My kid sister Jenny in Chicago told me yesterday that my eighteen-year old nephew, Jake, came home and revealed that he got a tattoo of his initials on his back. I suppose it's a way to assert his independence and incipient adulthood. Although some Jews these days obviously get tattooed, it’s considered taboo in the religion because it breaks the rule against the making of graven images, the equivalent of raising idols to pagan gods. Supposedly, tattooed Jews cannot be buried in Jewish cemeteries. I don’t know how strictly this is enforced now; perhaps it depends on the individual cemetery and denomination. Anyway, it’s not like my family is observant. It seemed that Jake only had a bar mitzvah to please his parents; they actually gave him a choice, and he decided to go for it, but has not been observant since.

Jenny’s reaction to the tattoo was fairly bemused. It was my brother-in-law, her husband, who brought up the point about Jewish cemeteries, just in passing upon hearing the news. Anyway, Jenny obviously has other, more important things to worry about, like her recovery from cancer. After having a major treatment for her tumor in early June, she’ll have new biopsies to check her progress in September.

My nephew is going to be a sophomore in college. Like a lot of kids his age, he’s wrapped up in his own life to the exclusion of adults. This summer he’s worked a job as well as gone to summer school when not hanging out with his pals. When I visited my sister in May, I stayed an extra two days to see Jake when he came back from college. He didn’t spend more than five minutes talking to me. This behavior is a comedown from how he and his sister hung on me when I came to visit when they were younger. It made me start to think that an uncle, even an attentive one who never forgot a birthday gift, is in some ways not unlike a favorite toy that is regarded as dull and boring when the child grows up. It’s almost as if the uncle is regarded not as a person but a fun-making device with an expiration date. Anyway, I don’t express these feelings to my nephew or niece, but just continue to let them know that whenever they feel like visiting, I’ll be glad to show them around New York City. They’ve never been to my town; in fact, the last time Jenny herself visited was in 1984, right after she got married. My family is not big on vacations...

On other fronts, the mercury here is supposed to hit 100 degrees tomorrow. Arghh. I never wear shorts, but this is almost enough to make me start. I don’t know why I don’t wear shorts, actually, because on the few occasions I have, women have complimented me on my muscular calves. I inherited them from my father, I guess, just as I seem to have inherited foot problems that I’m finally going to have to deal with in the next few weeks. But first things first. I haven’t had a complete physical in two years, so I’m going to start with a trip to the internist on Thursday. Yep, everything from bloodwork to the cherished prostate exam...

I have been neglecting myself a bit. The dentist and eye doctor are also in a holding pattern at Sir Cranky Field.

I don’t want to take care of myself!! I just want to feel like a teenager who will live forever!! I just want to ogle the girls and watch my movies and read my film buff magazines!!

A fellow Blogstreamer, CITIZEN ZANE (check out his fun blog), asked the other day why I chose the name “Sir Cranky.” Well, it’s not only because I get curmudgeonly, but because I am capable of acting quite infantile as well, like a cranky baby who wants things HIS WAY!! Stomp-stomp!!

I think about my nephew and consider his tattoo as a form of rebellion, although maybe it’s more than that. When I look back at myself at eighteen, I remember how I was not rebellious at all...I came back from freshman year at college, got a telemarketing job, hung out with my girlfriend Andrea, and just stayed in the “good Jewish boy” groove for one more summer.

The next summer, with the help of a friend of my father, I got a job as a page at NBC in Rockefeller Center in New York, and I worked backstage at the Tonight Show while living in a room in the Young Man’s Hebrew Association (YMHA). It was that summer that my rebellion against my past began. I went to bars and picked up girls (you could still legally drink at eighteen then). I lived on packs of bologna and drank quart bottles of Bud while reading John O’Hara novels (regarded as quite risque in their day). My rebellion wasn’t comprised of having long hair or a beard, or smoking pot, but of becoming pretty much a Bohemian in terms of my lifestyle and goals. I rejected living in a middle-class neighborhood in Chicago and getting married and having a family, and instead I moved permanently to sleazy, dangerous New York, consorting with writers, actors, hookers, and strippers...going to see kung-fu and gangster movies on nasty old 42nd Street...and in a way, my rebellion has never ended.

