One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 13 By Laurence Lerman I was saddened to hear of the passing of filmmaker Alan Parker, who died at the age of 76 on Friday, July 31, at his home in London following a long illness. One of the most successful directors to emerge from Britain in the 1970s, Parker transported his estimable talents across the pond, where he helmed such popular films as Midnight Express (1978), Fame (1980), Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982), Mississippi Burning (1988), Come See the Paradise (1990), The Commitments (1991), Evita (1996) and Angela’s Ashes (1999). Arriving in Hollywood with an immaculately stylized visual sense that he honed as one of Britain’s busiest TV-commercial directors in the late Sixties and early Seventies (alongside fellow Englishmen Adrian Lyne and Ridley Scott), Parker’s skills as a cinematic storyteller only grew stronger and more clearly defined as the years passed, beginning with his first Hollywood venture, 1976’s Bugsy Malone, up through his final feature, 2003’s The Life of David Gale. Upon hearing of Parker’s death, I altered my streaming schedule to include the two features of his sixteen that I had never seen—David Gale and 1994’s The Road to Wellville—as well as his breakthrough 1975 BBC TV drama The Evacuees. I’m glad that I watched them all, particularly The Evacuees, a BAFTA and Emmy winner written by Jack Rosenthal centering on the lives of two Jewish boys who are evacuated from Manchester to Blackpool during the blitz. Essentially a filmed play, it’s quite fine, and along with the two films—which are lesser entries in his genre-spanning filmography, to be sure—showcases Parker’s consistently good work with actors and his splendid sense on how to arrange what goes into his frame (mise en scène, as the French film dork in me feels obligated to offer). David Gale, which Parker directed and produced, is the more disposable of the two—a dramatic crime thriller starring Kevin Spacey as a college professor and longtime advocate for the abolition of capital punishment who is sentenced to death for raping and murdering a fellow activist friend. Laura Linney is the ill-fated activist and Kate Winslet the journalist Spacey contacts while on death row to tell his story—the real story—as the clock ticks down to his execution. The film’s in-your-face agenda, hard-to-swallow denouement and overly martyred performance by Spacey (who was apparently in his Kevin-Does-Good mode at the time, having just starred in 2000’s Pay It Forward and 2001’s K-Pax) derailed this one for me, though La Linney and Lady Kate acquit themselves well. And, as it’s Parker, the film and its Texas settings look great. The Road to Wellville went down a little better for me, ironic as its comedy is of a distinctly scatological bent. Based on the 1993 novel by T.C. Boyle, the film looks at the life of doctor, nutritionist and corn flakes inventor John Harvey Kellogg and the unusual turn-of-the-century methods he employed at his health resort, Battle Creek Sanitarium. It’s a highly fictional historical fiction that Parker anoints with a colorful commitment to its eccentricities, which include all manner of scatological situations and humor. (I never read Boyle’s book, but I’m assuming Wellville’s happy embrace of flatulence, enemas, diarrhea, stool samples and constipation play a major role in it.) Wellville tanked in theaters, enthusiastic performances by Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda and John Cusack, notwithstanding. But Parker’s energetic engagement with the material can be clearly seen (and nearly smelled). Several years back, I had the opportunity to speak on the phone with Mr. Parker on the occasion of a DVD reissue of Midnight Express. We talked British filmmakers taking on American subjects, DVD and supplement materials and memorable prison films. It was a brief chat, but I was thrilled to be able to tell him how much I dug his work, particularly 1982’s Shoot the Moon, the finest marital discord drama I’ve ever seen, and the deliciously devious 1987 noir Angel Heart. Rereading that interview re-energized my appreciation of Parker and his impeccable body of work. He will be missed. Here are a few excerpts: LAURENCE LERMAN: You’re an England-born filmmaker who’s well-known for taking on films with distinctly American stories and themes. How do your English filmmaking talents, styles and perceptions lend themselves to creating such “American” movies? ALAN PARKER: Well, I grew up on a diet of American movies and so graduated quite naturally to American subjects. The American film industry has always embraced filmmakers from abroad ever since the early days of Hollywood, so I was not alone. There is the theory that if you’re one step outside of a society, perhaps you can look at the world with some clarity and objectivity. Also, I have always been comfortable with the American vernacular. I always think I write better in “American English” than “English English.” LL: Midnight Express is considered to be one of the cinema’s great prison films. What are your favorite prison films? AP: I think Cool Hand Luke and The Shawshank Redemption probably are my favorites. Yes, those two. LL: Looking back on Midnight Express, which you directed nearly thirty years ago, what about it, if anything, would you change in it now? Any regrets? AP: Well, it was made when I was quite young. It was my second film. Also, it was Oliver Stone’s first credited screenplay and no doubt wisdom comes from a certain maturity. We were young filmmakers hell-bent on telling a good story about what we saw as an injustice of a disparate legal and prison system, and in our zeal to make our point, maybe a little light and shade got lost. The “good guy” Turks got left out. But the raw energy and uncompromising visceral power of the film still remains fresh and modern, which also came from the same youthful enthusiasm, single-mindedness and naiveté. 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.

