I have a tendency to self-pity, and the entries I write but then don't post (or delete an hour or two after posting) often reflect this tendency. I review the entry before putting it up, and then I say, "Is that really the way I want to be? Whiny and sarcastic and depressing?"

The blog acts as a mirror, and reminds me to just shelve the pity pot, and keep trying to move ahead and meet my goals, though sometimes it feels late in the day.

We got snow today, but it was a messy, unlovely snow. I didn't much feel like walking in it. I've spent almost the entire day (and night) in my apartment. I did some work but spent a lot of time reading about Mexican horror movies, an early comic book artist named Fletcher Hanks, and illustrators of the fantastic like Roy Krenkel and Norman Lindsay. Too bad I can't get paid for browsing the Web...I would have made a lot of money today, if I were paid by the hour.

I also spent a lot of time writing a blog entry that I didn't post. Sometimes I get so cranky that I don't want anybody to see it...this is the second time in a week that I didn't post what I wrote, a total of almost three thousand words. I'm not trying to tease you; I just don't like myself when I show too much of my bitterness about various things. I wonder sometimes if having a blog feeds my bitterness, makes it bloom...it gives me a forum for my disappointment to be shaped into prose, and I almost forget that content is as important as style. And when I feel embarrassed by the content, I realize the style doesn't matter...the raw materials will defeat even the best of stylists, much less a prose journeyman like myself...

I read about Krenkel, a fantastically talented artist who sometimes had a hard time seeing the value in his work, denigrating his accomplishments after comparing them to the work of earlier artists who inspired him. Yet Krenkel inspired many artists and mentored them despite his self-doubts. He was one of the artists who helped re-popularize the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the paperbacks of the 1960s.

Anyway, I felt unwilling to go out to dinner tonight, so I ate two small bags of Utz snacks, a brand available here in New York; BBQ chips, and buttered popcorn, washed down by ginger ale. I eat like a fourteen year old when I'm feeling blue...

Maybe tomorrow I will get out and about more. I still have to finish assembling my records for the tax accountant, though, and pay some bills too...ah, this worrying about money (and my financial future) is really getting me down...yet I feel inertia about making real changes. I will have to make bold moves to better my situation, I think, and nude modeling for art classes (which I wrote about a couple of posts ago) won't cut it...I was only really being satiric about it, anyway...

I ramble. That's what happens when I don't eat a healthy dinner, not to mention being on a starvation diet of one lapdance every month or two...

As far as this Fletcher Hanks character I mentioned, he drew comics back in 1939-41, and they're only now being rediscovered. Very strange stuff. Superheroes with limitless power who inflicted bizarre punishments on evildoers. And, he created one of the first female superheroes--Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle--whose beautiful face turns into a skull when she goes off on a mission. Check out this link and you'll see what I mean by strange...and I've also included a link to a bio page on Roy Krenkel too. You'll see fascinating pictures there as well, in a completely different mode.

Yes, if you check out the links, you'll experience a little of the mental journeys I take in these days when I don't really have the money to spend in the stripclubs.

FletcherHanks.com

RoyKrenkelAtBPIB.com

I watched Artists and Models the other night, the 1955 Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedy about two guys who get involved in the comic book business. Dean was his usual smooth self, Jerry was weird, and the best part of the movie was seeing Dorothy Malone and Shirley MacLaine costumed and directed to look like living pinups. They walk around in towels, shortie pajamas, bathing suits, and even when they're fully dressed in those wonderful 1950s women's outfits they look like feminine confections. Anita Ekberg and Eva Gabor were in the film too, and they also looked pretty good, but not as memorable as Dot and Shirl. Anyway, as usually happens, seeing an actress like Malone in her heyday sends Sir Cranky to the Internet to find a nice picture to share with you, and here's a great leggy shot I found on a cool site called Suspense-Movies.com, which has some interesting stuff about film noir and femme fatales as well.

Dorothy Malone specialized in giving a real neurotic edge to her often-glamorous characters, for one of which she garnered the Best Suppporting Actress Oscar for 1956's Written on the Wind. As I was looking at her photos, it occurred to me that this combination of allure and histrionics would have been perfect to play the leading female role of "April" in the movie adaptation of Richard Yates' great novel of 1950s suburbia, Revolutionary Road, which has only recently been filmed with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. And then, looking at Malone's pictures, it occurred to me how much Kate Winslet resembles Malone...and I wonder if, when they cast the movie, somebody thought, "Damn, we need Dorothy Malone for the role of April...but she's in her eighties...so why not Kate Winslet?" I'm just thinking out loud...

If you haven't read Revolutionary Road, it's a fantastic novel, although very grim at the end. I hope the movie lives up to the book. It was certainly a long wait--the book came out in the early 60s!

DorothyMaloneAtSuspenseMovies

Sometimes when I feel depressed, I can't figure out what I want to eat for lunch or dinner. That's when I head to Dunkin' Donuts for the #1 combo, a medium coffee and two donuts of my choice...the choice is always easy, and it picks up my spirits (or at least, fills my belly temporarily).

I guess their spokesperson Rachael Ray doesn't have to worry about competition from me as a pitchman! I could use the money, though...