It’s funny; if my father hadn’t died young at forty-nine, my life might be different. He was quite capable of making me feel ashamed of myself; I wanted his good opinion; so who knows? If he hadn’t died in 1977, he might eventually have shamed me into a more "respectable" life. I remember one morning when he was getting ready to go to work, and he found me asleep in my clothes on my bed after a late night: “Why don’t you act normal?” he asked. That was during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, the last I spent in Chicago.

Everybody else in my family has middle-class lives, but me? I was no hippie, but I really rebelled on a profound level. In some ways, I am still quite Bohemian, living in an apartment cluttered with books and videos and magazines. Oh yeah, I’m professional and disciplined and organized in my freelance work, but that’s largely because of my fear of catastrophe--a fear of not being able to survive (an infant’s fear, actually) which is expressed through an acute and specific anxiety about not being able to pay my bills.

Sometimes I feel like I have an inner Gauguin, waiting to chuck it all for life on some island paradise! But my infantile/bourgeois survival fears restrict my forays to utopia to the nearby stripclubs where I can mingle with exotic girls (Asian or otherwise) but then return safely home afterward.

There’s really something very absurd about my way of life. Half-rebel, half-conformist. Half-adventurer, half-couch potato. Just call me “rebel in a box.”

And now, having said all that, I have to get back to making a living...

It was good to see my actor/writer friend Sid onstage again last night, even if it was just in a staged reading of a rather silly play that was a satire of post-World War 2 male-female relations viewed through the prism of 1940s superhero cliches. Yes, you read that right. Somebody in 2006 felt the need to write a play examining gender relations in 1948 by having the female express herself through becoming a crimefighter ala Wonder Woman.

Sid hadn't done stage work for many years, and previously had gotten small roles in movies, soap operas, and tv shows--although his primary occupation for years has been as a staff writer for various companies. Last night Sid zestily played a comic German villain who is subdued by two superheroes in the New York of 1948. Bringing a contemporary note to the proceedings was the fact that one of the crimefighters was a man in drag. Did I say 1948? Seemed like 2006 to me.

Some of the performers were quite good and will undoubtedly continue onto better things. The young actor playing a mad psychiatrist garnished his megalomaniacal dialogue with an effectively evil laugh and wielded a ray gun with panache. Also of note was the narrator of the show, a veteran performer in regional theater, whose vocal delivery affectionately recalled the suspenseful tones of radio shows from the 40s, and provided a couple of solid moments of irony and hilarity. I also liked the bare midriff of a cute redhead who played a salesgirl in a department store for crimefighters (!), even though the display of her navel over hip-hugging jeans firmly squelched any remaining illusion that the story took place in 1948! Then again, it was a staged reading and authentic costumes were not the point, although Sid was given a Kaiser Wilhelm-style helmet to evoke his character's Teutonic misanthropy. The actors playing the crimefighters wore full costumes, however, and the guy playing the crossdressing avenger (he also wrote the play) certainly exhibited a passion for detail right down to his long red fingernails, impeccable lipstick, and falsies.

In attendance were Sid's wife Terry, a voiceover artist; their thirteen year old son Von, who seems to have mastered the technique of the evil laugh himself; as well as an actress friend of Terry's and of course our mutual writer friends Moe and Betty.

Yes, it was a real "superhero" week for Sir Cranky, between seeing Superman Returns, watching the 50s Superman tv show, and catching this play! Maybe this week I'll focus on pinups instead, since I just picked up a very lovely little book called Jeepers Peepers, published by Collectors Press in Portland, Oregon.

There are a lot of collections of pinups around (the word is spelled with the variant "pin-ups" in this new book) but this is a stand-out volume for four reasons: one, it's pocket-sized; two, it's inexpensive; three, it has a clearly written introduction by pinup expert Louis K. Meisel that even gave a longtime buff like myself some new information about the genre; and four, it has a really sweet collection of pictures, broken into different categories such as nudes, glamour, and exotic. Best of all from my point of view, though, its cover showcases one of my personal favorite pinups of all time. If you click on the link I've provided below, you can view the cover at the Collectors Press site, and if you click on the image itself, you can see it even larger. The pinup was painted by the late great Gil Elvgren.

