In these mid-summer doldrums, a few rambling thoughts that amount to nothing in particular …

Best sentence all summer: “Her lipstick is a philosophically incomprehensible shade of chalky orange.” (From “Eve’s Hollywood” by Eve Babitz.)  

I have yet to read a memoir that didn’t bore me silly or raise an eyebrow or two. Nabokov’s “Speak, Memory” is a possible exception, and “Eve’s Hollywood” definitely is. I’m skeptical of minutiae only the writer cares about, like how their father flew planes in World War II and their sister married an alcoholic son of a bitch. I can hardly believe a word of what the authors say, especially when they do things like insert direct quotes they muttered as toddlers, forty years after the fact. (See: Mary Karr’s aptly titled “The Liars’ Club.”) It’s all magnificent hooey.

I’m sleeping like crap. Nothing new, but I’m locked in a stretch of relentless insomnia. I called my doctor and he gave me a low dose of Lunesta. It’s done nothing, even when I take more than the prescribed amount (whoopsie). I pop Benadryl and a dorky over the counter sleep aid as well. I’m all drugged up and I still don’t nod off till 4 or 5 or 6. Then I sleep till 9 and awake vaguely refreshed with murder on the mind. I feel like a Stephen King character.

Kamala’s got me revved. For now. The initial blast of flowers and fireworks — her spontaneous honeymoon — is about over, and now she must face the music … er, the monster. Trump, a hopeless buffoon, bigot and playground bully, will meet his match in the debates. Kamala will be the buzzsaw that Trump’s ignorant, lying face encounters and it will be beautiful. That ear boo-boo Trump’s so proud of will be shown for the nothing it is, except symbolic and specious martyrdom. He keeps blathering about the American “bloodbath.” Yes, indeed.

As always, I’ve been watching lots of classic movies from early and midcentury Hollywood — the Golden Age of pictures when men were either gruff or suave (and glistening with pomade) and women were silky and soft-focus, radiating unreachable glamor. Black and white was king and the best pics were positively charged with swoony cinematography and dazzling chiaroscuro. Those were the days. (And I’m someone who name-checks “Alien” and “Jaws” among his favorite films, alongside “All About Eve” and “The Big Sleep.”) Recent viewings: “The Big Heat,” a crackerjack 1953 crime thriller by Fritz Lang, starring Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame, who gets a pot of scalding coffee tossed in her face by Lee Marvin and has to wear a giant bandage for half the movie; the unbearably charming Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in the 1937 screwball marriage/divorce romp “The Awful Truth,” which features the brilliant dog Skippy, who also plays Asta in the great “Thin Man” films; and 1955’s “The Big Knife,” where a fist-tight Jack Palance is a movie star sucked into the manipulative corruptions of fame. A rabid Rod Steiger noshes the scenery like it’s beef jerky. And that’s just three oldies I’ve recently watched (I’ve seen them all before). They beat the living crud out of big, dopey summer blockbusters any day.

I bought a hair dryer. I swear to god. It cost $15. It screams like Janis Joplin.