Lady Blumoon, one of our fellow Blogstreamers, left a comment on my last post about how I seem upbeat about the prospect of change, and look forward to it. Actually, I don’t much like change when things are going my way and I’m indulging my pleasures and enjoying myself; but for the moment I am trying to have a positive outlook when change seems inevitable, in whatever ways change presents itself. In the past, I have often fallen into the habit of bemoaning things or whining, but I have an intimation now that I may need a different, more constructive approach. I have a feeling there is going to be a tougher road ahead in some things and I want to be focused.

Which isn’t to say that in the privacy of my cluttered chambers I won’t indulge in a little breast-beating, but I hope I will be able to get over it quickly.

I always feel silly when I complain or moan because I have deep admiration for the strong silent heroes of Hollywood cinema, everybody from Bogart to Mitchum to Wayne to Clift to McQueen (and Lee Marvin in The Professionals, too), and I can’t tell you how much I wish I were like those images of “real men.” And let me add the names of a couple of less iconic but equally memorable gentlemen, Dana Andrews, John Payne, and Dennis O’Keefe.

I think Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta, in his unique masked way, has entered into that pantheon as well.

Anyway, change isn’t necessarily a disaster. Let’s take a small change. When I first lived in New York, I had a job for a teleprompter company, which sent me to a tv station to type the news on big scrolls off which the anchorman could read. The ratings were down on this particular show, and the anchor decided to take out his tension on the lowest man on the totem pole--a guy he had never once spoken to--me. I was sent by the teleprompter company across town to another tv station and another assignment. Mind you, I didn’t write the news, all I did was type it up in inch-high letters on fifty-foot scrolls following the reporters’ pages. When the keys of that special teleprompter typewriter hit the roller, it sounded like a machine gun! And, as I’ve told you, I am a fast typist--the samurai typist. Rat-a-tat-tat!! (Cue Toshiro Mifune’s grunt in Yojimbo, too.)

At first I groaned because the job I lost was a pretty easy one and I really felt an injustice had been done to me. The anchorman was just kicking the dog, I guess, over his own frustrations. But as I started working at the new assignment at a bigger and more prestigious network, I came to realize that the new gig was much more pleasant, not any more taxing, and it was also easier to get to work via a shorter subway ride!

That’s always stuck in my mind as an example of how change is not necessarily for the worst.

Speaking of Toshiro Mifune and one of my favorite samurai movies, Yojimbo: I’ve mentioned here before how, when I was trying to lick a medical problem involving one of my hands, I kept recalling to mind an image from that film. Mifune is beaten very badly by thugs, and he spends time recovering in a hut, getting back not only his strength but his warrior’s skill. The great image of the film for me is when he sits in the hut throwing a knife at a leaf which is blowing across the wooden floor. As his strength comes back, he is finally able to nail the leaf with a single toss of the blade.

That almost Zen-like image of perseverance and success helped me mentally and emotionally as I did the exercises and therapy necessary to fix my hand.

I could have had the doctor cut open my arm to fix the problem (it had to do with a nerve, and the doc seemed rarin’ to go) but I was determined to do whatever I could in the simplest, most uncomplicated way. And Mifune the Samurai helped me.

Anyway, this is my long way of saying that sometimes I can have a really hard time with change--and so I will evoke my tough guys when the going gets tough.

I appreciate all the supportive comments I got from you on my last post, "My future life in a fishbowl," about my "happy problem" of wondering whether I will be able to afford lapdances and being a stripclub regular once I pay my heavy income taxes as a self-employed worker. I also got a couple of great private comments which cheered me up too...you know who you are--wink! It all serves to remind me of another reason I started this blog...

You see, in the past, when I would tell some of the people I know about my various stripper acquaintances, some folks would metaphorically roll their eyes...like I was an idiot or something...one of these friends is not my friend anymore, in fact, partly because I got sick of his judgmental nature. Anyway, I always wanted to explain in depth what I feel about these dancers and what the world of the stripclub means to me...so that my pals (male and female) could see its complexity as I do. Now my friends sometimes say they know too much about me! But I think they realize Sir Cranky has been more than meets the eye...

