By Madeline Barry "KAMALA!" Randy Rainbow’s new video is dedicated to none other than Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Sung to the upbeat tune of “Camelot,” the sketch begins with a clip of Joe Biden announcing Kamala’s nomination. Rainbow, dressed as a knight and with his back to the camera, watches diligently. He turns to face us, a large smile gracing his rosy-cheeked face and he begins to sing exurberantly. His enthusiasm for Harris’s nomination is evident. It’s clear he feels confident that she has what it takes to “help make Trump’s first term his last hurrah.” Along the way, he pokes fun at current Vice-President Mike Pence, exclaiming “And in his pants Mike Pence just made a pee pee/ he’s scared a her!” and addresses those who “push crazy racist birther theories.” Rainbow praises Harris for going after now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearings and her ability to incite tears among grown men. And just in case you need a reminder on how not to pronounce her name? Rainbow’s got you covered. “And don’t you dare pronounce her name Kah-MAH-Lah!” “A SPOONFUL OF CLOROX” Sung to the tune of “Spoonful of Sugar” from Mary Poppins, this Rainbow short begins with a shot of Rainbow in a plum-colored suit, declaring, “Every product ‘neath your sink might be a medicine to drink,” a obvious dig at Dr. Trump’s suggestion that Americans ingest hydroxychloroquine in order to defeat coronavirus. Rainbow sings his heart out, passionately belting, “Just a spoonful of Clorox makes your temperature go down.” He advises viewers to put “Pledge on your pancakes,” “bleach in your beer,” and “a flashlight up your ass,” among other unique home remedies. At one point, Rainbow dons a Mary Poppins style “Jolly Holiday” hat, complete with a below-the-chin scarf. “Since it’s improbable you’ll win/ with your hydroxychloroquine/ splash some Windex in your wine and you’ll resolve.” At the end of the video, Rainbow pours Tide into a water glass and chugs it. The music speeds up and a disturbing image of feet tagged in a body bag appears on the screen followed by a flashing warning that you should not actually drink cleaning products. Trump’s voice declares, “Maybe ya can, maybe ya can’t, I’m not a doctor,” but Randy has the last word, ending the video with a sarcastic “You’re kidding!”. “COVER YOUR FREAKIN' FACE!” In classic Randy Rainbow fashion, “Cover Your Freakin’ Face!” begins with real footage from a presidential press conference. The hint that you're about to dive into a Randy Rainbow video? The bottom of the screen, which reads: “PRES SLOBBERS THROUGH PRESS CONF WITHOUT MASK.” As Trump drones on, Rainbow appears in his familiar guise as a reporter (once again, classic Randy Rainbow). “GURL!” he shouts at the President. “Mr. President, COVID cases continue to rise around the country. You said in your last stand-up special that you had asked your people to slow down testing in order to make the numbers look better, which by the way is f--king brilliant. You’re also not requiring people to wear masks at your rallies.” Rainbow pauses and thinks for a second before continuing, “which doesn’t matter, nobody goes to those anyway, but don't you think you should be following CDC guidelines and leading by example?” Rainbow proceeds to show Trump a few mask samples, hoping that one might pique the President’s interest. These include the standard pale blue triple-layered disposable mask that is all the rage these days, a pink cartoonish-looking mask, and finally, a giant Hillary Clinton head. Gotcha, Trump. Rainbow is as clever as ever in the video. He compares Trump to the virus, “You’re siding with the virus, cuz you’re a virus too,” and praises the one and only Nancy Pelosi for her stylish face coverings. "DISTRACTION!" Once again, we are at a press conference and Rainbow is playing the role of a comically gifted and concerned reporter. Rainbow wastes no time. He opens with a hilariously snarky statement, “We are back, Mr. President, I want to thank you for respecting recommended CDC guidelines and wearing a mask” (pause). “Oh! That's just your face!” Rainbow sings to the tune of “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof and dresses the part, at one point transforming himself into a Hasidic Jew donning payos and a black hat. He calls out Trump on his recent “Twitter tantrums,”which Rainbow believes are meant to distract from the global crisis at hand. “Obamagate” is mentioned a few times, accompanied by snippets of Trump’s interviews in which he slanders his favorite targets, these being the former President and Nancy Pelosi. Rainbow cleverly rhymes ‘distraction’ with synonyms meant to capture the essence of Trump’s interviews and policy. He sings, “Deception, inaction, confusion, digression, delusion, obsession, RECESSION!” "GEE, ANTHONY FAUCI!" An homage to the nation’s top infectious disease expert, this video opens with Rainbow in a Zoom appointment with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Randy worriedly expresses his feelings to the famed specialist: “I know you’re not a shrink, I just didn’t know who else to go to. I mean my country is a mess, I’m not even talking to it right now, I haven’t had a haircut in like 5 months, I mean I know i still look great, thank you, but I just feel there’s no leadership. And ugh.. The president is even attacking you. Can’t you stop him?” Fauci is silent, but stoic. Cue the tune of “Officer Krupke” from West Side Story. Rainbow croons, “Dear darling Dr. Fauci, we know you’re smart as hell, you’re certainly no slouch-i, Ya made it through Cornell, you’ve fought some bad infections, but now you’ve hit a wall, with the worst infection of them all”. Rainbow goes on to call Fauci’s raspy voice “sexy” an acknowledges Fauci’s heroic mission to keep the people of the United States alive amidst chaos. Rainbow then splices himself into an interview with Trump, who accuses Fauci of making mistakes. Rainbow wears a pale pink blazer and his signature pink cat’s eye glasses. He calls Trump “satanic” and declares that Trump only tries to save his “big fat ass.”” Ahh, the refreshing honesty of Rainbow’s humor! Other incidents Rainbow brings up include Goya-gate, as well as Kayleigh McEnany’s press conference regarding reopening schools, in which she announces, “The science should not stand in the