Last night we saw Yusuf play three songs from Harold and Maude.

We were five rows back, he was right there, skinny in a vest, and his voice is startling coming out of him, and he’s just warm. His voice is more clear and sweet than it is on this recording. We didn’t even know that he was going to be there until like three days ago, we signed up for the Hal Ashby tribute, he flew in special from England. He played this, and “Miles From Nowhere,” and “Trouble,” by insistence of Cameron Crowe, and then he thanked Hal Ashby for using his music.

Cameron Crowe and Peter Bart hosted a really disappointing panel discussion with Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Diablo Cody, Jon Voight, and Haskell Wexler (cinematographer, writer of Medium Cool). PB said some great stuff, CC said some good stuff, HW of course. But HA made fantastic movies that were thoroughly political and leftist, and Jon Voight has written, “I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam,” (only linked for reference, don’t click on it, it’s loaded with pop-ups and the opinion that Democrats are brainwashing America) and the other three are all responsible for movies notable for centering around young women who don’t get abortions (Big ups to CC, though!). But no one really mentioned his devoted politicalness, just that he mixed drama and comedy and he was a great guy and so on, which is nice, but.

After the panel ended we were whispering about how terrible it had been and Toph asked where Bud Cort was, and I said they should have had Wes Anderson for pete’s sake (later, as we were leaving, Mark said about Harold and Maude, “That movie is like the Rosetta Stone for Wes Anderson”), and Mark said they should’ve just gotten the whole cast of The Life Aquatic up there, and then the movie started but in my head I was thinking yeah, I really would have actually liked to hear Owen Wilson’s and Bill Murray’s and Anjelica Huston’s opinions on HA, certainly over these schmucks.

And when the movie ended Bud Cort did come out and did a lot of name-dropping, and “I was living at the Chateau”ing, but he also said about meeting HA for the first time that he “was like an illustration out of a French children’s book, like Neptune rising out of the sea…” and who begrudges Bud Cort any of it anyway (Plus he obviously didn’t know who Diablo Cody was and forgot her name.)?

($5 at the Academy.) (More on H&M soon.) (Previously on H&M and Cat Stevens.) And right now we’re off to new prints of The Landlord and Shampoo.