Before I started this blog, I wrote a novel on which I worked intermittently from 2002 to 2005, which covered some of the same material. I finished its 500 pages and revised it and polished it and still felt it wasn't right...so I never sent it out and attempted to get it published. It wasn't until I started writing this blog that I realized what the problem was. I took the subject too seriously in the novel. After all, I was talking about a middle-aged bald paunchy single guy drooling over tits and ass! And maybe getting a little stuck on the owners of those tits and asses sometimes too, being a romantic.

I started this blog on an impulse one late summer day and didn't even expect to continue. I felt embarrassed, in fact, that I had even started it...and if one of my friends hadn't encouraged me to continue, I might have deactivated it. I am a fairly private person, and that's partly why I must maintain anonymity to write this well. But in writing here, I found a way to be both serious and light-hearted about my curious life. How I could I not be light-hearted at least some of time, if I dubbed myself "Sir Cranky"?

I don't think my life is all that interesting in comparison to the lives of many others...many folks on the 'Stream have far more dramatic stories. But I do find pleasure in the details of my life, and so I guess that's why my heavy-breathing saga has not sunk into boredom yet--I hope!

I frequently ask my friends, "Is the blog still interesting? Am I repeating myself?"

Anyway, it's fun to write, fun to be read, and fun to get your comments and thoughts. I appreciate them very, very much, and I try my best to reciprocate. So many of the things I read here are fascinating, funny, moving, sad, and illuminating. What a great invention the Internet is, to give society back the desire to share written words! It's easy to understand now why people wrote so many letters in the 18th and 19th centuries, and why written communication became so much a part of people's lives.

Anyway, I just got back from a working day out of the city, and being a little tired, I hope I'm not rambling too much. I think I might go see my favorite dancer Lily tonight, but I've made sure to have very little dough in my wallet so I can't go overboard. If all I can afford is one drink, one dance, and a few minutes of hello, then that's all I can afford! I hope she'll understand. Even at work today, I started to see how I might have to reorganize the way I do certain things...mix up various tasks to maximize my time in a more effective way...and learn a new digital technology to make things go smoother. I guess today's theme, class, is managing one's life in the face of change. I had a productive day at work, and I hope I have a pleasant evening if I go out to the stripclub, or just stay at home and watch a movie. I hope you all have a pleasant night too!

I saw V for Vendetta last night...a scary, apocalyptic movie. Like pulp fiction out of the 1930s wedded to a totalitarian vision of the future out of Orwell's novel 1984, it has a masked and caped hero named "V" fighting an oppressive British government of the near future. V wreaks vengeance for the government's conspiracies and manipulation of the populace...and the movie concludes with imagery that evokes the solidarity of the unbowed slave army at the end of the 1960 Kirk Douglas movie Spartacus. It took me awhile to warm to Natalie Portman in her starring role as an initially cowed young woman eventually discovering her fierce inner revolutionary--but she won me over at the climax. And Hugo Weaving as the masked V who strikes out at fascism is terrific--he plays the part superbly behind an immovable but expressively grinning mask. A memorable film with exciting action sequences. I’m sure I’ll see it again.

It was based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore, which I haven’t read. He also wrote the graphic novel on which another good film was based: From Hell, with Johnny Depp. That was a particularly bleak and conspiratorial vision of the saga of Jack the Ripper in late 19th century London.

Moore’s name is not in the credits of V for Vendetta as the writer of the novel. I heard that he didn’t want it up there. I don’t recall if his name was on From Hell. At any rate, it’s almost as if he’s hiding in plain sight: although V for Vendetta and From Hell were made by different directors, both films stand out to me because of Moore’s distinctive storytelling structure and rhythms, which combine furious action, wit and philosophy, political speculation, boldly expressive characters, and a thick atmosphere of moral corruption and its opposite, personal redemption. So even though Alan Moore’s name is not on the credits of V for Vendetta, he is omnipresent, not unlike V in his shadowy, now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t crusade against the dictators.

There is dialogue in V for Vendetta which celebrates the enormous power of words, and it is a power which Moore clearly exercises...when V first meets Natalie Portman’s character, he has a couple of juicy monologues that are even more astonishing for being crisply enunciated from behind a mask. Yes, Hugo Weaving is a great actor!

And now, let’s turn to the more mundane reality of Sir Cranky and his taxes...