way of this.” Rainbow responds by calling her a “dipstick” and asks if she has “been eating lipstick”. Rainbow compares Trump’s team to wind-up toys, and brilliantly coins the name “Cruella” DeVos. "ANDY!" Andrew Cuomo is the object of affection of YouTuber Rainbow in another playful parody video. “ANDY!,” sung to the tune of the Grease song “Sandy,” is a gubernatorial love song. This time, instead of watching John Travolta sulk at the drive-in movie theater, we see Rainbow grace the screen in a variety of fun 1950’s themed costumes. He sings adoringly to Governor Cuomo, “Oh Andy, baby, someday, when COVID’s not a thing/ If we’re on Earth, for what it’s worth, I hope they make you King/ You run my state/ While I gain weight/ With grace and dignity/ Oh please, be my dad/ Oh Andy!, Rainbow teasingly reveals that he is now a “Cuomosexual.” It’s worth mentioning that Andrew isn’t the only Cuomo that Randy appreciates: brother Chris Cuomo, concedes Rainbow, is still his “first love.”: Madeline Barry is a high school English teacher at Northside Charter High School in North Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She teaches three sections of senior English and two introductory Latin classes.  Figuring out virtual learning, listening to music, and writing for The Insider has kept her semi-sane during the quarantine.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 15 By Laurence Lerman An August convergence of Democratic and Republican National Conventions, a determination to deflect some of the unwanted anxiety that may arise from watching them, the wish to embrace something—anything—of equal size and scope, and the arrival of HBO Max and its vast library (2,000-plus titles and counting) yielded a multi-night summer streaming highlight: Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace, the Soviet Union’s 1966-67 epic film version of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 novel about the French invasion of Russia in the early 19th century. Remastered and reissued in 2005 by Mosfilm, the biggest and oldest studio in the Russian Federation (it dates back to Eisenstein), issued on disc stateside by the esteemed Criterion Collection in 2019, and premiering on HBO Max just a couple of months back, Bondarchuk’s landmark endeavor is a “film series" (as it was initially billed) that I’d long wanted to see, and what better time or way to take it on than as a palate cleanser between the two conventions, happenings of both war and peace in their own right? I’ve never picked up Tolstoy’s 1,200-page novel, nor any of his work for that matter, though I did see the original Off-Broadway production of the musical Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at Hell’s Kitchen’s Ars Nova back in 2012. Based on a 70-page segment of the novel War and Peace, it was an exquisite and immersive production that snaked through its cabaret-styled theater and its audience, which was happily plied with vodka, perogies and a pleasing performance by a pre-Hamilton Phillipa Soo. One of those movies that rewards a behind-the-scenes look or a quick glance at a Wikipedia write-up (a well-researched one), Mosfilm’s production of War and Peace was prompted as a response to King Vidor’s 1959 American-Italian big-screen adaptation of the imposing literary classic. Starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn, it was released around the world as well as the Soviet Union, where it garnered tens of millions of viewers, international acclaim and some boffo box office. Seeing what Hollywood’s Vidor has done with the novel (can you imagine how worked up members of the Politburo must have been!?), the Soviet State, in an action that reflected the time’s “Khrushchev Thaw” of relaxed artistic censorship, set out to make their own bigger and better screen version of the Russian national epic, which Germany’s Der Spiegel trumpeted was a “counterstrike” to the one made by Vidor. Following a lengthy development and pre-production period that contained a documentary’s worth of stories involving the securing of a filmmaker, scripting, casting, costuming and construction, 40-yar-old Sergei Bondarchuk began filming the proposed four-part War and Peace. Five years, eight million rubles, 10,000 costumed extras, 2,000 horses, hundreds of props from Russia museums and two heart attacks later, Bondarchuk completed his project. And the film? Saying that it’s not a chore to sit through all seven-plus hours of it might not sound flattering, but that’s what it’s meant to be. (Think about the 90-minute movies you’ve squirmed through.) Formally constructed with flourishes of a modernist style that had rarely been seen in earlier Soviet-produced social realist cinema, War and Peace makes for a genuinely engaging—and lengthy—large-scale entertainment. And that means everything from the human story of the panoramic tale’s four aristocratic players, led by actress and ballerina Ludmila Savelyeva as Natasha and Bondarchuk himself as Pierre (he went through a number of possible actors before casting himself as the lead) to the awesome battle sequences. It’s those extended scenes where Bondarchuk lets loose all manner of cinematic invention, utilizing the kinds of “tricks” that are reminiscent of those wielded by France’s Abel Gance for his 1927 silent masterwork Napoléon. Among them are a variety of hand-held camera movements, POV shots, multiple exposures, superimposition, crane shots, film tinting, split screens and what looks like shots that were attained by tying a rope to the camera and swinging it through the air. War and Peace’s society ball segments, a pair of them, match the war scenes in scope and grandeur, making for a nice break from the battles. Like its Hollywood predecessor, War and Peace was a critically lauded and respected moneymaker; it won both the Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and was the U.S.S.R.’s top film of the year—even with the critics crying foul at the removal of large swaths of the novel, necessary to allow the film a “realistic” running time of seven hours. But are the naysayers satisfied with Vidor’s version, which clocks in at half that length? Or maybe they would dig a regional production of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. Following my very satisfying four-night streaming saga, I decided to go American