I've been continuing with the cleaning of my apartment...it goes slowly, but I'm making progress...but it is very, very dusty...

I found the manuscript of a screenplay I had forgotten I'd written...yes, I'm doing the kind of cleaning that is akin to an expedition in "personal archeology"...and I've been giving away videotapes I don't need anymore (because I have DVDs of those same movies now)...and magazines I won't be re-reading in the next century or so...

For the last few days, my freelance work has kept me from my cleaning and packing...and it looks as if I won't get back to it until the weekend. Yes, one must work for a living...

For the last two years I've been grumbling on this blog about tightening finances preventing me from having much leisure-time fun anymore in the tittie bars...and it seems like this has become the situation for a lot of people lately in our flattening economy...less dough for recreation.

I felt proud of myself yesterday for finding a cheap dinner at a food stand in Penn Station: $3.75 for two hot dogs with mustard and kraut, and a 16 oz. beer...

Then I was amazed to see that the same place offers a breakfast of two eggs, toast and potatoes for 99 cents! Almost makes me sorry I don't work down by Penn Station to take advantage of that deal...

After hours of packing and dusting and cleaning last weekend, I treated myself to a visit to the stripclub, where I saw my dancer fave Lily...it was fun, and of course I told myself that "you only live once," but I could have used that money for other things...but I have to have fun once in awhile, yes or no? You're nodding, right?

Lily asked when I'd be back, and I said, "In two or three weeks." If I'm lucky enough to afford it...now I have to start paying back the loan I took out to pay my taxes as a self-employed freelancer...rolling the stone up the hill once again.

But it was nice to see Lily...she seems to have a good attitude about life in general..and she's very simpatico to me as a customer. Whether it's all acting or not, she makes me feel at home...and what if it is acting? I don't worry about whether a movie star personally likes me when he or she makes a film...all I want to do is feel the effects of his or her performance. And maybe that's all one can rightly expect from the entertainers we call "exotic dancers."

I got news this week about an acquaintance of mine who has developed some serious health problems. Somebody I've known for a long time; not a close friend, but somebody I like and shoot the breeze with regularly. I hope he gets better soon. Ah, I can see we're moving into that treacherous gray zone of middle age...

And I think I'm going to need make room in my budget for more trips to the stripclub for occasional relief from the murk and fog of that gray zone.

I re-watched one of my favorite movies the other night, Ghost World, with Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi. This 2001 movie is the story of a rebellious girl named Enid (Birch) who has trouble adjusting to adult life after high school graduation. She becomes friends with an eccentric curmudgeon and collector of old records and pulp art named Seymour (Steve Buscemi) who is much older than her. She tries to get him hooked up with a woman closer to his age but becomes jealous when he does. It leads to predictable but eminently watchable complications between Enid and Seymour...

When I told my friend ZP that I'd watched the movie again, he said, "Oh, so you're resuming your fantasy romance with Thora Birch." Yes, I have to admit, I love her in this role...I know she was in American Beauty, but I didn't like that movie much and she didn't make a strong impression on me there. But in Ghost World, she creates a simultaneously cranky and lovable female character of supreme appeal...

I identify with Seymour and his desire for Enid, and also with his suppressing his attraction to her as a ridiculous idea since he's so much older than she is. I've been in situations like that with much younger women, especially in the stripclubs. But I also identify with Enid--because I also had a hard time adjusting to adult life after high school and even college, and didn't want to take things seriously for the longest time. Sometimes I think I still don't...

Anyway, I wish Thora would make some more movies. Better yet, I wish she'd appear again as Enid in a sequel to Ghost World! That's really what I'd like to see. More Enid!

Here are two links to nice pix of Thora. One is with an interesting review of Ghost World from a site called Cinema 100, and the other is from an academic site discussing the various points of "mise en scene," or film direction. In the first shot, Enid wears a catgirl mask she buys at an adult book store--how damn cute is that?? In the second, she's talking with Seymour about his rare collection of 78 rpm records.

You have to see this movie. Although the ending is a little ambiguous--and melancholy, from my point of view--overall it's a modern gem with all the star power of the great Hollywood classics.

Cinema100

MiseEnScene

It's been more than three weeks, almost four, since my last post, because I've been preoccupied with a massive new project: cleaning up the clutter in my apartment. Over the last two weeks I've taken twenty-five boxes of books and magazines over to my storage space, which had more than twenty boxes of stuff there already. My good buddies Rexx the writer/bodybuilder and ZP the writer/artist who looks like a tall Kafka have been helping me schlep the stuff over there...and then we go out and enjoy a good breakfast.

Now I see how my brief foray into reading ancient military history last fall, about the campaigns of Hannibal versus the Romans, is coming in handy: because I have to take the approach that cleaning and organizing the stuff in a dusty studio apartment is like fighting a kind of war against several fronts of massive hordes of books and magazines and videos...I concentrate on one battle in one area, cleaning and boxing the stuff up there, but make small skirmishes in other areas to weaken my opponents (piles of books and mags) in anticipation of coming major offensives in those regions...

Anyway, enough of the Hannibal analogy. You get the idea: I'm basically spring-cleaning like many other folks in town. But I guess I have to turn it into a gladiator movie.

