I've been writing this blog since mid-September. Now it occurs to me, "What's the score in Sir Cranky's internal battle over strippers versus DVDs?"

Because the question I posited in my very first post was, "Should I spend another twenty dollars on a lapdance, or should I take it to buy a DVD I've really wanted?"

Not exactly the weightiest conundrum that has ever faced mankind, I readily and almost shamefacedly admit.

Well, even though I sometimes kick myself for shelling out crisp green Jacksons for such ephemeral things as dances and a little conversation with a pretty peeler--when instead I could take that money and buy the definitive edition of the first season of The Twilight Zone--I would be fooling myself if I didn't admit both are important to me.

I sometimes wonder about all the dancers I've known in the past and where they are and what became of them. The DVDs and VHS tapes? Well, I have seen them steadily accumulating through the years, cluttering my apartment, yes, but stalwart and comforting too, like faithful friends.

Gregory Peck in my VHS copy of the 1949 feature film Twelve O'Clock High. Robert Lansing in my VHS copy, taped off the tube, of the 1963-65 tv show Twelve O'Clock High.

Actors I admire. Stories I love.

So Peck and Lansing are nearby. But whatever happened to Gloria?

Gloria was the first topless dancer I ever became friendly with. She was a slender brunette who danced at the Club 45 in Times Square. The barmaid would ring a bell every hour or so, and then you could get two-for-one beers. There was no stage; girls danced on the bar, walking back and forth, squatting down to chat with the customers and receive their tips. As I recall, it was a small place with just a few tables in addition to the bar.

My college girlfriend and I had moved to New York in 1973, and I was living with her when I met Gloria. I went to strip clubs a few times during that year, all by my lonesome. I didn't date Gloria or anything, just chatted with her in the bar. She told me about her unhappy relationship with her boyfriend. I've known many dancers who've told me about their rocky love lives, but not because they seem to want to start a love life with me. It's just that I've got one of those sympathetic-looking faces, I guess.

Maybe that's why when I went to a Halloween party one year dressed as a priest, it got me laid. I had an Irish Catholic girlfriend--the girl I wanted to marry in the early 80s--who always told me I would look good as a priest. A couple of years after we broke up, I decided to test her theory, and I guess my congenial mug, plus the costumed aura of religious unavailability, briefly turned me into one sizzling prospect. Like Richard Chamberlain in a movie I've never seen but only heard about--The Thorn Birds. Or Tom Tryon in a flick that I have seen and always liked rather immensely--Otto Preminger's The Cardinal from 1963. I first saw it the year I started training for my bar mitzvah.

In one sequence, Romy Schneider plays a light-hearted girl in pre-World War 2 Vienna, who meets Tom when he takes time off from his priestly duties to reflect on his wavering faith. Just as she thinks she's going to snare him as a lover, he decides to go back to his vocation and stay celibate. Her hurt, then angry expression when she sees him again in his collar was a powerful visualization of gulf between two people's needs...and the different demands of the spirit and the flesh.

Actually, I'd like to get The Cardinal on DVD. Maybe if I get one less dance from Lily next time I see her at the club, I'll be able to. Or I could just rent it for a few bucks, I suppose.

Now how did I get from Gloria to Tom Tryon?

Oh yeah, my understanding face. It's not a mask--I do like to listen to people. But maybe Gloria was coming onto me? At the time, I was so dense it never occurred to me. Or maybe I just didn't want to play around while I had a girlfriend.

Hell, if I like a stripper, I stay faithful to her too. I mean, I'll tip other dancers, and maybe get an occasional dance from them if and when my fave is busy with other customers, but I spend my money primarily on the gal I like. I'll come to the club specifically to see her.

Some people might say that defeats the whole purpose of going to a strip joint, but that's just the way I am.

Of course, if things go sour between me and a dancer, then I move on. I don't become unfriendly, but I just don't spend much money on her anymore. Maybe I'll tip her onstage and get a single dance occasionally. But if I like someone and we get along, I tend to stick with her. I'm not saying it's anything more than acquaintanceship. It's not an intimate relationship.

I only moved on from Margie to Lily recently because Margie seemed to have gone on automatic pilot around me. It was a vibe I started to get: when it was clear my money had run out, she didn't waste time in moving along.

Somehow, Lily seems to linger. Even after the dances are done, she stays and talks for awhile. Nicole was like that too. But if my money runs low or runs out, I suppose I'll see if I've been fooling myself with Lily too.

Anyway, a little lingering goes a long way with me. I'm already scheming about how I can buy everyone decent holiday presents, and still see Lily once a week.

I've taken on an extra bit of work just for this purpose.

