“Only 2 percent of the human genome codes for proteins, which is to say only 2 percent does anything demonstrably and unequivocally practical.”

-- Bill Bryson, “The Body: A Guide for Occupants,” which does for biology what he did for other sciences in “A History of Nearly Everything.” Most of it, of course, is going over my head or is tough to grasp: “Unpacked, you are positively enormous. Your lungs, smoothed out, would cover a tennis court, and the airways within them would stretch nearly from coast to coast. The length of all your blood vessels would take you two and a half times around Earth.” And it gets worse. Or we get bigger. Stuff inside us could go to the moon and back. Here's another line, by the way, that I am one with, that helps explain me to me: “What is perhaps most remarkable is that nothing is in charge. Each component of the cell responds to signals from other components, all of them bumping and jostling like so many bumper cars...” Explains all of humanity, really.

WARNING: SPOILERS

The movie begins with Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) sitting bored in her shop, and I quickly found myself bored by the film. Because of that? Is watching a bored person boring? I’m trying to think of a fascinating movie that focuses on a bored person and coming up blank.

“Bell, Book and Candle” seems like a great idea for a film. Kim Novak plays a witch who seduces “Vertigo” pal Jimmy Stewart on the day he'll get married. My local theater, SIFF Egyptian, played it on a recent Sunday as part of its Halloween program. I didn’t know much about it so decided to check it out. “Maybe there’s a reason it’s being resurrected,” I thought. “Maybe there’s something there.”

There isn’t.

Catty
Gillian runs a shop full of African artifacts on the ground floor of a Manhattan apartment building where both her aunt (Elsa Lanchester, Bride of Frankenstein), and publisher Shepherd Henderson (Stewart) live. She doesn’t have many customers but she doesn’t seem to mind. She just minds the boredom. These are the first lines of the film. It’s Gillian talking to Pyewacket, her Siamese cat: 

What's the matter with me? Why do I feel this way? It’s such a rut. The same old thing day after day. Same old people. I know I’m feeling sorry for myself but it’s true. Why don't you give me something for Christmas, Pye? … What would I like? … I'd like to do something different. I’d like to meet someone different.

She decides that Shepherd is that someone. Coincidentally, her aunt already has a hand in. She shows up at his place uninvited, and after he tells her to leave she casts a spell on his telephone, requiring him to borrow Gillian’s phone to call the phone company.

Stewart’s Shepherd is mostly an innocent in this movie, but you gotta wonder: Did he knock on Gillian’s door because Kim Novak was on the other side? Sly dog.

Plus he keeps showing up. It’s Christmas Eve, and though Shepherd is meeting his bride-to-be, Merle Kittridge (Janice Rule), Gillian offhandedly mentions a pub she and her fam will be at, and guess what? Shepherd shows up! With Merle! Then it gets catty. In college, Gillian and Merle didn’t like each other, so Gillian cast a spell to make Merle … what was it … frightened? Of thunder and lightning? In the present day, Gillian casts a spell to make Shepherd fall in love with her.

Could anything be more perfectly Hollywood patriarchal than that? Kim Novak having to cast a spell to make a 50-year-old man fall for her? 

It works, of course. He breaks it off with What’s-Her-Name and sets to canoodling with Gillian. Oh, right. She also casts a spell to send a big-name author, Sidney Redlitch (Ernie Kovacs), to Shepherd, and thank god. Kovacs is a breath of fresh air in this thing. Redlitch is interested in the supernatural but mostly interested in his next drink. At one point they offer him bourbon or whiskey, he downs whatever they give him and asks what it was. Told whiskey, he requests the bourbon. Everything Kovacs does works in a way that the rest of the film does not. Kovacs is off-kilter and perfect.

For his next book, Redlitch is sussing out—coincidence alert!—witches in New York, and guess who helps? Gillian’s bongo-playing warlock brother Nicky (Jack Lemmon). For some reason, he’s willing to give up the ghost, and admit everything, to get a few bucks. Apparently blinking money or gold into existence isn’t a thing for these witches. 

The bongo-playing makes me wonder, though, if the whole witches enclave idea didn't spring from, I don’t know, someone checking out Beatniks or homosexuals or some other in Greenwich Village. Fifties culture was staid and bland but there were subterranean movements that would soon shift everything. Was this movie a bland harbinger of all that?

Admittedly, it most just feels like 1950s floof, and the last half is pretty convoluted. Gillian confesses about the spell, Shep doesn’t believe her. Then he does believe her and breaks up with her, and goes to another witch to have her spell removed, but he can’t convince Merle about the spell so she'll take him back. Meanwhile, Gillian is falling apart, particularly since Pyewacket keeps running away from her. Because she’s no longer a witch. You lose your witchiness, apparently, if you fall in love, which she’s done with Shep, and the proof is when she cries. Witches can’t cry. When Shep realizes this, he takes her in his arms and kisses her. Happy ending.