Author and Cat Champion Gwen Cooper to the Rescue! Some people turn to booze. Some people raid the refrigerator. And some people adopt a pet. Americans are coping with the stress and isolation of the pandemic in different ways, but the stampede towards pet parenthood might be the most unexpected. “Around the world, animal shelters are emptying out because of the coronavirus outbreak.” reported the Los Angeles Times in April. “People who are confined to their houses are adopting or fostering animals en masse.” When you can’t leave your home and feel lonesome, it seems a cuddly new pet can fill the void. The A.S.P.C.A. is determined to go with the flow: you can now adopt a cat or dog by Zoom. Full disclosure: I’m a longtime devotee of creature comfort. I have two rescued cats, Abby and Jimmy, the latest in a line of frisky felines. We have been sheltering-in-place together, kibble in hand, since March. So I understand the tug towards populating your household with pets during these trying times. Which is why, with all of this talk of skyrocketing animal rescues, I decided to pull down Homer’s Odyssey, my favorite book about loving a pet, from my bookshelf. Homer’s Odyssey is not the book of Greek mythology that you were forced to read in high school. Rather, this book is a touching exploration of the human-animal bond. Heartwarming without being Hallmark-y, sensitive without being syrupy, it is a smart, literary memoir about taking risks and finding the courage to live life on your own terms, A New York Times bestseller in 2009 (in hardcover), in 2010 (in paperback) and in 2015 (in ebook), Homer’s Odyssey has now been published in 25 languages. The tale (the tail?) in brief: Homer was a tiny, starving two-week old stray kitten with a devastating eye infection when he was brought to a Miami veterinarian in 1997. The vet found the kitten’s eyes needed to be surgically removed to save his life. The well-meaning Florida couple who had found the kitten begged the vet to euthanize him. Instead, the idealistic young vet desperately sought to find a loving owner for the otherwise healthy, playful kitten. After meeting with a torrent of rejections, she found a financially-strapped 25-year-old woman with two cats of her own, who agreed to take on the responsibility of this blind “fuzzball” that no one else wanted. Homer (named for the blind Greek poet who wrote the original Odyssey) grew into a spirited cat who defied the odds and lived a long, happy life. The young woman, Gwen Cooper, grew into a bestselling New York City author, who weathered 9/11 near Ground Zero and, with Homer in tow, found love and marriage in often heartless Manhattan. Although Homer died in 2013, that was just the beginning of his saga. Thanks to Cooper’s hard work, Homer has become a star on social media and an icon to many in the rescue community. Cooper (who has been The Insider’s ace book reviewer since we began publishing), spoke with us about her life as an author, and as an advocate for animal rescue and pet adoption. The Insider: You’ve been a moving force for finding homes for special-needs pets—animals who might be blind or deaf or missing a limb, or who might be living with chronic physical or neurological conditions and who were once considered “unadoptable.” Cooper: I hear from people all the time who say that they were inspired by Homer’s story to adopt a special-needs animal, which is of course incredibly gratifying. The joys of adopting special-needs pets is something I reiterate whenever I do interviews, and I always showcase my own and other people’s special-needs pets on Homer’s social media accounts. Homer has a large and devoted online following of around 900,000 people across Facebook (@homerblindcatfans) and Instagram (@homerblindcat), which reach a combined 2 million-plus people each week. We also do a lot of fundraising for animal shelters in Homer’s online community, although that’s not specifically related to special-needs animals. To date, we’ve raised nearly $1 million for shelters and rescue groups around the world. The Insider: You’ve also done book events at shelters, right? Cooper: Homer’s story struck a real chord in the rescue community, and rescuers remain some of my most passionate readers. In 2013, I published a novel called Love Saves the Day (named for the legendary and sadly now-defunct vintage store in the East Village), narrated from a cat’s point of view, and my book tour for that book was done entirely at shelters. I visited 20 no-kill shelters across the country and even secured corporate sponsors who made donations of food, litter, and money to each of the shelters I visited along the way. I don’t think I’ve done a traditional bookstore reading since 2010, although there’s usually a local indie bookstore onsite to sell books when I do a shelter event. The Insider: You and Homer have a lot of fans! What do you hear from them? Cooper: I’ve heard from more than 10,000 readers since Homer’s Odyssey was first published, and I’m proud to say that I’ve personally answered every reader email I’ve received! I get tons of pictures and stories about my readers’ cats (they post them on our social media accounts as well) and lots of presents for the cats and for me. Presents for the cats tend to be toys, handmade cat blankies, and things like that. For me, the gifts are usually representations of Homer in various media—ceramic Homers, soft sculpture Homers, paintings and portraits of Homer, etc. When Homer passed away, I got a lot of angels. I recently heard from a reader who was 11 years old when Homer’s Odyssey first came out and who just completed her most recent reread of the book. She’s 22 now, about to complete a B.A. in Creative Writing, and she said she felt like she’d grown up with Homer. That really struck me, because I remember very well those books that I loved when I was young and continued to re-read well into adulthood. It felt odd—in a good way!