There are three things I really love about this pinup of a lady in her bath: the shape of her back and bottom, her cupid's bow lips, and the evocation of the water and the tub. To me it evokes a scenario not of a peeping tom, but rather a saucy game between a guy and doll who are playing at voyeurism as a prelude to sex, like a husband who pretends to peek in on his wife as she bathes on a balmy night back in 1948 (the year the original pinup was published).

I own a deck of Elvgren pinup cards from the early 50s, which is where I first saw this image, and now many more people will be able to enjoy it on the cover of this enjoyable book. I don't work for Collectors Press, I'm just sharing my enthusiasm with you, so do check out the link and see if you agree with me that this pinup, which is actually entitled Jeepers Peepers, isn't a keeper!

JeepersPeepers

I’m not exactly sure why, but early yesterday evening I felt at peace with the world. I know that sounds kind of ridiculous, but it’s a feeling I rarely have. I’m usually dissatisfied and stressed and constantly thinking (or fantasizing) about how I can improve everything in my life.

I’d felt okay for awhile earlier in the day as well. I’d taken a walk over to 42nd Street to look for the new issue of a film magazine I like (Classic Images), and then I walked home slowly through Times Square. I stopped at a food court on Eighth Avenue and had two Nathan’s hot dogs. These are the franks made famous at Coney Island, but they have long been available at other places around the city. The food court offered a nice deal: the second frank was a nickel (the original early 1900s price) if you bought one at the regular price. So I had a tasty, inexpensive lunch.

After I blogged for awhile yesterday, I started to brood and get into my head a bit too much, and I thought I was setting myself up for a gloomy evening--especially since it rained heavily in the late afternoon. But then it cleared up and, looking over my weekly budget from last week, I realized that if I don’t buy any new videos THIS week, I could afford a visit to the stripclub. So this week it’s strippers over DVDs, at least in terms of expenditure. I obviously already have plenty of DVDs to watch, which I’ll continue to do.

I took a shower and dressed up, shaving a second time in ten hours and even putting on a little cologne. Before I went out to the club, I had a can of beer so I would save some cash (a brew at home costs me 70 cents versus $11.00 to $12.00 (including a $1 to $2 tip) in the club.

I always feel better about myself when I dress up in a nice shirt, slacks, and sport jacket. I guess I’m an old-fashioned guy. The dancers in the clubs seem to look at me more respectfully, too, or perhaps that’s because when dress up I have a more self-confident aura. Anyway, I ran into Daisy, that cute Asian dancer I’d met a couple of months ago and with whom I’ve hung out three times in the past. It made me feel good that she remembered that I am deaf (from a childhood fever) in my left ear, and so when she sat down on my lap she favored my right side so I could hear her soft and very girlish voice over the music. She had just started her shift, and her body was smooth and fragrant from body lotion. As she danced for me in the back of the club on the couch, she joked that I was “taking her virginity” as I was her first customer of the night. I told her that when I get a dance from her, I feel as if I’m about to lose MY virginity! It’s true; there’s something both innocent and knowing about Daisy that makes me feel I’m at her erotic mercy, as if I’m an inexperienced teenager in the hands of a sensuous nymph. That’s a sexy feeling for me. Anyway, I didn’t want to go overboard with the spending, so I had to limit her performance to three very enjoyable lapdances. She asked for “number four, please!” but I told her I really couldn’t afford it. “Credit card!” she suggested, but I replied that the moment I used plastic in the club would be the beginning of the end for Sir Cranky. Judging by her laugh and the look in her eye, she seemed to understand exactly what I meant. I’m sure she’s tantalized more than one guy out of a substantial sum of money, especially in the champagne room, and seen more than one look of male ambivalence when the customer is presented with the tab.

Don’t get me wrong. If I had the money, I wouldn’t mind spending it. I am not a cheapskate. If I have a good time, I feel it’s worth it. But times are tougher for me now. And I would have to be a multi-millionaire before I would go into the champagne room.

Then Daisy did an unusual thing. She suggested that even if I didn’t get another dance with her, I should get a dance with one of her co-workers, another Asian gal who apparently had just started working at the club. She even introduced me to this other girl. I politely declined, and told Daisy privately that if I’d had more money, I would have spent it on HER! She seemed surprised, almost as if she believed that the reason I stopped at three dances with her was because three had been enough, when the reality was I could have gone for another two with Daisy. Or three! Or four! Plus a few drinks! Ah, if I were a rich man!!

