It takes me about an hour to get going in the morning from the time I wake up to when I walk out the door to get some breakfast. In that hour, my mind veers from being agitated by the newsradio to worrying about whatever I have to deal with during the day.

This morning I'm tying my shoes and listening to the reports about Lindsay Lohan's latest arrest and antics, and I'm muttering, "What the hell is wrong with that girl? She's on the top of the world and she's doing her best to jump off her perch." Well, only she can decide if she's an alcoholic, but it is a bad disease and if that's truly her problem, unless she finds the strength to accept help, it's just going to get worse.

Somebody should sit her down in a room at the rehab and let her read the "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" chapter from John GIlmore's recent book L.A. Despair. The chapter chronicles the sad life of Barbara Payton, who went from making movies with James Cagney, Gregory Peck and Gary Cooper in the early 1950s to being a skid row prostitute, junkie, and boozehound in the 1960s. She went from a Beverly Hills spread to vermin-ridden motels.

Of course, Lindsay's already made so much money that she could probably destroy herself in style for quite some time. But Payton's story is a cautionary one about an actress who let her problems interfere with the functioning of her life and career, and finally became untouchable.

Tyrone Power's famous 1947 film Nightmare Alley was a similar tale about a carny mind reader-turned-high society con man who goes from gracious living to biting the heads off chickens in a carnival for his daily bottle of hooch and a place to sleep it off.

Is Lindsay Lohan heading down a Barbara Payton-like nightmare alley of unchecked addiction and disgrace?

Of course, Barbara messed up in an era that still had a concept of shame. When her publicity got really bad, audiences actually threw boxes of popcorn at the screen when she appeared in 1951's Bride of the Gorilla.

But as all these thoughts are going through my head this morning, it suddenly occurs to me, why am I get worked up about it? Who cares? What does Lindsay Lohan have to do with me? Has she ever given me a lapdance, at the very least?

I have my own problems, and thinking about Lindsay and making all these historical and analytical connections about her problems makes me feel like I'm a smart guy, like I can see the big picture, and I'm not just this middle-aged mug struggling to make a buck as a freelance worker in The Wormy Apple.

Still, if rehab has any reading lists, they might give Lindsay that Gilmore book. And I hear there's a new biography about Payton called Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, The Barbara Payton Story (that phrase was the name of her most famous film, made with Cagney) by John O'Dowd, a writer who has been sparking interest in Payton for years with his excellent articles in mags like Filmfax. I haven't read the O'Dowd book yet, but I'm going to get a copy of it soon.

As an intro to Payton's tragic and truly iconic story of a person's rise and fall, here's a link to a site that has some info about the actress, her life, and her films. It'll lead you to info about the O'Dowd book, too.

AnswersDotCom

Sunday afternoon was beautiful here in New York City, but I was almost mowed down on the sidewalk near Rockefeller Center by an adult idiot on a skateboard. This tall, buff asshole was apparently out with his son, indeed setting a good example for the kid by coming so close to an unsuspecting pedestrian (me) that if I had moved an inch or two over, he would have sent me flying. I yelled out "Fucker!" but I don't think he heard because at the speed he was moving he zoomed forty feet ahead of me in about two seconds flat. His pubescent progeny, wearing a helmet as he rode on his skateboard, followed behind him.

Lately it just seems as if bicycles and skateboards are coming out of nowhere and bearing down. A simple walk in the Sunday afternoon sunshine to get myself an Italian sausage hero at a street fair could have meant serious injury, or even death.

It is very hard when you live a solitary life like I do not to fall prey to existential anxiety about life and death, and feel terrorized by these near-calamities.

After I calmed down, I found myself a spot to sit and eat my sausage sandwich, and I gradually forgot about the incident for awhile; it was beautiful in the plaza where I was sitting, and I had brought an interesting book to read called Hannibal, Enemy of Rome, about the Carthaginian general's fabled march over Alps and into Italy. The book got my mind off my fears. But later when the sun went down my thoughts returned to the near-mishap, and I felt angry all over again.