—to have written a book that became one of those books for someone else. The Insider: How has the pandemic affected you personally? Cooper: It actually hasn’t had a huge impact on my day-to-day life, insofar as my husband and I are both writers who worked from home anyway. Of course, we used to go out, particularly into Manhattan, much more frequently. (We’re in Jersey City, only one train stop out from NYC.) And we used to do a fair amount of traveling, which is obviously on hold right now. Two readers who I used to hear from frequently on social media have died of COVID-19, and one of my readers lost her daughter, who was a nurse. And I have a lot of elderly readers who are very isolated right now. I know how lucky I am that, thus far, the toll it’s taken on me has been fairly minor. The Insider: You had COVID-19 early in the pandemic. What was that like? Cooper: I still haven’t had that confirmed by testing, I should say. For ten days, I had constant pressure in my chest, to the point that even talking was difficult. I’m asthmatic, and in five days I’d completely drained a rescue inhaler that usually lasts me three months. And at the same time I had the worst stomach bug I’ve ever had in my life. I also had a mild bout of conjunctivitis about three days before anything else started. This was back in March. The Insider: How long did it take you to recover? Cooper: My chest was bad for 10 days, although with my stomach it was closer to two weeks. I’m still battling persistent rounds of hives and weird rashes that flare up and are tough to control even with Benadryl and topical steroids—although they (finally!) seem to be coming less frequently. My knuckles are now almost entirely rash-free! The Insider: Tell us a little about your current cats. Cooper: I’m currently owned by two black cats: Clayton “the Tripod,” my three-legged cat, and his litter-mate, Fanny. Clayton is roly-poly, intensely social and “talkative,” and incredibly sweet—although not terribly bright. He’s a lovable doofus, basically, and a mama’s boy through and through. Fanny is very svelte, athletic, and quiet—which makes her in all ways entirely unlike anybody else in our household. She has my husband Laurence [Lerman, The Insider’s “Reel Streaming” columnist] wrapped around her velvety little paw. The Insider: Was Laurence a cat person when you met him? Cooper: Laurence wasn’t at all a cat person when we first met, and he was trepidatious about living with cats at first. When we moved in together back in 2005, he fell very hard for my cat Vashti—everybody fell for Vashti; she was an exceptionally beautiful cat—and he and Fanny have been very close since we first adopted her and Clayton eight years ago. I’m not sure that I’d describe Laurence today as a “cat guy,” but he’s definitely an “our cats guy”! The Insider: Do your cats like you being home all the time now? Cooper: I’ve been a “stay-at-home cat mom” (sorry—that’s a little joke from the online cat community!) for their entire lives. Unlike with my three older cats—of whom Homer was the last to pass away—Clayton and Fanny have never known me to have an office job or routinely leave the house for ten to twelve hours at a time. I honestly think Clayton, especially, would completely lose his mind if I suddenly had to go back to a nine-to-five. Basically, Laurence, Clayton, Fanny, and I are an intensely co-dependent foursome. Gwen Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of Homer's Odyssey and My Life in a Cat House, among numerous other cat-centric titles. Check out a full list of Gwen's titles on her Amazon.com author page.

By John Rolfe One lining (silver or otherwise) of being in perpetual pandemic lockdown is you have plenty of time to become acutely aware of your domicile’s flaws. After five months, my dear wife and I can’t help but notice we sorely need a new kitchen and living room as they have grown ratty, dingy, drippy and depressing. Now, unless you are an accomplished do-it-yourselfer with a variety of practical skills, such a situation presents a (golden or otherwise) opportunity to engage in one of life’s great aggravations: calling in a contractor. We have ample bitter experience in this realm. Since our love shack was constructed 20 years ago, we’ve had our basement finished, our roof, furnace and well pump replaced, and the outside of our hovel repainted twice. Various plumbing mishaps and other calamities have required professional attention. The biggest hurdle to unleashing your consternation is getting a contractor to come to your home in the first place. In my neck of New York’s Hudson Valley, contractors work on what is called “country time.” In other words, they get to things when they get to things, which can be after the sun burns out. Once they take your call (assuming they answer or call back), it’s anyone’s guess when they’ll actually show up. Their word tends to be less reliable than a politician’s. The first thing your friendly contractor will do is denigrate the work of their predecessors. “What clown did this ductwork?” one heating specialist asked after being called in for a furnace estimate. “Let me guess. Was it Lloyd?” “You know Lloyd?” I asked, referring to the fellow from the concern that installed our farcically underpowered heating system. “Oh, yeah. Lloyd’s a special person,” I was informed with dripping sarcasm before the specialist recited a litany of reasons why our gracious “Enery Star” home is an energy sieve. I’ll wager you didn’t know that tearing down competitors is just one of the skills that are taught in Contractor School. Licenses and permits aren’t issued in many states unless a contractor is certified in the following: * Working part of the day or not showing up at all, even in good weather. * Moving on to more lucrative gigs after completing the first half of yours. * Acting like they’re doing you a favor by doing what you are handsomely paying them to do. * Blaming their assistants for any sloppy work or collateral damage they do. * Leaving an infuriatingly small but very noticeable amount of work unfinished while asking for full pay. Contractors are mandated by states as well as the federal government to cut corners and do as little as possible at maximum expense to you. Along with maintaining an ample stock of antacids, headache remedies, and potent beverages to nurse you through the ordeal, you must be sure to: * Get everything in writing before they start. My last house painter balked at doing our garage