Later Daisy came over with her co-worker and suggested a two-girl lapdance, but I had to decline again. And still later she stopped by briefly on her own and sat on my lap, making yet one try for a dance, but I told her it would have to wait until next time. Oddly, her insistence on asking me repeatedly for more dances didn’t annoy me; she seems to do it more out of entrepreneurial pluck than anything else. I have the feeling she’s had quite a hard time in life, but there’s also something about her that doesn’t quite add up for me; I can’t put my finger on it. When I first met her, I thought she was of a different Asian ethnicity than she told she was. For some reason, I still have that feeling, or maybe it’s just that there’s something about her innocent/knowing persona that seems like an act, albeit an entertaining one, and it makes me wonder about the veracity of other things she says. Anyway, she said I was a “good boy” because I like Asian girls. On that score, I have been a very good boy indeed as I am fairly fixated on Asian women of late.

Of course, I don’t ONLY like Asian girls, I like all kinds, and as it turns out one of my favorites from a couple of years ago, Nicole, is now working at this particular club. She is a blond European. I wrote about her when I first started this blog, but I hadn’t seen her for many months because she went to work at a club I don’t like. Well, it turned out that she didn’t like that club either, and she switched to one of my regular hang-outs instead. Last night, I tipped her a couple of dollars while she was onstage, and then she sat down and we chatted for awhile. She’s a very well-educated, well-spoken young woman, and one of the few dancers I’ve met who understands that this stripclub habit is an expensive one for the customers. She didn’t take it personally when, in early 2005, I’d run into some financial difficulty when I lost a lucrative freelance account, and I told her that I wouldn’t be able to come by as often, or spend as much when I did. She understood completely, having endured some rough times herself in coming to America.

So it was fun to catch up with Nicole last night, get a few dances from Daisy, and also have an amusing conversation with a leggy brunette dancer from the South who sat herself down next to me and began to chat. I told her she had long, shapely legs and she said, “Well, they get me around.” I recalled for her Abe Lincoln’s statement, when asked how long a person’s legs ought to be, that they should be “long enough to reach the ground.” She looked at me quizzically and said, “Did he really say that? He had a quite a sense of humor!” And I briefly flashed on Honest Abe coming into the club for a dance, perhaps taking a break from a tempestuous night with his famously emotional wife, Mary Todd.

I only spent twenty dollars more last night at the club than I had intended to, which wasn’t bad. Afterward, I stopped at the supermarket to pick up some sandwich meat and bread, and went home to concoct myself a cheap dinner and watch a couple of episodes of the 1950s Superman tv show starring George Reeves. I read in the paper this morning that the new movie Hollywoodland, which is a drama exploring the mysterious 1959 shooting death of Reeves, is going to be in competition for the top prize at the Venice International Film Festival next month. Ben Affleck is going to play Reeves. I’m eagerly awaiting this film.

Tonight I’m going to a play spoofing 1940s superhero comics in which my actor/writer friend Sid is going to be playing a Nazi villain. He has specialized in this type of character in the past, and our mutual friends Moe and Betty will also be at the show. So I’m looking forward to a sociable evening! I hope you enjoy your Saturday too, and thanks as always for reading my blog.

Yesterday, I was talking to my kid sister Jenny in Chicago, and she told me that she ran into an old girlfriend of mine at a restaurant. Let’s call her Andrea.

I was friends with Andrea during our senior year in high school. She was a petite brunette with extremely pretty hazel eyes. I really wanted to date her, but she was going out with someone else and only wanted me as a friend. Yeah, friends--right? We ate lunch together in the cafeteria almost everyday, and I became her confidante, hoping that I could eventually transform into her boyfriend. Meanwhile I dated other girls, and took someone else to the senior prom...a woman, actually, with whom I am still friendly today. I wrote here last May about visiting her amazing house when I went to Chicago.

