It's very rainy out tonight, a cold wet rain. I've stayed inside working part of the day, and surfing online. Talked to my sister in Chicago for a little while, just to let off steam about various work pressures. I try to be like Gary Cooper's movie characters, and just keep things low key if not bottled up, but it doesn't work for me and my more impassioned Romanian-Russian-Jewish temperament. But I wish I could be a stoic Westerner.

These days have been very stressful...as a freelancer, I'm finding that money is coming in slower than ever before, and I'm trying to adjust to a more constant level of anxiety than I had to experience when my work was more regular. As I've explained in previous posts, I recently lost a steady freelance gig I had for over sixteen years.

I wonder if stress starts to affect your memory? Sometimes my mind seems to go blank, and I can't think of what to do next, even though I have plenty I could do.

Like my tax prep. Or figure out how much I'm going to shift money from my savings account to my checking account to pay my expenses since my checks for freelance work are coming slower and slower.

I find that financial stress takes the zest out of everything. I watch movies, but my mind is always feeling I should be working instead, or figuring out some scheme to get more dough. Sometimes I don't feel like eating. Other times I waste hours on the Internet, surfing and reading until my eyes hurt. There's always some bit of esoteric knowledge or exotic beauty that captures my attention online.

The old battle between which I preferred more, strippers or DVDs, seems quaint. I don't think I could enjoy a strip club right now, unless of course the most beautiful girl of the Doris Day type was there and lavished her attention on me and gave me free lapdances and bought all my drinks!

DVD-wise, I have plenty of movies to watch, but feel too distracted to put them on the machine. Although I will sometimes turn on Turner Classic Movies and sit there and watch whatever's on for awhile.

I like listening to Robert Osborne introduce the movies on that channel. He's a very personable host, full of affection for the subject. I'm sorry I didn't get cable years earlier, so I could have enjoyed him all along. Might have made the last decade better.

Watched that new show "How To Make It In America" on HBO; it's pretty good, although the two main twentysomething characters seem like they're never going to get their shit together and achieve something. The plot is about how they're trying to hustle deals and make it big in the modern Manhattan of hot models, sexy parties, and the interconnected art and fashion scene. The characters' lack of focus in their strivings brings back melancholy memories for me of my own twenties, when I and my actor and writer friends seemed to work without strong plans on how to properly build our careers. Still, the actor Bryan Greenberg, who plays Ben Epstein, has a memorable quality about him; a kind of handsome urban Jewish melancholy not unlike that of John Garfield's so many years ago, if less rough-hewn and street-tough. I'll keep watching, but I have a feeling it's going to get grim. But that's okay, because Garfield's movies didn't always end on an upbeat, and maybe they were more memorable for it.

Well, here it is New Year's Eve again. Almost 2010! It's hard to believe Y2K was ten years ago, with all those fears that our technology would grind to a halt with the beginning of the 21st century. I remember I stocked up on extra bottled water, sandwich fixin's, and took an extra C-note out of the bank just in case ATMs stopped working.

I stayed home that New Year's Eve, because the Times Square crowds were huge and, living in Midtown Manhattan, I'm right in the center of it. I felt kind of like a stick-in-the-mud, staying in that once-in-a-lifetime turn-of-the-century night, but even as I type these words now I can hear folks blowing horns on the street and remind myself I'm better off inside.

Nobody can accuse me of not paying my nightlife dues. I certainly spent plenty of time and money in lots of places, strip joints or otherwise, on a good number of New Year's Eves. But now I have one glass of wine and one beer with dinner, as I did tonight, and I'm ready to fall asleep.

The movie I watched on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1999, was The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I think in hindsight that it was a good choice. Because if anything, people have shrunk (metaphorically) over the last ten years, becoming ever more obviously powerless pawns in the hands of both the ultra-wealthy and the politically connected, as well as all the other forces in this world that seem to have made life much more of a struggle. I think if people pursue their entertainments and diversions now with an even greater intensity, it's because their despair at feeling like they matter in the scheme of things has never been greater. It feels like we live in a time of almost unending bullshit, and people really need their fun to relax their weary brains. Whether it's with sports or lapdances or movies or iTunes, we incredible shrinking people need to chill.