door after he’d painted the rest of the structure. “You said just do the garage,” he said before explaining he’d have to charge extra for the door. “How is the door not part of the garage?” I asked. “I never agreed to do the door!” he insisted. “Oh, yes you did!” I replied, waving our contract in his blustery face. “Well, you can’t paint aluminum,” he said. “It’s not aluminum,” I replied, wisps of steam slowly curling off the top of my skull. “You checked the first day you were here. Now get out there!” * Get someone to keep an eye on the rascals. It’s an added expense, but if the project is big, doing so can (possibly) save you from disaster. When having the New Olde Rolfe Ancestral Home built, I hired an independent inspector to make sure all work was done satisfactorily, as I have neither the expertise nor the eye to know. Of course, that didn’t stop the builder from cutesy-poo shenanigans like telling the inspector to be at the site at 11 a.m. for the pouring of the foundation. When he arrived, it had been poured and everyone had left. “I can’t verify this work,” he told me, inducing cardiac arrest. “I don’t like the way all this water is pouring out of the concrete.” Great. A foundation with the strength of a graham cracker. After howling at my builder like a lunatic, he assured me it would be fine. I had no choice (or money) but to proceed and toss and turn at night for months. Fortunately, 20 years later, I can say he was right … but the roof went after less than 10 years, a scant month before the warranty on the shingles expired. “Good luck getting the company to honor it,” my builder chuckled. “I’m not.” * Compile of “punch list” of things that need to be corrected or finished, and never, ever, ever, ever pay in full before all work is completed to your satisfaction. If you do, your contractor will enter the Witness Protection Program and you’ll never see or hear from him again. As a grand finale, my lovely housepainter neglected to paint the cupola on our garage and left a ladder on the roof for good measure before vanishing. Fortunately, I’d withheld $200. It should have been more because I ended up finishing the job myself before leaving a rather tart message that he could come get his damned ladder. * Bad word of mouth helps. Many contractors rely on referrals, so letting people know that you’d rather stick a lit blowtorch in your ear than do business with someone can be a measure of revenge for lousy work poorly done for big bucks. If you get shafted, notify your local Better Business Bureau. Sometimes the good folks over there can apply a boot to a recalcitrant contractor's posterior. To be fair, there are reliable, honest contractors who do good work at fair prices. The fellow who finished my basement was an ace. Naturally, he left the business before we could hire him again. 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 Evelyn Renold Alfresco dining is one of the few pleasures left to Manhattanites who find themselves tethered to the city in this long, hot pandemic summer. Indoor dining was supposed to resume in Phase 4 of the reopening, but Governor Andrew Cuomo (wisely) elected to defer that. So local restaurants have spilled out onto sidewalks and streets, in instant new spaces created with little more than plywood, trellises and canvas coverings. (In some places, Plexiglass dividers separate the tables.) Owners are already talking about installing space heaters when the weather turns cooler, to prolong the outdoor experience. Even with these efforts—and with expanded takeout and delivery service--restaurants are obviously hurting. At one crowded West Side eatery the other day, the maitre d’ explained that the outdoor tables represent a mere 25% of the indoor seating capacity. No word yet on when indoor dining might resume, but when it does, some form of social distancing is sure to be required…taking another bite out of restaurant profits. Not surprisingly, many local restaurants have packed it in for good, and more will surely follow. Among the high-profile casualties to date: The Oxbow Tavern, Lucky Strike, Aureole, the Gotham Bar & Grill, and deli stalwart Fine & Shapiro (though another deli, Pastrami Queen, is expected to open soon in the same space). One popular café, rumored to be on life support, is back in business: Le Pain Quotidien on West 65th has reopened under new ownership, as have several LPQ cafes on the East Side. And the popular LPQ outpost in Central Park is set to reemerge in the next couple of weeks. Understandably, menus tend to be limited at many makeshift outdoor spots. Excessive heat can be a problem on some days. Only a few eateries take reservations—mostly, it’s first-come, first served. More seriously, an outdoor patron at Pappardelle on Columbus Ave. was punched in the face the other night by an apparently deranged passerby. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been on the front lines (so to speak), sampling the fare and watching the passing scene at a number of these newly tricked-up outdoor eateries. Four of us turned up for dinner at Café Luxembourg one Saturday night; this restaurant no longer takes reservations, and it took about 20 minutes to be seated. No matter; we enjoyed the French bistro fare and the friendly, attentive service. Luxembourg is on a side street (West 70th, off of Amsterdam), which is a plus. Restaurants located on busy thoroughfares are at a clear disadvantage. A recent, otherwise tasty lunch at Nice Matin, was marred by a steady stream of noisy trucks barreling along Amsterdam Ave. (Meanwhile, the restaurant’s next-door neighbor, The Lucerne Hotel, was recently designated a homeless shelter.) The Greek restaurant Avra, on East 60th off of Madison, benefits from an unusually large, outdoor footprint as well as terrific food. The three-course lunch special for $29.50 is almost a bargain considering how immense each course is. Back on the West Side, Elea (West 85th between Broadway and Amsterdam) also serves up refined Greek fare in very pleasant surroundings. Alice’s Tea Cup recently reopened both its East and Upper West Side chapters. In addition to high tea, Alice offers various sandwiches and salads; it’s also possible to stop by for a scone (many varieties) and a mug of iced tea. (A woman strolling by the other day allowed her dog to poop on a small patch of dirt right next to our table. She did clean it up, but still…) Way west, on the Pier that extends past Riverside Park and West 70th Street, is the Pier i Café. You order food from the takeout hut (hamburgers are a good choice), then eat at one of several tables, with cheery green canopies, overlooking the Hudson. You won’t mistake this setting for the Côte d’Azur, but it has its own pleasures. Evelyn Renold is a longtime editor with a special interest in arts and entertainment. Her wide-ranging career has included stints at Newsday, The New York Daily News, Lear’s and Good Housekeeping. She currently reviews literary fiction for Kirkus and works with authors at evelynrenold.com

