My writer friend Moe kindly brought an article to my attention in today's New York Times that I probably would have missed. Being on a freelancer's limited budget these days, I tend to avoid reading the restaurant reviews, which tease yet deny the fulfillment of my senses with a cruelty second only to lapdances. Yet here was a piece I had to read, by the Times eatery scribe Frank Bruni, about a steakhouse located in a stripclub! Specifically, Robert's Steakhouse in the Penthouse Executive Club on the Far West Side of Midtown Manhattan.

Oh yummy: I love it when the Times deigns to rub elbows with my favorite kind of woman, La Femme Ecdysiasticus. And I do like reading about good steaks, because on occasion I manage to afford to consume them. (Thanks to the largesse of my writer/bodybuilder/streetfighter pal Rexx, I dined recently at Sparks.)

My hopes for Frank Bruni and his review grew a little shaky at first when in his fourth paragraph he wrote, speaking of himself and his dinner companions: "We were strangers to such pulchritudinous territory, less susceptible to the scenery than other men might be, more aroused by the side dishes than the sideshow." Hmm, those first two clauses are mysteriously loaded: firstly, I always scoff at grown men who profess to be lambs in the land of lasciviousness, who claim to be unacquainted with flesh palaces--really?? In Gluttonous Gotham in the 21st century?? And then, that second statement, "less susceptible to the scenery than other men might be..." My first interpretation of that line was that Frank means he's gay. Is he? And/or his friends, too? But being gay doesn't prevent a man from being "susceptible" to a skin display--because gay men go to their own strip shows, and look at their own erotica. So what did Frankie mean??

Calling all copy editors! Hey, I know a good one who works freelance at Vanity Fair.

Frank meets a stripper who accepts his offer of a glass of cabernet, and she says he can pour it on her toes. And then he tells us--"Didn't happen." My dear Signor Bruni, you should have called moi. (Wait, you don't know moi. Darn.) Because I would have accepted that experience. And then Frank admits that on his visits to both the stripclub and the steakhouse, through which the peelers apparently traverse freely, he was "derelict in my duty, failing to sample much of what the restaurant had to offer."

A pity, that. Wasn't he curious about how a lapdance or two could affect the perceptions of his palate? He's basically saying that he didn't finish his job, and saying it in print! Will he get spanked back at Times headquarters? I would hope so. (Maybe one of the Penthouse chicks could be brought in with a paddle.)

In the "body" of the review (nyuk-nyuk!) Frank gets into what he does pretty well, and describes the chow. After a really positive analysis that implies that the meat at Robert's combines the best qualities of two of New York's finest steak joints (which would seem to indicate that even the presence of strippers does not detract from the chef's triumphant achievement) Frank only gives the place one star. Huh? Doesn't compute. The Times should let Frank put a calculator on his expense account, and not just the wine.

Frank's discussion of the chef's work situation reminded me of what I call the "Positive Fringe Effect in Popular Culture." Because the executive chef of Robert's Steakhouse weaves his wonders within what is generally regarded as a declassé environment (the Penthouse Executive Club, aka a tittie bar), by his own admission to Bruni the chef is given more control over the food than he would have in another type of establishment. This reminds me of how directors of Grade B to Grade Z films made on the fringes of Hollywood, everybody from Edgar "Detour" Ulmer to Ed "Plan 9 from Outer Space" Wood, were able to freely exercise more creativity in their world of schlock cinema and make classics because they were left alone to spin their magic as long as they turned in the goods on time and on the dime. Similarly, it sounds as if Lang has found a similarly laissez-faire environment to do his steakmaking the way he sees fit, and it sounds as if he produces damn good meals, which Sir Cranky will have to sample some time when he and his friends are feeling flush.

Returning to Frank's review: his description of a dessert called "a buttery nipple" makes me wonder if you can just go the steakhouse for the dessert alone, because for $20 cash a dancer will straddle your lap, and "pour a combination of Bailey's Irish Cream and butterscotch schnapps down your throat," with a squirting of Reddi-Whip to top it off. That I could afford; a $53 strip steak would give me pause. As it is, I currently prefer my after-stripclub meals at Greek-American diners, where for $10.95-$12.95 I can scarf soup, salad, entree, and side dishes, sometimes with a free glass of house wine thrown in for good measure. Coffee, regrettably, comes extra.

