This was one of those Mondays that went awry. A bad traffic jam delayed my bus commute to snow-covered New Jersey and I couldn't seem to get on the proper work track once I got out to my freelance client's office...my mind seemed to be more on socializing with my co-workers than getting down to the tasks at hand. Because I work at home alone so much, sometimes when I'm in the office I just have a hunger to chat with my favorite people there, and today it got the best of me. But then I don't get much done.

So when I got back to Manhattan, I stopped by the stripclub to unwind from the anxiety of not having had a productive day (!), but other than a brief conversation with a stripper I know just in passing, the visit was dull and my mind was elsewhere. It's not good when I look at women's semi-naked bodies and think, "What the hell am I doing here?" Although I was thankful to only spend eleven bucks, ironically I would have gotten a dance from that particular girl, yet she didn't ask and I fell into that passive state of, "Well, it's better this way, I'll save twenty bucks..." I really think I could have used a lapdance, though.

At least I watched a very good 1965 movie last night that a friend recorded for me on DVD. It was a black-and-white French-Italian coproduction (dubbed in English) called Hail! Mafia, about two hit men who travel from New York to France to silence a fellow gangster who, the Mafia fears, will testify at hearings into organized crime. The cinematography featured the ultra-hip location shooting perfected by the French New Wave of the time, and the flick was scored with real cool jazz. The hit men were played by Jack Klugman of The Odd Couple fame, and Henry Silva, who specialized in such menacing roles. This was an excellent flick! The snappy dialogue and quirky interplay between the two hit men is the crux of the fast-moving story, and it all antedates by decades Quentin Tarentino's attempt at the same type of thing between hit men John Travolta and Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

Now, you don't think of Jack Klugman as a contract killer, but he was totally believable. And Henry Silva is one of the now-unsung gems of mid-20th century character acting. His steely eyes and unusual face never let him down in giving a vivid performance. He also could really wear a three-button suit with aplomb. The target of their contract was played by Eddie Constantine, a craggy-faced American actor whose voice resembled John Wayne's. Constantine was not a star in America, but the French loved him and he made many crime films there.

Spoiler alert: skip this paragraph if you intend to see this film one day. The hit men discuss their job and its moral pros and cons. Silva's character essentially says what many gangster films have said since (I paraphrase): "We have our rules in the organization, when you break the rules you earn a bullet, but we only kill our own." So he sees his job as "right" and "clean." This obsession with cleanliness is echoed in a beautiful scene in the dingy hotel room where the two men stay overnight. Silva orders extra towels from the maid so that he can lay them down on the floor as a path for his bare feet over the well-trod and musty carpet! It was just a throwaway image, which made it all the more memorable.

Anyway, Klugman and Silva and their guns finally meet up with Constantine at an isolated farmhouse, and the film has a great twist ending. Yes, Hail! Mafia has the kind of distinctive character interplay that really makes films shine. Stories are about people, not just events. If it ever comes your way, check it out.

This is turning into a very scary period of my life.

I have to make changes in my freelance business but I seem to be at sea about exactly how to do it. I guess I've fallen into a rut that is being flooded with the muddy tides of relentless, unwanted change.

A sixty-seven year old friend remarked to me the other day about how older people tend to stay with the same furnishings for many years, and if they do replace things, they look for the same types of items that they've been surrounded with. He mentioned how a buddy of his has been looking for five years for the same little doohickey to switch off a light that he had on his light for even more years than that. This almost seemed like a metaphor for the situation I'm in career-wise. I am comfortable in what I do, and don't want to do something else. What I do is not so much easy, because it takes continual effort and commitment (at least the way I do it), but it is warmly familiar to me, and as a person who has gone to the same doctor for thirty-four years and the same barber shop for twenty-two years and had the same primary employer/client for twenty-four years and lived in the same apartment for sixteen years, I am clearly a person who dotes on the tried and true.

But I must make changes or I face possible financial disaster.

I have always had a hard time defining long term goals and have been better with the more immediate things. Give me a task that needs to be done by a certain deadline, and I can organize my time, allot the tasks, and deliver it on schedule. But to plan for something for which I don't have a guaranteed reward is harder for me.