By Lisa Goldberg MS, CNS, CDN What could be worse for your waistline than sheltering in your home with the refrigerator not far from sight? During this uncertain time that we are living in, do you find yourself opening the door to the fridge countless times a day? Are you turning to food more than ever before because you’re stressed, or you need an activity or you’re just plain bored? Several months have now passed since we got stay-at-home orders due to coronavirus. Right now, much of the chatter on the internet revolves around gaining “the Quarantine 15” or “the “COVID 19.” Like many of my clients who struggle with emotional eating and yo-yo dieting, do you find that your eating as of late has nothing to do with being hungry? You may be using food to cope with the stress of the pandemic because you repeatedly tell yourself that “food makes me feel better,” but in your heart you know that it doesn’t. If you find your clothes are getting tighter and you’ve decided that you will worry about it later, it’s time to nip it in the bud right now! Because the truth is, if you are gaining weight from stress and mindless eating, you will only be mad at yourself when the pandemic is over, and your social life resumes. This is 100% avoidable. Remember, you are responsible for taking care of yourself no matter what is going on in your life. In fact, it’s even more important that you take care of yourself when times feel hard, because this will make you feel better about the current circumstances and about yourself. So, what can you do instead of continuing to stress or boredom eat while you are stuck spending more time than usual at home? Here are 20 things that you can do to avoid eating and distract yourself when you are NOT hungry: 1. Take 5 slow, deep cleansing breathes 2. Go outside (with your mask) for a walk 3. Sit down and journal your feelings and what’s triggering you to eat 4. Walk the dog or play with the cat for an extra 15-20 minutes 5. Take a hot bath or shower 6. Brush your teeth or pop a Listerine strip in your mouth 7. Organize your closets 8. Call someone you care about but can’t visit now to let them know you’re thinking about them. 9. Rearrange pieces of furniture to give your home a new look 10. Stream a new movie, podcast or music video 11. Find a new exercise video workout 12. Turn on the music and dance around the house 13. Start your holiday shopping list 14. Put a cosmetic mask on your face or deep condition your hair 15. Read a good book 16. Do some yoga stretches 17. Take a nap 18. Count your blessings 19 List ten things you can’t wait to do again. 20. Take a look in the mirror and say to yourself “I love you” and remind yourself why food is not the answer to riding out the pandemic. You will get through this. Remember, obesity is a comorbidity when it comes to this virus. The reason we are at home is to stay healthy. So, as I say when I coach my clients, “choose YOU and your health over food you are not hungry for”. You will thank your lucky stars when it’s time to get out of your sweats and get back out in the world. Lisa Goldberg is a nutritionist and weight-loss accountability coach with a master’s degree in Clinical Nutrition from New York University. She is an author, certified Nutrition Specialist, a certified Dietician/Nutritionist licensed by New York State, and certified in Adult Weight Management by the American Dietetic Association. Lisa, who has been coaching clients since 2001, focuses on mindset change, mindful eating and habit and behavior change. She teaches her clients how to break their old patterns around food and eating so that they can end their struggle with emotional eating that leads to yo-yo dieting. Her clients create sustainable lifestyle changes that empower them to change their relationship with food and lose unwanted weight for good. Lisa is the author of the book Food Fight!! Winning the Battle with Food and Eating to Achieve Sustainable Weight Loss, available on Amazon. She served as the nutritionist at the New York Stock Exchange where she created HealthCoach, a healthy lunch program that delivered healthy meals to Wall Street traders from 2003-2013. Lisa is based in New York City. In 2015, she expanded her practice to coach clients remotely and she now coaches clients around the world. For more information about how to work with Lisa Goldberg, click below: http://www.lisagoldbergnutrition.com

August 5, 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an anti-China speech that was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous. If biblical literalists like Pompeo remain in power past November, they could well bring the world to the brink of a war that they expect and perhaps even seek. NEW YORK – Many white Christian evangelicals in the United States have long believed that America has a God-given mission to save the world. Under the influence of this crusading mentality, US foreign policy has often swerved from diplomacy to war. It is in danger of doing so again. Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched yet another evangelical crusade, this time against China. His speech was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous – and may well put the US on a path to conflict with China. According to Pompeo, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CPC) harbor a “decades-long desire for global hegemony.” This is ironic. Only one country – the US – has a defense strategy calling for it to be the “preeminent military power in the world,” with “favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere.” China’s defense white paper, by contrast, states that “China will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony,” and that, “As economic globalization, the information society, and cultural diversification develop in an increasingly multi-polar world, peace, development, and win-win cooperation remain the irreversible trends of the times.” One is reminded of Jesus’s own admonition: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). US military spending totaled $732 billion in 2019, nearly three times the $261 billion China spent. The US, moreover, has around 800 overseas military bases, while China has just one (a small naval base in Djibouti). The US has many military bases close to China, which has none anywhere near the US. The US has 5,800 nuclear warheads; China has roughly 320. The US has 11 aircraft carriers; China has one. The US has launched many overseas wars in the past 40 years; China has launched none (though it has been criticized for border skirmishes, most recently with India, that stop short of war). The US has repeatedly rejected or withdrawn from United Nations treaties and UN organizations in recent years, including UNESCO, the Paris climate agreement, and, most recently, the World Health Organization, while China supports UN processes and agencies. US President Donald Trump recently threatened the staff of the International Criminal Court with sanctions. Pompeo rails against China’s clampdown on its mainly Muslim Uighur population, but Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, claims that Trump privately gave China’s actions a pass, or even encouraged them. The world took relatively little notice of Pompeo’s speech, which offered no evidence to back up his claims of China’s hegemonic ambition. China’s rejection of US hegemony does not mean that China itself seeks hegemony. Indeed, outside of the US, there is little belief that China aims for global dominance. China’s explicitly stated national goals are to be a “moderately prosperous society” by 2021 (the centenary of the CPC), and a “fully developed country” by 2049 (the centennial of the People’s Republic). Moreover, at an estimated $10,098 in 2019, China’s GDP per capita was less than one-sixth that of the US ($65,112) – hardly the basis for global supremacy. China still has a lot of catching up to do to achieve even its basic economic development goals. Assuming that Trump loses in November’s presidential election, Pompeo’s speech will likely receive no further notice. The Democrats will surely criticize China, but without Pompeo’s brazen exaggerations. Yet, if Trump wins, Pompeo’s speech could be a harbinger of chaos. Pompeo’s evangelism is real, and white evangelicals are the political base of today’s Republican Party. Pompeo’s zealous excesses have deep roots in American history. As I recounted in my recent book A New Foreign Policy, English protestant settlers believed that they were founding a New Israel in the new promised land, with God’s providential blessings. In 1845, John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to justify and celebrate America’s violent annexation of North America. “All this will be our future history,” he wrote in 1839, “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man – the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen...” On the basis of such exalted views of its own beneficence, the US engaged in mass enslavement until the Civil War and mass apartheid thereafter; slaughtered Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century and subjugated them thereafter; and, with the closure of the Western frontier, extended Manifest Destiny overseas. Later, with the onset of the Cold War, anti-communist fervor led the US to fight disastrous wars in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutal wars in Central America in the 1980s. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the evangelical ardor was directed against “radical Islam” or “Islamic fascism,” with four US wars of choice – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya – all of which remain debacles to this day. Suddenly, the supposed existential threat of radical Islam has been forgotten, and the new crusade targets the CPC. Pompeo himself is a biblical literalist who believes that the end time, the apocalyptic battle between good and evil, is imminent. Pompeo described his beliefs in a 2015 speech while a Congressman from Kansas: America is a Judeo-Christian nation, the greatest in history, whose task is to fight God’s battles until the Rapture, when Christ’s born-again followers, like Pompeo, will be swept to heaven at the Last Judgment. White evangelicals represent only around 17% of the US adult population, but comprise around 26% of voters. They vote overwhelmingly Republican (an estimated 81% in 2016), making them the party’s single most important voting bloc. That gives them powerful influence on Republican policy, and in particular on foreign policy when Republicans control the White House and Senate (with its treaty-ratifying powers). Fully 99% of Republican congressmen are Christian, of whom around 70% are Protestant, including a significant though unknown proportion of evangelicals. Of course, the Democrats also harbor some politicians who proclaim American exceptionalism and launch crusading wars (for example, President Barack Obama’s interventions in Syria and Libya). On the whole, however, the Democratic Party is less wedded to claims of US hegemony than is the Republican Party’s evangelical base. Pompeo’s inflammatory anti-China rhetoric could become even more apocalyptic in the coming weeks, if only to fire up the Republican base ahead of the election. If Trump is defeated, as seems likely, the risk of a US confrontation with China will recede. But if he remains in power, whether by a true electoral victory, vote fraud, or even a coup (anything is possible), Pompeo’s crusade would probably proceed, and could well bring the world to the brink of a war that he expects and perhaps even seeks.