I got the forms back from my accountant and finished looking them over today. Although I initially thought things weren’t too bad, when I looked at my bank balance this morning I realized the amount I have to pay is bad enough. I have to always borrow to pay my taxes as a self-employed worker, and this year it’s going to really cut things to the bone for me. I’m going to spend the next ten months paying off the credit line...and unless I get some new accounts soon (I lost a couple last year) I’m not going to have much money for those pursuits dear to my heart...strippers and DVDs. And what will Sir Cranky be then? Maybe I'll have to concentrate just on blogging and cleaning up my cluttered apartment. But who wants to read bloggingversushousekeeping?

Well, I have a stock of DVDs that could keep me going for two years. Strippers, on the other hand, are something I cannot hoard. Too bad I can’t buy them in little packets and put them in water like those “seahorses” that were once advertised in the backs of comic books. “WOW, dudes! Your own full-size strippers in a fishbowl!! Just add water and they’ll grow full-size!! They’ll dance for you!! Tease the money out of you!! Then they’ll feed you magic pellets which will make you SHRINK, and they’ll put YOU in the fishbowl!! Watch them take over your apartment and keep YOU as their pet!!”

Hmm. Did you know I was a surrealist?

Ah yes, this may be the year I end up becoming one of those guys the dancers call “cheap bastard” because I’ll have to just suck on one beer for two hours and tip the ladies onstage a few meager dollars, forsaking lapdances and the personal interaction and conversations that make those places fun for me.

Oh well, no use getting upset about it now. I’ll just make out the checks to Uncle Sam, and then I’ll see what to do next.

It’s silly but everyday I check the email address I gave to my favorite dancer Lily, hoping she will drop me a note. I don’t expect her to, yet I hope she will...

I wonder if my obvious devotion and liking for her has somehow earned me her disdain. I think that’s a real danger in the stripclubs, when the dancers realize they can rely on you for easy money and you start to seem like a sucker...I think even THEY realize that the entertainment they’re dishing out can be pretty thin stuff, and probably not worth $20 for every song...I fear that their thinking becomes, "Who but a sucker would shell out money for this?" Anyway, that is my anxious interpretation of why Lily seems less interested in keeping up the conversation during the stretches between dances when we sit and drink...

On the other hand, I am probably close to thirty years older than her...so why the hell would she care about me other than as a source of income?

I have written on this blog before that I feel customers and dancers exist in a metaphorical state of agelessness while they are in the clubs, any generation gap between them leveled by their common desire for instant gratification. It’s as if dancers and customers are the same age: “the age of instant gratification.” Not unlike the emotional age of an infant who wants what he or she wants NOW. After all, the dancers get the instant gratification of immediately earning hard cash without having to work a regular nine-to-five job, and the customers get the instant gratification of being close to their fantasy women without the effort and risk of courtship in the real world...

But I’m starting to feel the difference in my age and Lily’s more acutely lately. I guess I expect different things from a dancer when I invest emotion in her, and not simply fill her garter with cash. Because I have female friends outside the clubs who genuinely like me, I know what affection feels like, and I can sense when a dancer really doesn’t care for me as anything more than a human ATM machine...

I’ve thought about not going to the club this week, partly to see if Lily will bother to write to see why I didn’t show up; partly because I don’t want to spend the money (tax day approaches); and partly because I’m not sure I even feel like seeing her...

On the other hand, after spending today commuting back and forth to my freelance job outside the city, I remember how I look forward to seeing Lily regularly as an oasis of fun in the workaday week.

I’ll see what my mood is on Thursday, when I promised to come by again.

Meanwhile, as I left the club last Friday, I ran into Misty, a dancer I’ve known about two years and who, ironically, was the girl I came to see the night I first met Lily. Misty wasn’t there that evening, and Lily and I became acquainted...I wasn’t Misty’s regular at that time, but had just dropped in to say hello and have a dance and a couple of laughs.

You see, Misty is a down-to-earth street-smart gal with a great sense of humor and two of the best legs in town. Anyway, when I saw her last Friday, we joked around for a few minutes and I said I’d try to say hello again this week...

Lily knows I’m friends with Misty too; in fact when Misty is onstage and I’m sitting with Lily, she likes me to give her a couple of dollars to slip into Misty’s garter...

