Monday morning. Man, I have a pile of stuff to do this week...a lot of work, plus I must get that tax preparation finished because it's weighing on my mind, and I didn't do a jot of it yesterday as I had half-heartedly planned. I was too busy writing about why I don't like the Oscars!

The weekend was pleasant--hanging out with my pals at a movie memorabilia show, and later a nice Italian meal with my writer friends Moe and Betty at a favorite Greenwich Village spot. I had one of the best plates of spaghetti puttanesca ever--I love that olive and caper tomato sauce! Topped it off with coffee and sambucca. I wish it were Saturday night again and I could eat it in instant replay!

Chatted with my writer/editor friend Mr. Stetson yesterday--among other topics, we talked about the fascinating multi-dimensionality of some of the cutting edge Japanese fiction, how the stories exist on many different psychological and temporal levels; how the writers are not afraid to jump ahead without necessarily explaining everything in a straightforward linear fashion, connecting point A to point B. Mr. Stetson is far more knowledgeable about these contemporary writers than I am--my favorite, Tanizaki, has been dead for more than 40 years--and he really piqued my curiosity about picking up a book like Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes, which sounds very enticing to Kinky Sir Cranky with its female dominant-male submissive angle.

Mr. Stetson is also a big jazz fan, and he sent me a great gift of a Coleman Hawkins CD that really puts me in a film noir kinda mood. I'd like to play it again right now--I was playing it while I was shaving--but I'll have to save it for later because it's time to work. Sometimes being a self-disciplined freelancer is hard. The mind wanders! Anyway, I'll try to check in again later. Enjoy your Monday.

Well, it’s around 10:30 Sunday night as I’m starting to write this, and I’ve avoided watching the Oscars so far except for when my writer/artist friend ZP, who looks like a tall Kafka, called me on the phone to say hello. I had just finished a cheeseburger and an episode of Superman with George Reeves, when ZP told me that George Clooney had won for Best Supporting Actor and Rachel Weisz for Best Supporting Actress. George’s award I can live with, but Rachel’s--well, what can I say that will make a dent at this point? She’s a nice-looking gal, solid actress, and I loved her in the Mummy movies (especially that duel in ancient Egyptian costume), but her performance in The Constant Gardener just had a little too much loaminess for my shovel.

I didn’t turn on the television until ZP said Salma Hayek was on, which I thought was worth a glance. Unfortunately I don’t have cable and my reception looks like an Impressionist painting, so I missed most of Salma’s appearance. Just as I was about to turn the show off, though, I saw the name “Jessica Alba” flash on-screen somewhere, so I figured I’d stick around.

After a looooonnnng commercial break, Jessica and Eric Bana came onstage to present the award for best sound editing (I think). She looked excellent as always, but ZP correctly noted they didn’t get any shots of her from the back. Why didn’t they use that classic shot of showing the presenters from behind, facing the sea of the audience? It’s always a popular and stirring image. Although we did like the look of her bare shoulders in her dress, that still didn’t make up for the camerawork that didn’t give us a rear-view.

Another thing we thought was unfair was that the camera focused on the winners the whole time they gave their thank-you speeches, instead of just staying on Jessica. That would have made up--almost--for the lack of butt coverage.

It was a little disturbing that Jessica wasn’t given more screen time too, especially in comparison to Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep who were standing so close to each other it looked as if they were auditioning for a remake of The Thing with Two Heads, but Jessica did a great job presenting with the time she had to work with. In fact I think it would be great if Jessica were THE Oscar host next year--or rather, hostess--and handed out all the statuettes, performed all the songs, got the Jean Hersholt and Irving Thalberg Awards, and ended the show by reading aloud fifty random pages of the Los Angeles phone book. Another good idea would be to have the producers of those zany Mexican game shows helm the Oscars next year, because they would probably have Jessica go into the audience and slap the losers. And there would be plenty of butt shots, you bet.

Anyway--now that Jessica Alba is off the screen, Sir Cranky turns off the tv and returns himself to his doggy life. It’s time to take a shower so he can leap out of bed tomorrow morning refreshed and ready to work. For the rest of the Oscar winners, he’ll just read the paper in the morning...

Sunday, March 5th, 5:43 p.m...

Oscar night approaches, and...

There are few things that get Sir Cranky as cranky as the Oscars!