Life sometimes feels frighteningly cheap in New York. Don't let the glitter and public relations about this town fool you: a lot of people here don't give a single shit about anybody other than themselves, and you have to be careful on the street. You not only have to look six ways when you cross the avenue, but you have to make sure creeps on skateboards and bicycles aren't barreling up on you from behind on the sidewalks.

It's funny the laws that get enforced here, and the ones that are ignored. Heaven forbid somebody should want to smoke a cigarette in a bar; that brings a fine; but cretins on skateboards and bikes can go their merry way while our cops look the other way. Huge tourist buses idle on the street in front of apartment buildings sometimes for an hour at a time and NOTHING is done about it. They're not legally supposed to idle for more than five minutes; one night a bus idled outside my window for TWO HOURS, literally sending tremors through my futon bed. Police are in the vicinity, but do nothing. We the citizens are supposed to waste our time and call "311" to complain about stuff like this (I'm sure in many cases 311 just serves as an emotional placebo) but it seems to me that the police should ticket these jerkoffs who idle the buses. Why don't they? Because TAX-PAYING RESIDENTS of New York City are not as important as THE FUCKING TOURISTS. The goddamn buses must be ready to pull out at a moment's notice once the theatergoers from Anytown USA have been spewed back onto the street from the theaters and onto the avenues. It's damn aggravating.

Last night, in the cool breezy air coming into my apartment window not far from Times Square, I could hear the youthful crowds cheering nearby when the last Harry Potter book was finally released to the public. But I was absorbed in the oeuvre of another Harry--Harry Whittington (1915-1990), a master of paperback fiction. He wrote somewhere around 200 novels.

Yes, as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was emerging out of its swaddling cloth into the breast of the book-buying public, I was just finishing up the 1987 Black Lizard reprint of Whittington's 1960 bank heist thriller, The Devil Wears Wings. It's about Buz Johnson, a World War 2 pilot now on the skids in his personal and professional life, drinking too much and making a meager salary helping socialites and dilettantes learn how to fly. He works for a man he despises, who unfortunately also happens to be the stepfather of the girl he loves. Buz gets a chance at a better job with an old pal running an airline in South America, but his pride gets in the way of his taking it. First he wants to make a score on his own, so he has money and dignity and doesn't have to rely on what he views as the "charity" of an old war buddy. So he decides to participate in a bank heist in which he will fly the getaway plane. The man who comes up with the heist concept is Sid Coates, one of the most memorable lunatics I've ever encountered in my vast reading of noir fiction.

The bank heist is a phenomenal, extended scene of breathless violence and psychological brutality courtesy of the vicious Coates, and it's written with virtuoso style and pacing by prose master Whittington. I sat in a coffee shop last night with the book frozen in my hand over my chopped steak dinner, as my eyes were riveted to the terse sentences which made the scene unbelievably visceral and immediate. After the heist was done, I had to take a slow walk home through the night air; I was going to stop by Columbus Circle for my usual bout of girl-watching, but decided I couldn't wait to get home to finish the book. And the pace didn't let up until the last page.

Whittington wrote in many genres: crime, western, and historical, and films and tv shows were made from his books. Only seven novels are now in print, however, given the stringent economics of the publishing business.

You can learn more about Harry Whittington, read his fascinating short memoir of his writing career entitled "I Remember It Well," and even get The Devil Wears Wings as an e-book, by checking out www.pulporiginals.com on the Web. I don't work for Pulp Originals, and I haven't ordered any e-books myself so I can't vouch for how that works, but I discovered the site just before writing this post when I surfed the Internet to see what the novel's availability was. In any case, you can read the novel's first chapter for free on the site. I tried to post a direct link to Pulp Originals, but it wouldn't work, so just cut and paste the URL and you should be able to find it.

Of course, I'm sure paperback editions of the book are also floating around out there, like the Black Lizard reissue that I purchased for six bucks a few years ago at a memorabilia show. Yes, it waited patiently on my shelf for years until I finally picked it up. I'm sorry I didn't read it sooner, and I can't wait to read my next Harry Whittington.

Sorry, Potter!