Oh, as I’m writing now, I’m starting to have a fantasy about being with both Misty and Lily...not in the club, but in a bedroom...not a lesbian thing that I just watch, but rather rolling around together with the two of them...hmm...mmm...

The mind is a terrible thing to waste...

Well, I’ve been up since 6:30 this morning, and I want to take a little nap before I go out to see V for Vendetta with my friend Vicki, who's also been a professional colleague of mine almost the entire time I’ve lived in New York...sounds like it might be an interesting movie. The posters, which seem to recall European propaganda art of the 1930s, are certainly provocative. Well, we'll see!

Sometimes I think it's amazing that I still have enough brain cells left to enjoy and analyze movies after all the mind-twisting I put myself through about stripclub life!

I was going to start the day off by getting down to some of my freelance work first, then blogging later, but something I read in the New York Post this morning has gotten me all worked up.

The new movie The Notorious Bettie Page is about to open in town on April 14th. Veteran readers of this blog might remember that I saw it at a screening at the Museum of Modern Art last September and reviewed it in my post, "Gretchen Mol: New Pin-up Queen of the Universe!" Anyway, it's a good movie and Miss Mol is terrific in the part of the legendary pin-up model of the 1950s. I've been praising this movie to my friends in the memorabilia and collector world for the last six months, telling devoted Bettie fans to see it.

Today in the Post, writer Danica Lo has an article called "Risque Business" about Dita Von Teese, who is the current "queen of burlesque" on today's retro striptease and fashion scene. Dita has a new coffeetable book out about burlesque and fetish fashion called Burlesque and the Art of the Teese, which I've bought because it has some terrific photos of Dita in both classic ecdysiast costumes and modern fetish gear. It also looks as if it has some interesting info about vintage burlesque. I just got the volume and haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'm looking forward to its pages.

Miss Lo's article also talks about Gretchen Mol in the new Bettie Page movie.

But here is my problem. Lo quotes Missy Suicide, who is the founder of SuicideGirls.com, a fantastically successful website featuring modern-style pin-up girls in everything from Goth, rockabilly, or rock modes, as saying, "If you look back through traditional modeling pictures, the girls are always coy and never looked into the camera lens...Bettie Page looked into the camera and let you know she was the one in control." Similarly, in an interview with Gretchen Mol in the new BUST magazine, discussing the actress's interpretation of Bettie Page, the film's director Mary Harron says, "Before we made the movie, my friend sent me a book of '50s pin-ups, including Bettie. My husband said that all the other women seemed to be feeling bad about what they were doing, and that as a man, that made him feel bad looking at them. But Bettie just makes you feel great...She gives you permission to look at her. She gives girls permission to dress up and men permission to look, and it makes everybody feel better."

What permission? We need permission to look? The model has to be "in control" so it's "okay" if we look at her dressed in almost nothing? Do Missy and Mary realize the gobbledeegook they're spouting? Do these women realize that the PHOTOGRAPHERS were in control, they PAID the models, the models WORKED FOR A LIVING, and that the photographs were designed to ENTERTAIN MEN? To get MEN through their lonely hours...to help MEN adorn their lonely walls...to inspire MEN as they risked their lives in combat!

This need to justify the activities of models from fifty years ago, to put their job into a feminist construct of "being in control" is utter nonsense and a complete distortion of what the scene was all about. Women posed for these pictures so they COULD PAY THEIR RENT...have a nice dinner once in awhile...and maybe get nightclub or movie jobs.

Here's another thing I don't understand. The interpretations of other models' attitudes quoted above are TOTALLY INCORRECT. Don't tell me that everybody is entitled to their subjective opinion. That's another way of saying anybody can express a view about something they clearly know nothing about. What I mean is, ANYBODY who has a love for vintage pin-ups and has looked at them extensively will KNOW that lots of the models clearly look as if they are enjoying what they are doing. This idea that Bettie Page is the only one who looked "happy" is COMPLETE NONSENSE. Has Missy Suicide ever actually looked at old-fashioned pin-up magazines? If she has, how could make her statement? What "book of '50s pin-ups" did Mary Harron give her husband? Was it some piece of crap from a low-level publisher, or the beautiful work of Bunny Yeager, Andre De Dienes, or Peter Gowland? As an enthusiastic collector, I have a huge pile of vintage pin-up magazines and books, and I can say with authority that lots of the models are equally as memorable as Bettie Page, some are more beautiful, and plenty look as if they are digging their job.