For the last several years, I have made a point of not watching them in any real way, other than occasionally turning them on for a few minutes here and there, but then quickly flicking them off and returning to whatever else I was doing--like watching an old gladiator movie or film noir.

Give me Chelo Alonso as an evil queen in Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops over Reese Witherspoon in anything, anyday.

Not having watched the Oscars, I can then awaken the next morning without having lost three hours of my life to hair-pulling envy (and there's not much hair left to pull), and I can simply read in the newspapers about who won what.

The reasons for my distaste for the Academy Awards are obviously both personal and cinematic.

After majoring in communications and particularly excelling at film editing in college, I moved to New York in 1973 hoping to get into the movie business; it didn’t work out because I lacked confidence, perseverance, and perhaps a bit of luck or timing. I also lacked patience, and the skill or interest in networking to achieve my goal of “going Hollywood” somewhere down the line. I was also extremely anxious about being able to make a living and become independent of my family, and so I quickly found my way into another profession to pay my bills-- although over the years I have done some small work on the far fringes of the movie business.

So watching the Oscars is now an exercise in self-flagellation and “what-ifs.”

But my feelings are also based in my love for cinema. The Oscars would be tolerable if I found the movies or actors today more interesting, but I don’t. I feel very little affection for current actors, unlike the old-timers whom I venerate as if they were long-time friends, family members, or fondly remembered squeezes.

Uncle Bela (Lugosi). Uncle Hank (Fonda). Uncle Jimmy (Cagney). And Uncles Kirk (Douglas) and Burt (Lancaster).

I guess Robert Mitchum would fall into the category more of a much loved but wastrel older brother.

And then there are Jean, Gina, Lana, Linda, Rita, Rhonda, Virginia, or Julie, just for starters.

Anyway, I admit that my lack of interest in the contemporary scene could be a result of the fact that so many successful Hollywood people are so much younger than I am now, and I am envious that I too did not gain a place in the cinematic sun. But I think if the movies and performers were simply more compelling, if the films told stories that I felt it essential to see, I would be able to get over my envy and take pleasure in watching today’s crop on their big night.

Yes--I miss movies that are essential to see. Essential for EVERYONE to see. Movies used to have that quality. You HAD to see Gone with the Wind. You HAD to see Ben-Hur. You HAD to see Midnight Cowboy. You HAD to see The Godfather. You HAD to see Star Wars. But somewhere around the end of the 1970s, movies began to lose this allure. Unless I’m just an old fogey, and movies still have this quality, and I’m missing it...

Now, I saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, and he was excellent. Everybody in the movie was good. It was a fine job, but it was also a depressing story, not enlightening beyond the obvious, and hence not something I ever want to see again. Therefore I lack affection for it, and don’t really care one way or the other if Hoffman wins.

I haven’t felt compelled to see any of the other Best Picture-nominated flicks like Walk the Line, Munich, Brokeback Mountain, or Crash, although I might check them out on DVD--or perhaps not.

George Clooney seems like a cool guy, but I don’t think he’s very interesting as a movie actor--whereas I thought he was great in his breakthrough tv show ER--and I thought Good Night and Good Luck was a competent but somehow bloodless job of writing and direction by him. So I don’t care if he wins an Oscar for his chores on that. The movie should have been at least another thirty minutes long to tell its story with the detail it required.

Rachel Weisz is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Constant Gardener of a viciously self-absorbed and self-righteous wife who emotionally abuses her loving husband by not being honest with him; we’re supposed to believe the political cause she’s pursuing justifies her treatment of him, but in my mind she was just an obnoxious, manipulative bitch--and probably a lot of other people thought so too, because word of mouth must have gotten around with the result that few folks went to see this overrated turkey. So I certainly don’t want to see Rachel Weisz win. Why should Sir Cranky subject his constitution to THAT??

Gossip columnist and entertainment pundit Cindy Adams had a good column today in the New York Post about how the movie business isn’t what it once was, because of factors as varied as the bland cineplexes which have replaced beautiful cinema palaces, to movies that come out so quickly on DVD and can be watched so much more comfortably at home, to the fact that we know so much boring and mundane and embarrassing stuff about actors and actresses from the media that all their magic and mystery is lost. Let me tell you, I think Russell Crowe is a good actor, but he sounds like such a bull-in-the-china-shop oaf in his personal life that I don’t want to patronize his movies. He strikes me as the type who thinks he’s better than the average guy just because he’s famous and wealthy. I avoided Cinderella Man precisely because of the ridiculous fracas Crowe got into with a New York hotel clerk just because he couldn’t get an outside line to call his wife back in Australia. I didn't want to look at this guy onscreen for two hours.