Frank winds up his review with a bit of condescension toward the strippers and their intellectual attainments, their choices of cellphones, and their lack of certainty in the spelling of their stage names. But really, Frank, you shouldn't take a girl to task for not being sure if Brianna is spelled with one "n" or two. After all, at least strippers make things easy for us by still using stage names. That's better than actors who use unpronounceable monikers nowadays, like that Euro fella who played the villain in Casino Royale. I couldn't tell you who he was even if you threatened to beat my testicles with a rope.

I'm still reading The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, by Robert Hofler, and it's one of the best books of Hollywood history I've ever encountered. One thing it shows vividly is how the gossip media were as relentless in their judgments of stars back then as they are now--except the focus has changed.

Whereas "bachelor" actors like Rock Hudson were nagged by the fan mags and commentators to get married, less as an expression of the gossipists' business (because it really wasn't) and more of an expression of their envy at his wealth and stardom (as well as disapproval of his then-closeted homosexuality), today celebrities like Britney Spears are urged to "go into rehab" less as an expression of the gossipists' genuine concern and more because of that same envy of the money and freedom she enjoys (as well as disapproval of how she can afford help for her babies and/or enjoy fresh stud meat just by crooking her finger--at least up until the time when she shaved her head).

The corrosive effects of envy are great, and it seems to me that they must be particularly harmful to journalists who have to witness the prerogatives of the mighty without being able to exercise those privileges themselves.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that venomous envy motivates the papparazzi as much as money does.

Yesterday's New York Post groaning board of schadenfreude (the German term for "happiness at another's misfortune") turned out to be only an appetizer to the entree in this morning's edition, a glutton's feast on everything from how the stars look shabby in HDTV to how Rose McGowan is supposedly willing to jut out her butt for the red carpet photogs. Brought under scrutiny were blemishes, wrinkles, dental deficiencies, Jennifer Hudson's bolero jacket (dubbed a "space oddity") and even the LACK of flaws in the family of Will Smith. At least the paper's caption about Smith and Co. was self-aware: "Will Smith, Jada Pinkett, and son Jaden make you despise them. Really, just one flaw, that's all we ask."

See what the Post functionaries could have avoided if they ignored the Oscars like Sir Cranky? I admit that I'm envious of all the money and celebrity, and so I just tuned out the whole friggin' thing. Let everybody in Hollywood enjoy themselves; I've got smaller fish to fry.

The New York Post's tabloid coverage of the red carpet at the Academy Awards last night was a veritable layer cake of schadenfreude (the German word for "taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune"). Beyoncé, Cameron Diaz, and Nicole Kidman all came in for barbs, but the major artillery was reserved for the rags-to-riches Best Supporting Actress winner, Jennifer Hudson. True, everybody with a beating heart has been getting a little envious of her rapid ascent to the Hollywood firmament via her fairy tale transition from cruise ship canary to poignant warbler in Dreamgirls, but the Post put it all in envious perspective with its headline: "'Dreamgirl's' Wake-Up Call' as the article proceeded to skewer Hudson's Oscar de la Renta dress as "the evening's fashion disaster," putting the word WORST over her flowing hem, and comparing the little silver jacket she wore over her gown to something that might have been worn by the "enslaved betrothed" of outer space archvillain, Ming the Merciless of the planet Mongo.

For those of you unfamiliar with the serials and space movies of the 1930s, Ming was the Emperor of the Universe and implacable foe of Flash Gordon, heroic young spaceman from earth. Ming's "enslaved betrothed" would be Flash's squeeze Dale Arden, played best by the lithe blonde Jean Rogers (once cited by Hugh Hefner in a documentary as one of his great sexual inspirations). Once Ming of Mongo got his eyes on Dale from Apple Pie, USA, he spent a major part of his time trying to get her to become his wife, and if it took a little enslavement to get her betrothed, well, Ming had the resources.

Still, I think even Ming would have hesitated to have his earthling bride wear a silver bolero jacket over a brown gown. The Post should have given the Emperor of the Universe more credit than that.

Just so you can see that Ming (and his opponents) had fashion sense, click on the link below to a photo from the original 1936 Flash Gordon serial. The blonde next to Flash is Dale Arden, and the sultry brunette on the left is Ming's daughter, Princess Aura, played by the immortal Priscilla Lawson (and without a bolero jacket). That's Ming glowering on the right. Come to think of it, the first Flash Gordon serial probably pioneered the bare midriff look for gals with some its racy costumes.

I think the Post owes Ming an apology, don't you?

Aura&DaleStillDazzle

"Flash Gordon". [Photograph]. Retrieved February 26, 2007 from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-73549.