Unmentioned is the fact that she cries not when Shep leaves her but when Pyewacket does. That’s the true love story.

Broomsticks
Given the talent in the room, the thing’s a slog. It had some success. It got Novak (and Pyewacket) on the cover of Life magazine, and it (along with “I Married a Witch”) inspired the successful 1960s TV sitcom “Bewitched." But it wasn’t the success they thought it would be. It certainly didn’t last—the screening at SIFF notwithstanding.

Apparently Stewart thought he was awkward in the lead, was tired of romancing women half his age, and stopped taking romantic lead roles thereafter. His next, “Anatomy of a Murder,” was actually perfect for him.

The title is a reference to exorcising a witch—“ring the bell, close the book, quench the candle”—but it’s a bad title. I keep wanting to go “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.” Which, come to think of it, is a better title. For this. Even if we don't see bedknobs.

Per Brian Jay Jones' “George Lucas: A Life,” these were some of the options they considered over the years, particularly as Lucas and Steven Spielberg debated whether there should be aliens in the thing (Spielberg was against it, initially), and if so, how much?

• Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars
• Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods
• Indiana Jones and the Atomic Ants
• Indiana Jones and the Destroyer of Worlds
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls

Eventually they singularized the last one and went with that. Shame. The first and third options have a fun 1950s vibe to them. All that schlock Lucas and Spielberg grew up on, then regurgitated back to the masses with A-production values.

I paused before celebrating, before shouting with joy, because last night for some reason I was misjudging a lot of fly balls. I'm usually better at that. I usually know, before anyone else at Mariners Park, for example, when it's gone, and, more importantly, when it's not. Crack of the bat, people around me are all “Ooohhh!” and I'm like, “Nah, can of corn.” And it's a can of corn. Tougher when I'm sitting in a different seat than my usual, and last night I wasn't sitting in my usual TV-watching seat, so maybe it was that. I was mostly misjudging Dodgers' batters so maybe it was pure wish fulfillment, too. Dodgers also hit more to the warning track than the Yankees did. Except ... Was it Kike Hernandez's fly out to left in the ninth? Again, it seemed a mighty wallop off the bat but it barely went anywhere. A pop out. Mid-range. Maybe he broke his bat. Maybe I'm just getting to that age.

So that's why I paused even though all signs pointed to YES. But I wanted to see it go out first. And then I wanted to see it go out again. And then I wanted to watch it a billion-zillion times.

In a game in which no one could break through—the Yankees kept stranding runners while the Dodgers kept hitting it to the warning track—the Yankees, the bad guys, took a lead in the top of the tenth on a line single by Jazz Chisholm Jr. (who, if he's not taunted as “Jism” in enemy ballparks, someone's missing a beat), and Jazz promptly stole second, and then third, and then scored when Dodgers shortstop and suprise NLCS MVP Tommy Edman dove for a grounder but couldn't get it out of his glove in time to start the double play to nullify the run. 3-2, Yanks.

Bottom 10, and it was 7-8-9 hitters up, and I'm sure everyone was thinking what I was thinking: Someone has to get on so Shohei can come up. And someone did get on: With one out, Gavin Lux walked. Which brought up Edman. And I'm sure everyone was thinking what I was thinking: Don't ground into a double play, don't ground into a double play, don't ground into a double play. And he nearly did! Except defense replacement at 2B Oswaldo Cabrera overdove for the ball and everyone was safe. Now it was one out, two men on, and the top of the Dodgers lineup due up, Ohtani, Mookie, Freddie, maybe the three best players at the top of any lineup in baseball history. First and third were lefties. And Yankees manager Aaron Boone had two lefties in the bullpen: Tim Hill, a superskinny sidewinder with a wisp of a moustache, who looks more accountant than baseball player—he looks less like a Yankee than any Yankee I've ever seen—and Nestor Cortes, a starter who went 9-10 this season with a 3.77 ERA and a solid 162-39 strikeout-walk ratio, but who hadn't pitched, a TV graphic told us, since Sept. 18 (against Seattle!) because of a flexor strain in his elbow. But postgame Boone said he thought Cortes was looking good. He liked that matchup better, he said. And that's the matchup he got. 

Cortes threw only two pitches.

