .the real reason our son used to throw up all the time, wife and lover, was nothing more complicated than that he couldn't stand you fiddling
at him all the time, breaking into his bedroom with your kimono flying, fiddling at him all the time, with your liquor breath on him, and your hands all over his. . .

This hint of incest is fully developed in the less artful Goad version, though the gender roles are reversed. No need to recount here the much-talked about details of the Jim Goad/<> coupling. Note only that <> was young enough to be the Goad's daughter, and once the Jim/<> relationship drew its last, a peculiar mother-daughter bond formed between Debbie and <>.

In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Martha violated her's and George's own private Law of Creation by speaking about their imaginary son to another person. As a result, George had to terminate the delusion.

GEORGE: You broke our rule, baby. You mentioned him. . .you mentioned him to someone else.

The delusion of the new life Jim Goad and <> were creating together ended in a somewhat similar, albeit more lowbrow, fashion. <> broke their private Law of Creation by writing on the Internet about Mr. Goad's nose job and hair implants.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has a happier ending than the Jim and Debbie Goad Story. After finishing with their imaginary son, George and Martha resolve to stay together until their own natural end. They realize it won't be easy or pleasant, but understand that they must stay together. Because they know they cannot survive on their own.

MARTHA: Just. . .us?
GEORGE: Yes.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

It is impossible that there were not moments when the Goads were content. I don't say they were happy. Maybe they were. Probably they weren't. One calls to mind the following passage from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and imagines its brutal *real life* fulfillment in the strange union that was Goad:

. . .whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: yes; this will do; who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving me and must be punished for it.

They were one flesh. And now they are torn asunder. Examine the results. This, then, is the tragedy that is Goad.

Standards

Poor white folk. By man’s standards, they are low.

But notice the content of the shopping bag at their feet. They did not forget their cat. By the standards of the scriptures, they are high.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Let Him Deny Himself

I have no problem with anything the Faithful Messenger said in this thread.  His interpretation is not unreasonable.

The problem, of course, is what is NOT said.  When we lift the words of the Lord Jesus Christ from the gospels and present them in isolation, a simplicity of fulfillment may appear.

The Lord Jesus Christ said if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. 

That is what we are to do. 

Understood.

But can we, in good conscience, just leave it there?

Perhaps I am too great a sinner.  But I cannot just leave it there.

It is, of course, an undeniable fact the overwhelming majority of persons alive, and persons who ever lived, denied themselves for most of their waking lives.  

The sad-sack who wakes up every weekday morning and reports to a job he detests has denied himself.  This same sad-sack denies himself again later in the same day when he denies himself a violent response to a superior’s disrespect.

There are, of course, plentiful examples of more fleshly denials from every person who lives or ever lived.  Lusts denied, whether for fornications or intoxications or more niche perversions.

The vast majority of the time the vast majority of humanity has denied itself.  

The Lord Jesus Christ said if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.  

The briefest look at the ugly, violent, debased human history tells us this instruction from the Lord Jesus Christ has not been followed.  And this, then, tells us two further things:

It takes only a very tiny amount of selfishness (the act of not denying yourself) to make a hell on earth, and

It must not be easy to deny yourself.  The proof is that the overwhelming majority of people do try to deny themselves.  The will is there.** 

But the created being will fail and fail and fail again.  He/she/they may go a few minutes, a few hours, even a day, two days, denying themselves, but the limitations of a created being are difficult to overcome.

The created being is throw into an anti-Christ system which automatically demands self-denial, the created being must serve the will of the rulers of the system, not themselves.  Additionally the created being is subject to the desires within their own flesh and their own psyche which they have no understanding of how to control, let alone understanding the genesis of those desires.  Invariably the created being will seek gratification of the flesh or the mind.  And sometimes this failure to deny self is due 100% to the created being’s selfishness.  But we cannot deny that at other times, the created being is subject to external forces, both environmental and supernatural, that create stresses or temptations that influence their selfishness, to whatever degree.

If it were easy to deny self, the world would be a pretty place.  The overwhelming majority of people will do the easy thing.  

I have no problem with anything the Faithful Messenger said in his X thread.  His interpretation is not unreasonable.

The problem, of course, is what is NOT said.  When we lift the words of the Lord Jesus Christ from the gospels and present them in isolation, a simplicity of fulfillment may appear.