and fill in a blank in my Seventies portfolio with a Burt Reynolds flick. Yeah, Burt Reynolds. From 1978, Hooper was director Hal Needham and Reynolds’ follow-up to Needham’s wildly popular 1977 directorial debut, the high-octane road comedy Smokey and the Bandit, which quickly became the template for Reynolds’ subsequent work for the next decade. In this one, he’s Sonny Hooper, a veteran stunt coordinator and stuntman whose years of broken bones, back problems, painkillers and booze are beginning to catch up with him as he works on his latest James Bond-ish endeavor, The Spy Who Laughed at Danger—and the stunts grow even bigger and more dangerous. Both Reynolds and Needham worked as stuntmen early in their careers and Hooper pays tribute to them, and specifically to late stuntman Jock Mahoney, whose work dated back to Columbia Pictures’ two-reel comedies of the Forties. Is it a coincidence that Mahoney was stepfather to Hooper co-star Sally Field, who was post-Smokey, pre-Norma Rae, and just at the beginning of her three-year relationship with Reynolds? The film itself is reportedly based on a fictionalized account of veteran stunt coordinator and driver Buddy Joe Hooker. Featuring Jan-Michael Vincent as a rising rival stuntman and Robert Kline as the overbearing director of the film within the film, Hooper hit a line drive up-the-middle of Reynolds’ late Seventies/early Eighties oeuvre—lively, but not as much as Smokey; insouciant, but not nearly as detached as Stroker Ace (1983) or, God forbid, Cannonball Run 2 (1984). You get the picture. At its center is Burt sporting the action-comedy persona that audiences loved at the time—handsome, funny, self-deprecating, affable and able to take a punch and leap a sports car over a gorge. And a helluva gorge it is! Following an hour-and-a-half of spirited barroom brawls, dizzying freefalls, fiery explosions, full-gallop horses, car-flipping hijinks and collapsing buildings, Burt’s Hooper—who, at the climax of The Spy Who Laughed at Danger, who climatically launches his ’78 Pontiac Trans Am off the remains of a flaming bridge and over a ravine in a 325-foot jump that set some kind of official world record for “rocket-assisted stunts.” Incidentally, the incredible car jump was made not by Burt, but driver Buddy Joe Hooker. Hooper’s leading man might be likeable and good-natured, but he ain’t crazy. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By John Rolfe Colds, flu, stomach viruses, hoof and mouth disease … If there’s an illness known to man or beast, school bus drivers will catch it thanks to our daily contact with runny-nosed, sneezing, wheezing, coughing, chundering urchins. I hadn’t had a cold in years until I started driving my big yellow sickroom in 2018. In an uncertain world, one of the few sure things is that the kid who is a fountain of mucus (or worse) will sit directly behind you and spray germy goodies your way. The first time a student heaves up some grub on your bus is a rite of passage and milestone in this profession. Until you hear the dreaded “Mr. Bus Driver, I think I’m gonna throw up,” you wonder how you’ll respond. (You dread catching the bug.) With sharing a way of life on a school bus, my fellow drivers often develop rather nasty respiratory ailments. Last winter, I had a dry, wracking, whistling cough that tormented my wife for weeks whenever we tried to get some semblance of sleep. And now coronavirus has been added to the menu. While teachers, administrators, staff and parents voice their concerns about opening schools during the pandemic, I’d like to join the chorus on behalf of my brave colleagues, who will play an important role but are often overlooked. Many of us are of ancient vintage (50+) and not in the most robust physical shape, which makes us especially vulnerable to the ravages of COVID-19, though we can’t be so crumbly that we fail our mandatory physical performance tests. I get my aerobic exercise by shrieking at kids. Aggravation elevates the heart rate and driving a school bus allows you to work up a nice sweat at the sight of the hijinks and mayhem going on behind you. There’s a reason why the overhead rearview mirror is called the most dangerous piece of equipment on the bus. The compulsion to gaze into it (while taking your eyes off the road) is always strong. Now it will be almost a requirement. You see, it will be up to us to make sure our precious cargo keeps masks on their sweet little faces while on the bus. Without a monitor — which, like drivers, are in short supply — we will have to figure out how to be in two places at once: at the wheel and among the kids. Our attention really should always be focused on not plowing the bus into something. Along with enforcing the mask rule, we’ll have to keep kids separated by two rows of seats. That’s more doable when you have a dozen rows separated by an aisle and only 18 riders, as I do on my middle school run. It’s a tad more problematic when there are 51 intermediate schoolers and 48 seats, and the luggage compartment and roof are unusable per district policy. (Trust me, I’ve asked about stowing kids there in less trying times.) It’s easier to teach squirrels to ballroom dance than it is to keep young kids from getting in each other’s grill or piling on one another. I’ve (vainly) expended much time and breath explaining to my young riders why it’s in their best interests not to distract me or cavort around the bus while we’re in motion. Last March, when coronavirus became a hot topic, I tried to calm their fears by telling them I would be disinfecting the bus after each trip, making it unlikely that they would get sick. I was tempted to add, “The only sure way to catch coronavirus is by standing up while the bus is moving, or not listening to the driver” but I thought that might be pressing my luck with parents whose little loved ones go home and repeat everything Mr. Driver says. No one seemed to care or even react, anyway. “They’re not listening to you,” I was cheerily informed by a nearby fifth-grader as the usual noisy hijinks continued. “What else is new?” I replied. “I’m a father. I’m used to kids not listening to me.” Don’t get me wrong. I ain’t complaining. I’m willing to have my temperature taken each morning and do what I can to make opening schools a safe endeavor. But the sobering reality is if we pilots of yellow chaos start getting sick in even modest numbers, districts will be hard-pressed to replace us. There’s already a national shortage of drivers and more than a few have retired because of the pandemic. As it is, qualified mechanics and office staff in my district are pressed into service during cold and flu season. More parents will be driving their kids, but that’s going to make for world-class traffic jams around schools when we all converge at pick-up and drop-off times. But if that’s the worst we endure, let us all be thankful. It’s likely that no matter which course we choose — a full return, remote learning, or a hybrid of the two — someone will get the raw and possibly dangerous end of the deal. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Andy Borowitz August 26, 2020 CHARLOTTE (The Borowitz Report)—An outbreak hit the 2020 Republican National Convention this week as hundreds of attendees tested positive for delusion. While public-health experts have yet to determine the extent of the outbreak, the episodes of attendees exhibiting magical thinking bordering on the hallucinatory appear to be widespread. Davis Logsdon, who studies delusional epidemics at the University of Minnesota’s School of Medicine, said that multiple R.N.C. participants professed to see things “that are not actually there,” such as a strong economy, a successful coronavirus response, and an immigration policy brimming with kindness. In another worrying symptom, Logsdon said that attendees who tested positive were unable to see things that were clearly in their line of vision. “One participant on Monday was shouting for more than six minutes despite the presence of a microphone inches away from her,” he said. While scientists tried to get their arms around the extent of the outbreak, containing the spread of delusion at the R.N.C. will be “challenging,” Logsdon warned. “The most successful treatment for delusion is facts, and these patients have built up an immunity to those over the course of many years,” he said. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

By Tobye S. Stein Like so many of my friends and family members, I am now cooking solely for two. Well, the only ones at home are my husband Neal and me and our dog Buddy, of course. We used to have friends over for dinner before the pandemic, but that’s not happening now. There aren’t many things that I cook that couldn’t feed four to six people, but when it comes to meals, it’s really no problem. I freeze what’s left, and we have dinner for another evening down the road. While I’ve been a decent cook for some time, sheltering in place has taken my cooking to a new and higher level. Every so often, I’ll ask Facebook friends, what are you cooking? I typically get a fair number of responses, and if something sounds interesting, I ask for the recipe. As a result, we’ve had chicken taco casserole, Mediterranean turkey burgers, and sweet potato and black bean chili. I purchased an instant pot several weeks ago, followed by an air fryer lid, and many more recipes are now being incorporated regularly, including caprese chicken, beef teriyaki and stir fry tofu and vegetables (which are actually excellent). One of our favorite newer recipes is Vegetable Tian. It’s a Dorie Greenspan recipe from Everyday Dorie that I mostly stick to. Unless I’m trying a new recipe for the first time, I rarely rely on exact recipes. Often the same dish isn’t really the same the next time I make it. I season to taste, I substitute if I don’t have something available, and I don’t think twice about it. In five months, I only had one epic failure; instant pot polenta, Ironically, another friend made the same disappointing dish. We concluded some things should be made in the oven. I’ve recently gone back to baking, but the problem with baked goods is that they’re too yummy. On the plus (or minus) side, Neal has lost several pounds, and I haven’t gained any weight. We’ve taken to distributing muffins and quick breads to some of our neighbors. Baking is more scientific than cooking, so measurements matter. Early on, Neal kept telling me he was going to make sweet and sour meatballs. He’s made them before but really hadn’t been doing any cooking. After three months of hearing this, I finally asked, “Are you going to make the damn meatballs or just keep talking about them?” Clearly, I was tiring of coming up with two to three meals a day. So he made the meatballs, which were delicious, and yes, I helped. We actually work well in the kitchen together most of the time. Since then, Neal has made Hobo Bread (a Greenfield Village recipe) twice, blueberry soup (a cold soup recipe that was printed in the Detroit Free Press), and grilled steaks. Neal is getting a lot more comfortable in the kitchen, too. He’s even used the immersion blender a few times. After Neal’s first foray into Hobo Bread, I tweaked the recipe a bit, and round two was much better. I’m not a fan of nuts in baked goods, so they are frequently eliminated. It also takes care of the recipient of said baked goods saying, “Oh, I’m allergic to nuts. “ I can honestly say I’m starting to prefer my food (and Neal’s) to takeout or other restaurant fare! Hobo Bread: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. If you have a convection oven, I would recommend baking at 325 degrees. While traditionally baked in a can, we’ve used aluminum loaf pans or a regular loaf pan. Ingredients: 1-1/2 cups boiling water 2 cups raisins 4 tsp. baking soda 4 tsp. softened butter 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste 1 tsp. cinnamon 1-3/4 cups walnuts (pecans or almonds also work well) 4 cups all purpose flour (we use Cup4Cup Gluten Free Flour) Instructions: Pour boiling water over raisins, let cool Once cooled, stir in all ingredients Fill 3 greased and floured 28-ounce cans or 2 medium aluminum or regular loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-60 minutes (oven temperatures vary). If the top is browning too quickly, cover pans with foil Cool and remove from pans or cans Tobye S. Stein retired as Chief Human Resources Officer from a California-based financial services organization. She once landed a job by replying to the age old question, “Why should I hire you instead of the other two candidates” by simply stating “I’m funnier than most people.” It worked.