A few years ago I overcame this short-sightedness by planning, writing, revising, and polishing a 500 page novel; I started it in March 2002 and finished it in the fall of 2004. However, upon completion, I felt I would never be able to sell it unless I completely redid it, that it just simply didn't work, that I had erred in my original conception and most grievously (which I discovered when writing this blog) I had not played to my strengths in the writing. I didn't need anybody else to tell me that; I am a good judge of literary quality. Periodically I think of redoing the book, but don't have the motivation because I don't have the guarantee of its success nor of the immediate return of MONEY. I know that's childish, but it's true.

Anyway, a friend suggested to me last night (as another friend also has) that I pursue my interest and skills in another field to try to make some extra dough.

I even had a dream last night that I actually pursued this.

My first love is writing, but it doesn't seem that I am capable of attracting a good enough income with this, either by demonstrating my skills through blogging, or by attempting specific projects for money or career advancement.

I even seem to be losing my precious libido over all this stress, and that, my friends, is alarming too. When I start to lose interest in strippers, then I know I'm on the fast track to palookaville.

Happy St. Patrick's Day...

As I write, I'm sitting at my desk with a shot of Jameson's Irish whiskey. I do love my Jameson. I don't drink too much of it, but I savor this loveliest of libations.

Let me go refill the glass...

Ah. Mighty refreshing.

It's a cold night outside...

"Bolt and bar the shutters, for the foul winds blow...
Our minds are at their best this night, and I seem to know
That all outside us is mad as the mist and snow."

That's from the great Irish poet, W.B. Yeats.

There was mist, if not snow, in the movie I saw this afternoon with my writer friend Moe: 300, the sword-and-sandal epic about the three hundred Spartans who fought the Persians in 480 B.C. Not bad. Some cool imagery of warriors slashing away at each other, and of giant ogres and charging rhinos. Not much of a story or script, but hey, they only spent about sixty million dollars on it. The writers and producers of 300 seem to have forgotten that one of the pleasures of the sword-and-sandal genre is to give the characters lots of rich conversation to parry with. But I guess the swords and javelins met the parry quotient.

The battles and landscapes were produced digitally. It was like going to a museum and seeing moving paintings. Some striking vistas, but the film was emotionally flat because there were no rounded characters and a dearth of interesting dialogue. Unlike the other movie I watched earlier this afternoon...1958's The Bride and the Beast, written by Ed "Plan 9 from Outer Space" Wood. That was about a young bride who discovers an affinity with her husband's pet gorilla. The gorilla attempts to carry her off. Hubby shoots the gorilla, but since he and his bride are going on a safari honeymoon in Africa, she gets another chance to meet the gorilla of her dreams. I'm not making this stuff up.

The Bride and the Beast looked as if it cost sixty cents, but it had characters all right, courtesy of Ed Wood's script and the lovely, oh so lovely Charlotte Austin, who plays the bride. I could have watched Charlotte read the phone book for ninety minutes. She makes Scarlett Johansson look like Rosie O'Donnell. And Charlotte does get to wear an angora sweater, Ed's favorite fetish object. (Ed was a transvestite as well as a screenwriter and director.)

Hmm, I think it's time for more Jameson...

My finger feels better, so it was good to ease up yesterday. However, my spirits are glum. They reflect the dreary weather...I have already spent almost an hour writing here, and I deleted it all...strange how I almost take a delight in deleting an entire post...I feel more willful than perfectionist, though...it was probably a perfectly good post...or maybe it wasn't...

I think I'll just watch some weird grade-Z movie tonight, and blank everything out.

In the course of doing some work yesterday, I hurt one of my fingers and it's a little uncomfortable typing today. I ignored it last night when I was blogging, but today it bothers me more every time I hit one of the keys, so I better keep this post short and not aggravate matters.

Hunting and pecking is not my style; I'm a very fast touch typist. When I made a living as a temporary office worker in the late 70s and early 80s, I thought of myself as a "samurai typist," dispatching work with dashing speed like a warrior on a Selectric (the brand of typewriter I most often worked on). Not unlike for a pianist, my hands are my tools. I really want to write here more today, but damn it...ouch!--it aches.

I'll just let today's thoughts marinate until tomorrow...

Maybe someday in the future we'll be able to just project our thoughts onto a screen when we blog?