In the case of self-denial, I feel compelled to also present the following words of the Lord Jesus Christ:

Then Peter having come near to Him, said, `Sir, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him -- till seven times?'  Jesus saith to him, I do not say to thee till seven times, but till seventy times seven.

Sin is selfishness. Sin is doing what you want.  Sin is not denying yourself.  If denying yourself were a simple matter, even a realistic matter for the created being, our Lord Jesus Christ would not have said forgive your brother seventy times seven.

Every day on earth is a grim struggle against self.  The worst people imaginable struggled against self.  Helpless slaves to self. 

The greatest lesson in picking up the Cross daily, the greatest lesson for anyone ‘who would come after’ Jesus is in failure.  Our daily sin is our reminder how helpless, pathetic and weak we created beings are.  When we act selfishly, when we refuse to deny ourselves, when we sin, in the shameful aftermath of that sin we recognize our absolute need for the Lord Jesus Christ’s atoning work.  

Yes, we ought to deny ourselves.  

Nobody has successfully done it, except the Lord Jesus Christ.

In our unsuccessful struggle we fully recognize the Lord Jesus Christ’s victory.

Jesus, thank you for being a friend to this sinner. Nothing in my hands I bring (not even my cross daily), simply to Thy cross I cling.

**Even Bible ‘heroes’ such as Paul repeatedly failed in denying self, and in matters as trivial as to who the slave Onesimus should serve. Paul’s passive-aggressive wheedling of Philemon is an embarrassingly selfish act!

The Legend

30 May 2026, Detroit Sports Spectacular: It was about 10 am on Saturday morning, people milling about, looking at tables and tables and tables of sports trading cards, everything from 50 cent Don Wert cards to 20k Michael Jordan rookie cards and even higher. People were also lining up to purchase autographs and photos from sporting luminaries such as Charles Woodson, Chris Webber, Allen Iverson and Michael Vick, who is both famous and infamous. 

Everybody was passing by one old geezer’s table. Most of the crowd far too young to know. 

Look at that face, I said to myself, for there was nobody else with me to say it to. That’s a face that’s seen some shit. Highs and Lows. Michael Vick is a virgin compared to this guy. 

I stood off to the side, watching the old geezer, watching everybody passing him by.

They didn’t know. This was truly a Legend. A Legendary Figure. A Hero. And a bum. A bum who turned it all around, and then fell to bum again. And got up again. And here he was, still breathing air. He had a walker next to his chair. But it was not quite time yet for the dirt to be shoveled on top of him. Look at that face. Nobody looked at it. They just passed by. I walked up to him. 

“You seen more shit than everybody in this room combined.” 

“I’ve been waiting two hours for my breakfast!” He tried to bark it, but his voice was too weak to bark. 

“Huh?”

“Are you the guy who’s supposed to bring my breakfast?” 

“No.” 

“No? Who are you?” 

“A fan.” 

“Oh.” 

“I’ve been waiting two hours for my breakfast.” 

“I read somewhere they said you used to drink a case of Pepsi every day. Is that true?” 

“Or more.” 

“More?” 

“Some days I drank thirty-six.” 

“Damn!” 

There was a long pause. What can you say after that? I just stood there, by his table. He had books and photos and cards for sale, but the sheeple kept walking by, paying no notice. After buying an admission and a ticket to get a photo with a Michigan basketball player, I had five bucks left. Too bad for me. 

“Where you from?” he asked. 

“Ann Arbor.” 

“Oh, I remember Dearborn. You remember the old mayor? What was his name?” 

He must have thought I said Dearborn. That was fine. And by the old mayor he must have meant Orville Hubbard, a bit of a legend himself. 

“Hubbard?” 

“Hubbard! That’s right!” he said. “He wouldn’t let the blacks in, remember?” 

I nodded and chuckled. 

“Wouldn’t let nobody in!” he went on. “Yellow people. Brown. Redskins. Nobody but white.” 

“Dearborn sure has changed, huh?” I laughed. He laughed, too. 

“You’re not a young fellow, either,” he said. “You want to sit down?” 

I sat down in the empty chair next to his on his side of the table. We yukked it up for another 10 minutes or so. I asked him who he liked in the upcoming Michigan senate race. He gave the right answer. Eighty-two years old and he knew what was going on. 

Finally some fat girl brought him his breakfast. I had to get going to catch my photo time with the Michigan basketball player. 

