I had to commute to my freelance job in New Jersey today and yesterday, and for some unknown reason I woke up at 5 a.m. instead of 6:30 on both days. Now as I sit in my apartment in the late afternoon after coming back to the city, I feel half-asleep.

And why oh why did I eat a strawberry Pop Tart just now? It is up to no good in my stomach!!

The pineapple fried rice and egg roll I had for dinner last night also did a number. I woke up this morning with no appetite, but plenty of belching. Arghh...I didn't want to eat breakfast until three hours after I got up, when I was finally at my desk in Jersey.

Those Pop Tarts were on a display at the supermarket near the office, a very cheap box of eight pastries that I bought in Jersey and lugged back to Gotham. They called out to me like a sweet memory of childhood, and I thought, "Why not?"

Tell Cranky why not, Mr. Intestine!

But don't be offended if he doesn't listen...

Oh, Moana, thou exotic vision from the stripclub the other night, come to Sir Cranky and rub his achy belly...

Just free-associating here, folks. Where Moana is right now, I have no idea.

Wait--my erstwhile favorite dancer Lily could come over and rub my belly instead! But she's on vacation, and she never even bothered to email me so we could have dinner together.

So I guess Lily is out too.

Take a deep breath, Cranky.

In. Out. INNNNNN. Out.

All right, my tummy turbulence has passed. And may mighty Thor give me the strength to throw out the rest of those damn Pop Tarts!

Meanwhile, I got solid good news a little while ago, so maybe that's why I felt I had to celebrate with something sweet. My kid sister Jenny in the Midwest, who's been fighting cancer the last eight weeks, got an excellent report this morning from her doctor as she prepares to undergo a procedure to obliterate the last of the tumor. The radiation and chemo have that little bastard on the run! Soon, we all hope, it will be shrunk into nothingness. Jenny is nervous about going into the hospital for a few days, so today's report was especially soothing to her soul. All she needed was to hear about some verifiable progress for her to get back to her usual optimism.

I have been talking to her everyday on the phone, helping her deal with her fears and stay positive.

She's generally got a great attitude and she's going to get through this!

But back in New York, her silly brother inflicts unneccessary trouble on himself with Pop Tarts, for yes! The turbulence has returned.

Time for a visit to Mr. Ginger Ale!

I had a most relaxing three-day weekend, a combination of books, DVDs, dinner with friends, long breakfasts over the newspaper--and a few solid hours of housecleaning which both lifted my spirits and gave me a good physical workout.

Yesterday I bought a small cigar and went for a walk in the late afternoon. I strolled over to 54th and Sixth Avenue to see where they had been filming the new Spiderman movie, but it looked as if they were in a slack period except for a large camera crane which seemed to be moving into a new position. I kept walking and got caught in the brief thunderstorm around 5:30. I puffed away at my stogie while standing under the ornate marquee of Carnegie Hall until the shower passed. When the sun came out again, it made for a fantastic display, edging the huge white fluffy clouds in bright white light as they hovered over the tall brick and glass buildings. I gaped at the celestial spectacle, half-expecting angels and cherubim to start floating out through the rays. And wouldn’t you know it? I had left my disposable digital camera back at my apartment for the first time in weeks because it was too hot to wear the jacket I usually carry the camera in! Nonetheless, the sky presented such a vivid vista that I don’t think I’ll forget it for a long time to come. That sun bursting out after the gray curtain of the storm really made me feel hopeful and optimistic about things in a very basic, almost primitive way.

I went home and drank a glass of Bud Lite from a 40 ounce bottle, and then decided to round out my Memorial Day with one last pleasure: and since my name is Sir Cranky, you can guess what that was...

I hadn’t been to this particular stripclub in awhile, and it was nice to sit in the cool darkness and watch the dancers. Nobody especially interesting was on the day crew, so I just drank my brew and watched the stage; but I’d arrived late enough to see the night girls begin their shift, and that lineup turned out to have considerable allure in the form of a gal I'll call Moana.