By Andy Borowitz August 6, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Alarmed by his plunging poll numbers, Donald J. Trump is actively considering replacing Mike Pence on the G.O.P. ticket with a Confederate statue, White House sources have revealed. According to the sources, Trump is currently considering a short list of Confederate monuments to swap for Pence, including statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Reportedly, Trump believes that replacing Pence with a Confederate statue is just what his campaign needs to energize his base. “Plus, he’ll finally have someone in his inner circle who won’t write a book,” one source said. According to the same source, choosing among the Confederate statues is shaping up to be the toughest decision of Trump’s Presidency. “He thinks they’re all very fine people,” the source said. But another White House insider was less sanguine about the strengths a Confederate statue would bring to Trump’s reelection effort. “Replacing Pence with an inanimate object seems like a wash to me,” the insider 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.

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."

One of America’s greatest anxieties during the pandemic is the fate of the crop on top. Hair care — mainly the lack thereof — is of such concern that salons, barbershops and other parlors of primp, snip and coif were quickly elevated to the status of essential businesses that must be reopened forthwith. I must confess that I do not participate in this wailing, lamentation and risk of infection. I trim my own locks. A scissors, a comb, a stance in front of the bathroom mirror and snip, snip, snip. Done! I should also mention that I have no clue how to cut hair. I just hack away. Fortunately, I have access to a hat, which covers a multitude of sins. The last time I had a proper cut was in 2017. It seems I’ve always had an aversion to barbers, probably because my Uncle Jack was one. A rather coarse gentleman of the redneck persuasion, he hailed from Tennessee and took great delight in giving me bowl cuts when I was a child, whether I needed them or not. “Lowering your ears,” he called it. When I sprouted shoulder-length tresses as a teen, he was outraged and made it his life’s mission to get me into his chair. I made it my life’s mission to avoid such a terrible fate. What was once an expression of protest morphed into laziness and frugality. I’ve never understood why anyone would be willing to spend more than $10 for a haircut, never mind the considerable added expense of dyeing, frosting, or other procedures, or why they’d have it done more than, say, twice a year. Then again, being presentable to the public is not one of my concerns. That may be due to having spent 30 years in a profession (sports journalism) where the slovenly Oscar Madison look is perfectly acceptable, if not expected. “Did you cut this yourself?” I am always asked by the bemused hair configuration specialists at the discount establishments I visit whenever a job interview or state occasion requires me to seriously tidy up the old noggin. They never fail to notice and comment on the bizarre assortment of tufts, spears, flanges, wings, shoots, corkscrews and burrs that make me look like Dagwood Bumstead with terminal bedhead. Despite occasional moments of shame, I gladly sacrifice artistry for convenience and savings by seizing my shears whenever I grow too shaggy. I don’t recommend you try this at home, but I simply cut my bangs in a slight curve at about mid-forehead, lop around my ears, and blindly hack at the back, approximating collar length and using touch to determine if my cut is even. (Usually not and I eventually give up trying to make it so.) Sometimes, I’ll attempt to layer the sides for a smoother, blended effect but they usually end up looking like a pack of weasels got loose there in a feeding frenzy. I’m surprised that my wife hasn’t offered to lend a hand. Self-taught, she used to give our kids and me some pretty serviceable trims during our child-rearing years. Now she frequently asks, “You aren’t going out looking like that are you?” but her queries are directed at my attire. My omnipresent New York Giants cap effectively hides much of the monstrosity on my skull. One of these days I’ll have to throw myself upon the mercy of a professional again. In the meantime, I’m happy to ride out the pandemic in my usual shabby state of tonsorial austerity. 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.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 12 By Laurence Lerman I’m going to preempt my whack-a-moling of the films that played a part in my weekly streaming adventures briefly to call attention to the death of two talented actors. Both were well known and respected, versatile and prolific, as well as being active for more than a half-century each. Between the two of them, their careers offer a wide-ranging view of the international cinematic landscape. I’m referring to Olivia de Havilland, who died on Sunday (July 26) at the age of 104 at her home in Paris, France, and John Saxon, who passed one day earlier of pneumonia at 84 in his home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Ms. de Havilland, one of only 14 actresses to win at least two leading actor Oscars, was one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, having costarred in a number of films that are now considered classics, including one that, perhaps more than any other, symbolizes that renowned era: 1939’s Gone with the Wind. Earlier, in 1935, the 19-year-old