Last year at this time a bad thing happened to me businesswise: an account I'd had for sixteen, seventeen years was unexpectedly discontinued, with the subsequent loss of a good chunk of income. At the same time, on the health front, a minor problem appeared out of nowhere; it turned out to be treatable, and not earthshaking, but until I understood what it was, it was quite disturbing. Still, I look back at that time as a kind of Gray Grim January.

Now, as I've said before, I do freelance work for different clients, and I travel out of the city to do some work for my main client at their offices. I check my email, though, on my home computer, since I don't have a computer in their offices. Tonight, just before I sat down to write on this blog, I went to check my office email account and was told I wasn't authorized to access the page--a page I have been authorized to access for the last two years.

It's probably a glitch, but the feeling of anxiety it set off was real. What if it isn't a glitch? Why would I suddenly be denied access?

The curse of having a good imagination is that sometimes it drives you nuts. I'll be going into the office tomorrow, and I'll find out what was wrong.

And to add to my agitation, I thought I heard a mouse again in my apartment, just a few minutes ago. I've turned all the lights on, so if I do have a visitor, maybe he'll crawl back into his hole.

Why do I assume he's male?

Maybe I'm being visited by a femme fatale mouse?

All right, that got a laugh out of me. I feel better now...kinda.

Still, my ears are alert for any sounds that shouldn't be. I'll keep the lights on for awhile.

Geez, my apartment is unpleasantly bright with all the bulbs on.

And did I say "ears"? Actually, ear. Due to a childhood illness which got me delirious with fever, my hearing was damaged. I only hear out of my right ear.

But that ear will hear your slightest pitter patter, Ava Mouse. As in Ava Gardner, one of the greatest movie femme fatales of all time.

Anyway, I had a busy workday. Although I stayed in Manhattan, I had plenty to do. For a guy who can't keep his apartment orderly, I am pretty well organized when it comes to my job. It was one of those super-efficient days. I made a "to do" list last night and plowed through a lot of it, checking each item off. Yep, I accomplished a lot.

My reward is to sit down and write in the blog for a little while.

I wrote a lot here yesterday: four entries. It was almost like blogging in "real time." I didn't realize until a fellow Blogstreamer asked me about Match Point that the movie has not been widely released. I thought it was everywhere in the country. My apologies for any befuddlement or boredom with so much verbiage on a movie many people might not have heard of, much less seen.

The movie landscape is changing. I heard that a big director is releasing his latest flick simultaneously in theaters, on cable, and DVD. Theater owners in one state are refusing to show the movie because they don't like the simultaneous release to different media. They figure it will hurt the theatrical business.

But only a few days ago I myself was writing on this blog about how stardom and bankability have to be redefined. Stars who might not sell $10 tickets to a theater might very well sell $20 videos, or $3 rentals.

Maybe what's frightening to some people is that by this definition, Paris Hilton is a bankable movie star. Didn't her sex tape make a mint? That's bankability.

Still, Sir Cranky missed that epic.

Yes, change brings anxiety--I know that.

At the end of the 1980s, I suddenly lost a staff job I'd had for six years, and had done well at. Right before I was fired (the euphemisms "terminated" and "downsized" were not yet popular), I'd started a new project for the company that was very successful. I never knew exactly why I was fired, but it seemed to be office politics--which I'm not big on. I'm the kind of guy who just likes to get along with people and get the work done. I can see the other guy's point of view and I'm not afraid to admit a mistake. I think my attitude has served me well over the years, but it didn't in that situation.

It wasn't a change I was ready for. I got through it, it made me finally become a dedicated freelancer, but I also experienced a lot of gloom, to put it mildly. Used up the savings in my 401-K plan just to survive. Still, friends helped me through the emotional rough patch. Sometimes I felt so blue in the morning that I couldn't get out of bed until I talked to an older lady friend on the telephone, a kind of big sister type, whose voice soothed me and got me making my morning cup of coffee. I was living in Queens through all this too--I thought I'd give another borough a try--and my pals convinced me to move back to my personal terra firma, Manhattan.

Funny how that friendship with Big Sister fell by the wayside. It was a platonic relationship, but platonic friendships can be different from what they seem sometimes. I think Big Sister liked me more than platonically (or sisterly) and was disappointed that I didn't return her affection in that way. A year or two later, our friendship just ended, vaporized. She was extremely sarcastic to me in a phone call, and I lost the desire to call her. She never called me again either. It was over.

Mm, I haven't heard any noises for awhile. Maybe Ava has gone back to the Cafe Rodent. Let me turn off some of these damn lights...

Ah, back to the shadowy noirish atmosphere I know and love!

One more thing. Lily! Ah Lily, my favorite dancer. That mantel is slowly slipping from her shoulders because I checked the club today and they still don't know when she's coming back. IS she coming back?

Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me to spend time cleaning my apartment and working on my taxes?

Cindy Adams, one of the gossip columnists for the New York Post, had a piece today about her experience of working as a barmaid at Manhattan's famous stripclub Scores. As I've said here before, I've never been to that celebrity-studded joint, although items in another Post gossip column, Page Six, constantly give a peek into the place.

But Cindy went one step further than Page Six. She put on a multicolor wig for a disguise and served drinks for two hours to an assortment of free-spending types. She reveals that a bottle of Heineken costs twenty dollars at Scores. Now I definitely know I'm not going to the place unless it's on somebody else's expense account.

Too bad Cindy didn't do like a barmaid I used to know at a late lamented topless dive on Eighth Avenue, the Club 44. I've told this story before on the blog, but indulge me while I repeat it. I used to come in with a long face, having gone through a hell of a year in the early 90s, and the motherly middle-aged barmaid at whose station I always sat told me she knew just the thing to pick up my spirits. One night she whipped out a little plastic baggie packed with clippings of the humor column Cindy's late husband, Joey Adams, used to write for the Post. "Take them home, Sir Cranky, read them, they'll put a smile on your face!" the barmaid said. She was right.

At twenty dollars for a Heineken, I would imagine the customers at Scores can occasionally use a little lifting of their spirits, too. Too bad Cindy didn't whip out packets of Joey's columns for their perusal. As for me, the breasts have yet to be born (or implanted) that can delight my eyeballs if I have to shell out twenty clams a brew just to see them.

Yep, Sir Cranky will stick with his ten-dollar-a-beer mammary shows and go broke twice as slow!!

Unexpectedly this afternoon, my twentysomething friend Diana called and said she was going to be in my neighborhood to buy herself a bicycle. We originally got acquainted through work and have been platonic friends for several years. She just moved into a new apartment with her longtime boyfriend in Brooklyn. Anyway, we met for a light lunch and then I accompanied her to the bike shop. It was also a pleasant excuse not to work on my tax preparations, so I seized it like Jason grabbing for the Golden Fleece.

It took Diana awhile to decide on what she wanted, but I think I was helpful as she bounced around her ideas. When she seemed compelled to buy something without being absolutely sure, I told her she didn't have to make a decision right away, and that we could stroll around the block and weigh the pros and cons of each bike. I enjoyed walking around on the sunny but not-too-cold afternoon helping her get a bead on what she wanted and what would be best to buy. She was still a little ambivalent when we got back to the shop and had more questions, but eventually came to a decision that was quite sound. She kept apologizing for taking up my time, and I said, "Do you want me to leave?" She said no, but she just felt guilty about the purchase taking awhile. I didn't mind. It was nice to help her out.

She said she'd seen Match Point and liked it a lot. She told me how she enjoyed the story and the actors. My friend Mr. Stetson also called me a little while ago, and he too liked Match Point, although the folks he saw it with weren't so crazy about it. It seems to be coming down to the actors: both Diana and Mr. Stetson liked the stars of the film. Maybe in the final analysis, it's about liking the faces on-screen. I said to Diana that if Christina Ricci had been in Scarlett Johansson's role, the movie might have been more entertaining to me and I might have cut it more slack, despite the shoddy story. On the other hand, I might have cringed even more to see Christina with the jerk character portrayed by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. When I like an actress, I sometimes judge her co-stars harshly. It's totally ridiculous, like seeing a good-looking gal on the street and thinking, "What is she doing with that bum?"

Diana thought Rhys Meyers was very handsome, and not at all "brutish" as I had written here earlier. And Mr. Stetson found Scarlett most appealing.

Say...why the hell am I still talking about this movie??

Maybe I should take a shower and a shave and go out for a lapdance tonight, Lily or no Lily, and resume the movie of my OWN life, which sometimes seems on intermission when I don't spend a little time in the strip joints!

I’m feeling so cerebral these last few days, analyzing movies, episodes of the second season of Superman (the latter not on the blog, just in my head)...I wonder if it’s an entirely good thing...

I start to feel cut off from the pleasures of the body when I don’t have a little fun talking with a stripper and getting a dance or two. Haven’t been to a club in about ten days. I talked myself out of it again yesterday afternoon, telling myself to save my money to see if Lily will be back this week.

Money, money, money. What a crimp it puts on the lustful heart!

These are happy problems, though, meaning they’re not problems but luxuries.

Anyway, there are so many things that are left undone by Sir Cranky. I could spend hours each day trying to straighten up my apartment, and put some of my books and magazines in a storage space I’ve had for two years but have hardly filled. My apartment is a mess.

