Well, I completed my three straight days of working in New Jersey at my freelance gig and now I can work in New York City well into next week. Finally I completed that big project I was alluding to, but it took up so much of my mental energy. I really enjoyed doing it and wanted it to turn out well.

When I got back to the city I went once again to relax at my favorite stripclub. At first I couldn't stop thinking about the project, even with T&A staring me in the face, and I was bored by all the dancers. Then again, they were boring not just in their familiarity but their lack of inventiveness. Sometimes they just walk aimlessly around the stage, instead of trying to entertain.

I was ready to nod off when I noticed a newcomer across the room, this one with a hint of the pagan about her. She was tall, lithe, with very long and shapely legs descending from the hem of her short dress; with golden bangles on her arms, and her dark hair pulled back to reveal large circular gold earrings. There was something of the ancient dancing girl about her, that's what I mean when I say she looked "pagan," and she attracted customers like bees to honey. I noticed how she spent a good bit of time talking to the guys before dancing for them, and without getting a lot of drinks or going into the champagne room. I like to see that in strippers. I hoped she would get onstage before I finished my beer so I could see her performance. I already had a bit of Jameson at home before I left and I didn't want more than one more Bud Lite as I had some things to do after dinner. Luckily, she did ascend the stage after writhing in three men's laps for a good number of songs, and I got to see that she was quite dazzling and had an easy sense of humor too. I approached her with a tip when she had just lowered her mini-dress to reveal her breasts, and she said, "Hmm, let me find my underwear for that," meaning her thong, where she would receive her tips. She had to tug the rest of the dress down further so her thong peeked through, and I inserted my modest tribute. When I gave her another tip, she took it between her breasts and said "Thank you, baby," with the lovely tones of a New York City Latina. Hmm...I will be sorely tempted to have a lapdance with this gal should she approach me at some point, despite my rigorous dedication to a program of "lapstinence" (just coined that word myself--means "abstinence from lapdancing"). When she received her tips, she dropped them in a pile on the floor of the stage, and it looked as if she had a small green garden down there. I finished my beer and left just after she finished her set. It was almost hard to breathe watching her...all right, I'm exaggerating a little with that last statement, but that's half the fun of reliving this stuff as I write.

I watched a Gina Lollobrigida movie from 1952 as I ate my Chinese take-out dinner. The film was entitled Wife for a Night, a very cute farce about a modest wife in nineteenth century Italy who has to pretend that she is a courtesan while the courtesan pretends to be the modest wife...the plot is too hard to explain, but it was funny and very good-hearted, displaying a wonderful acceptance of the foibles of men and women, a heavenly quality I find in the best farces. The actress Nadia Grey, who played the courtesan, was as sexy as Gina. But Gina...ohmigod, she was a beauty. And a very good actress too, not to speak of all the shots of her in a tight-fitting corset that showed off the most snowy white inviting cleavage...

Ironically, this warm-hearted comedy was updated to modern times and remade in Hollywood in 1964 as one of Billy Wilder's most caustic and cynical comedies, Kiss Me Stupid, which starred Dean Martin, Ray Walston, and Kim Novak, with Felicia Farr in the Gina role.

I looked Gina up on the Web and found a nice page devoted to her at a site called The Love Goddesses. Here's the link. It's a site that's right up my alley, as it discusses other actresses I like, especially the less remembered ones such as Martha Hyer and Elaine Stewart...so check it out if you're so inclined. I'm sure I'll be reading more of The Love Goddesses and referring to it here.

GinaLollobrigidaPageAtTheLoveGoddesses

I have been so busy in the last three days that I have fallen behind in answering telephone calls and emails from friends and associates. I make the time to blog a little every day no matter how busy I am, but I don't enjoy leisurely conversation when I'm not in a relaxed mode, and since right now I am trying to get some work done that is nearing a pressing deadline, I put conversations off unless they're urgent. I took on an extra project that has turned out to be a tremendous amount of work which I did not anticipate and it is draining me although it is turning out extremely well. So this is my way of telling my friends (who also read this blog) that I will be getting in touch with them in a day or two when I don't have to commute to and from my client's office in New Jersey and am rooted back on my terra firma of Manhattan and feel calm again.

In crunches like this, I do what is most necessary, and what I felt most imperatively when I got back after a stressful day of commuting and eyeball-straining work was to take one hour for a beer in the glittery solitude of my favorite stripclub. I read somewhere that the Spanish film director Luis Bunuel used to enjoy a martini every afternoon and space out to relax, and I sometimes think that some of my hours in stripclubs serve a similar function. I go to one particular club where most of the girls are so familiar they have lost much of their erotic charge for me, and I just kind of drink my Bud Lite and gaze at them and gaze away from them and zone out.

Happily this afternoon a pretty Latina sat down at my table, an unfamiliar face for a change, and even though I didn't get a dance from her we enjoyed a nice little conversation for about ten minutes. When she got onstage I was impressed by her lithe mastery of the pole; she was very petite, but very strong, and she did a movement around the pole on her wrist that was almost like a slow motion gliding twirl. It was quite beautiful and I complimented her on it as I slipped my humble donation into her garter. There was something wistful about this girl that was appealing, and even when she was doing her impressive moves with the pole, she retained that wistful quality in her dark eyes and broad smile.

Veronica, a veteran dancer I enjoy watching but who is almost never up front with the mostly cash customers because she's constantly in the champagne room with the credit card boys, got onstage tonight for a change and it was titillating to watch her strut her stuff. She always blows me kisses when I tip her, which turns me on. Maybe it reminds me of a movie goddess blowing kisses to an adoring fan. Well, I have been known to get looks of adoration in my eyes, which have been described by more than one woman as having a "puppy dog" quality, which may work both in my favor and to my detriment...