Ms. de Havilland was cast in the pirate adventure Captain Blood opposite the dashing Errol Flynn, the first of eight adventure films and costume dramas the two would work on together. It remains a remarkable cycle that includes such greats as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), in which she spunkily portrayed Maid Marian. In the years immediately following her Oscar-nominated turn as Melanie Wilkes in GWTW, Ms. de Havilland felt she wasn’t getting the plum roles she coveted from Warner Studios, where she was under contract. A battle royale ensued, with de Havilland and studio chief Jack Warner heading to court as the actress attempted to break her contract. (At the time, if actors declined a role or were otherwise “difficult,” the studios were contractually entitled to put them on leave and extend their contracts for the length of that leave, effectively stalling their careers.) De Havilland won her case, creating what quickly came to be known as “The De Havilland Law,” which essentially declared that studio contracts were nothing less than a form of indentured servitude. (Following Olivia’s liberation from Warner, Jack Warner reportedly became apoplectic at the mere mention of her name.) The De Havilland Law on contracts stands to this day and has been used by numerous actors over the years (most famously by Johnny Carson when he wished to break his contract with NBC in the late Seventies). Hollywood quickly rewarded Ms. de Havilland for her fortitude. Her first post-Warner film was the 1946 tearjerker To Each His Own, for which she received her first Academy Award. This was quickly followed by her lauded performance in the 1946 murderous twins noir The Dark Mirror (a personal favorite), 1948’s ground-breaking expose on mental institutions, The Snake Pit, and then, in 1949, her second Oscar-winner, the haunting drama The Heiress. After those peak years, as times changed and she raised her two young children, de Havilland’s career slowed down, though a number of memorable films still emerged—the 1956 romantic comedy The Ambassador’s Daughter was a delight and 1962’s Light in the Piazza a lovely drama-romance. Then of course there’s the 1964 gothic mystery Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, which Olivia playing opposite her pals Bette Davis and Joseph Cotten. Prior to her retirement in the early Eighties, de Havilland popped up in a pair of Seventies all-star disaster movies, the box office smash Airport ’77 (1977) and the not-so-smashing African killer bees thriller The Swarm from 1978—the same year John Saxon flew into town in The Bees, an awful Mexican knockoff about a South American strain of the deadly insect that was quickly banged out a few months after Hollywood’s colossal-by-comparison The Swarm. The nearly 200 titles listed on Mr. Saxon’s IMDb page aren’t as prestigious as Ms. de Havilland’s, but they’re no less varied and colorful, particularly for an actor seeking regular work both in the Hollywood system and outside of it. As far as Hollywood goes, the Brooklyn-born Saxon headed out there when he was 20 and began his career as a contract player for Universal Pictures, taking second leads in musical comedies (Rock, Baby, Rock, 1956), film noirs (The Restless Years, 1958), historical dramas (The Big Fisherman, 1959) and westerns, including the 1966 Marlon Brando starrer The Appaloosa, for which Saxon garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Beginning in the mid-Sixties, Saxon alternated his work in the American film industry with a generous serving of genre work in European productions mounted by producers looking to put a familiar, manly face in their low-budget movies (and on their accompanying posters). John Saxon—like Lee Van Cleef, Mel Ferrer, Tony Franciosa and a slew of others—fit the bill perfectly. German war films (The Cavern, 1964), British sci-fiers (The Night Caller, 1965), spaghetti westerns (One Dollar Too Many, 1968), Italian poliziottescoes (Violent Naples, 1976) and the like kept Saxon busy into the Eighties, while he simultaneously appeared in dozens upon dozens of popular and not-so-popular American films and television shows. Most notably, Saxon held his own against Bruce Lee in 1973’s landmark Enter the Dragon (1973), which is still considered to be the greatest martial arts film of all time. My dad took me to see Enter the Dragon the year it was released—truly great stuff for this 10-year-old that marked my first exposure to Saxon. My second encounter with him occurred less than a year later on TV, first in a The Mary Tyler Moore Show entry where he played a boyfriend of Phyllis, and then in “Day of the Robot,” an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man where he plays a buddy of Steve Austin’s who’s kidnapped and replaced with a super-powered look-alike robot. Our expensive titular hero and the robot have a climactic, proto-Terminator fight to the finish, most of it filmed in slo-mo, which undercuts the action chops Saxon had displayed in Enter the Dragon. But it was wild fun nonetheless, particularly Saxon having his face plate slugged off by Austin to reveal an eyeless mass of wires and electrodes, followed by his circuits-a’blazing impalement on a steel girder. I tracked down the episode this week and revisited the fight for the first time in more than 40 years, after I had checked out Errol and Olivia enjoying some frontier smooching in the 1939 Technicolor western Dodge City. Neither picked up any awards, but for me they were both winners. 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.