By Alan Resnick Imagine the following scenario: You, your spouse, your daughter, and your 17-year-old son are sitting around the dinner table. Your son looks up from his cell phone and casually says, “You know, our football season just got cancelled because of the pandemic, and I really miss playing. I read that they’re still planning to play in a bunch of states. What about if Mom and I moved to Florida so that I could play football this season?” According to the Washington Post, this conversation is becoming more common, as 14 states have cancelled their fall football seasons and another 14 have delayed the start. Some two dozen families have gone public with their decision to relocate part or all of their family to enable their son to continue to play high school football. For some, it is simply to allow their child one last year in the spotlight before confronting the real world. For other families, it is a calculated investment decision to increase their son’s visibility, either to try to secure a college athletic scholarship or improve the scholarship offers that already have been received. While the Washington Post story is about football, it wouldn’t surprise me if this discussion were taking place in other sports as well. I live in Michigan, and ice arenas still have not been permitted to open due to the pandemic. What if you have a daughter who is a talented ice skater or hockey player and she floated this proposal? I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I think about this. I wasn’t a high school football player, but I can tell you with absolute certainty how this discussion would have played out in my house. There would have been two possible responses, and neither would have resulted in our dinner getting cold. One would have been nonverbal. My father would have given me “the look,” that combination of the eye roll and the glare. The other would have been verbal: “No.” I empathize with the boys’ perspective, though. I still remember how devastating it was to me when one of our summer leagues games was rained out. There went 10% of our games. These kids are being forced to give up an entire season. State athletic associations are holding out the promise of conducting a spring football season next year, assuming the public health risks are less than at present. But it’s difficult to imagine that there will be a spring football season followed by a fall season only three or four months later. That’s not much time to heal from such a physically punishing sport. And some kids also play spring sports like baseball or track, so they would be forced to make difficult choices. Losing an entire season may limit opportunities for athletic scholarships, as kids in other states are on the field, being observed by colleges. And sports provide a sense of order and normalcy that is vitally important in the midst of this pandemic, particularly when opportunities for socializing with friends are limited. Perhaps it’s because I’m considered elderly by the Centers for Disease Control; maybe I’ve become a gentler version (hopefully) of my father; or possibly it’s merely a reflection of our country’s schizophrenic handling of the pandemic, but I’m struggling to understand the parents who are giving in to their children’s requests to relocate, if not initiating these conversations themselves. I’m a parent and absolutely recognize the desire to be supportive of your children and to encourage them to follow their heart. When my daughter was deliberating over an undergraduate major and an advanced degree, I knew I never wanted to be the reason she looked back at her career choice one day and asked herself: “What if?” So, when she informed me that she wanted to attend law school, I swallowed hard and told her I was all in if that’s what she wanted. But until she graduated, passed the bar, and got a job, I kept flashing back to a trip my wife and I took to Boston a few years prior to her announcement. It seemed that every server we encountered was an attorney who hadn’t been able to find a job with a law firm. I empathize with the reality that, for many kids, a football scholarship may be their only means of attending college. But I question how much of an education football players actually receive, particularly at the highest levels of the sport. For all the puffery the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) foists on the public about the nobility and sanctity of the student athlete, players who attend football factories like the University of Alabama, the Ohio State University or Louisiana State University are players first and then students. Teams at this level simply function as the uncompensated minor leagues of professional football. But these are unique times. As the Washington Post asked: “Is the sacrifice for high school football worth the risk?” One parent profiled said that his son does better in a classroom environment rather than through remote learning, so the family decision was as much about the son’s education as athletics. Fair enough, although I think I smell the scent of self-justification wafting up into the air. But another parent in the article explained (rationalized?) his decision as follows: “Whether he was going to be exposed to it on the football field versus the classroom or going to a restaurant or going to Walmart or anything like that, that’s obviously a risk we’re willing to accept.” Maybe so. But isn’t the question really, “Am I doing everything possible to mitigate the likelihood that my child will contract coronavirus?” It’s no different at the college level. Two of the five major power conferences, the Big 10 and the Pac 12, have announced that the fall football season has been cancelled. The decision was made after consulting with medical experts and the conferences’ own task forces on infectious diseases. Given the millions of dollars lost from television revenues and tickets sales, as well as the financial impact on the towns in which games were to be played, this could not have been an easy decision to make. It has left many administrators, coaches, players and parents aggravated and disappointed. Some parents were frustrated enough to take to Twitter to air their grievances. A group of concerned parents of University of Michigan football players banded together and tweeted this month about the unfairness of cancelling the season without input from players and parents. In addition to demanding a “detailed description of standard protocols and safety practice for all Big Ten teams,” the tweet said,: ““We strongly believe that denying these players the opportunity to compete this season would jeopardize their futures. They deserve the opportunity to play.” Apparently, the science and statistics behind the decision don’t matter. Well, they do to me. We’ve all had to sacrifice in some way during this pandemic, and sacrifice can be very painful. But my coaches always told me that it was important to forego personal goals for the greater good of the team. Alan Resnick is an industrial psychologist with over 40 years of professional experience. He and his wife are sheltering at home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He is passing the time by cooking, exercising, catching up on friends’ recommendations of must-see TV and writing.