The first, Shohei popped up into foul territory in left field, and Alex Verdugo made a great catch, tumbling into the seats, and recalling that Jeter catch from 20 years ago. Apparently it wasn't a great pitch. Apparently it's the type of pitch Shohei usually eats for breakfast. Not this time. And a collective groan was heard throughout this great land.

Then the Yanks did the automatic-walk thing to Mookie Betts to get to the other lefty, Freddie Freeman, who'd injured his ankle in late September, but kept playing postseason baseball on it, limping around the bases. He'd hit a triple earlier in the game but he obviously wasn't 100%. And Mookie had been smashing the ball.

Even so, we were questioning that intentional walk. “Isn't he putting the winning run in scoring position?” I said to Jeff and Patricia. Jeff agreed. He didn't think much of the strategy. At this point, I was hoping for a single.

Earlier in the game, RE: Freddie, my friend Tim texted, “It just occurred to me how appropriate it is that Freeman has a bum leg,” and then included a link to Freddy Freeman, the “crippled newsboy,” as they used to say, who with one magic word could turn himself into one of the mightiest of mortal beings: Captain Marvel Jr.!

Fifteen seconds after Cortes threw his second pitch, Tim texted me that magic word: SHAZAM!

Fifteen seconds after that, I thought of the obvious precedent: hobbled Dodger comes to the plate in the final inning of Game 1 of the World Series, two outs, one run behind, and hits the walkoff homerun. It's Kirk Gibson all over again. Not quite, of course. Gibson was so hobbled he couldn't play, he was pinch-hitting, and Freeman wasn't facing the best closer in the game, and Gibson had only one man on. The bases were juiced for Freddie; Cortes couldn't walk him. But I doubt he wanted that first pitch to be a midrange fastball middle in. In his stroll toward first, Freddie raised his bat high in the air, as if saluting the game, as if offering a benediction, and then let it roll off his hand and drop to the ground, its mighty work done.

The Dodgers mighty work isn't done yet. They have three games to get to their eighth title and prevent the Yankees from getting to their 28th. But this was a helluva opening act.

MICHAEL: Before we wrap this up here, can I just put something out into the universe—like the secret? I just want to put something out into the universe. I just want to remind anyone who might be listening who works in the Dodgers organization of a truth about the universe, okay? Giancarlo Stanton has never once in his entire career made contact with a slider. If you throw Giancarlo Stanton a fastball, he will hit it 520 feet. So in my opinion, in my humble opinion, it would be a better idea to throw Giancarlo Stanton sliders. It would be more optimal for the Dodgers to throw him sliders low and away than it would be to throw him fastballs belt high on the inner half.

JOE: What would you think about throwing two sliders low and away that he swings at and misses and then throw three balls out of the zone and then throw a fastball? How would that work?

MICHAEL: I was with you until you got to the point where you throw him the fastball. Here's the way I would suggest you approach Giancarlo Stanton. I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: Yep.

MICHAEL: Then on the next pitch, I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: OK, good.

MICHAEL: And then as a change up, as a way to like throw him off balance ... I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: And then what would you do if he just said, “No, I'm not swinging.”

MICHAEL: It's a great question. I would throw him a slider low and away.

JOE: OK.

MICHAEL: Followed by two sliders low and away.

JOE: Yes.

MICHAEL: And then a slider low and away. And let me say one other thing. At some point, Dodgers pitchers, you may be thinking to yourself—because this is how you were trained as a pitcher—“I need to,” and I quote, “establish the fastball,” end quote. And what I would say to you, Dodger pitchers, “No, you don't.”

JOE: Right.

MICHAEL: You don't. You do not need to establish anything. What you need to do is throw a slider that starts at the knees on the outer half and breaks out of the zone. And if it doesn't work, you should do it 50 more times.

-- Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski, on the latest Poscast, with midseason vaudeville comic timing. It's an exchange that made me very, very happy.

I guess I'll have to take down my sign: 

THE WORLD SERIES: YANKEE-FREE SINCE 2009

They were so close to breaking their own record, too! No one's talking about that. Since they acquired Babe Ruth in 1920 and made the World Series for the first time in 1921, and then became the most successful, insufferable and loathed team on the planet, the New York Yankees have had the following gaps in terms of pennants:

• 2 seasons (1924-25)
• 3 seasons (1929-31)
• 3 seasons (1933-35)
• 1 season (1940)
• 3 seasons (1944-46)
• 1 season (1948)
• 1 season (1954)
• 1 season (1959)
• 11 seasons (1965-1975)
• 2 seasons (1979-80)
• 14 seasons (1982-1995)
• 1 season (1997)
• 1 season (2002)
• 5 seasons (2004-2008)
• 14 seasons (2010-2023)

Another season and they would've broken their own post-Babe Ruth record for futility!