My real life is generally stressful yet dull; my reading life is full of drama and action. Isn't it that way for many people?

I'm reading both that book I mentioned yesterday, the one about Rock Hudson's agent, Henry Willson; as well as a British bestseller from 1847 entitled Wagner the Werewolf; so while my actual life is weighted with such worries such as how I'm going to pay my freelancer's taxes come April 15th, my imagination is experiencing the highs and lows of Hollywood in the 40s and 50s as well as the melodrama of a man during the Renaissance who sells his soul for renewed youth, vigor, and wealth, with the only condition being he will also turn into a werewolf at sunset on the last day of each month.

Perhaps my experiences in the stripclubs once or twice a week are a bridge between my real life and my reading life, because it is in the clubs where I contemplate and encounter the beautiful dancing girls who enliven and decorate the movie of my own average existence.

I find my own melodrama in bite-size pieces which I can manage. Thus, when the beautiful college girl at the Chinese take-out restaurant, a sullen young goddess with whom I have a goofy and probably ill-concealed fascination, takes my money for my combo plate and I momentarily graze her soft fingers, I am transformed for a brief moment into a medieval knight dazzled and blessed by the inadvertent touch of the inaccessible but adored lady of the castle.

This girl, like all the other female cashiers at this place, wears for most customers a usually matter-of-fact, testy expression on her face; but the other day, while waiting for my order, she found something to smile and laugh about in response to something another male customer had said, as he bopped along to his headphones and came up to the counter for his pork lo mein. So I actually got to see the goddess smile! Nice moment.

Meanwhile, back in the world of Wagner the Werewolf, I am dazzled by lush descriptions of feminine beauty. The character of Lady Nisida of Riverola, a Florentine aristocrat of 1519 beloved by Wagner (when not in his werewolf phase), is lavished garlands of the most vivid prose that turn her into a kind of verbal pinup, as the author George W.M. Reynolds (the bestselling popular novelist of his day, rivaling Charles Dickens) describes her stranded on a island and bathing naked like a mermaid in the surf.

This was written in 1847, mind you, and for popular consumption in the "penny" journals of the time.

One thing that is fascinating about this very long and stately-paced book is how it anticipates the movie spectaculars of our own day. The richness of the descriptions of such things as the destruction of a convent of self-flagellating nuns (based on historical fact), and a rampaging storm at sea that shipwrecks Lady Nisida, are told with a kind of proto-cinematic realism that was the 1847 equivalent of widescreen and Dolby Sound. The public's appetite for fantastic spectacle is nothing new, and books like this satisfied it.

Now I come to the section where Wagner, falsely condemned to death for a murder committed by the charismatic yet sociopathic Lady Nisida (a proto-dominatrix if there ever was one), is scheduled not only to climb the gallows at sunset, but also (because it is the last day of the month) to transform into a werewolf in front of the seething crowds of onlookers to his execution! Author Reynolds just needed a pen and paper to tell his story, but undoubtedly the modern cinematic equivalent would cost $300 million to produce!

An interesting editorial by a literature professor in the New York Post today discusses how the public's appetite for stories about Anna Nicole Smith has its antecedents in Victorian novels, filled with heroines who were interested in men with "oil"--"Old, Ill, and Loaded," not unlike the late Smith's octogenarian hubby. And the editorial further states that the public's appetite for fictional narrative, whether in the form of books, movies, tv, is vast and insatiable. We all want to feel the thrill of a story--and occasionally, we want to be part of a story ourselves. And we all find little moments of drama in our own lives, whether it be a lapdance from a stripper or the accidental touch of a pretty cashier, to make ourselves the headliners in our own life stories.

And the Oscar for Best Performance in His Own Life goes to...?

Last evening featured a very Crankesque lineup of entertainment experiences. First I went over to the stripclub. Everybody seemed to be in a rather good mood as it was more crowded that usual and lots of girls were doing dances and getting frequent onstage tips. I even broke down and let a cute Hispanic girl do one dance for me which was, quite frankly, so close and spirited that my balls ached with pent-up desire afterward. Although I've tipped this gal and talked to her, I'd never gotten a dance from her, and before we went over to the couch I said, "It can only be one dance because I'm low on money." She said that was okay, I didn't have to spend a lot of money to have a good time, and that the one dance would be a good one. She wasn't kidding.

One comment I made before the dance must have struck her as strange. When she said she was always glad to see me in the club and talk to me, I asked her "Why?" as if I couldn't conceive of the answer without her help. She said it was because I seemed like a nice guy. I guess I was in a self-deprecating, cynical mood, and figured she was just trying to play me, so I didn't want to take her compliment at face value.