You know, when I start to wonder what's real and not in a strip club--as in, does she like me solely for my money, or maybe does she like me also, just a little, for my priestly/rabbinic face too--it's like contemplating what's at the end of the universe. It also means I've had a long day and should give my mind a rest.

A couple of hours commuting, like I had today, can have a dulling effect on the brain.

But before I sign off, back to Gloria. I remember how we were sitting one night in the Club 45, underneath the zodiac signs that hung over the bar. By the way, you can see this very bar briefly in a scene in the old movie Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, which is set in the Times Square of the late 1960s. Anyway, a customer was sitting at the end of the bar and a dancer was standing over him in her bare feet. The guy was leaning over and sniffing her toes. The foot fetishism was striking enough a sight in 1973--nobody talked about stuff like that then--but what really blew me away was the public aspect of it, the guy doing his odd thing right there in front of everyone.

I had a lot to learn about people and what they will do.

One thing about me is that I'm not a physical exhibitionist...I think! Now, maybe writing a blog like this, even anonymously, qualifies me as an emotional exhibitionist; but when it comes to doing erotic things in full view--well, that's not my thing. Oh sure, in high school, I necked (quaint term) with girls in the movies, but everybody did that. (Didn't they?)

On the other hand, what about that time in college when I went to see Count Yorga, Vampire in a crowded theater, and my then-girlfriend unzipped my pants and went fishing during a dull stretch?

But it was fairly dark.

On yet another hand (what are you, tridexterous?), when I get a lapdance now, that IS in public, except that I do a very good job of blanking out everybody else around us. Is that a definition of denial? But the lapdances are not exactly done under a spotlight, either.

Nonetheless, maybe this argument about my not being an physical exhibitionist isn't holding water too well...so if getting lapdances makes me a showoff, I stand convicted.

But returning to my original topic, at this point it looks like a DRAW when it comes to strippers versus DVDs. (I hate the word "stalemate." Reminds of bread I forget about. You know the brand Roman Meal? It ends up as Stale Mate in my fridge.)

Yes, I like my strippers and my DVDs, and I hope I don't go broke chasing them.

There's still so much more to learn about them both.

And about myself.

John Garfield is one of my favorite actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. He first became a star playing a moody rebel of a musician in Warner Brothers' Four Daughters (1938). Garfield was born in 1913, a tough kid from the Bronx--real name Jules Garfinkle--who got a break from his life on the streets when a perceptive educator steered him towards dramatics. After a period of bumming around as a hobo in the early 30s, he got involved with the Group Theater and some of the best directors and actors of the time. He did a lot of acclaimed stage work and his fellow stage actors almost felt betrayed when he went on to achieve film stardom. He never abandoned the stage however, returning to it frequently right up to his death.

Although he didn't like to be typecast, Garfield had a strong and distinctive "everyman" personality that lent itself to variations on the role of the hard luck Depression era city guy simultaneously weighed down with bitterness and buoyed up by streetwise charm. Whether playing a gangster or a sailor, a lawyer or a workingman, Garfield was one of the first actors who made audiences feel he might be sitting right next to them in the theater instead of emoting on the screen--that he could be just other average mug out to see a movie with his girlfriend or wife.

With the sleeker and more exploitable DVD format, Garfield is again garnering new fans. One by one, his movies are being re-released on disc. You can enjoy his classic performance as a drifter in The Postman Always Rings Twice, one of the hottest films of 1940s Hollywood. Garfield plays a horny sap who falls for luscious Lana Turner and allows himself to be convinced that killing her husband is a good idea. Their sexual chemistry is startling, especially in the famous scene where Lana, wearing short shorts, drops her lipstick at Garfield's feet.

Garfield's sexual charisma was legendary. He was perhaps even better, because the role was more natural and less melodramatic, when he played the scruffy married owner of a fishing boat opposite the offbeat glamour of Patricia Neal's wiseass, golddigging hussy in The Breaking Point--a really great 1950 remake of the earlier Bogart/Bacall hit To Have and Have Not. I don't believe this movie is on DVD yet, although it can be seen on cable. And in 1948's Force of Evil, a tremendous film noir about the numbers racket, he plays convincingly against a totally different type of woman, the waiflike Beatrice Pearson--who represents lost innocence to Garfield's character of a corrupt New York lawyer.

Although he's great in his classic Oscar-nominated role as a boxer-on-the-take in 1947's Body and Soul, I find the character of his "cultured" artist girlfriend played by Lilli Palmer annoying. I never believe he could really fall for her--she's just too damn pretentious, in my opinion--and that hurts the film in my estimation. In all other respects, though, it's well worth seeing.

Garfield died in 1952 of a heart attack. It was said that the pressure of the Hollywood blacklist destroyed his health. Although he wasn't a Communist, he found it difficult to get work because of his long association with liberal causes.