I would add to Cindy Adams’ list the fact that there are so many different venues of entertainment choices now that our perceptions are fragmented into small niches. We find our stars in the niches we follow. A friend of mine likes the tv show Lost, so Evangeline Lilly is a star to him. But I don't watch that program; instead, I view the 50s tv series Superman on DVD, so the late George Reeves is a current star in my universe. As a result of this fragmentation, it’s hard for actors and actresses today to establish themselves and their personae over as broad a spectrum of the population as actors did in the old days--unless they get the rare, super-high profile project like a James Bond movie. And look at the negative reaction to the “new” Bond, Daniel Craig! He’s gotten a lot of razzing because he’s short, blond, and looks like a back-alley mug--in essence, very much not in the classic Bond mold of tall, dark, and handsome. All I know about the dude is that he was unmemorable playing a sleazeball gangster in The Road to Perdition, the Tom Hanks period gangster flick from a few seasons back. And now he’s been anointed James Bond, replacing Pierce Brosnan, who was so good in the role and wanted to continue? Where’s the sense in that?

But the main thing that alienates Sir Cranky from following the contemporary movie business is the air of self-congratulation and assumed aristocracy that now cloaks it like a noxious miasma. Back in the day, the business took pains to remind people that movie stars were LUCKY--that it was a combination of talent, looks, and fate that got them where they were, but they weren’t better than you or I. They continued in our eyes to be normal human beings, except for the fact that they’d won the lottery in the form of an extremely well-paid high-profile job. Nowadays, the underlying sycophantic media theme seems to be that these actors become celebrities because they are BETTER than you or I--and always have been! The message seems to be that once the slothful machinery of fate has finally gotten off its ass, revealed these actors’ inherent aristocracy and genetic greatness, and elevated them into their rightfully rarified positions--then they can assume their predestined places above ordinary folk and become the tabloid objects of our drooling envy! Yes, it's only logical: the message HAS to be that they’re better and more important than everybody else, because for what other reason would they be entitled to money, celebrity and the obsessive paparazzi gaze? It can’t be the result of their acting in movies that, for the most part, nobody goes to see! Even Julia Roberts can’t get people’s butts into the seats anymore--and quite frankly, I’ve never understood why she ever did.

Now, I’ve heard Keith Ledger--whoops, I mean Heath Ledger--is great in Brokeback Mountain, and Joaquin Phoenix is terrific as Johnny Cash, so there are obviously exceptions to what I’m saying. But in general, the media presents actors and their movies in a ridiculously pumped-up light that has no connection to the reality of what they deliver--to the worth of actual services rendered. That’s why I think people have been retreating to their DVD players and to the cheaper enjoyment of movies at home, and also to the revisiting of the vintage classics, whether feature films or durable tv series. These older productions were imbued not with the arrogance of largely unearned deification, but rather with the beauty of thespian skill and cinematic craft humbly presented not as “events” but as entertainment.

So if Sir Cranky knows what’s good for him, he will once again avoid watching the Oscars!!

I went out to the club last night and saw Lily. I got there later than usual because I had to work late. She told me she'd thought I wasn't going to show up because I've always been there just when her shift starts. It turned out that she'd missed her two earlier days of work this week (when I had shown up and she wasn't there) because she'd had to help a close friend through a sudden crisis. She was apologetic about not being there, but of course I said there was no reason for apology, obviously! I said I had just hoped she was okay and was glad to see her now.

We had a drink and hung out for a couple of hours. She danced for me a few times and also went onstage twice. She seemed a little distracted or distant yesterday as we sat together, but I didn't want to ask her why; it just seemed too nosy. Maybe she was thinking about her friend's crisis, or worrying about making up for her two lost days of work, or was just figuring Sir Cranky is getting too attached to her and she wants to keep him at arm's length. The dancing was fun although she seems not to be into the simultaneous verbal fantasizing we'd shared before the holidays; in fact, she hasn't been into it the last three times I've seen her, not picking up on my cues. This is a drag because I like the extra spice of the imagination and naughty talk, and when I detect signals that the other person is not into it, I can't get into it myself.