Although ... maybe they did? Shouldn't the 1982-95 dearth eliminate '94 since no World Series was played? In which case, that era went pennantless for 13 seasons, and the Hal Steinbrenner group did 14. We have a new WEINER! And it's pinstriped!

This is the match-up the networks wanted, and some fans wanted, but it's not what I or Michael Schur wanted. The Yankees won their 41st pennant, the Dodgers their 22nd—and the Dodgers are second in all of Major League Baseball. That's how much the Yankees are ahead of everyone.

Actually this is how much the Yankees are ahead of everyone. The Dodgers have a chance to win their eighth World Series title, which would tie them with the Giants for fifth all-time, behind: the Red Sox and A's (nine each), the Cardinals (11), and the Yankees ... who have 27. Twenty-seven. Nearly three times as many as the second-place team. Rooting for them is like rooting for Jeff Bezos to get a tax cut.

Anyway, I'll be rooting for Shohei and the LA Dodgers, and hoping that my new sign, “THE WORLD SERIES: YANKEE-FREE SINCE 2024,” will have a long, long, long life.

John Amos (with Esther Rolle) in “Good Times”: the very definition of a man.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, John Amos seemed the very definition of a man to me. He was forceful and joyous, stern and affable. He put his best face on, and fought as best he could, and usually it wasn't enough—but he was still strong. If you'd asked me what a man was, I would've said that guy: James Evans, Sr., Gordie the weatherman, Kunta Kinte.

I guess I saw him on “Mary Tyler Moore” first, but he made the bigger impression on “Good Times,” and the show was never the same after he left. For some reason, I thought he'd left it, but I guess it was the opposite. The show couldn't sanction his public criticisms of its most popular character, his son, J.J. “Dy-no-MITE” Evans (Jimmie Walker), and let him go. History has since backed up Amos on the matter—though, in a perfect world, where groups controlled their own narrative, and there was much representation rather than a few characters against a sea of white, you might argue that J.J. wasn't dissimilar from what Barney Fife was doing on “Andy Griffith.” But it wasn't a perfect world.

After the dismissal, Amos played one of the most central roles in one of the most watched and impactful miniseries of all time: “Roots.” There was that strength again, to keep running, to be free, only to have his foot chopped off. More heartbreaking, for me, was a later scene. He and another slave, Bell (Madge Sinclair), have a daughter, and he suggests they name her Kizzy, which means “Stay put” in his language. That makes Bell happy because she's tired of Kunta running. But once Kizzy is an adult, now played by Leslie Uggams, a series of unfortunate circumstances (being taught to write by a stupid white girl, then using those skills to help her boyfriend escape, and then him giving her up), all of that lead to her being sold to a man who rapes her. I remember her being tied up in the bag of a wagon that's being pulled away from her crying mother and distraught father, and the father, after she's gone, does something with the dirt, an old African ritual so she will return to them. The wife looks at him with contempt and says:

“I thought her name was supposed to do that!”

The look of utter defeat on the man after that. Was it the last we ever saw of Kunta Kinte in the miniseries? I think it was. That awful moment. (Apologies if I misremembered anything. It's been nearly 50 years.)

It's odd that an actor who will be in your field of vision constantly and then, though they keep working, not at all. Amos appeared in stuff I knew about—“Love Boat,” “The A-Team,” “Trapper John, M.D.,” “Hunter”—but those weren't shows I watched. To be honest, they seemed a step down from MTM and Norman Lear productions. Did he get a bad rep from the J.J. complaints? And relegated here. I don't think I saw Amos in anything until “Coming to America” 10 years later, when he played the overly ambitious restauranteur Cleo McDowell. Then he was in “Die Hard 2” ... as a villain! That was a shocker. James Evans Sr.—the bad guy? And then maybe I saw him on “West Wing” 10 years after that? We just kept missing each other. But during my formative years, John Amos was formative. He meant something. 

Bottom of the 9th, 2 runs down, 2 outs, nobody on, 0-2 count. In a best-of-7 series where you're already down two games to none. Against a team you never beat. That was Cleveland last night.

Not enough has been made of the pain the New York Yankees have caused the Cleveland Naps/Indians/Guardians through the years. Cleveland was the first American League team to integrate, second only to the Brooklyn Dodgers, promoting Larry Doby in July 1947 and continuing with others throughout the late '40s and early '50s. The Dodgers, buoyed by such Negro League greats, became perennial pennant winners in the NL during this time but that didn't happen with the Indians. Why? The Yankees. Yes, the Indians won the World Series in 1948, only their second ever, and a third pennant in 1954, winning 111 games during the regular season but losing to the Willie Mays-led New York Giants in the World Series. Otherwise? They kept finishing second. They finished second in 1951, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956—all to the Yankees. They could've been a dynasty. But for the Yankees. The racist Yankees.