I was looking at a good short article elsewhere on the Web about Garfield. I've attached the link below. It lists his films, and includes a couple of photos that typify his screen persona. What's amazing is how many good films he made in such a short period of time--his stardom only lasting about fourteen years. When his Warner Bros. contract ended in 1946, he became an independent producer and vowed to only make films to which he was deeply committed--a vow he lived up to. His last movie, 1951's He Ran All the Way, is a gem about a gangster on the run who holes up in the apartment of a family. I believe it recently came out on DVD. It is a sad, scruffy tale with naturalistic qualities not unlike those of the Italian neo-realist dramas of the time. I'm not giving much away--because you see it coming: Garfield ends up dead in the street, in a grim and uncompromising finale to his definitive portrait of a regular guy on the run in a hard-luck world.

John Garfield

After writing all that stuff about spiders and spider ladies last night, as soon as I lay down, closed my eyes, and began to drift off, what did I see as I went into the limbo between wakefulness and sleep? Spiders on webs! And then, this morning, a little spider was in my bathtub...I do see them on occasion, but it was just a weird coincidence to see one now. I'm afraid I had to dispatch Mr. Spider with a rolled-up newspaper.

Maybe the spirit of the writer Junichiro Tanizaki was trying to communicate with me through the dream spiders and real spider. As well he should, I'm afraid; I must apologize for not doing him justice last night. My simplistic description of his work made him seem lurid and trashy; in fact, his writing is complex and ambiguous in many ways. His novels, such as The Key (constructed of the alternating diaries of a man and wife), are psychologically astute portraits of relationships as well as perverse behavior. He died in the mid 1960s after a literary career of great renown that started in the early years of the 20th century. Edogawa Rampo was Tanizaki's contemporary and he, too, adds up to more than the sensationalism of his concepts like "The Human Chair."

I guess I shouldn't write literary criticism directly after coming home from a stimulating hour with Lily in the club. You might say that an overflow in the production of my vital fluids affected my brain and made my analysis too crude.

A film called Manji from 1965 is an adaptation of Quicksand. That's the English title of Tanizaki's novel about a housewife who takes art lessons to relieve her boredom while her husband works. She falls in love with the model in her nude drawing class, a beautiful but manipulative young woman played to the femme fatale hilt by Ayako Wakao. In the end, the husband is drawn into a relationship with the model as well--it becomes a kind of threesome, not so much sexual as mind-twisting. This film is out on DVD. There is a later version of the same book, but the one I saw was directed by Yasuzo Masumura. According to the notes on the Manji DVD, Ayako Wakao became something of a muse for the director, appearing in several of his films. He had good taste in muses; she is a gorgeous and excellent actress.

Well, I could just write about this stuff for hours, but I have my work to do--so I wish you all a good day, and I will try to check in again later.

I got some work done today, but it took awhile. Some research for a project. But tomorrow Cranky will really buckle down!

It was so beautiful today, very warm, sunny, so in the middle of the afternoon I left my cramped apartment and went over to Rockefeller Center to run some errands. So many out-of-town visitors! Workmen were putting up all sorts of scaffolding in preparation for the lighting of the Christmas tree. But it was so like summer, you wondered what a Christmas tree was doing there in the first place!

I went to Kinokuniya, the Japanese bookstore across the street from the tree and the skating rink. They have beautiful magazines of all kinds, books in English and Japanese, and DVDs. I lingered for awhile. One of my favorite writers is Junichiro Tanizaki, and they have an entire shelf of his books. He had a taste for the bizarre and perverse. Many of his books and stories have scenes where men show their admiration for women's feet.

In one of his stories, a shy young woman is tattooed with a giant spider on her back and ends up becoming like an emotional and erotic spider to the man who tattooed her.

The fatal woman is one of Tanizaki's favorite subjects, except that the fatal woman always has an accomplice: the man who is more than willing to be her victim.

Tanizaki's writing is extremely elegant, even as his subject matter explores the dark side of human nature.

Another Japanese writer I like is Edogawa Rampo. If you say his name quickly, it sounds almost like an echo of "Edgar Allan Poe." That is because Rampo adopted his pen name in phonetic tribute to Poe.

In one of Rampo's stories, "The Human Chair," a man is so in love with a woman that he designs a chair and has it delivered to her house. The twist is that he is inside the chair, fully equipped with supplies and water to survive. In this way, whenever his beloved sits on the chair, he is near to her. I can't remember how the story turned out beyond its weird premise, but isn't that enough?

My friend Mr. Stetson is also into Japanese writers, but more contemporary than Tanizaki or Rampo. The ones who write about tattooed spider women and human chairs seem to be my department.