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs August 27, 2020   |   CNN.com Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) In the great urban debate between the co-owner of the Stand Up NY comedy club on New York City's Upper West Side and its greatest stand-up act, the comedian wins the debate hands down. Jerry Seinfeld makes the point: he won't ever leave NYC. And because he won't, we won't. (Full disclosure: My daughter and I once watched transfixed as Jerry Seinfeld gave an impromptu and utterly hilarious performance in front of a couple dozen customers at the fish counter at Zabar's, around the corner from the comedy club. No one watching that Sunday morning several years ago could ever dream of leaving NYC, since the hope springs eternal for a repeat performance.) NYC will survive the Covid-19 pandemic, as it did the 1918-19 flu epidemic, 9/11, and other calamities. And as Seinfeld rightly notes, so too will other great cities such as Rome, which after all first became known as the Eternal City (Roma Aeterna) in the 1st century BC. The world today is 56% urbanized and the UN expects the continued rise of urbanization to 68% of the global population living in cities by 2050. I think it will be even higher. There are three reasons. First, from a historical perspective, Covid-19 will soon subside. Maybe in a year, maybe three, but it won't be with us forever. New York City has suppressed the transmission to around 260 cases per day, down from an average daily high of more than 5,000 in mid-April. With 8.3 million people in NYC, that's around 34 cases per million per day, compared with more than 600 cases per million per day in the spring. We can and should slash that tenfold in the coming weeks, as in several Asia-Pacific countries. Sure, there will be other pandemics, as there have been in the past. If we are more careful and better prepared, as we should have been, they won't overturn daily life as this one has done. Second, cities are more productive, except for farms. The single biggest driver of urbanization in human history is therefore the productivity of farming. When one farmer feeds one household, every worker must be a farmer. When one farmer feeds around 100 households, as in the US, fewer than 2% are farmers and the rest do other things, almost all of which are best done in cities. Third, people really do like cities. The services are far better, the entertainment is far more varied (Seinfeld and all), and the violent crime rates in US cities have plummeted, though with a spike this year. Urban health in the US and elsewhere improved dramatically a century ago with the introduction of public health measures such as mass vaccinations, sewage, and clean-water systems that slashed the effluence and disease associated with crowding. Yes, Covid-19 transmitted earlier and faster in densely settled places like NYC, but alas, the virus is also spreading dangerously in rural areas too, which are also burdened by vulnerable older populations with pre-existing health conditions (such as high blood pressure and obesity) and living farther from hospitals. In claiming that NYC is finished, James Altucher argues that the digital-age work-from-anywhere technologies will gut the office towers and central cities, with cascading damage for the life of the city. I think the situation is somewhat more prosaic: rents will go down, property prices will go down, commercial space will be converted. NYC is the place where meatpacking plants became high-end art galleries, garment factories became chic hotels, and a former railway spur became the much-beloved High Line outdoor walkway, residential and shopping area. Repurposing is what cities do. No doubt, Altucher raises some pertinent questions. NYC, like every part of the world, will be revolutionized by the digital age. A large part of the workforce will work from home at least part of the week. Hundreds of thousands of commuters will be delighted to dispense with commutes to midtown offices that can take one or two hours each way. They will come in perhaps 1 or 2 days a week, and at staggered schedules. We won't have banks at every street corner (thank God) because consumer banking will be online. Thousands of retail businesses will not return because e-commerce truly is more convenient and efficient. For the coming year the number of empty street fronts will be staggering, indeed depressing. But then commercial and residential rents will fall. They are already down perhaps 5-10% and there is more to come. Mortgage rates are at historic lows, with 30-year mortgages below 3%. The unaffordable prices that recently were driving young people out of NYC will become the bargain prices that drive them back in. Stodgy midtown offices will be reconverted into new startups. The City will become younger, not older, occupied by a young generation that mixes digital, brick-and-mortar, startup, residential, and leisure. Be certain: there is a reckoning ahead, not between urban and rural, where urban will prevail, but between the superrich and the rest. The shocking reality of Covid-19 is that the superrich have gotten fantastically richer, unimaginably so, during the pandemic. The soaring stock market alongside Great Depression unemployment is just what it seems: the most dramatic redistribution of income from the poor to the rich in US history. With tech stocks soaring, for example, Jeffrey Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk have seen their combined net worth rise by $197 billion since the start of the year while, tens of millions of Americans have been thrown into financial desperation and hunger. NYC has more billionaires than any other city in the world -- 111 in 2019. They like NYC, like the rest of us. They depend on NYC for their vast fortunes. And many have enjoyed astounding windfalls of wealth this year as frontline workers around them have died or faced eviction. The true challenge for New York City is not technology or even the pandemic. It is basic decency. A city survives and thrives as a living breathing social organism, one that acts together for the common good. The billionaires must be the ones paying higher taxes to keep the City's schools, hospitals, public transport and social services running as NYC picks itself up from the crisis.