So instead they became a symbol for such ineptitude that Hollywood had to make a movie, “Major League” in 1989, about how they beat the Yankees and won the pennant. (Shades of Douglass Wallop!) Because after '54? They didn't win the pennant for another 40 years. And in the division era they didn't come close, never finishing higher than fourth in their division between 1969 and 1993.

Ah, but then the mid-90s! Great team! They had talent everywhere: Belle, Lofton, Thome, MannyBManny, Hershiser, Omar, Baerga. They looked to be a dynasty. Instead, the Jeter-led Yankees became the dynasty. The Indians went to the Series twice and lost both times. The Yankees went to the Series four times (1996, 1998-2000) and won every time.

I could go on. George Steinbrenner came to embody the Yankees but where was he from? Cleveland. Superman came to embody a New York-like Metropolis but where was he created? Cleveland. The only player killed in a Major League baseball game was Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman, who was hit in the head by a fastball in the helmet-less days of 1920. Who threw the pitch? Joe Mays. A pitcher for the New York Yankees.

In 2017, the year after losing to the Cubs in the World Series, Cleveland got knocked out in the Division Series, 3 games to 2, by the Yankees. In the 2020 Wild Card Series? Lost 2-0 to the Yankees. In the 2022 Division Series? 3-2 to the Yankees.

Last night seemed more of the same. They were finally taking a lead into the late innings, and had the best closer in the world, Emmanuel Clase, at the ready. And with two outs in the top of the eighth, Hunter Gaddis walked Juan Soto on four pitches and so Clase was called for and got two quick strikes on Aaron Judge, but who, on the fourth pitch, hit a line shot to the opposite field. Anyone else hits that, it's an out, or a double at best. Judge is so strong it went over the wall. Tie game. And while Cleveland fans were probing this new bruise, Giancarlo Stanton gave them another one, hitting a homer to center to take the lead.

The Yanks added another in the top of the 9th, and had their new all-world closer, onetime Mariner Luke Weaver, at the ready. Jose Ramirez got on via an error but was erased in a double play. Which brought up Lane Thomas, the epitome of a journeyman. He'd been drafted in the fifth round of the 2014 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays, who, after several years in the minors, traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals for (get this) “international bonus slot money.” I didn't even know that was a thing. In three years barely playing with the Cards, he was a .100/.200/.300 player before being traded to the Washington Nationals, where, for four years playing more regularly, he was a .200/.300/.400 guy. Mid-season he wound up in Cleveland, where he was so-so. He's also the guy who hit the grand slam off of Tarik Skubal to send Cleveland here, to the ALCS, to face the Yankees yet again. But he worked the count. Down 0-2, he didn't bite, and got it back to 3-2. And then he hit a double off the top of the wall in left-center. Life!

Jhonkensky Noel? Called Big Christmas by his teammates. Another midseason player, this one a call-up. DR, 23 years old, apparently signed by Cleveland in .... 2017? When he was ... 16??? Is that legal? Big strong kid, built like a tank, but with a tendency to strike out. Not even 200 plate appearances for the season and 63 Ks. But 13 homers. Against Detroit in the ALDS he got some playing time but went 0-15. He started Game 1 of the ALCS in right field, went 1-2, but was replaced by a pinch-hitter in the seventh. He didn't play in Game 2. This time, he was the pinch-hitter, and on the second pitch sent one screaming into the chilly Cleveland night 404 feet away. And Cleveland erupted. And his bat flip! It wasn't the showy kind. He didn't hold onto it, linger over it. The opposite. He swung ferociously, and then, as if on a rubber band, snapped it back to dismiss it. He's saying This is over. It's a thing of beauty.

So now it's a tie game. Setting up the bottom of the 10th. I was almost hoping for a bloop single, to be honest. One of the Naylor brothers, Bo, led off and singled, was sacrificed to second, and would've been thrown out after a come-backer to one-time Yankees closer Clay Holmes, but Holmes opted for the certain out at first. If David Fry had singled, all of New York would've wanted Holmes' head. I could imagine the hand-wringing, the Daily News and Post headlines calling for Holmes' head. Instead, Fry sent it into the Cleveland night as well. Who is he? Not even a journeyman. He's 29 next month and this is just his second MLB season, both with Cleveland. He did well, .800 OPS, and even became an All-Star. And now this. He'll always have this. We'll always have this.