After graduation in June 1969, I finally convinced Andrea to go out with me. That Saturday night I took her to one of the most romantic spots in the Chicagoland area, the gardens surrounding the Ba’hai Temple in Wilmette. It’s a very striking building that looks something like the Taj Mahal plopped down in the middle of an upscale suburb. As we sat parked in front of this dramatically lit and ethereal structure, I told Andrea how crazy I was about her, and eventually won her over. We dated throughout the summer, and then continued to see each other on vacations during freshman year in college. But we went to different schools and eventually broke up during the Christmas break of our sophomore year in 1970. It was my doing; I was a restless young guy, dreaming of going to New York or California eventually and getting involved in writing or movies. I didn’t want to be tied down to anyone. Yes, a familiar, clichéd story. Actually, if I recall correctly, Andrea’s mother was always warning her that I wasn’t right for her because I wanted to be a writer and wasn’t long-term relationship material. She turned out to be exactly right.

As often happens with relationships that start out with great intensity but end sadly, Andrea and I cut off contact with each other. I would hear about her from time to time through the Chicago grapevine, and I knew that she’d married, had children, and fulfilled her career goals.

According to Jenny, however, Andrea apparently knew next to nothing about what had happened to me in the subsequent years. Her first question was about whether or not I had ever gotten married. Jenny said no, and told Andrea that I lived in New York and worked as a freelancer on various projects.

I asked Jenny how Andrea looked. She said that although she still looked pretty, her eyes were made up a little too heavily, in a way that made her look older than necessary. I wasn’t surprised to hear that Andrea still did her eyes that way. What makes her look older is probably that her methods of eye makeup are dated. Her eyes were the most striking feature in her cute face, and the way she did them was almost her trademark, a distinctive part of her identity. The style of the late 60s was quite dramatic with false eyelashes, mascara, etc. Just look at Raquel Welch in any late 60s flick. Of course, what works when you’re eighteen sometimes has to be modulated when you’re fifty-three.

Fifty-three! The last time I saw her, Andrea was twenty. One of the most erotic memories of my life was going to a drive-in movie with her and another couple during the summer of 1970. Andrea and I sat in the back seat, and she was wearing a light and yellow summer dress which bared her shoulders. I can still feel her pert bosom under the bodice of that dress as we made out during the movie, which was Kiss of the Vampire. It was very nice kissing Andrea; I certainly never tired of that...

Andrea told Jenny that she hadn’t gone to the twentieth reunion in 1989 because she had hated high school, largely because she wasn’t part of the “in-crowd.” I remember being disappointed that she wasn’t at that reunion, which I had gone back to Chicago to attend. She would have been thirty-eight then. I think it would be freaky to see her now in 2006, because the problem with memory is that although we see ourselves aging in the mirror, we remember other people as they were. Seeing Andrea, I wouldn’t feel like the paunchy bald fifty-four year old Sir Cranky I am today, but the slender twenty-year old I was when I last held her: not a bad-looking lad at all, with dark brown hair that I had to keep brushing off my eyes. In fact, one of the most harmful things anybody ever said to me in high school, in terms of ridiculously inflating my ego, was that I was “Byronic,” but perhaps I had something of that quality or the person wouldn’t have said it. Anyway, I would feel like a young man stepping out of a time machine if I saw Andrea today. I could deal with it, but it would be weird. And she’d probably gag if she saw me!! All right, perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

Andrea was a “nice Jewish girl,” feisty but gentle. Playful but essentially chaste. It was a different era; adolescence in the 60s was not the uninhibited party it reportedly is today. The “nice” girls didn’t go too far then. I confess that while I loved Andrea, and was very attracted to her, I also eagerly wanted to encounter some “bad” girls too! I would say that in subsequent years, I have certainly made up for any lack of bad girls I suffered in adolescence.

Andrea had a sense of humor, which especially brought out her bright, almost mischievous smile; but she was generally serious in demeanor. And I remember how she deferred to me when I was her boyfriend, very much in the style of that bygone era. Still, she was determined to get into a certain field of professional endeavor, which she did, and she also married and has a family.

Andrea was with her daughter when Jenny ran into her. Jenny said Andrea’s daughter has inherited her eyes--although she wore no makeup on them.

Having written this post, I almost feel as if I were present at the meeting; or at least, for the hour it’s taken me to write this, I’ve conjured up Andrea’s presence before me...yes, she was a good part of my young life. I shouldn't have been such a schmuck and broken up with her on 12/31/70, New Year's Eve...I could have waited a day or two...but such is the shitheadedness of youth.