This girl--let's call her Millie--once told me how much she likes to cook, and elaborated on all the various dishes she makes. Now, she's a pleasant looking girl, sexy figure, cute and kittenish, and the fact that she is really into cooking such homey fare as lasagna and chicken is also a factor in why she turns me on. There is something about her combination of stripperly tease and kitchen-oriented domesticity that gets to me. She also has very beautiful silky hair, and that's alluring too. Anyway, I've had fantasies of her making me a good meal and then going to bed with her. And in point of fact, she was going on last night about really needing to have some fun, and that maybe she would go out to a comedy show with a girlfriend; it made me think, is she trying to get ME to ask her out? But I didn't trust the situation. Maybe I was just looking a gift horse in the mouth, I don't know. She'd been complaining about how she'd lost a significant sum of money and I was wondering if she were giving me hints that she could use some financial help. I thought that her getting me to take her out to a show might be her way of ingratiating herself to get such help from me. However, if she had such an idea, it must have been dashed when I said I was low on dough.

Ah, maybe I think too much. This is all pure speculation. At any rate, I got my twenty dollars worth from her sexy dance, although I could have done without the scrotal throb for about an hour afterward.

After the stripclub, I went to dinner at a favorite diner and had a Western omelette made with sausage instead of ham. As I ate, I read a book recommended to me by my actor-writer friend Sid, who is as much a movie buff as I am. The book is The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, a biography of the agent Henry Willson written by Robert Hofler and published by Carroll & Graf. Willson guided the careers of actresses like Joan Fontaine and Lana Turner before gaining his most power and influence in the creation of 50s male icons like Hudson and Tab Hunter. It's interesting how the book shows Willson putting his gay-oriented stamp on male pulchritude in 50s Hollywood in a way parallel to how Hugh Hefner put his heterosexual imprimatur on female beauty in Playboy during the same period of time.

So there I sat in the diner, eating my omelette and reading this large trade paperback with a big and now very gay-seeming color picture of a shirtless Rock Hudson on the cover...I felt a little self-conscious about it, but the fascinating book was good company over my food.

After dinner I rented a 2005 movie from Blockbuster called The Squid and the Whale. It's a drama with touches of humor and comedy about a divorced couple in 1986 Brooklyn, and the effect of their breakup on their two sons. Specifically, the husband (Jeff Daniels) is an accomplished fiction writer whose career seems on the downslide while that of his wife (Laura Linney) is on the upswing. The story deals with their sexual tensions and edgy sparring, and how the divorce causes both their sons to act out neurotically in various embarrassing ways. The title refers to an exhibit of battling sea creatures at the American Museum of Natural History which scared one of the boys when he was a child, and which becomes a metaphor for the combat he witnesses between his parents.

The movie was quite good in only seventy-six minutes of running time. Director Noah Baumbach also wrote the script, which beautifully captures the rhythms of speech of intellectual people who sometimes have a hard time feeling their emotions, but instead observe them in a detached manner.

Included on the DVD was a dialogue between Baumbach and writer Philip Lopate, whose essays about various aspects of New York life and bachelorhood I've enjoyed reading in the past. Lopate also wrote a very good novel called The Rug Merchant which I read some years ago. Anyway, I had never seen a picture of Lopate before, so it was a little startling to see that he looks like an older version of myself--what I might look like ten or fifteen years from now. Lopate, I believe, is about that much older than I am. I began to imagine myself looking similarly bald with Lopate's purely gray fringe of hair, and wearing a similarly functional sports jacket--yet still showing up in my ageless Sir Cranky mode at the tittie bars in the year 2017 or 2022 for leisure time frolics with dancers who will be young enough to be my granddaughters. Yikes...but then again, the exterior is not what's inside. Right now, I don't feel like I'm 55 except in the morning and late at night. During the day, I'm emotionally still the same post-adolescent dreamer I've been my whole life in New York since 1973--a solid 21, except when I see certain dancers who make me feel like a shy schoolboy of maybe 14. Dancers like the incredibly sexy Brazilian girls at the club last night, who seemed so happy to see me, who gave me big hugs and kisses in their perfume-scented arms when I gave them my measly two and three dollar tips. Yes, some women leave me speechless, and although someday I might look truly old and gray (if I make it that far), inside I will undoubtedly still be just the same timeless awestruck squirt.