For the first time, I regret that I don't have cable tv. This new show that premieres tonight on AMC, entitled Mad Men, takes place in 1959 and is about the lives of advertising men in that martini-drinking, chain-smoking, secretary-seducing era. It's the brainchild of one of the guys who worked on The Sopranos and it sounds like my cup of tea both visually and dramatically. I'm fascinated by the 50s and practically live in a time warp with all the 50s novels and movies and magazines I look at.

Could Sir Cranky actually break down at some point soon and get cable?? Nah, that wouldn't be very 50s of him...then again, it might be time to move into the 00s.

What do I remember of the 50s that was specifically identifiable with that era? I spent the first eight years of my life in that decade, but as a child of course I wasn't aware too much of the cultural angle. I remember...Davy Crockett, Howdy Doody, Father Knows Best...Disney's Sleeping Beauty...President Eisenhower...Ben-Hur (1959)...and Hula Hoops (a vivid memory), yo-yos, poodle skirts (a girl I had a crush on wore one to second grade), cowboy outfits and toy guns, toy soldiers and toy Romans (from the Ben-Hur merchandising blitz)...wow, that's a pretty narrow view of the 50s. Maybe that's why I make up for it with my reading and movies and mags. The 60s, obviously, I can remember much more vividly.

Subconsciously, however, I think I do remember a great deal more on the visceral level, because I feel a real attachment to the way people dressed in the 50s; I have never lost the feeling that the 50s were the last time in my own life when men really dressed like men, and women really dressed like women...whatever the hell that means.

Maybe it just means I think double-breasted suits and fedoras are cool, and women in tight sweaters, pumps and pencil skirts are mighty fine.

I didn't get as much done today as I did yesterday. It was pouring rain and gray when I woke up, and I was having strange dreams. I was reading a non-fiction book last night about a private detective in Bangkok, Thailand, who specialized in checking out whether the hostesses and dancers (called "bargirls") at the local go-go clubs were being honest with their foreign sugar daddies, and not just taking money from them and spending it on secret boyfriends and hidden husbands. Just before I awakened to the rain spattering against the windows, I was dreaming that I was in Bangkok and an attractive thirtyish British woman was asking me for my help in getting her a taxi. The detective in the book is always taking taxis as he's following the bargirls to get the lowdown on their behavior for his clients, and so maybe taxis in Thailand were on my subconscious mind...I think I would rather have dreamed about the bargirls, though. I don't know why I dreamed about a British woman, although she was quite foxy.

If I ever went to a place like Bangkok, I would lose all my money and probably my soul too. I am sure those beautiful Thai girls could vamp me with no problem. Look how easily the strippers in New York can do it...

I did meet a Thai girl in New York, actually, within the last year...at least she said she was Thai, as I recall. I wrote about her here several months ago, briefly: her name was Moana. At least I called her that in the blog. She was very beautiful in that ultra-exotic Thai way...even thinking about her now makes my heart beat a little quicker. She was slender, golden, with raven hair down her back, long legs, and large breasts. Yikes...but she was ultimately disappointing because when I went back to see her the second time, she had mega-bad breath! I don't know what she ate for dinner, but when she was lapdancing me, I couldn't wait for her to finish. The turtle retreated into his shell, if you get my drift. The first time we met, though, Moana was fine; although I do recall, she did pop a breath mint, which I'd never seen a dancer do right in front of me. I'm sure they usually do it backstage.

The bargirls in Thailand often come from very hardscrabble backgrounds and can intensely focus on making money through selling drinks and their bodies, and they can readily vamp the tourists into becoming their boyfriends or fiances by giving them lots of affection and hot sex--"the girlfriend experience," as it's called. Then the men fall in love and give them loads of money. The foreigners (called "farangs" in Thai) are often average-looking middle-aged guys very susceptible to these stunning younger women, and this book I'm reading, published by Monsoon Books and called Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye, by Warren Olson and Stephen Leather, is entertaining and informative and quite atmospheric on the subject.

The farangs in the book go through the same doubts and questions about what their favorite girls are thinking, just as a world away, Sir Cranky tries (or tried, when he had money to spend) to get into his strippers' heads in midtown Manhattan.

I guess Asian women are really on my mind a lot...and reading books like this is a safe and inexpensive way to have vicarious adventures.

When dough is tight, the tight go vicarious.