Still, even when she dances silently, it's nice. What's not to like? I'm getting nostalgic for the feeling of her body next to me even as I write this. Still, tax time is going to be very draining on my wallet. I am really uptight about spending money these days--and out of anxiety about this, I am prone to keep spending. That's partly why I try to keep my visits with Lily briefer now. But even after telling me a couple of weeks ago that it didn't matter if I couldn't spend as much as I'd done during the holidays, she seemed disappointed when I left her--and I wondered if it was because I'd only had four dances. I could theorize that she was disappointed because she would miss my company--she actually said it would be "boring" when I wasn't there--but when she doesn't talk much or ask me about myself, I wonder how interesting I really am to her, beyond the financial gain I represent.

I know I sound cynical after all my romantic outpourings in earlier posts, but I'm just trying to be realistic. At any rate, she made eighty-eight dollars from me, between the dances and the tips I gave her onstage; and I spent twelve dollars on her drink, out of which she might get a cut of a buck or two, I'm not sure. On top of this, add my own drink, admission charge, coat check, tips to a few other dancers onstage, and I ended up spending about $130. I could have bought four outstanding Criterion Collection DVD editions for that kind of dough--but for the time being, since I've enjoyed Lily's company, I will refrain from comparing the apples of lapdancing to the oranges of DVDs.

When I think back to Angela, who had been my favorite dancer a couple of years ago before she retired from the job, I recall that I didn't have much of a personal relationship with her at all; she would chat with me for just a few minutes before or after our dances, mostly about current movies she'd seen; our time together was basically about dancing. Which was okay, because although I was curious about her as a person--and she did tell me enough to have a sense of her, which actually enhanced my desire, and gave me interesting details to think about in erotic fantasy when I was alone in the privacy of my chambers--I never developed any illusions that I could be friends with Angela on the outside. I both respected, and felt frustrated by, the limitations she put on our interactions; it was business, and yet the "business" was so satisfying that I could live within those boundaries, because she never failed to deliver the sensual pleasure of her excellent dancing, her captivating beauty, and her skill at dirty talk.

With Lily, I think the situation is more muddled in my mind, partly because the Christmas season inflamed my yearning to "connect" with her (or somebody), and she too may have felt that holiday loneliness, so often mistaken for genuine desire--but for Lily, this feeling may have passed with the turn of the year.

I was reluctant to dissect my visit to her last night, and was just going to say "I saw Lily and enjoyed myself," but as is often the case with me, the truth seemed more complicated than that, and when I sat down to write, this analysis just began to come out.

So yesterday on Page Six, the famed gossip column of the New York Post, there was an item about how at a Los Angeles fashion show Lindsay Lohan wore a dress that inadvertently exposed one of her breasts. The Post printed a full-length shot of Miss Lohan, from her kinky high heels to the top of her head. Frankly, the dress looked as if it had been designed and fitted to her body by a one-armed paperhanger. An unseemly dark strip of material diagonally crossed her back and, as it turned out, didn’t do a very good job of helping the garment conceal her boob.

Although the New York Daily News ran a closeup that showed the rounded underside of the Lohanian Tit, a star was discreetly placed over the nipple. Elsewhere, the same edition didn’t hesitate to describe in detail the city’s current sexual and criminal atrocities, in gruesome verbal images ready for traumatic absorption by any person who peruses the paper.

But let’s get back to breasts. I need their nurturing presence, whether in fleshy or ersatz photographic form. Have I mentioned that my favorite dancer Lily has lovely breasts...? Anyway, needless to say, in our futuristic world of Internet communications, it wasn’t hard for Sir Cranky (thanks to the expert reconnaissance of his writer/bodybuilder/streetfighter friend Rexx) to see Lindsay’s accidental nipple flash online, stripped of its censoring star.

My buddy and I had a brief discussion focused on whether her nipple (seen in profile) was high enough on her breast to be positive proof of augmentation...a topic that has been debated in the past.

No definitive conclusion was reached in this weighty matter. Whether Miss Lindsay got a bazoom job or not remained a question in our minds...although Rexx seemed more certain than I did that the answer was yes.