Why do the memories of these other hardworking models have to be sullied in order to prop up the legend of Bettie Page? Who is arguing that Bettie Page was not a great model? She and Marilyn Monroe are probably the greatest glamour models of the 20th century. But there were many other gorgeous models as well.

This ignorance of history is APPALLING. It's a mental disorder that infects our populace on so many different levels, from not knowing the past history of our country to not knowing that Bettie Page was not the only good pin-up model!

I remember being horrified about thirty years ago when I met somebody who didn't know what side the Japanese fought on in World War Two. Little did I know that this type of ignorance was a harbinger of the future!

But let's get back to pin-up models. What about Betty Brosmer? Jackie Miller? Ruth Anderson? Mara Corday? Maria Stinger? Barbara Osterman? Cleo Moore? Jayne Mansfield? What about strippers who also did great photos, like Tempest Storm, Blaze Starr, Julie Gibson, Evelyn West, Jennie Lee, Dixie Evans, Penny Page, Paula Page, Rita Grable, Lily St. Cyr, and my most beloved favorite stripper of the 50s, PATTI WAGGIN??

Many of the above could have gone one-on-one with Bettie Page in a Pin-Up Duel and come out even, and maybe even Number One on occasion!

I defy ANYONE to say that Patti Waggin was not the equal of Bettie Page in presenting a joyous sexy persona along with a killer body! Check her out in Something Weird Video's Roadshow Shorts Vol. 3 in the striptease featurette "Ohmigosh!" and you will know what I mean.

So enough with the BALONEY! Let's honor Bettie Page but not dishonor the memories of all the other beautiful models and strippers who posed and danced at the same time! Go see Gretchen Mol in The Notorious Bettie Page--she is a pin-up dream! And check out Dita Von Teese's book--she's a fine model! I hope to one day see her actually perform her burlesque acts too, and then I'll have something to say about them. Maybe if Dita performed at regular stripclubs like a real stripper would, instead of these arty venues, I might already be an expert on her shows. And man, I really wish there was some old-style peeler pizzazz going on in the joints I frequent--meaning, not just g-strings and lapdancing, but some costumes, some feather boas, some theme acts, and some music other than rock or rap!

But hey, I don't blame Dita for the career route she's taken. Going the high road, she gets better money, mainstream attention, book deals, marriage to a celebrity (Marilyn Manson), and is superbly photographed by the best lensfolk.

Still...I have seen a good number of these "retro" or "neo-burlesque" acts of the type that Dita does. I can't say that I've found them especially memorable or interesting. They often seem curiously sexless, like a lot of fetish fashion is, too--drained of their arousal component. But what is striptease supposed to be about but DISPLAYING THE BODY FOR THE PURPOSE OF TEASING? The word "burlesque" is the euphemism...STRIPTEASE is what it really is, or really oughta be.

If they performed in stripclubs rather than too-cool-for-school spots, these neo-burlesque babes would probably be sexier, and fulfill their peeler potential.

I remember one neo-burlesque act where a girl got into a bubble, and another where a girl dressed up in a gorilla costume, and another involving a magician, but that's about it. I find most neo-burlesque dancers to be too self-conscious and self-admiring to qualify as the equals of the fun entertainers in old burlesque movies such as the ones released by Something Weird. In my opinion, real strippers strip for their supper...in other words, the true descendants of the strippers of the past are the girls who do their stagework and lapdances in regular stripclubs today in order to MAKE THE RENT, TO PAY FOR SCHOOL, TO SUPPORT THEIR BABIES, rather than strut around for the satisfaction of post-feminist egos in the revues presented at downtown hipster bars. The stripclubs of today are the authentic heirs of the burlesque theaters of yesteryear. My current favorites will always be from the local jiggle joints. Give me Lily, Angela, Nicole, Margie, or Misty--all the dancers that I've written about in this blog. And if I want to see truly classic burlesque, I will watch "Best of Burlesque" or "Hollywood Burlesque" on DVD from Something Weird Video.