I'm not holding my breath. Momentum, as Earl Weaver famously said, is the next day's starting pitcher, and Cleveland is throwing out Gavin Williams, a 25-year-old who went 3-10 this season with an ERA near 5.00. He's another midseason guy who strikes out nearly one an inning. We'll see. Either way, it's fun now. There's life. All we want is life. And for Yankee fans to suffer crushing defeats for 100 years. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

The movie poster kind of gives away the goods, doesn’t it? Not that there’s much good in them.

At the outset, Stan (Kevin McCarthy), a big-band clarinetist, is having a nightmare. He’s in a small, mirrored room, where a man is attempting to open a safe with a blowtorch, while a beautiful blonde (Marian Carr), first seen as a floating head, stands nearby. Then the man tries to choke Stan. They go round and round, and the blonde hands the man an icepick, except, oops, she hands it to Stan who sticks it in the other guy. Cue Nelson Riddle-like blare of music. The girl flees, Stan hides the body, steps outside and falls, and falls, and falls…

And wakes up. Whew!

Except! What are these odd bruises around his neck? Why the bloodstains on his sleeve? And where did he get this odd-shaped key?

He calls in sick to work (with Billy May and his Orchestra) and wanders the town. “I had to get out of my room,” he tells us via voiceover. “Out into the sunshine. I had to stay out of the shadows.“

A lot of the movie is this kind of voiceover. It gets old fast. One generation’s arty is the next generation’s eyeroll.

Eventually he goes to see his brother-in-law, Rene (Edward G. Robinson), who’s in the garage working on his boat, but during the day is a New Orleans homicide detective. Whereas earlier Stan was confused about whether the murder was in a dream or not, now he’s certain. “It happened, Rene, it happened!” he insists. Rene tells him to take a vacation. “C’mon, kid,” he says. “Let’s wrap ourselves around some chow.”

So Stan investigates on his own. In his dream, he remembers a slow, melancholy tune, a dirge, but he can’t place it, and goes around town playing it before bandmates and famed New Orleans musicians—such as Meade “Lux” Lewis making a cameo. “Sorry, Stan,” Lewis says. “I guess I lose the $64,000.”

But guess who he spots at Meade’s bar? The blonde! They drink rye, she suggests going back to her place, they neck for two seconds, and then he sees the reflection of their reflection in the mirror—his back, her front—things get wavy, and he begs off, learning nothing.

Days go by. More fretting and frustration. Then Rene shows up with his wife, Stan’s sister (Virginia Christine, who played Mrs. Olson in Folgers commercials for decades), and Stan’s songstress girlfriend Gina (Connie Russell), for a picnic in the country. Stan relents, then suggests Bayou Lafourche, but doesn’t know why; and when a thunderstorm sends them scattering, Stan tells them where to drive: over this bridge and toward that mansion. It’s like he’s been there before! Nobody’s home, but Stan finds the spare key ... in the flower pot! Then they go in and make themselves at home—as one does.

For some reaason, Rene now believes Stan really did murder someone. “You didn’t have the guts to say, ‘Look, Rene, I went to such-and-such a place and killed a guy!’” he shouts. “You had to cook up a dream!” As they argue in the kitchen, guess who walks in? Deputy Torrence (Rhys Williams), who’s been watching the place, the Belknap mansion, because, yes, a double homicide was committed there. The more they look into it, the more all signs point to Stan. And when Rene drops him back at his place, this is his parting advice: “Run out. I’m giving you that one last chance. When they catch up with you, I want you to meet your finish somewhere else, not here.” Geez, thanks, bro-in-law.

After a suicide attempt that Rene foils, Rene finally asks the question he should’ve asked back at the garage: “Tell me everything that happened that night.” The key to it all? His kooky neighbor, Britten, at the Hotel New Orleans, who foists cough drops and daiquiris on him, and who that night showed up with a candle to say his lights were out, then retreated, telling Stan over and over: “You’re tired… you’re tired.”

Yes, two-thirds of the way through we finally get to the hypnosis that the movie poster spills at the outset.

Nightmare, I did
Britten, Rene figures out, is actually Mr. Belknap (Gage Clarke), and he hypnotized the notoriously suggestive Stan into … I guess showing up at the Belknap place and standing around until someone tried to choke him? And hopefully the girl would hand him an icepick by mistake? Seriously, what was Belknap’s plan? And who did he want killed—safecracker Bob Clune (Sol Gorss) or his own wife, whom we never see, and who is run over by a car even though Stan can’t drive? Or was the blonde his wife? And the pickup at Meade’s bar was in fact a case of mistaken identity? Which makes you wonder why she couldn’t keep her hands off Stan. Was she a prostitute? No offense, Kevin.