I caught the attention of this eye-poppingly beautiful Asian damsel just as she came on duty. Although another dancer tried to get my business first by hurrying over and aggressively pressing her chest against my arm and whispering horny promises in my ear, I politely declined while praying that Moana didn’t go off with someone else in the meantime. She didn’t; in short order she sat her slender but curvy bottom down on my lap (!), introduced herself, and asked how I was doing this evening. She had a sweet voice, and a bright white smile that seemed all the brighter against her tawny skin and long jet-black hair. She was attired in an elegant classier-than-the-usual stripper gown, and wore delicate, dressy high heels. Moana told me what faraway place she was from; as usual, though, for the sake of discretion, I don’t want to disclose such an identifying detail. She asked where yours truly was from, and I strained mightily to harness the few remaining cells in my dazzled brain in order to say that I have been a citizen of Manhattan for many a year. After this brief chat, I eagerly accepted her offer of a lapdance and we went over to the shadowy banquette area.

I can sum up the three lapdances I got from her in a phrase from some old movie, I can’t remember which: “Thanks, I needed that.” Moana was a graceful lapdancer, and her undraped body was a visual feast even for this jaded eye. It didn’t seem possible that I had just met her only five or six short minutes before as she moved creatively, this way and that, across my lap and against my torso and face. Her movements seemed very relaxed. She hugged me close and I somewhat bashfully kissed the top of her shoulder. Later, as she straddled me against the banquette, I gently caressed the smooth skin of her legs and feet. I ran my fingers lightly down the curve of her back, and I stared at her lovely breasts with schoolboyish awe. Her straight black hair swayed and played peekaboo over her large brown nipples...oh brother! It was nice! My body built to a pleasant tingle, and I regretfully told her to stop only because I knew I needed money for dinner and for my trip to work the next day.

I tipped Moana a few extra dollars after the dance when she went onstage as well, and told her I’d come back to see her again when I had a chance.

As I contemplated her with zeal later in the privacy of my chambers, I thought, "Watch it, Cranky, this Moana could be habit-forming..."

But whatever she becomes in the future, she was the perfect end to a much-needed refreshing weekend...which combined the delights of both a stripper and DVDs!

I actually did more housecleaning yesterday...threw out an old electronic typewriter which I hadn't used in ten years...and plenty of dusty paper...several old magazines...I was pretty relentless in tossing out stuff. Even found the copy of a letter of recommendation I wrote for my friend Moe about twelve years ago when he was applying for a job at a journalism school...and I found copies of job resumes I wrote fifteen years ago, when I was first living in this apartment...

Yikes.

Well, I'm trying to consolidate my belongings, I guess...yes, I've reached the Age of Consolidation...

Weather is beautiful today and I want to go out for awhile. I heard they were filming the new Spiderman movie a few blocks from where I live yesterday...big crowds gathered, but I didn't know about it until I read the papers this morning with my eggs over easy.

I hear jets flying over head as I write this sentence...probably the Blue Angels, giving a demonstration...just the other day there was a startling photograph of them flying over Manhattan, looking as if they were right in the middle of the Midtown skyscraper caverns! It was probably a bit of an exaggeration due to a camera's lens and point-of-view...

I went over to Tower Video last night and picked up a couple of movies. Yes, once again I opted for the DVDs over the strippers...much cheaper, of course, but I hope it doesn't mean my posts here are much less interesting. I like writing about movies as much as strippers...

I bought the biopic about the boxer Barney Ross, entitled Monkey On My Back (1957). According to the biography I just read (and discussed two posts ago), Ross and his family were very unhappy with the movie, which emphasized his morphine addiction rather than his fantastic career as a boxer. As a biography of a pugilist, the flick was truly lame...and the only references to Ross' Jewishness were when his mother says she'll serve him lox and bagels and cream cheese for breakfast after one of his fights! But it was actually a good movie in some respects...the late and always under-rated and under-used Cameron Mitchell was fine in the role, and I wished the script had given him more in-depth scenes about who Ross actually was as a boxer, a Chicagoan, and a Jew. But the film's depiction of Ross' heroism at Guadalcanal, and his fight against later drug addiction back in the States (initially caused when he took morphine for malaria he caught in the jungle) were powerfully depicted by director Andre de Toth, who could be an amazing visual stylist. You could feel the rot in the endless rain of the jungle as Ross fights off the Japanese snipers, and the filth in the city gutters as he hunts for a fix. (Another good De Toth movie is 1954's Crime Wave with Sterling Hayden.)

