Continuing from yesterday's entry...

I put my emergency "fun" money in my pocket and went out last night, but as soon as I neared the stripclub I decided I didn't want to go. Ah, this is not the Cranky ye knew...the Cranky of the Lily days. Maybe my interactions with Lily ruined that Cranky, however, in tandem with my freelancer's money worries. Now I am so cynical, I just can't imagine getting much for my stripclub dollars, which I will spend only reluctantly in a miserly fashion out of sheer necessity.

I didn't even want to get sake and sushi, because that would be too much money for too little drink and chow. I finally had an appetite about 8:30, so I went down to 42nd Street instead and had barbecue chicken and a 20 ounce mug of Bud at Dallas BBQ, a big inexpensive joint that reminds me with its boisterous crowds of culinary pleasure-seekers of the fun-loving throngs in the 1930s and 1940s Coney Island paintings of Reginald Marsh...meaning, this hectic restaurant recalls the cheap yet satisfying populist enjoyments of an older New York, even though it's firmly ensconced in the over-priced ruckus of the "New" Times Square.

When I got back onto the street, I had a bit of a headache from the beer and the pulsing music of the restaurant, so I decided to go home. The air made my head feel better, or maybe it was also that I saw so much cleavage overflowing the tops of dresses and t-shirts, and so many butts wiggling in shorts and skirts, and scores of pretty feet in flip-flops and stiletto heels. Indeed, after that street show, a trip to the stripclub seemed a superfluous and costly waste of time. Lately I gather more sexy impressions walking through Times Square than I do staring at a stripclub stage.

Ordinary women, dolled up, are in fact the most effective pornography.

There was some kind of work going on in my building today, and since there was going to be no running water, I left early and wandered around all day. I did have a destination, though--a street fair where some memorabilia dealer friends of mine were selling their wares. It was down in the West Village and although it was hot, it was fun to hang out there. Fortunately my buddies' tables were under the trees so I didn't have to worry about getting my bald dome sunburned.

Greenwich Village is a nice area, always has been. All the short buildings and the stately brownstones. The narrow, leafy streets are pleasant. I stopped in at a mystery bookstore there too, and picked up a copy of an out-of-print Lawrence Block suspense novel. He's always worth reading.

The street fair was loaded with pretty women walking by, although they didn't seem to be interested in spending much money on my friends' assortment of lurid paperbacks from the 50s. However, I picked up a couple of things from them, including a novel called Satan is a Woman, by Gil Brewer. How could I resist this opening line: "It would have been far simpler for her just to kill me. Sometimes I wish she had." The late Brewer, a real cult figure of hardboiled fiction, has been out of print for years; he was just brought back into paperback only a few weeks ago when Hard Case Crime reprinted his fantastic noir novel The Vengeful Virgin, which I highly recommend. You can find it at Barnes & Noble in the mystery section.

After the street fair, I felt carnivorous and I treated myself to a hamburger with a slice of onion, cole slaw, pickle, and a nice frosty mug of Corona.

Lately, though, I feel so low on energy. Maybe it's the high humidity combined with the annoyance of allergies. I've been grumpy and gloomy in general, and I seized on my desire to eat a burger because lately I don't have much appetite at all. All I had for lunch yesterday was an iced coffee. Sometimes I literally cannot think of anything I want to eat, which is a discombobulating feeling.

I hope when I finish blogging I'll have an appetite again, although the only thing that sounds appealing is a bottle of cold sake. And maybe a California roll to accompany it.

And maybe a lapdance or two and a shallow conversation with some stripper, to soothe my obviously unquiet soul...

Based on what I've seen in tabloid photos, I can say conclusively that I have better taste in women than Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, despite A-Rod's $252 million contract and endless opportunities to meet fine femmes.

Any of the strippers I've had a jones for in my financially-pinched journey through the tittie bar demimonde have been better looking than this stripper babe the tabs have been hounding him over.

I've been looking for a way to increase my freelance income, and I think I've hit on it. I think I'm qualified to be a kind of "aesthetic personal trainer" for guys like A-Rod; for a reasonable retainer, I'll educate them in what kinds of women are actually worth the painful scrutiny they are courting through their activities. I'll accompany them to stripclubs, bars, restaurants, sporting events, galas, awards shows, and casinos, giving the thumbs up or down to the babes who catch their eyes. I'll supplement this personalized tutoring with a thorough grounding in the history of beauty as exemplified in the best of art, fashion, and cinema, with special focus on the history of the pinup and those female qualities and proportions that they should, given their opportunities and wealth, focus their energies on. Then, if these celebs get humiliated in the press, at least no financially-strapped wiseacres like myself are going to have the fodder to write on blogs about helping them to consort with dames more worthy of the subsequent aggravation! Because they'll have Sir Cranky-certified knockouts on their arms!

The comedic hook for the movie Knocked Up is the premise of the character played by Seth Rogen, who is supposed to be a nudie-website-surfing slacker schlub, actually managing to get prize all-American beauty Katherine Heigl into bed and into the family way. The advertising slogan, "What if this guy got you pregnant?" over his dopey mug reads like a warning to fecund young women...those same women who usually decide what movie they and their men will patronize on the weekends.

In my opinion, Hollywood has for almost its entire existence subliminally promoted a kind of eugenics program by presenting images of whom people should properly mate with...the implication being that a beauty like Katherine Heigl should not sully her ovaries with the wigglies from an unworthy source...that she does, however inadvertently, is a source for comedy born in the rich depths of genetic anxiety...

Lest we forget, Woody Allen's getting the girl in his films was based on a similar twist of Hollywood's subliminal eugenic code. Because no matter how nutty Diane Keaton seemed, she was always a long-stemmed pinup compared to the Woodman's baggy pants burlesque comic.

Just a few thoughts...I admit I haven't seen Knocked Up yet, but dissecting a movie's advertising and basic premise is legitimate too.

Katherine Heigl in the new movie Knocked Up looks gorgeous...I haven't seen the movie yet, but the photos in the newspaper reviews show that the proportions of her face are pinup perfect. She has a face out of a Gil Elvgren pinup...and he was the greatest pinup painter of them all. In one photo where she is slightly pursing her lips while sitting with Seth Rogen in a gynecologist's office, she calls to mind a hundred Elvgrens where the girls' mouths are pursed almost in a little bow. Heigl is so adorable...

The movie sounds like it's funny, too.