Anyway, I've been up since 5:30 this morning and I'm exhausted. So before I start rambling in a loose Freudian manner, I guess this blogger will call it a night.

A long day. I worked at my freelance client in New Jersey, then came back to New York to do more work on another project. Then I took a break for dinner downtown with a friend, and now I still have some more emails to answer before I go to sleep.

I saw Casino Royale last night and I want to jot down some thoughts about it, but I'm just too tired now for anything extensive. One thing I can say quickly is that the girls who had bit parts as hotel clerks and cocktail waitresses were more sexy and attractive than Bond's leading ladies in this one. Yes, they're definitely working a new angle on 007 when the poor guy not only doesn't get the cream of the crop, but has a hard getting them into bed as well.

The movie is best if it's not thought of as a Bond movie, but just an action-packed thriller about a super-efficient secret agent who has a hard time getting laid. Almost sounds like a comedy when it's put that way, but it wasn't.

Daniel Craig was a strange James Bond...more like an anti-hero in a 1950's B-film than a suave British agent. He grew on me as the film progressed, but I never really found him all that engaging. Again, the movie worked best for me when I told myself to forget he was supposed to be James Bond.

Now here's a great twist for the next one: bring Sean Connery back, but as the villain to Daniel Craig's James Bond! That would be crazy, no?

This has been a work day for me. I spent several hours on the computer getting stuff done on two freelance projects. I had a late lunch of won ton soup about two-thirty, and now I feel as if I'm going to fall asleep at the computer.

However, I'm going to meet a friend in a little while and we're going to catch the latest James Bond flick, Casino Royale, which should wake me out of my stupor. I hear it's pretty violent. I don't care, as long as the Bond Girls are fetching. And Judi Dench as Bond's boss "M" is always entertaining, giving 007 a raised eyebrow or two.

I remember seeing Judi Dench in a 1964 British whodunit called The Third Secret; the star was Stephen Boyd, and if I recall correctly, Judi just had a small part as a girl who worked in an art gallery. She almost could have been a Bond Girl herself 43 years ago; she looked pretty cute.

This week I'm going to be a citizen of New Jersey as much as New York; I'll have to commute two or three times to the Garden State (why do they call it that? it's never struck me as particularly garden-like) to work at my freelance client's office. I'll have to find a new book to read on the subway and bus. I just finished a terrific 1957 thriller by the late Margaret Millar called An Air That Kills. She was a fine psychological suspense writer who really had a beautifully descriptive style that brought her characters to life in a few sentences...and she didn't stint on the murder and mayhem that gave her books some incredible twist endings that also had tragic, emotional resonance.

The only thing that bothers me lately about reading all these thrillers is that their grimness has been getting me down a bit more than usual. Perhaps as I get older, I have a greater need to be amused than to be thrilled...

Maybe I should get an issue of MAD magazine for my commute tomorrow morning?

I did stay in last night, and it was my decision, not that of my "Mental Mommy," the stern superego I carry around in my head. (See my previous, somewhat tongue-in-cheek entry, for more on Mental Mommy.)

After I had some Chinese take-out, I decided to watch the 1960 Steve Reeves flick The Last Days of Pompeii. The story took place in the Italian town just preceding the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in August, 79 A.D. Unfortunately, this movie wasn't very good, and barely retained any of the elements of the wonderful nineteenth century novel by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton on which it was based. The actresses were the best elements of the movie, although I know some folks would also get off on watching Steve Reeves display his tremendous physique in his designer mini-tunics. Christine Kauffmann (who was married to Tony Curtis at one point) played the virginal heroine, and although her acting wasn't much above the basic ingenue level, she was gorgeous to look at; easy to see why she turned Tony's head. Barbara Carroll (whom I'd never heard of before) played Julia, the evil blonde femme fatale. Barbara had a figure that rivaled Jayne Mansfield's, and she sure looked great in form-fitting gowns. Va-va-voom! No wonder the volcano exploded.

Also included on the DVD I rented was a bonus silent Italian-made version of the story. The Timeless Video DVD boxcover said this bonus was from 1913, but after reading up on the film in the authoritative book The Ancient World in the Cinema (Yale University Press), it seems to me this was actually a 1926 Italian version. In any case, this silent movie, although presented in a choppy print and with a voiceover narrator, was much closer to the novel and much better as a film overall. There were spectacular recreations of Pompeii and its arena. One of the best characters in the original story is that of an evil, lecherous, and nihilistic high priest of Isis named Arbaces, and this 1926 epic also featured the character prominently, played by a charismatic actor unfortunately not identified in the skimpy credits!! The Steve Reeves version featured Arbaces too, played by the prominent European actor Fernando Rey, but he didn't have too much to do; whereas in the 1926 version Arbaces schemes, kills, debauches, entraps, and in one cool scene, tries to win over a new protege by giving him a huge platter of flowers, underneath which is a beautiful and saucy girl for the protege's enjoyment.

That's the old boy from the book--that's Arbaces!

For the life of me, I can't understand why Hollywood, with all its resources today, doesn't undertake the definitive version of the original novel, which was an incredible blend of romance, action, mysticism, lust, gladiators, and Mount Vesuvius to tie it all together. If you ever find a copy of The Last Days of Pompeii, give it a try. If you can make allowances for its slower nineteenth century pace, you will be rewarded with a fantastic story that has a memorable love triangle and a truly poignant ending. Another thing I can't understand is why this book is not readily available at Barnes & Noble in their inexpensive editions of classics! Get with it, B&N! Sir Cranky commands!