An Insider Exclusive By Jeffrey D. Sachs Since we are never far away from a sound bite, tweet, or video clip of the Psychopath-in-Chief, and since the epidemic continues to take a thousand-plus lives daily, it might seem extravagant, even reckless, to mention the word “optimism” at this time. Yet this was a good week, one that brought us closer to the end of our national nightmare. Three things give me optimism. The first, of course, is Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris for vice-presidential nominee. I’ve testified before Senator Harris in a Senate Committee investigating climate change. As is plainly evident, Harris is very smart, tough, and ready to help Biden lead the U.S. in the right direction. I was also delighted with the highly positive reaction in favor of Harris across the country in the following days. Trump couldn’t come up with anything other than foul-mouthed insults of Harris that lacked the slightest wit or bite, all a good sign. Second, the prediction sweepstakes and betting markets are all pointing in the right direction. The Iowa Electronic Market gives Biden a probability of 72 percent of winning the popular vote. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives Biden a 72 percent chance of winning the presidency. Real Clear Politics’ betting odds puts Biden’s probability of victory at 58 percent to 39 percent for Trump, not as high as Nate Silver, but not all that bad. Third, we have also been reminded repeatedly in recent weeks that Trump’s base of older, white evangelical males is on the way out. Peaceful, multiracial protests this summer have belied the claims of pervasive white racism. Racism is out there to be sure, in Trump’s base, but that base is not the U.S. population. Even James Murdoch bailed out of his father Rupert’s despicable propaganda machine for Trump. James sees the writing on the wall. The Murdoch media vitriol on Fox News is a sign of desperation, not strength. Young whites born into fundamentalist households are walking away from the divisiveness and hatreds of their elders. A fantastic article by political scientist Ronald Inglehart (University of Michigan – yeah!) in the new September issue of Foreign Affairs confirms a sharp decline in U.S. fundamentalism in the past decade. The Pew Research Center found the same in its survey data last year, reporting that the percent of white evangelical Protestants in the U.S. population fell from 19 percent to 16 percent, and noting a huge shift of young people away from religious affiliations. Donald Trump is cornered, and no doubt dangerous in this final stretch. He will try anything to hold on to power, including attempts to disrupt voting and vote counting, including a Post Office debacle he’s scheming in full view. We will have to be on guard, most importantly by turning out a massive vote for Biden and Harris, but also by making certain that our votes are duly counted. People will likely have to be on the streets this time to defend the democracy. The endgame will be dangerous, but we are getting close to the glorious moment when Trump is carried out of the White House kicking and screaming. I’m indulging in a little sweet optimism this week, though I acknowledge that the biggest battles lie ahead. Jeffrey D. Sachs University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development in the Earth Institute, Columbia University

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 14 By Laurence Lerman As the summer crests, the economy sputters, the virus slithers and the 2020 political conventions unspool, nonfiction programming continues be this season’s essential viewing. Even as movie theaters cautiously begin to reopen with the most appealing of new and vintage fare (from 1985’s Back to the Future to Christopher Nolan’s long-anticipated new Tenet), it’s what’s playing in the den that’s commanding the most attention. While we’re on the subject, this week’s Democratic National Convention’s presentation as a technologically dazzling Zoom gathering was filled with so many split-screen compositions (including a National Anthem singalong comprised of nearly 60 onscreen boxes) that I had to suppress my immediate urge to call up a pair of my favorite split-screen-friendly films, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and The Longest Yard (1974), along with just about every title in Brian De Palma’s filmography. That said, following my previous two Reel Streaming entries driven by the passing of a pair of notable film figures, a smaller, mixed bag of streams was the order of the past week—one new, one of considerable vintage, and an adored Eighties confection from France that its U.S. distributor tagged as “A New Kind of French New Wave.” The 1982 thriller Diva by Jean-Jacques Beineix has been referred to as the first French film in the post-New Wave cinéma du look strain, a marginal French movement that briefly flourished in the Eighties and early Nineties. Represented by a dozen or so films that had a slick, highly stylized visual style and a loose focus on alienated younger characters, Diva is indeed the poster child of the trend, with its very cool tale of a young opera-loving mailman in possession of two in-demand tapes—one, a live bootleg of a popular opera star who refuses to make recordings, the other containing the testimony of a prostitute that would incriminate senior police officials. Enter a bunch of corrupt cops, a cabal of hired killers, a hooker with a heart of gold and a philosophical bohemian with an antique Citroën and one helluva tidal wave jigsaw puzzle. Though Diva was not initially well-received in France, audiences there grew following the film’s release in the U.S., where it was a smash, playing New York’s famed Paris Theatre for more than a year. Highlighted by a go-for-broke chase through the Paris Métro and a hypnotically heady mixture of opera and new-wave rhythms, the film is still a lot of fun—a candied pop concoction that runs on the colorful fumes provided by a very self-consciously composed concoction of lights, colors and music. It’s an arty style that also defines much of the work of cinéma du lookers Luc Besson (1985’s Subway, 1990’s La Femme Nikita) and Leos Carax (1986’s Bad Blood, 1991’s The Lovers on the Bridge). It’s art, not artiness, that’s at the center of the recently released 2019 thriller The Burnt Orange Heresy, based on hardboiled fiction specialist Charles Willeford’s 1971 novel of the same name. The setting has shifted from the book’s Florida Everglades to Italy’s stunning Lake Como region, where we meet a fine-looking twosome: a British art critic (Claes Bang, who portrayed an art curator in 2017’s The Square) and a Hitchcockian blonde American school teacher (the striking Elizabeth Debicki, first seen as Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 The Great Gatsby). The pair get involved with an insanely wealthy art dealer (Mick Jagger, in his first major film role in more than two decades) who’s looking to profit from the work of a famously reclusive artist (Donald Sutherland), who’s living in palatial estate. It’s a fine art thriller, so lots of duplicity, one-upmanship, chain smoking, pretentiousness and sensuality is inevitable from the start. Though The Burnt Orange Heresy is not the knockout that its initial setup teases that it could be, the very appealing Bang and Debicki seem to be having a good time, and Mick is always a welcome sight, his