As for the dirge no one recognizes? That’s a familiar tune played at a slower speed. So did Belknap play it at a slower speed to aid with the hypnosis, or did Stan hear it at a slower speed because of his hypnotic state? And if Belknap can hypnotize Stan into, whatever, showing up during a safecracking, why doesn’t he hypnotize him into sticking around at the scene of the crime? Or into writing a confession? Think of the work that went into this idiot plot. He stayed at the hotel for a week, priming Stan, and only got what he wanted because the icepick wound up in the wrong hands. And then he has to run over his wife with a car.

Apparently all that’s not enough to exonerate Stan—who, after all, did kill the safecracker. So Rene works with the local cops to record Belknap 1) confessing to the crime, and 2) hypnotizing Stan again (to show the law that it could be done).

“Nightmare” is based on a novella, “And So to Death,” by Cornell Woolrich, who was the source material for dozens of films, most notably Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” and whose work, someone wrote, tends to be heavy on atmosphere and light on plausibility. Checks out here anyway. The movie was adapted by its director, Maxwell Shane, who did five noir features in 10 years: “Fear in the Night,” “City Across the River,” “The Glass Wall,” “The Naked Street,” and this. This was the end of the line.

I like the location shooting around 1950s New Orleans—including a shot of the vertical neon “Hotel New Orleans” sign with the “s” burned out. I also like one bit of dialogue. After Rene’s “Run out” speech, Stan tries to kill himself by jumping out of his 15th floor window. He’s on the ledge, sweating, fretting, and a crowd gathers. Rene sees, and rushes back in. He tells the elevator operator “15th floor!” A few seconds later, we cut back to them.

Rene (frantic): Can’t you go any faster?
Elevator operator (bored): Got it wide open. 

In his memoir, Edward G. Robinson devotes barely a sentence to the film. It was made during the post-HUAC phase of his career, after he’d been accused of disloyalty and made to come hat-in-hand to the likes of Ward Bond so he could keep working. But he’d been relegated to B-pictures, which he did for money and for something to do, hating himself all the while. “Hell on Frisco Bay I did, and it was hell in Beverly Hills,” he writes. “Nightmare, I did, and it was nightmare all around me.”

The car ride to Bayou Lafourche looks like a scene from a failed '50 TV sitcom, “Brother-in-Law Knows Best,” about a New Orleans detective, his coffee-loving wife, her grumpy, twitchy brother, and his big-band-singing girlfriend. Tonight's episode: “Sunday Picnic”!

Noem's face tells us more than the New York Times lede.

What are the facts surrounding the Donald Trump rally last night outside Philadelphia?

• There were two medical emergencies in the crowd, the first 30 minutes into the Town Hall, the second shortly thereafter
• The Town Hall was suspended
• The gathering didn't disperse; instead, Trump called for music (“Hey Justin, how about a couple of really beauties, and we'll sit down and relax”) and stood on stage, listening and bobbing his head for 30 minutes

Here's how The New York Times described it. And let me highlight the areas about which I have questions:

Donald J. Trump was about 30 minutes into a town hall Monday night in suburban Philadelphia when a medical emergency in the crowd brought the questions and answers to a halt. Moments later, he tried to get back on track, when another medical incident seemed to derail things, this time for good.

And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.

Mr. Trump had his staff fire up his campaign playlist, standing on the stage for about half an hour and swaying to songs as his crowd slowly dwindled.

He bobbed his head through the Village People's “Y.M.C.A.,” his usual closing song. He swayed soberly to Rufus Wainwright's version of “Hallelujah,” watched a Sinead O'Connor video, rocked along to Elvis, watched the crowd during “Rich Men North of Richmond” and then, finally, left the stage to shake hands on his way out during one last song.

This used to be called “sugarcoating,” and in 2016 we called it “normalizing.” For the kids, it's “sanewashing.” But no matter what you call it, the Times is going out of its way to make odd behavior, questionable behavior, seem normal. And they only seem to do it with Donald Trump and the GOP. It goes one way. With the Dems, they hold their feet to the fire for minor missteps. With Trump, he could take a dump on the stage and the one-time Paper of Record would tell us he's a political candidate know for his earthiness. 

To the questions about the highlighted:

• Why would this derail things for good? Even later in the article, writer Michael Gold mentions that medical emergencies at Trump rallies this summer stopped nothing. “But Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed.” 
• “A political candidate known for improvisational departures” is the chef's kiss of normalizing Trump's batshit ramblings.
• “He seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.” Too much “seemed” and “appeared” to be this high up in the article. But if you're going to include it, also include the later line: “he seemed more uncertain how to proceed.”