“Hey,” I said to the fat girl holding out my phone, “if this gentleman is OK with it, will you take a picture?” 

“Sure.” 

“I got 5 bucks,” I said to the Legend, “is that good enough for a quick selfie?” 

“Your money’s no good here.” 

The fat girl took the picture. I told the Legend I was gonna let him eat in peace, but that it had been an honor to chat with him. 

After I got my picture with the Michigan basketball player, a kid sixty-three years younger than the Legend, I walked past his table again, but he was gone.

Obsession

Obsession: Yet another film marketed as horror that lacks horror and yet another critically acclaimed film that is a dud of a disappointment.  The ultra-thin story centers upon a hemming-and-hawing, meek near-incel named Baron "Bear" Bailey, who works at a small local family-owned music shop that somehow generates enough sales to keep four employees on the clock per shift (that is a rather petty script nit-pick, I admit, but anyone who has ever worked retail, and especially anyone currently misfortunate enough to be employed at Family Dollar or Dollar General or Dollar Tree will notice this deviation from our current Late Stage Capitalism labor management practices). But anyways, and more to the story’s ultra-thin point, Bear harbors a painfully frustrated and unspoken romantic affection for co-worker Nikki.  The incellular Bear, upon hearing Nikki has lost her cherished crystal necklace, decides that purchasing a new necklace and presenting it to her as a gift will be the perfect opportunity for him to express his feelings for her.  Blue-balled Bear thus heads to the local New Age herb-and-crystal shoppe (a kind of bohemian business establishment that seems copied from a Portlandia sketch) to buy the necklace, but being the deeply insecure nerd he is, he doubts his necklace choice.  About to leave the store in empty-handed despair, he happens to notice a peculiar novelty item known as a *One Wish Willow.*   Thinking this quirky little oddity of an impulse item might amuse Nikki, Bear does indeed buy it on impulse.  But, alas, when the time comes for the bumbling Bear to give Nikki the gift and declare his feelings, he turtles.  Alone in his car he berates himself for his heterosexual incompetence and in a rash act of bitter self-pitying irony, he snaps the One Wish Willow in two while wishing for Nikki to "love him more than anything in the world."  It’s no spoiler, of course, to reveal that this is exactly what happens.  The rest of the film, in varying degrees of quality and gore, is a series of relationships-are-Hell set-pieces that eventually lead Bear to mourn for his old onanistic existence. Nikki’s original intelligent and sarcastic disposition is entirely supplanted by a volatile, manic Bear-smitten doppelgänger. She begins to exhibit biploar unhinged behavior: staying up all night watching Bear as he sleeps, standing in place and urinating and defecating while waiting for him to return from work, threatening acts of self-harm to extort his loyalty, and then, during a social gathering upon witnessing Bear about to kiss another young woman during a parlor game, Nikki actually does self-harm as she mutilates her own face with a broken bottle. From here, the picture descends into the familiar crude climax of most American horror films: rapidly occurring acts of wanton violence the typical horror audience will have been numbed to dozens of films ago (or two Terrifier films ago) separated by the briefest interludes of character reflection, in Obsession’s case, this means Bear accepting the full consequences of his catastrophic violation of Nikki's autonomy, followed by a lightning quick role reversal which ensures the movie ends with the de rigueur horror film balancing of the cosmic order.

There’s no need to list all the film’s many plot holes (how did Sandy the cat manage to open dead grandma’s bottle of oxycodone and why did Sandy like the taste of them so much he/she ate enough of them to die, couldn’t the filmmaker find a more plausible way to set up the feline cannibal lunch scene? Why are the rules of the One Wish Willow so vague? Why does Nikki become violently obsessive rather than simply “in love,” Bear’s wish was that she love him more than anything, not that she become insanely jealously obsessive, to list just a few so you know I am not exaggerating when I say there are many, though unless you have seen the film you have no way to know if I have just listed them all and am lying when I say there are more), better to lament its wasted opportunity.  The film could have been a first-rate character study of our modern American adult male, the increasingly celibate terminal adolescent who can’t connect with women because of his submission to the electronic and pornographic environment, yet still feels entitled to “have one.”  Almost all of Obsession’s one hundred and eight minute run time is spent on how Bear can manage his problems (how to get Nikki, how to keep Nikki, how to keep his friends from wondering how he got Nikki, how to keep his friends from noticing how oddly Nikki is behaving, how to keep Nikki from hurting herself, how to keep Nikki from hurting others) rather than Bear recognizing his role in creating his problems.  There was greater character development in the 25 minute Twilight Zone love obsession episode The Chaser than in this film.  Indeed, Bear’s last scene epiphany is too little, too late to save the movie from being anything other than an occasionally creepy, occasionally gory and reviews-contradicting never funny Make-A-Wish gimmick flick in which the gimmick is the sick boy’s wish ultimately turns out to be a wish to die. 