Maybe I shouldn't have had Triscuits and Swiss cheese for dinner tonight. I was going to take out some Chinese, but the crowds outside were insane and I knew I would have trouble getting back to my apartment. So I went back upstairs, got out the crackers, cheese, and a shot glass of Paul Masson Rose (yes, I like to drink cheap wine out of a shot glass) and a can of Natural Ice, and watched a 1937 movie with a pre-famous Rita Hayworth called Paid to Dance, about government agents bringing down the "dance hall racket." Not a great movie, but I love anything about the history of sleaze entertainment. Someday I'll have to write here about my experiences in the last sleazy dance halls in Times Square. Or maybe I already did? I guess this blog could use an index right about now.

I had the notion of maybe going out to the stripclub and getting a lapdance at midnight, as a way of bringing the New Year in with something pleasant. This has been a rough year, and I thought maybe a lapdance at the stroke of twelve would bring me good luck. But one time when I went out to the club on New Year's Eve, the girl I was hanging out with left me just a few minutes before midnight; the reason she did that was because of a superstition of her native country which was that whomever you spent midnight with on New Year's Eve would be in your life the coming year. I guess she didn't like me enough to risk that.

Well, we'll see. I'm drinking some water now to wake up from the effects of beer and wine, and sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop, one of the great candies of my Baby Boomer childhood. Maybe if I feel adventurous, I'll go out and get that dance. I have my coupon for free admission at the ready.

Happy 2010 to everyone, and especially to my pal Sid, with whom I chatted early this evening and who reminded me I've been neglecting this blog! I guess I've just been more clammed-up than usual.

Yours in curmudgeonry,
Sir Cranky

This holiday weekend started out nicely. I had dinner with some friends here in the city with whom I watch old movies on Thursday nights. We hit an East Village coffee shop for the $15.95 turkey dinner special, and it was quite filling. Then we watched an old pirate movie from 1951 on DVD, Anne of the Indies. Jean Peters played a female pirate captain, and was quite feisty and attractive in the role. I find Peters extremely sexy; I like her womanly body combined with a somewhat tentative tomboy quality. One of my friends drooled over Debra Paget, also in the film: "I'm in love!" he gasped. Debra appeared as a more dainty and conventional type, complete with sexy seventeenth century off-the-shoulder frilly finery that showed her off most fetchingly.

After looking up the movie on IMDB, I realized it is almost exactly the same age as myself; it was released on October 18, 1951, and I was born on October 27, 1951. So it was probably in "gestation" in the studio about as long as I was in my mother's tummy.

Just an odd bit of personal trivia, I guess you might call this...

Anyway, after Thanksgiving I unfortunately developed a cold by Friday afternoon, and with the windy and chilly weather, had to lay low for the most part. A pity; I really look forward to this weekend, and had planned to wander about. But it wasn't a good idea the way I've been feeling. I figured since I had to stay in, I might as well do some freelance work that's coming due this week, so I got up early today, put in a few hours, and felt nobly productive.

At least that MRI I mentioned in my last post turned out to be okay, and the remedy for my foot problem didn't involve yet more surgery.

Just want to get over this cold already. Guess I'll go with a nice hot Cantonese noodle soup for dinner.

Boy, without me having a stripper to obsess about, this blog gets dull...for me to write or read! But my financial situation (described in recent posts) has really put the kibosh on my spending time in the clubs, except on rare occasions like the one I wrote about in my last entry. Still, going cold turkey from peelers has had a negative effect on my spirits. I feel like I've aged five years in one. Seriously.

Maybe the clubs were my private "fountain of youth."