reptilian art dealer setting out to prove that you can always get what you want. Art is also at the heart of the noir-ish 1944 drama Address Unknown, directed by William Cameron Menzies, who remains best known for his work as a production designer (a job title he reportedly invented!) on such silent classics as Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and, later, on 1939’s venerable Gone with the Wind, for which he was the director of the “Burning of Atlanta” sequence. Adapted from the 1938 short epistolary novel Address Unknown, it concerns two German expatriate friends in early Thirties San Francisco, the Jewish Max (Morris Carnovsky) and the gentile Martin (Paul Lukas). When Martin and his wife return to Germany to find artwork, they get caught up in the country’s rise of Nazism, leading to Martin’s joining the party. Antisemitism and a blind belief in Nazi doctrines prompts the unraveling of Max and Martin’s friendship, while also endangering Max’s daughter, who has traveled to Vienna to pursue an acting career that, in a twist of fate, places her in Berlin. Clocking in at a lean 72 minutes (the novel is only 68 pages), Menzies lets loose his design chops in Address Unknown with hard-angled settings, intimidating backdrops and stony architecture, all underscoring the uncompromising scenario unfolding in Germany. The great cinematographer Rudolph Maté tightens the vise with his shadowy, angular compositions, noir’s defining visual motif adding a deceitful unease to the proceedings that ultimately leads to one character’s downfall, signaled by a returned letter that’s marked, of course, “address unknown.” In a defining sign of its time, the original novel was deemed “too strong to appear under the name of a woman,” so author Katherine Kressmann Taylor (Kressmann was her maiden name) dropped her first name and Address Unknown was published under the name Kressmann Taylor. The reasoning for the name was ridiculous, yes, but the work on which it appeared certainly delivered—initially banned in German, Address Unknown was subsequently translated into 20 languages over the years, with a 50th Anniversary French reissue alone selling some 600,000 copies. Ooh la la. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By David Weiss | August 19, 2020 | From Deadline Detroit David Weiss is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist who grew up in Oak Park. He has written for Newsweek, the LA Herald Examiner and Men's Journal and co-founded the band Was (Not Was). Perhaps the most corrosive effect of the Trump era is not the wholesale degradation of our cherished institutions and ideas, it’s that it all began with the election of a man better qualified to sell rotgut, self-branded vodka and inedible steaks than by one deeply motivated by patriotism or a sense of service. It’s government by infomercial host, not by a statesman. And while I have often tended toward the skeptical when it comes to anything cherished (government and religion, above all), in this case I am being rather literal in my appraisal of the Donald. Case in point: the life and crimes of consummate television huckster Kevin Trudeau, currently serving a 10-year sentence for hawking useless and dangerous weight-loss cures and advice on how to obtain “free money” from the government. He is a hydra-headed con with an impressive rap sheet. But while Donald Trump is putative leader of the free world, Trudeau languishes in an Alabama prison for identical behavior, especially his Global Information Network, a $110-million pyramid scheme promising expert financial advice and access to “a cadre of “millionaires, billionaires and multi-billionaires” who would advise potential investors on how to get rich quick. Sound familiar? It ought to – remember the Trump Institute? It made similar promises to its privileged  “members,” offering wealth-building secrets and networking opportunities that never amounted to a hill of soybean futures. Trump lent his image and imprimatur to the bunko scheme, cashing in on his burnished image courtesy of “The Apprentice.” Many lost thousands of dollars, and Mexico never paid for it. Neither did Trump or his co-conspirators, i.e., his children. Fagin has nothing on DJT when it comes to corrupting youth. The difference between the two television-era con-men? Trump had a big pile of dough that his family secreted from his father’s estate, rather than paying taxes on same. And he had a fat Rolodex of political figures he’d cultivated through campaign donations over the years. Remember the photo of Bill and Hillary at his wedding to Melania? That about says it all: pay in and we’ll confer legitimacy on your marriage and criminal enterprises by showing up and smiling. Little did they know they were hurling a boomerang that would one day return with a decapitating vengeance. And that's not all ... Mind you, I’m not heading anywhere in particular with this rambling, thumbnail screed/survey of Donald Trump’s various and sundry self-enrichment schemes, except to testify to being gobsmacked and awestruck – even to this day – that a certain segment of our fellow citizens mistake this bumbling flimflam man for Thomas Jefferson. That’s akin to thinking that Ron Popeil is Thomas Edison! Yes, I love the kitsch value of the Pocket Fisherman and the self-immolating charms of the rotisserie oven, but the man is a carny huckster and pitchman, not a proper inventor. If only we could set our watches back four years and then “forget it,” as Popeil said of his miracle oven. Addendum: Joe Biden might be a bit of a relic at this point, the denuded spirit of the Democratic Party past, but even that chain-rattling gaffe machine spent his life walking the line between preserving the established order and giving voice to the dispossessed. But – vive la difference -- he never created a fraudulent university, a self-enriching charity nor a line of Squaresville Chinese-made neckwear. He may have bestowed a few lingering hugs in his youth, but he steered clear of teen pageant contestants, porn stars and Playboy bunnies. The difference is qualitative, not just quantitative. And even if Hunter Biden played Cain to his brother Beau’s Abel and pocketed a few shekels of dubious provenance, he is nowhere near the realm of rarified con-kids like Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka, the Three Stooges of insider dealing, who curry favor with deep-pocketed and murderous dictators in the name of present profit. Add it all up and you have a near-perfect existential storm, i.e., our world pre-Covid-19. Before its rude arrival, I must admit I was hoping the recession would hit before the election, and that it would take down Trump and his crony capitalists with him. It would cause pain and suffering for many, but might be worth the short-term price to get rid of Kevin Trudeau, oops, I mean Ron Popeil. Or did I mean Donald Trump? So confusing -- you need a scorecard to tell the three card monte players apart. Mind you, I’m no fan of the “Chinese virus,” but it looks positively wholesome and organic compared to the virulence of the Trump Flu, a malady for which there is no vaccine short of the ballot box – and we don’t even have them to depend on anymore. I always rooted for the four-legged combatant when it came to the eternal battle between dog and postman, but now I tend to cheer for the borderline sociopath sorting the mail, that is, if he or she still exists come Nov. 3.