Red Rooms

What is Red Rooms?  It’s certainly not a horror movie.  It’s not a thriller, as it is numbingly boring.  Is it a character study?  If so, it’s a study of an implausible character: a fashion model/genius poker player/AI developer/hacker.  Can you imagine Gigi Hadid as a real life Girl With A Dragon Tatoo?  Neither can I.  So that eliminates Red Rooms as a character study.  What are we left with? A tediously paced, incomprehensible plot hole that seems as if it were made-up scene-by-scene on the fly by a *filmmaker* named (and aptly initialed) Pascal Plante.

The story, as best I can remember it from my stupor, is as follows:

Kelly-Anne is a mannish-looking Montreal fashion mannekin AND whizbang online poker player AND whizbang AI developer who programmed her own AI assistant named Guinevere who appears only to speak English even though Kelly-Anne is a native French speaker AND whizbang hacker who can break into any electronic device and steal any access code she wants and who appears to live a remarkably sterile, isolated life in a sterile luxury high-rise. Her only amusement appears to be an obsession with an ongoing, high-profile trial of a scrawny, pasty incel-looking geek named Ludovic Chevalier, who is accused of being the *Demon of Rosemont* (Rosemont being a Montreal borough), a serial killer who allegedly tortured and murdered three Aryan-looking teenage girls, and broadcast the mischief live in dark web *red rooms.*  He picked these particular victims because, according to the script’s knowledge of the dark web, Aryan-looking girl snuff films earn more money.

Anyway and inexplicably, Kelly-Anne goes to extraordinary lengths to secure a seat at the courthouse every morning, going so far as to sleep in alleyways to maintain her place in line, though why she couldn’t just rise early in the morning and take a cab to the courthouse is never explained, even though at one point Kelly-Anne is asked this very question by a waifish Chevalier fangirl named Clémentine who, during the court proceedings, becomes acquainted with Kelly-Anne.  For some reason, Kelly-Anne invites the emotionally volatile Clémentine to stay at her apartment for the duration of the trial.  This subplot adds nothing to the movie other than a few boring scenes of Clémentine trying awkwardly to bond with Kelly-Anne.  

Anyway, eventually the movie attempts to proceed to some sort of climax, with a distraught Clémentine lamenting missing what she believes is exonerating evidence, the two recovered snuff videos, which are shown in court only to jurors and family members, with gooners such as Clémentine and the passive onlooker Kelly-Anne having to vacate the courtroom. While waiting in the hallway, Kelly-Anne reveals that she has already obtained the horrific videos via the dark web.  When they return to Kelly-Anne’s apartment she shows Clémentine the videos. As they view the footage, Kelly-Anne coldly points out that the masked killer shares Chevalier’s highly distinct blue eyes and unusual gait. For some reason, this flimsy *proof* shatters Clémentine’s delusions; now profoundly disturbed, she packs her belongings and flees back to her hometown, abandoning her obsession entirely.

Left to her own devices, Kelly-Anne’s behavior, which heretofore had been icily unemotional, for some reason spirals into an alarming realm. Her fixation pivots toward the third, unrecovered video—the murder of the youngest victim, a 13-year-old girl named Camille, while she also begins cyber-stalking Camille's grieving mother, Francine.

So, finally, after seeming cinematic hours of nothing much happening, on Chevalier’s birthday, Kelly-Anne orchestrates a shocking stunt: she attends the trial in a Camille cosplay costume: blonde wig, blue colored contact lenses, and a replica school uniform. Though she is swiftly ejected from the courtroom by security, she achieves what one assumes is her desired effect. Chevalier, who has sat rigid and impassive for the entire trial, makes direct eye contact with Kelly-Anne and offers her a slight, knowing smile and wave.  For some reason, this seems to have been Kelly-Anne’s desired outcome. Unsurprisingly, Kelly-Anne’s modeling agency is put-off by Kelly-Anne’s bizarre antics and promptly terminates her contract.

