The modern movie business is ridiculous. Reading this morning in the New York Times about the obsession with breaking records, I am struck by the jock mentality that has come to pervade the film world. The box office is written about as if it's the only thing that matters. It's score-keeping pure and simple, like watching the standings of teams.

Maybe film companies were like that in the old days too, but they kept their avariciousness and competitiveness more to themselves and just concentrated on presenting the magic of stories and stars to the audiences, and not openly showing their greed for every last fucking dollar. It's especially annoying to read how producers whine to the press when their turkeys deservedly don't get the gold.

The current movie industry treats patrons like suckers, as if they're trying to draw the rubes into a cooch tent at a carnival, and it's offensive.

Yes, there are a few good contemporary movies, obviously. But overall, the movies are a dead art form. The only real life left in movies is in the movies of the past. I'll buy a DVD to see a performance by some long ago beauty like Lana Turner faster than I will go to the theater to see some overhyped modern gal like Jessica Alba.

I turned out to be a little more exhausted than I initially thought this weekend...I really needed to take a break from writing of any kind. I wrote something for the blog on Saturday morning but my thoughts were so convoluted I decided not to post it. Instead I just went to Central Park and sat by the pond across from the Plaza Hotel and enjoyed the sunlight coming through the leaves and the breeze skimming across the water. I brought along my point-and-shoot digital camera and got a couple of nice pictures of the contrast between the huge blue towers of the Time Warner Center in the background and the bucolic foliage and green pond in the foreground. Then I walked west past the little patch of land where the ducks were nesting, or whatever it is they do in their downtime from the water. There were about forty or fifty of them, dark brown, cleaning their feathers or just sleeping, while pigeons occasionally dropped in to waddle around.

I don't really remember what else I did on Saturday...oh, I watched part of an old crime movie called Nightmare in Chicago, but I wasn't really in the mood for it so I turned it off.

Sunday was really humid so after a morning walk I decided to stay close to home. I read the manuscript of the novel I wrote over the last four weeks. It's only 210 pages and it was a quick read. It left me feeling kind of blank. I'm not sure if I read it too soon (I finished writing it last Monday), or it's just not very good. Maybe a combination of the two. Maybe I'll put it aside for a little longer and then read it again. I had no complaints about the prose, and it certainly moved quickly, but it just didn't seem to add up to whatever I envisioned it adding up to. I guess that's why it's called a first draft. I have various ideas how to tinker with it, but I'm not sure if my ideas are premature. I may just have to keep myself in suspense a little longer about whether I've written a piece of caca or a gem in the rough, and just put off a close re-reading for another week. At least I have a paying freelance project to occupy my mind and satiate my wallet in the interim.

I went out to work in New Jersey today at my client's office and got plenty done, but I kept thinking about the novel whenever I took a break from my tasks. It got to the point where I couldn't stop thinking about it when I got home even though I wanted to give it a rest. I took a shower and that finally distracted me. And then I ate some Chinese food which upset my stomach, and that REALLY distracted me.

I decided I needed some air after the moo shoo pork, so I went out to Columbus Circle to watch the girls go by while the sun went down. There must have been some kind of Japanese event at the Time Warner Center there because I saw a number of women in kimonos, mostly middle-aged but a couple of young ones too. As a matter of fact, it was Asian Paradise for Horny Middle-Aged Bald White Male around Columbus Circle tonight. I saw so many attractive Asian girls, from the tastefully dressed to the summerishly slutty. Two of the hottest looking were lower on Eighth Avenue, just below Columbus Circle; one was wearing a pleated gray skirt that started at the middle of her hips, about ten inches under her black halter top; so her belly was VERY exposed. She had the pouty look of the Total Testicle Destroyer. She also had two long ponytails. How do young guys concentrate in college with gals like this walking around?? The other ultra-hottie I saw was walking her dog, and wearing flip-flops and a navy blue sweat shirt that barely came down to the tops of her thighs. I got the impression she may well have had nothing on underneath it, or maybe just a skimpy bra and panties.

Yeah, the girls got my mind off literature for awhile, too.

My mind seemed to shut down on Wednesday. While finishing up the first draft of a novel on Monday, I was simultaneously doing my regular paying freelance work, and when I finished that in the middle of the week, I figured I'd go out to New Jersey to my client's office and start on the next project. But my brain, as the ambassador of my body, told me "No, you idiot, you must rest. NOW."

Two disadvantages of being a freelance worker are that I have to buy my own health insurance (costly indeed) and I don't have legal protection should I lose a client--in other words, I'm not eligible for unemployment benefits if an account goes belly up on me. But one big advantage is that when I need to rest, I can do so if the schedule permits it. And I suddenly felt as if I really needed time out.

I was too fatigued to even want to blog. I was having trouble reading the newspapers, feeling as if I didn't want to exercise the muscles of my brain (or whatever we use to read along with our eyes).

I was telling myself that I hadn't really worked that hard, because I wrote the novel purely on the hope that I will be able to sell it, as if it didn't really "count" as work because I wasn't guaranteed a paycheck. But after printing out its 210 pages so I can read and revise, I couldn't deny that I had at least expended some elbow-grease, whether it eventually brings a paycheck or not.

So I've taken the rest of the week off. I took a long walk yesterday, carrying my camera and taking a few photos along the way. I realize how rarely I just let myself enjoy the city around me, because I'm always, and I mean always, thinking about work or what I should do to make more money.