But Sir Cranky had another concern: those bulky high-heeled sandals she wore.

The dark ankle straps were thick and ungainly. Ugly shoes.

Makes a guy wonder what women see sometimes when they’re buying a pair of shoes. Women's shoes are works of art that enhance their owner's appeal, or detract from her allure. What goes through their heads as they shop? Are they hoping just to look good, or to please or entertain somebody besides themselves? And who or what is that somebody? What did Lindsay Lohan think when she saw those humongous ankle straps? What fantasies played in her subconscious? One thing I know she couldn’t have been thinking: "My ankles will look dainty in those shoes."

To Sir Cranky, there are few things as sexy as a woman’s ankle adorned in a slender ankle strap, or wispy anklet.

Yes, my fashion critique is unabashedly personal, and I want Lindsay Lohan to please me.

Keep wishing, tiger!

One nice feature of the photos was that the flash was strong enough to get through her makeup and show off her freckles, which were also displayed to sexy advantage in her recent Vanity Fair pictorial. I hope someday a movie is made that will exploit the potent allure of a woman’s freckles...

In actuality, Lindsay Lohan is basically only a photographic model to me, just as Jessica Alba is. I’ve never seen any of Lindsay’s movies...I have a copy of Mean Girls, but it remains unwatched.

Maybe I’m a little behind the times when it comes to my movie-viewing. Yes, I’m up on obscure 50s starlets like Dorothy “Blonde Bandit” Patrick, but I haven’t seen Lindsay do her stuff yet. And I've only seen Jessica in Sin City. Then again, sometimes I think I’m LIVING in a movie, starring Sir Cranky and the sometimes elusive Lily.

Indeed, I find some of my truest and most abiding stars in everyday life.

Lily’s scheduled to work tonight, so I’ll be going over to her club for awhile.

Too bad I don’t run a stripclub...

I think I would do a good job. This is not totally pie-in-the-sky, either; I have some comparable management and organizational skills from the freelance work I do. I would let the girls be creative and wear different types of costumes, and I’d encourage them to perform theme acts. My regular dancers would be recognized as the stars, rather than hire touring stars from the outside. My stars would become local celebrities; I would only hire dancers who took pride in what they do, and I would hire a good PR person to promote them.

One reason I like Lily is that she has a lively erotic imagination, and I’m sure she’d enjoy dressing up like a nurse, or a teacher, or a lawyer, or a pirate, or a doctor, or a cop, or a harem girl, or a lustful queen, or just a full-out burlesque diva complete with fan and feather boa.

If I ran a stripclub I would give the dancers the option to do lapdancing, or not. And because they’d be comfortable with their choices, I’m sure they’d all make money. And plenty of guys would be happy just to tip the girls onstage, maybe buy them a drink, without having them writhe on their laps according to a timer (the length of a song) that ticks off far too rapidly and far too expensively for most men’s wallets.

I’d have a room for social dancing too. Not twenty dollars a song, but twenty dollars for an hour in that room. A guy could go in there and dance with the girls who preferred that form of entertaining, and as a courtesy he could tip them at the end of the numbers.

The girls could make money through a variety of activities--stripping, social dancing, lapdancing, and performing theme shows.

I would also have a small screening room where we’d show old burlesque movies featuring the great stars of yesteryear. Occasionally I’d arrange for those stars to make personal appearances and talk about their days on the burly-cue stage.

I would call the club Good Feeling, because if the dancers were happy and doing what they most liked, they would attract the customers who appreciated them just for those things. Good feeling all around. It would be a big place, and maybe have a small built-in restaurant with ribs and chicken and burgers, and where the guys could take the dancers, too; but the club would also have quiet nooks where gents could have a drink with their favorite girls.

Dancers who chose to perform theme acts could get special billing and select their own music, and the girls who wanted to stay more in the background could do that too.

Yes, I think Good Feeling would be a success. And I would put it right in the center of Times Square, to bring a little honky-tonk jive back to that commercialized patch, a little unpretentious and uncorporate FUN!

And if Lily didn’t want to dance anymore, she could be the hostess, not selling champagne or dances but just circulating around the room in a beautiful gown to flash her sweet smile and make sure that everyone was having a good time.

I think they call this lucid dreaming, right? Dreaming while you’re awake.

Well, it sure seemed real to me as I wrote it all out!