But still, how's this for a pitch for tv or radio:

"Hi, Sir Cranky here. Maybe you've read my blog? Maybe not...hey, don't worry, that's one more reason for me to get depressed! Anyway, when I experience one of my frequent neurotic episodes where life seems futile and eating a regular meal just an exercise in narcissism and self-delusion, I head to Dunkin' Donuts where the sweet and tasty choices are always an easy distraction from my daily diet of total despair. Yes, Mr. Counterman, give me a #1 combo, I take my coffee with one cream and sugar, and I'll have a Boston Kreme and a jelly donut! Meal mission accomplished!"

Hey, I'm just trying to figure out ways to supplement my freelance income...another option is nude modeling for art classes. Don't laugh! I was reading about it on the Web this morning. Apparently my doughy “ordinary joe” bod is actually the type of thing artists like to sketch...maybe I could charge twenty bucks an hour! Yeah! A dollar per quarter inch of Edgar the One-Eyed Snake!!

Hey, this gives me an idea about how to combine donut-pitching with nude modeling...but maybe that's best left to your imagination, eh?

You know, when I'm not working, I feel like a mess. Discombobulated. Full of doubts about everything.

I guess that makes me a workaholic?

Yet I don't work all the time...although I think about work, or my various projects, a lot of the time.

Work gives me a focus. I'm very organized and pretty efficient. When I'm not doing it, I feel lost in the miasma of various befuddling emotions...

Okay. Sigh. What did I do today? I took a walk down Ninth Avenue. It was cold and sunny, a nice day for a walk. Even though I seem to have pulled a muscle in my right leg, and walking is intermittently uncomfortable.

Ninth Avenue from 57th Street to 42nd Street is fairly gentrified with nice restaurants and shops; not glitzy, but not dumpy either. On the other hand, Ninth Avenue between 42nd and 34th Street has a nice, rundown, seedy quality that I find comforting.

I walked past the Papaya Dog at 42nd and Ninth, where you can get 2 franks and drink for fairly cheap; and further down, there is a pizza stand with slices for a buck. People were lined up for that bargain. Between 41st and 40th there were a bunch of down-and-outers getting food from some sort of missionary truck, right under the overpass that leads into the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It was a scene out of the old urban photos of the Great Depression.

I kept walking. I passed a Moroccan restaurant that has belly dancing...I've never eaten Moroccan food, but I watched James Stewart and Doris Day eat it in Hitchcock's Man Who Knew Too Much. Maybe I should try it, or maybe I'm just interested in seeing some belly dancers...

I walked past a place called the Cupcake Cafe that seemed to be bustling with people in a leisurely coffee-and-pastries mode...and across the street, a couple of dive bars (real dive bars, not the "retro" kind)...an existential looking diner right near the Port Authority that calls itself DINER...further down there was a flea market on 39th Street, but that was pretty uninteresting, nothing but old clothes and shoes and vases, hardly any books or mags...further down on Ninth I saw a guy with his own display of secondhand (or fifth hand) stuff, everything from vinyl to books to clothes to DVDs...I saw a movie I've wanted to buy, Scaramouche with Stewart Granger and Eleanor Parker, but I don't know, the copy lying there on the pile with the broken DVD case looked kind of dumpy...so I passed it up.

I walked by other small restaurants and shops...the old three and four story buildings, brown and rusty looking in the sunlight, had that beautiful Hopperesque look...I wondered about the people living in those old apartments. I pictured women running clandestine massage businesses, and guys like me walking up rickety steps to get a rubdown and relief...also, I was struck by how many excavated lots there were near Ninth Avenue. They are doing so much building here in this area, one day soon nothing seedy will be left...

The subliminal message of every enormous yet faceless and ugly new building going up in New York is: lowly citizens, you too can be replaced. And will be.

I walked down Ninth specifically to go to the Skylight Diner, a large, airy, and unpretentious coffee shop at 34th and Ninth that has an inexpensive and tasty egg-and-sausage sandwich...comes with decent cole slaw and a pickle on a roll. I had two cups of coffee with cream and then I started walking east.

I stopped in at a movie memorabilia store on 35th between Seventh and Eighth because I wanted to see if they had any stills from Queen of Outer Space, a movie I watched last night...I didn't find anything as good as the shots I found on the Internet, which I'm linking to below...

I had never seen this silly 1958 movie with Zsa Zsa Gabor before. I enjoyed it. It was totally ridiculous, about space explorers trapped on a planet of women, but I liked the 50s color and Cinemascope, and some of the actresses were gorgeous...

Like Barbara Darrow, whom I had never heard or seen before. What a doll...she plays one of the Venusian women, and she hooks up with one of the earthmen, portrayed by Dave Willock. He was always playing goofy comical character types in 40s and 50s movies, and this had to be some kind of high point in his career, getting to actually kiss this incredible babe on screen...I got some good biographical info on her from a cool site called Glamour Girls Of The Silver Screen, and a good shot of her from Queen of Outer Space from a site called Spooky Tom's.

According to what I read, Barbara Darrow is or will be 77 this year...but I'll always think of her fondly in her mid-twenties, in a short interstellar skirt, proving that the planet Venus was very inhabitable, and most hospitable!

SpookyToms

GlamourGirlsOfTheSilverScreen