Here's the key to it all: Trump did something that confused everybody. Nobody knew how to proceed: the music guy, Gov. Kristin Noem of South Dakota, who was moderating, nor the audience. This is the third-to-last graf of the story. It should be near the top:

But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There's nobody leaving,” he said. “What's going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.

Finally, no explanation why Gov. Noem of South Dakota was moderating an event near Philadelphia.

Saw this on social media over the weekend:

100%. Everything he says. The absolute dereliction of duty by our most respected news sources during the most dangerous time in my American lifetime is something that will not be forgiven. 

Here's the referenced NPR interview with Joe Kahn. Blather. Sure, the Times generally doesn't have to portray that “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our society,” but it should report what he says, without buffing it up, without dragging it toward the sensical; they should give it the same treatment and placement if Kamala or Biden had said something similar. Instead, it feels like there's a very low, almost nonexistent bar for Trump in Times coverage. On the stump, he could state the most atrocious things, and does, and is doing, and it rates nothing. 

This has been making the rounds as well. Kamala is called on ... what exactly? Bobbing and weaving? Because she's not as forthright as the Times demands? Because she focuses on what she wants to focus on? Meanwhile, Trump is not being called on ... what exactly? Overt racism? 

“Long-held fascination” is so awful there. “Yeah, it's just a hobby of his. Like stamp collecting.”

Margaret Sullivan has a SubStack post, “About Those New York Times Headlines,” and writes, of the “long-held fascination” headline:

The article itself got to the heart of the matter — but not until its 11th paragraph.

Trump, it noted, “has a pattern of using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly referred to immigrants who commit crimes as 'animals.'”

And later still, it noted that Trump's insistence that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” evokes “the ideology of eugenics promulgated by Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States.”

This is vile stuff. Cleaning it up so it sounds like an academic white paper is really not a responsible way to present what's happening.

I'd call it an absolute dereliction of duty. I don't know if anyone in the Trump era has disappointed me as much as The New York Times. They should be better. And they are utterly failing us.

The 2024 MLB season is down to four teams, and many are hoping for a reprise of the 2000 Subway Series (NY vs. NY), but longtime readers, or short-time readers, or people who barely glance at this blog, will know that that's not me. I want the other matchup (LA vs. CLE), for many, many reasons, and start with the obvious: Yankees Suck.

Here are the familiar numbers again, 40 and 27, the pennants and titles the Yankees hold, which is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY ahead of any other team. Second place for titles is the St. Louis Cardinals with 11, and no other team is in double digits. And, again, the Yankees have *27*. Comparatively, the Dodgers, who have had their successes, have only seven, while Guards and Mets are at just two apiece. Plus if we keep the World Series Yankee-free another season, I think we'll set a post-Babe Ruth record for pennant futility: 15 straight seasons. C'mon, people, we can do this! We're so close!

But there are other reasons I want LA-CLE. Those teams have the lowest payrolls. I mean, the Dodgers are fifth overall, and I guess Ohtani's contract is mostly deferred and so uncounted, but the two New York teams are 1 and 2. It's easy to forget, too, since they're such underdogs, but the Mets are No. 1 in payroll. The Mets. I guess they're still paying Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer? Yes and yes. They're also still paying Bobby Bonilla, who retired in 2001 and who's getting paid through 2035. Lesson there, kids: get a good financial planner.

But I also want the Dodgers because of Shohei and I want Cleveland because they haven't won it all since 1948—the longest title drought in the sport. Second place is a tie between the Padres and Brewers: est. 1969, never won. Then it's my Mariners: est. 1977, never been. Just think of the distance we've come since 1948. Rock 'n' roll didn't exist. Elvis Presley was 13 and in junior high, Martin Luther King was 19 and graduating from Morehouse College. Donald Trump was just 2! Temperamentally the same, of course.

Maybe best of all, an LA vs. CLE World Series would not only reprise the 1920 World Series (Brooklyn Robins vs. Cleveland Indians), it would be a matchup of the first two teams to break the color barrier. That'd be cool. I'm not saying the Yankees and Mets would be racist if they beat them, and denied us this, but it'd be close.

EXTRA READING:

• At the start of the season, Joe Posnanski counted down from the worst team in baseball (the Rockies) to the best, and this is where the remaining teams ranked per Joe: Dodgers (1), Yankees (10), Guardians (17), and Mets (18). This is the Poz who predicted great things for the Mariners, remember, to which Michael Schur deadpanned “Really,” speaking for everyone in Seattle.