Monkey On My Back's weakness was definitely its script, which was too sketchy, and its exploitative title reduced a great man into the sleazy cliché of a junkie. I think the Barney Ross story would be a great one for a mini-series on tv, maybe adapted from Douglas Century's book; but it's got to be done with the same care for ethnic details that Francis Coppola brought to The Godfather movies. Maybe Steven Spielberg should get on it!

The other movie I watched last night was Tora! Tora! Tora! from 1970. The title refers to the Japanese codewords for a successful strike on Pearl Harbor. Yes, I had a war film double-feature...TTT depicted the attack on Pearl Harbor from both the Japanese and American points of view. It was beautifully shot and gripping throughout, but the best part was the build-up to the attack, showing the diplomatic maneuvers on both sides, Japanese military debates and planning, and American bureaucratic red tape that left Pearl Harbor vulnerable even though there were indications for weeks that we might be attacked. The film's ironic conclusion (as uttered by Yamamoto, the Japanese naval commander-in-chief) is that the attack was a failure from the Japanese point of view because it not achieve its primary objective--destruction of the American aircraft carriers. "A sleeping giant" was awakened, in Yamamoto's view.

Directed overall by top-notch Hollywood ace Richard Fleischer, with Japanese directors guiding the Japanese scenes, the movie dispassionately looks at the event and leaves the viewer with a provocative question: Why were the warning signals of an impending attack not dealt with in a proper fashion both by the American and Japanese governments? Or were they dealt with AS WELL AS THEY COULD BE at a confusing moment in time?? A frightening thought...the film does not depict the Japanese as bloodthirsty predators, but rather a mix of those who wanted war and those who wanted to avoid it. The attack is depicted almost in a newsreel fashion (although in color and widescreen), and if the movie has a flaw it's that as a viewer you start to wonder how the hell they could have recreated all that carnage and destruction so thoroughly in the days before computer effects. As it turns out, the movie was one of the most expensive up to that time, so that partly explains it...I'll have to listen to the commentary track and watch the documentaries included on a second disc for more info on this. But this distraction aside, Tora! Tora! Tora! provides in the end a simple but powerful moral: that the leaders of all nations must not lose their grip, focus, and understanding of those forces (psychological, economic, nationalistic, diplomatic) which when set loose send the world into bloody chaos...a message well-worth remembering on Memorial Day.

It was a relaxing Saturday and, boy, I needed it. I blogged, read the NY Times, News, and Post, picked up a copy of the monthly movie buff tabloid/magazine Classic Images (it always hits the stands precisely at the end of the month), and even managed to do forty-five noble minutes of housecleaning of my cluttered apartment. I put on disposable latex gloves and a dust-filter mask so I could gather up and toss out three well-stuffed plastic bags of newspaper clippings I had saved "for future reference." Well, the future has arrived and no references are needed to participate in it; or, as my writer friend Moe said last night over dinner, if I need to look up any references, I do have the Internet now--even for obituaries of old-time strippers.

Moe and I had a fine repast at the well-known Italian joint Arturo's, on the edge of Greenwich Village facing Soho. Mellow jazz played in the bar as we ate our hot antipasto of baked clams, eggplant, and calamari, then plunged into a large sausage-and-mushroom pizza while sitting underneath photos and drawings of long-ago Hollywood luminaries like Lou Costello and Piper Laurie. Arturo's has been in business since 1957 and the decor is evocative of that era. We washed down our feast with a carafe of house white wine that, to our dismay (because we didn't check beforehand), cost us $26--more than our pizza, and certainly not the 1957 price!

Our necessary long walk after this bout of gluttony took us through the Village and then up Fifth Avenue, and the streets were peppered with many leggy lovelies along the way--it seems that neatly tailored short-shorts are going to be a fashionable choice for the gals this summer. I approve.

Moe told me that he was amused by the names of some of the neo-burlesque dancers I wrote about the other day, like Pookie Patookie and Precious Little. So I told him a little more about the Starshine Burlesque show and how I was also probably the oldest person in the audience, since this retro-inspired entertainment scene seems to be largely the province of people in their 20s and 30s. Moe is exactly nine months younger than I am--theoretically it is possible he was conceived on the day I was born. I'm 54, he's still 53, and we have known each other twenty-four years--that's a lot of wine and conversation under the bridge--and last night we talked about everything from the ups-and-downs of writing to the unsettling uncertainty of a middle-aged existence where finances are tight and health problems horrifyingly spring up out of nowhere. We still feel younger than our chronological ages, and like many of the people I know in New York (myself included), Moe is still striving to fulfill his artistic goals. In his case, it's completing and publishing a second non-fiction book, even though as the author of a bestselling tome he has already achieved solid success.