Having severed her ties to normal society, Kelly-Anne now focuses like a laser on acquiring Camille's missing snuff video, which is not really missing, because a miscreant is putting it up for a private dark web auction.  Like all of the previous computer shit Kelly-Anne is supposed to be a genius at, the script demonstrates this computer genius stuff by showing the audience shots of Kelly-Anne staring at several computer monitors which are littered with incomprehensible computer code stuff while she keyboards unknown-to-the-audience commands which unlock or allow access or do computer stuff which Kelly-Anne wants.  All this computer shit combined with some online poker allows Kelly-Anne to purchase the third snuff video, which, for some reason, has eluded law enforcement agencies, despite their months and months of investigation.

Anyway, after for some reason suspecting that her AI, Guinevere, might be monitoring her illicit activities, she meticulously destroys the hardware in a blender before viewing the snuff video. Her reaction to the video is entirely devoid of horror (as is the film); she appears merely satisfied, as if completing a complex puzzle.

In the film's limp climax, Kelly-Anne breaks into the home of Camille's mother. She slips into the deceased girl's bedroom, for some reason takes a few selfies in the school uniform, and then quietly leaves a flash drive containing the missing video on the mother's bedside table. The video is subsequently turned over to the authorities, which, for some reason, forces Chevalier to change his plea to guilty (two snuff videos in which he is masked would not be enough to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, but three videos would??  LOL.  OK.  Whatever.  Let’s just end this movie, already).

The picture mercifully concludes by, I suppose, emphasizing Kelly-Anne’s chilling emotional void. She did not solve the case out of any sense of justice or empathy for the victims, but rather to test her own limits and satisfy a deeply narcissistic obsession.  I guess.

<yawn.>

There is nothing remotely interesting about the film itself, which *runs* for one hour and fifty-eight minutes. . .a runtime that seems more like a three hour crawl.

I found myself for most of the film wondering if its *star,* a woman named Juliette Gariépy, was, in fact, really a woman. That’s one of the effects of living in an Age of Abundant Transsexualism, any mannish-looking woman, such as Juliette Gariépy, is immediately suspect of having a penis.  This concludes our review.

The Late Great Rex Reed

Born in 1938 in Fort Worth, Texas, Mr. Rex Taylor Reed emerged in the 1960s as a formidable force in American journalism. Educated at Louisiana State University, he cultivated a reputation as an arbiter of taste whose acerbic wit and unyielding standards became the stuff of legend. Writing for esteemed publications such as Vogue, GQ, The New York Times, and most notably during his long tenure at The New York Observer, Mr. Reed was never merely a reviewer; he was a gatekeeper of cinematic elegance.

It is difficult not to lament his departure from the cultural forefront, for one must acknowledge him as, quite perhaps, the last great American film critic. His loss to the daily discourse is not an isolated event, but rather a stark symptom of an overall American cultural decline. We have traded the sharpened pen of the educated aesthete for the clamor of the crowd.

In a bygone era, a discerning audience could comfortably rely on the elevated, uncompromising opinions of film experts like Rex to guide their evening’s entertainment. A critic of his caliber served as a necessary filter against mediocrity. Nowadays, however, we find ourselves navigating a rather regrettable landscape. The critical establishment has thoroughly capitulated to populism, resulting in a confounding reality where cinematic garbage such as Black Panther, Oppenheimer, and Sinners is universally praised. It is a time when sheer spectacle and trendy posturing have entirely usurped the quiet dignity of genuine cinematic art, and it is, at best, a faint hope that one day there will be a swing back toward the refined standards Mr. Reed so admirably defended.

PS: Nobody in the Arts ever used the word *ossified* more frequently or aptly. Here are a just a few examples:

A Prairie Home Companion (2006): "The jabbering, meandering and ossified movie that Robert Altman has made from Garrison Keillor's lumbering, affected and pointless audio curiosity A Prairie Home Companion is not a movie at all".

The Cured (2018): When confronted with this Irish zombie picture, he used the term to indict the entire category of film, noting, "The latest in this ossified cornball genre is The Cured, which at least tries for a soupçon of freshness".

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018): Directing his weariness toward the blockbuster action series, he remarked that it was "business as usual with Fallout, the sixth installment in the ossified franchise series that seems more like the sixtieth.”

RIP Rex Reed