Now I'm just a guy scrambling for more freelance work and dealing with an annoying foot problem. I have to go to the doctor tomorrow to get the results of an MRI done on the foot, and I'm stressed about it. Wish I could be stoic and silent about it like my movie heroes.

Well, at least tomorrow night I'll be having dinner with my writer/bodybuilder friend Rexx. I think we might go get a particularly tasty hamburger.

Some of the effects of financial stress on me, a single middle-aged guy in Manhattan, have been these: I've lost interest in reading the newspapers, I often have little interest in eating anything other than candy, and I often think about how I'd like to take up smoking cigarettes again. I stopped smoking two or three years ago; I can't remember exactly. I could check by looking in my bank book; when I find the notations for the checks I wrote to an ear-nose-and-throat doctor whom I went to when I couldn't get rid of a scratching in my throat, then I'll know about when it was that I quit. Having a tube put down your gullet so the doctor can take a peek is a great inducement to stop smoking--and I smoked very little to begin with, maybe a pack a month, or even two months. I didn't even inhale; would just puff and let it dangle on my lip like Bogart's or John Garfield's.

In fact, I lost some considerable comfort and pleasure in stripclubs when the Bloomberg administration here in New York outlawed smoking in bars. A cigarette was a calming defense mechanism when I was being bombarded with requests for lapdances. Also--and I don't care if it's stupid or politically incorrect to say this--I'd been smoking long enough to feel that the habit gave me one of my few visual vestiges of old school cool, and an ordinary looking mug like me needs every advantage he can get when he's feeling flummoxed by all that flesh.

So, no strippers, no cigarettes, cheap Chinese food every night for dinner (I lean towards beef with string beans), bored with the news, and even getting bored watching TCM or DVDs lately. I just hope that my foot problem isn't a serious one, and that my apathy and boredom isn't relieved in a distressing way...

I know, these really aren't bad problems. Others have it much, much worse. The only things I tend to completely read through in the papers these days are stories about people struggling for jobs and dough. Sorry for whining, but I'm just depressed.

Don't even much enjoy drinking anymore. Even one beer can give me a headache. What the fuck is it with this middle age shit...!!!

I did something the other day that I haven't in a few months--stopped in the stripclub. I've stayed away for financial reasons, but I told myself I didn't have to spend a lot of money, just have one beer and maybe tip the girls a couple of bucks. In fact, because of some medicine I'm taking for my foot problem (which I mentioned in the last entry), I could only have one drink, so my expenditure on alcohol was limited from the git-go. And for ten bucks a beer, I was happy about that.

The club had been re-designed and was so dark it was hard to make out the faces of the dancers even onstage. But maybe that's to encourage customers to get the entertainers up-close and personal, for drinks and lapdances.

Although it was pleasant enough to chat (and I enjoyed the company of two attentive, attractive young women, which I don't generally get unless I go to a stripclub), I left when my beer was done without spending more than fifteen dollars.

Still, the next day, I realized that it would be nice to go back again soon sometime, just for the nearness of these twentysomething ladies, their perfume, their low-cut outfits, and their seductive chatter. That's what I mostly miss--the company. I don't believe for an instant that they would pay me any mind if they didn't believe they were going to get money out of me, but that doesn't entirely cancel out the comforting nearness of their feminine presence, however fleeting that presence may be.

It might be nice to stop in again over the Halloween weekend--the dancers dress up in cute outfits and it can be a lot of fun, both for the eyes and the spirit. And since I have to go to the doctor again on Monday, something I am not looking forward to, it might be a way this weekend to get my mind off my minor but nonetheless annoying foot problem...

I had an opportunity to hang out at a big memorabilia show in New Jersey this weekend, but I passed on it. I'd rather just to go the flea market in Manhattan and browse through old pinup magazines. I just can't get my fill of alluring feminine images, whether in the flesh or on paper...such images are my psychological comfort food, just like other guys are comforted, for example, by the prospect of their team winning the World Series. To each his own...