After we parted I went uptown. Eighth Avenue was even more crammed with sailors and girls than Friday night, and I envied those young guys their pick of so many fine-looking young women. But hey, they're earning their good times in spades these days. I respect their bravery and wish them all the best.

I always look forward to the Memorial Day weekend. The city is full of sailors and Marines from Fleet Week, which gives the city an especially festive air. Girls walk out of the Eighth Avenue bars with white caps on their heads, and everybody's having a great time.

My father was in the Navy in World War 2 and I think of him when I see the sailors. He often said the Navy was one of the best times of his life. I have a picture of him on the streets of Staten Island back in '44 or '45, looking rakish indeed in his dark uniform, hands on his hips, hat cocked at an angle, devilish smile on his mug.

I had dinner with my writer/bodybuilder/streetfighter friend Rexx last night and a pal of his whom I'll call Damon. We hit a popular Mexican restaurant on Eighth Avenue that is always full of pretty office gals. I thought very highly of our waitress! A dark-eyed tawny minx, she had a face that was simultaneously sultry and friendly. Her makeup was beautifully applied and her cheekbones were awesome. She was petite and exhibited alluring cleavage in her tight black top. Her raven-black hair was piled high on her head. Yes, just her presence as she took our orders only added to the spice of the already fiery salsa!

We ate our meals and drank our beers and then went to a bar on Ninth Avenue, a stretch packed with new watering holes and restaurants of all kinds. A couple of Marine officers came in and seemed to be having a good time chatting with a pretty blonde. Damon himself was a Marine, and is a veteran of Desert Storm, but now he is an elementary school teacher going for his doctorate in education. Nursing our drinks, we kept things light, discussing sundry topics such the relative attractiveness of the barmaid versus the hostess, and whether certain Sesame Street characters were originally supposed to be Dominican and Puerto Rican. Sesame Street was part of the childhood of Rexx and Damon, who are fifteen, sixteen years younger than me, but I couldn't really relate to that since I'm a Chicago boy from the Garfield Goose generation--Windy City baby boomers will know what I'm referring to, a popular local kids show of the 50s and 60s. When we left the bar it started raining heavily, but after waiting under an awning for a few minutes, I was on my way. It wasn't too late, and I was still feeling a little buzzed from a few beers, but I went home and decided to read for a while.

I often read two books simultaneously these days, one fiction and one non-fiction. I'm in the middle of the manuscript of an unpublished novel by my writer/actor friend Sid; but last night I finished a book called Barney Ross, a biography by a young journalist with the unusual moniker of Douglas Century. The bio is about the Jewish-American boxer who grew up in the tough ghetto on the West Side of Chicago, was a great welterweight and lightweight champion in the 1930s, and also became a Marine and a hero of the battle of Guadalcanal in World War 2. Century's descriptions of Ross's bouts with boxers like Jimmy "The Babyfaced Assassin" McLarnin are terrific--and the book has an appealing brevity at only 216 pages long--but even more intense are his passages describing how in the jungle Ross defended his badly wounded buddies against a Japanese patrol. A modest but fierce warrior of almost mythic determination, like someone out of the Old Testament, Ross held off the enemy for hours by using his comrades' automatic rifles and grenades to make the Japanese think they were facing a much larger force. He won the Silver Star for his actions, although he was also badly hurt and became addicted to morphine trying to relieve the pain of both his wounds and malaria. He showed even more courage later in the 40s when he went public about his drug addiction both to kick it, and to help others in the same predicament.

Century's biography is an engrossing picture not simply of Ross, but of a colorful era in Chicago Jewish life and the vanished world of 20th century Jewish-American boxers. It's also a moving remembrance of the sacrifices symbolized by Memorial Day, especially a scene where Ross plays both Christmas carols on the piano and sings "My Yiddishe Momma" for his fellow soldiers on Guadalcanal on Christmas Eve 1942. I highly recommend this book.