I was able to not think about work for about sixty minutes yesterday, but then I started ruminating and eventually just went back home to distract myself by surfing the Web for awhile.

The evening was better, as I got together with some film buff friends. I brought along my copy of Dance Hall Racket, a 1950s exploitation movie written by and starring Lenny Bruce, and we watched that. I was delighted that two of the guys, who had never seen the film before, really enjoyed it. It's a quirky movie, very low-budget, but really evokes its characters and life in a sleazy dance hall. The best version is available on the recently released Dream Follies & Dreamland Capers burlesque DVD from Somerthing Weird Video; Dance Hall Racket is one of the bonus "extras," although it is way better than the other movies on the disc.

Today I haven't really felt like going out much at all. The weather is nice, but I just don't feel in the mood for the enormous crowds in midtown, which is where I live. For all the talk of how New York has been improved in recent years, it's also been made uncomfortably crowded with throngs of tourists. The sidewalks and streets are not wide enough to accommodate the huge slow-moving hordes of visitors on top of the city's actual denizens going to and fro from work. It gets damn oppressive. Eventually the city is going to have to address this problem. I heard there was talk of turning Times Square into a traffic-free zone, but I would imagine the cars would just be diverted elsewhere creating congestion further east or west, creating a different sort of chaos.

There sure are plenty of ultra-expensive high-rise apartment buildings going up everywhere you turn, and not in swanky neighborhoods either; but the problems of the average person trying to navigate the streets of Manhattan do not seem as if they are being adequately addressed.

Meanwhile, an idiot bicyclist riding on the sidewalk yesterday morning came within six inches of mowing me down. Nice way to start the day. At the ferocious speed he was going, and given the narrowness of the sidewalk and the proximity of a wrought-iron fence, I am very lucky he didn't hit me. Fucking lowlife scumbag!! He could have seriously injured or killed me.

Yes, I must admit that more and more, I'm starting to feel that New York, for all its hype, is really turning into a shithole for the regular joe. But we keep being told relentlessly in the media that it's such a wonderful place to be, the hifalutin center of the goddamn fucking world.

The heat and humidity make the city surreal to me. A little while ago I walked down Eighth Avenue, on the western edge of Times Square, to run an errand; and the slowwww-moving crowds on the ridiculously narrow sidewalks, and the stickiness in the air, and the litter and dirt on the streets, and the noise of the trucks and cars, made me want to do one thing: go back home, sit in the air conditioning, and drink a beer.

So here I am. Bud Lite in hand, Blogstream in view.

Now here's the scoop about another good movie I watched on DVD: The Woman of the Town (1943), starring Albert Dekker, Claire Trevor, and Barry Sullivan. The story of Bat Masterson (Dekker), the marshal of Dodge City, and the love triangle between him and King Kennedy (Sullivan), a spoiled reckless rich cowboy, and Dora Hand (Trevor), a dancehall singer. Masterson is the silent type, dedicated to keeping the peace but wishing he could get a career in journalism instead of law enforcement, and unwilling to declare his affection for Dora because he knows he could be killed at any time. Meanwhile, Dora not only performs in a dancehall, but also ministers to the sick and actually pays for the establishment of Dodge City's first hospital. She's the proverbial "bad girl with a heart of gold." She gets the town's fire-and-brimstone minister realizing that there's more to her than a flashy exterior.

Maybe it was a corny movie. Or maybe not. It sure was beautifully written and acted. True, maybe Bat Masterson may never have actually been in love with Dora Hand. Nonetheless, all these characters were based in historical fact, and--SPOILER ALERT--SKIP THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU'RE GOING TO SEE THE MOVIE--Masterson did help track down Kennedy (whose real first name was James, not King) when the cowboy accidentally shot Dora dead while seeking revenge against the mayor of Dodge City. Dora Hand was a victim of a "ride-by" shooting.

Dora does a lot of noble things in the movie, the least of which is help Masterson get a good newspaper job. And he did end up living and writing in New York City, where he died in 1921 at his newspaper desk: he was a popular sports columnist for the Morning-Telegraph. And although it might have been fictitious and concocted for the script of The Woman of the Town, the unspoken affection between Bat and Dora is very touching. I know I have a thing for "bad girls with hearts of gold," and Claire Trevor could play them like nobody's business. She looked damn good in those tight-fitting 19th century clothes, too.

I completed the first draft of the novel I've been working on, which I've discussed here in previous posts. I finished around lunchtime this afternoon, right on target with approximately 60,000 words, or around 200 pages, and I wrapped it up two days ahead of schedule. Nice. I'd given myself a June 11th deadline, so I completed the draft in 25 days (I missed 3 days along the way because of work commitments).

I'll print it out and read it next week after I have a little distance from it, then make notes about what needs to fleshed out or deleted. The book has twenty-one chapters, so I'll try to revise at least a chapter a day, or maybe two if I'm feeling ambitious.

It's a psychological suspense story. I tried to keep it fast-moving.

I just hope it doesn't suck...

It's hard to tell if it's good when you're working at it piecemeal. Seeing the forest for the trees, and all that. But I enjoyed writing it, at least.

I didn't shave today because I was so eager to get to work, but previously I made a point of shaving every day and using that brief time to plan what I was going to write. But I guess the book's climax took care of itself without any of my razor ruminations.