I could also exercise. Other than walking, I don’t get exercise. My friend Rexx, who is a bodybuilder and a certified personal trainer, put this suggestion in my head last week. I asked him more about it last night, and he said that he could give me an exercise regimen that would make me feel stronger and better, like a regular “Hebrew Hammer” who would reap new and more positive attention from the ladies. He looks very good in his buff but not over-exaggerated condition, but then again he’s sixteen years younger than I am, and I wondered if the social benefits of training would be readily transferable to yours most truly balding and gray. I asked him to describe the training program, and it sounded workable. I’m not sure yet because it could be just another thing that I start but don’t pursue. I would have to join a gym. Then again...I might need a change. So I told him I’d think about it because first I have to have a physical anyway--I haven’t had one in two years, and it’s probably not a good idea at 54 to start doing jumping jacks and push-ups and other stuff without checking out the ole ticker, especially after a lifetime of “heart attack” breakfasts of eggs, sausage or bacon, and potatoes.

Indeed, as I discussed this regimen, I inserted a jumbo bacon cheeseburger with fried onions into my kisser.

And another thing I must get to is paperwork for my taxes. Arghh, it’s like doing math homework in grade school. I would much rather watch another episode of Superman. Maybe I should go to a dungeon and have a dominatrix lock me in a rubber room for five hours and not let me out until I’ve added up my receipts for the year’s deductions! But the money I would spend on Mistress Whatever would be money I couldn’t put in my IRA. Sheesh, talk about not taking responsibility for one’s one life...

Still, it’s good to whine like this, I start to laugh at myself right here at the keyboard, which somehow makes the mountain of financial arithmetic seem less formidable. I’ll get it done as I do every year, with time to spare.

Nothing like a good vintage whine--the same whine I’ve savored all my adult life, the whine that I would rather watch something interesting on a screen or on a titty-bar stage than attend to the mundane tasks of life!

My friend Rexx said last night at dinner that it was surprising how I could be so affected by a movie, as I was by Match Point. But I'm that way sometimes. It's a combination of emotion and intellectual curiosity that spurs me to examine some films so closely. I will also admit there is perhaps the immature thrill of playing David and Goliath here--being just an anonymous mug with a blog taking on the work of a world-famous movie director. I admit my subjectivity as always, but I also believe many of my ideas are on solid ground.

The advantage of writing a blog over, say, doing a movie review column, is that I can keep posting my thoughts about a particular film as my ideas evolve.

One of my proudest moments in college--it affected me profoundly--was when one of my professors, who until then had not viewed my work with much affection, said that an essay I wrote about a John Updike novel was full of "wit and sophistication" and had altered his view of the book. That single comment, from a very respected scholar on American literature, gave me confidence that has lasted a lifetime.

So when I play David to my choice of Goliaths, I don't think I'm just being capricious. I wouldn't sling my shots if I didn't think they wouldn't hit the mark with justification. David didn't fight Goliath because Goliath was a nice guy, but because he was a disturbing force
in the world. Movies and books can be disturbing too, even disruptive.

Hollywood wonders why theater attendance is down. It might not only be because of the ascendancy of the DVD. It could also be because of the miscasting of actors and actresses. That is why I analyze performers like Scarlett Johansson so closely .

One of the funniest and, for me, life-changing lines was spoken by Martin Sheen in a 1968 movie called The Subject is Roses, with Patricia Neal. It's about a bickering family, and, as I recall, at one point Sheen says to his parents, "What is truth?" As I remember it, he says it somewhat facetiously, but it opened my eyes to the ambiguity of things.

As I'm revising this post, I just remembered that I once encountered Martin Sheen in a hotel elevator in Atlantic City about four years ago. I wished I had thanked him for The Subject is Roses, but I was too startled just by seeing him to think of that. My cigarettes slipped out of my jacket pocket unbeknownst to me, and he alerted me to the fact. I picked them up and said thank you, and then the elevator came to my floor and I got out.

Anyway, "What is truth?" resonated with me because ambiguity was not a quality endorsed by my parents' view of the world, and I had to leave the city I grew up in to be essentially alone in order to think and to start to see things more in shades of gray.

In some ways, I've become that character that Sheen played. I'm always thinking, "What is truth?" and I especially like to apply it to the sacred cows of culture. Match Point is this season's cinematic sacred cow, and I want to get to the truth of what it really is. Maybe I'm slipping into unambiguous, black-and-white thinking here to even imagine there is a "truth" about a film; maybe I am reverting to the dogmatic thinking of my upbringing--but I don't think so. Maybe this "truth-seeking" is my personal exercise in machismo, or just crankiness, or my brand of fun, but all I know is that I've been positively affected by other people's insightful writings on film--like the criticism of Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Robert Warshow, or Manny Farber--and I want to return the favor.