It's nice to see the books and movies again that I know I had, but couldn't access because of the stuff on top of them...

Like my videos of the memorable noir Angel Face, with Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum...or the historical melodrama Black Magic, with Orson Welles in the role of the charismatic 18th century magician Cagliostro...

Of course, a lot has happened in the celebrity world since my last post. Legends Richard Widmark and Charlton Heston died...as well as the stripper Sherry Britton, who was a famous World War 2 pinup as well as a peeler, and who was made an honorary Brigadier General by FDR for her efforts to help morale! After stripping, she became a stage actress and achieved some solid success. I recall reading somewhere that she performed with John Garfield in the play Peer Gynt when it was revived in the late 40s or early 50s. She was also married for many years and lived in Manhattan...

Speaking of strippers, last weekend I ran into my old dancer fave Lily after almost a year. I hadn't been out at the club in months, but after a long day of packing and cleaning, felt I had earned a little fun...I was surprised to see her, as I thought she'd left the city, but there she was, sexy as ever--maybe more so. We had a drink together and a few dances, and I realized how nice it was not only to see her again in particular, but just to be out in general and having a little fun with a pretty and personable dancer. As corny as it sounds, I felt renewed...and horny. You see, lately I've been worried that my libido, which sometimes has seemed like the very engine of my consciousness, has been starting to flag. But apparently not, when Lily's on my lap...

Yes, I guess your cranky blogger needs his strippers as much as his DVDs. I've been definitely concentrating more on the DVDs in these financially tighter times...but I'll try to fit in some more visits to Lily and try to make it work budget-wise.

Someday I'd like to open the AARP magazine and read an article about how aging baby boomers fit "quality stripper time" into their constrained budgets...maybe I'LL write it? I'm certainly qualified...

Wow, it's been eight days since my last entry. First I got preoccupied with yet one more revision of my novel, which took four days (when I say "revision" I mean mostly touching up, not too much complete rewriting); and then I got a bad cold with a touch of the flu, which basically laid me up.

I hope the book is basically done now. It's the ending which has given me the most problems, but I hope I've licked it.

I still don't feel so good--can't seem to get my temperature down to normal--and don't have much of an appetite. I drank my fill of tea and soup this weekend...with a little Jameson to sweat out the fever, too.

Highlight of the weekend was watching the old movie "The Scarlet Pimpernel" with Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon. I had never seen it before--the 1935 chestnut about the British aristocrat rescuing French aristocrats from the guillotine during the French revolution. It's a Zorro-type story, with Howard pretending to be a near-effeminate fop to cover up his derring-do from the villains. The best scenes were when he was pretending to be totally vapid and only concerned with men's fashions. Howard was quite funny as a kind of 1792 "metrosexual." And Merle Oberon as his bewildered wife was gorgeous. A friend of mine really likes her, and now I understand why. Beautiful face, good actress, and a lot of sexy low-cut gowns in this movie! A most fetching bosom...in fact, it was interesting to see a 1935 movie that gave such prominent display to cleavage. I can't get her cleavage out of my mind...I guess I must be back on the road to health, after all!

In the wake of the Spitzer scandal, all weekend there have been articles in the papers about high-class hookers and the fast and expensive sex-and-champagne lifestyles of the financial wizards, many of them guys in my age bracket, who get to party with the young and beautiful chicks. It really makes me envious, because I can't afford that kind of excitement and adventure...but with my heightened imagination, I can well picture what it would be like...falling asleep after a rambunctious night with a busty blonde cuddled under my right arm, and a sparkling Japanese under my left...or the blonde under my left, and the Japanese under my right...

Ah, why do I complain? I've had my share of thrills. Just not lately...

Not that I would want to spend $4300 on a call girl like Spitzer is alleged to have done. No wonder hooker slang for the wad of cash is "the Brick" at that lofty level of the sleaze world. Oh, did I call it sleazy? It is at EVERY level. That's part of the appeal, the tingle, and any john who denies that is deluding himself...anyway, a smart shopper like yours truly could have a great time for $200. I used to in the past, and I could tomorrow...if I had $200 to blow.

Alas, I brought my tax figures to the accountant last Tuesday, and I have to prepare to borrow on credit to pay my tab to the government as a self-employed freelance worker...

It just irks me to hear about how much money is floating around out there...these rich idiots spending hundreds of dollars for "bottle service" in the hot clubs...and Sir Cranky resents spending $6.50 for a glass of house wine at the Italian joint the other night! It tasted like the whole bottle cost $6.50 retail...or less, wholesale...

Money! Money! Money! Dough! Dough! Dough! The hooker involved in the Spitzer affair is going to make mountains of it, mountains! Just for being in the right wrong place at the right wrong time! And you just sense she's going to get the book deal that every struggling scribe I know is lusting after, waiting for their agents to get back to them with a crumb of good news...but all this girl had to do was spread her thighs and wham! The dough rolls in...true, she's into her music, and it's supposedly not bad, and so she was indeed ready for her moment in the sun...or is it a flashing neon hotel sign that I see in my film noir-loving brain? In any case, her story is still an envy stirrer-upper...

Oh, to have one good solid opportunity to whore myself and make a couple of million!!!