I saw Superman Returns last night and didn't like it very much; I started writing an entry which analyzed the movie's shortcomings, but I decided to put it aside. I want to think more about the movie before I post a commentary on it. Still, sometimes I question why I want to expend more time scrutinizing a film I didn't enjoy; it just seems to extend the pain.

Going to theaters nowadays can be an excruciating experience in noise and pomposity. Last night I found the mirthless thundering aggressiveness of the trailers for various family-oriented cartoons to be particularly oppressive. These coming attractions seemed so convinced of their hilarity, but I didn't detect many laffs. I also find it ridiculous that the actors whose voices are featured in these cartoons are listed as the "stars" of these flicks. Seems bombastic to me. They're not the stars; that honor goes to dancing cows or hyperkinetic ants.

I hear The Devil Wears Prada is an entertaining movie for adults of both sexes. Maybe I'll go see it. The gossip columnist Liz Smith referred to it as a "cross-gender hit" today in the New York Post. It sounds as if that's because its story touches on a recognizable and common experience--dealing with a tough boss. Yeah, I bet that's one reason why it's been popular with women AND men. If it was only about the world of a fashion magazine, it would be a chick flick; but it sounds as if the filmmakers remembered that even guys can relate to the drama of an abusive employer.

Ah, what the hell. I might as well tell you what I thought of Superman Returns. Why make a big deal out of it, Cranky?

No wonder they’re giving out coupons for a free ticket for Superman Returns in the DVD sets of the 3rd and 4th seasons of the 50s Superman tv show; it’s obvious that Warner Bros. knew they’d have to convince people to get butts in the seats after the opening weekend. The new film is a long, noisy, glum disappointment.

Brandon Routh is handsome, sure, but far too youthful and lightweight for the role; he looks like a freshman in college. All right, maybe that's an exaggeration, but he does look rather untested in the travails of the superhero lifestyle. Kate Bosworth is sour and cold as Lois Lane; in her best scene, she takes off her high heels to go flying with Superman, but the viewer doesn’t even know if those cute pedicured bare feet in closeup are hers. And then we come to Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor; Spacey seems to think he’s playing Hamlet. The director appears to have exercised no control over Spacey’s over-indulgent performance.

The parallels of Superman to Jesus seem pretentious and tacked-on. Superman probably has more in common with Houdini. Sure, everybody is entitled to interpret a pop cultural icon, but the writers and director of Superman Returns did not make a convincing case that Superman is really Christ-like. A few self-sacrificing moves may make someone a Good Samaritan, but Jesus is another thing entirely.

One of the movie’s major faults is that it really has no story. Luthor’s plot to dominate the world is not only ridiculous beyond the call of ridiculousness, but the film doesn’t even bother to explain in a coherent way how he’s trying to achieve his nefarious ends. The special effects lack a sense of space and dimension; you know everything was done in the computer, so there’s no sense of real physical derring-do. And scenes of an airplane in distress (until Superman saves the day) are jarring and frightening without any genuine emotional payoff afterward. Oh yeah, lots of people (in the film) clap when the plane is safely brought to the ground, but that's to make up for the people in the theater who just kept eating their Milk Duds.

Worst of all, the plot (such as it is) subjects Superman, weakened by kryptonite, to a brutal pummeling at the hands of Luthor and his henchmen. This scene looks like it belongs in a movie about thugs on the Brooklyn waterfront. It serves to point up the film’s consistent tone of pain and hopelessness. This sequence was such a turn-off that I turned to my friend and said, "This movie is piece of shit."

This is the saddest Superman. I don’t even want to waste any more words on this. It’s going to take a lot of George Reeves 1950s tv episodes to act as an antidote to this ill-conceived mess. I actually felt sorry for Brandon Routh, because he was personable enough and given less ponderous material, he might have made a decent Man of Steel--in a few years, when he gets the college boy out of his eyes. Here, he has little to do as Superman other than to look soulful or determined, and almost nothing interesting to do as alter ego Clark Kent.

I would even give Kate Bosworth another chance in another Superman epic, if they would give her a scene where she could smile and be something other than a judgmental bitch.

Two scenes deserve praise. A flashback where Superman recalls first learning how he could leap and fly back on the farm is a nice bit of Americana; and there was a lovely throwaway image of Superman gliding down a Metropolis street around dusk while people go about their everyday business. Alas! If only Superman Returns had more of this, and more warmth and good old-fashioned storytelling.