I love Japanese movies as well, everything from samurai films to family dramas to early horror flicks to monster movies to erotica.

There is a Japanese composer named Akutagawa who wrote a terrific symphony of which I got a 33 rpm record while I was in college. I still have the record (currently inaccessible behind a pile of books). The symphony was memorable and very vigorous, almost in the style of the Russian Shostakovich; and the platter itself was memorable for being made out of RED vinyl. Not many records were made out of anything but black vinyl, as I recall.

One of my favorite Japanese movies is Late Spring, directed by Yasujiro Ozu. It's about a widower who's trying to convince his daughter to get married. She is devoted to her father and content to take care of him, but his prodding finally moves her into marriage with a man who is never actually seen in the movie (if I recall properly) but is described as looking like "Gary Cooper from the eyes down." The movie was made about 1950, when Cooper was still alive and still a huge Hollywood star.

The most affecting moment in the movie was at the end. After his daughter leaves on her honeymoon, the father is by himself in his house. He finally realizes that although he is happy for her, he is now alone. We feel the weight of his beloved daughter's absence, but none of this is conveyed through dialogue. Instead, we see him cutting the rind of an orange. We only see his hands holding the knife and the fruit, and the rind slowly peeling off in a spiral. No words are necessary to understand his feelings as he faces a new, anxious solitude.

I haven't seen this movie in at least twenty-five years, but that image stays with me. I'm almost afraid to see it again, afraid that it won't be as powerful now as it was back in the day.

Anyway, in an unusual burst of self-control, I managed to leave the Kinokuniya Bookstore without buying anything. Still, it was a nice break to browse. I ate a sandwich down near the Rockefeller Center skating rink, and then went home to do some work.

After a couple of hours I picked up my laundry. Just as I finished putting it away, my friend Rexx, the writer/bodybuilder/streetfighter, called to chat. We joked about how he never has to ask me what I'm up to lately, because he reads my blog. By the time we talk, it's old news to him. I said, "I better get busy generating some new news, then." In the course of our conversation, he had remarked about how I seem to really like my new dancer friend, Lily, so I said, "Hey, she's working tonight, so maybe I'll go see her."

I'm glad I did. Monday night is usually the slowest night at the clubs, as well as being the slowest night in the city period--and it can be kinda depressing when you're alone. So an hourlong visit to Lily not only got HER off to a profitable start--although I only spent half of what I have on previous visits--but it also made me feel good. We had a drink together and a fun conversation, and then she danced for me three times. When she went up onstage, I tipped her a few more dollars as we chatted and joked. I told her I had to leave earlier than usual, and although she was initially disappointed, I told her I was going to come back on Friday anyway. She got offstage and sat with me for another twenty minutes while finishing her drink. She really is a doll. It sure was a good way to round off the usually grumpy Monday after Thanksgiving!

Kvetch, which is Yiddish for complain...

Ah, Cranky, back to work after the long Thanksgiving weekend! It's always an uphill climb. At least I can choose, as a freelancer, to work in the city today instead of commuting.

I guess it was also an uphill Monday morning climb for the coffee shop where I get my breakfast. I ordered a buttered bagel, and I got one with cream cheese.

Grumble, grumble.

Dropped off my laundry for the old wash-and-fold. One of my few other luxuries besides lapdances and DVDs. Although maybe DVDs are a necessity. Yep, they probably are... anyway, I just wish the head lady at the laundromat would occasionally crack a smile; she always looks like she's pissed off at the world. She's the poster girl for Disgruntlement International.

I had to read and answer a lot of business emails this morning. People must write more correspondence now than they did back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sometimes I spend more time writing emails on the smaller matters than I do on the bigger ones.

Oh, for a secretary, so I could just attend to weighter matters.

Nice fantasy, Sir Cranky. The closest I'll ever get to a secretary is if I put on a skirt and stockings and look at myself in the mirror holding a steno pad.

I am in a retro frame of mind...

How about a martini for lunch? Now that would be retro.

It occurs to me that I would like to spend a week in a hotel room, starting right now, with a pretty woman. Maybe that preppie Asian gal who works at the cleaners. (A mug can dream, can't he?) We'd forget the entire world, except when we'd stand naked at the window and look out on the skyline. Nothing but sex, room service, and movies.

Now where's my New York Post Scratch N' Win card? It's $250,000 this week if you scratch off five aces.

So far, the only time I've scratched and won is when I take off my underwear at the end of the day.

Grumble, grumble, toil and trouble.

Even if you're big, that's no guarantee of a hassle-free life. Look at Kong.

Well, at least I got today's emails out of the way. Now, onto those weighter matters I see beckoning to me in the distance...