I just got back from commuting to and from my freelance job in New Jersey. The shuttle buses that I take when returning to the city are convenient but uncomfortable. They are very cramped, often drafty, with stained and torn seats. Today a lady sat down next to me and kept fussing with her packages while getting what appeared to be wrong numbers on her cellphone. Then she moved up to the front of the bus and a curly-haired teenager sat down next to me instead, and he began doing a wordless impression of a Method actor from the 50s. Even though it was cold in the bus, he pulled his coat off and sat in his white t-shirt and fidgeted and held his head in his hands as he stared off into space. He looked as if he were pondering the fate of humanity, or maybe he was just pondering whether some girl was going to go out with him. Come to think of it, the fate of humanity can hinge on just that kind of matter...remember Paris and Helen of Troy?

I turned away and looked out the window. At least the skyline was beautiful to behold when we crossed the George Washington Bridge back into town. The air was crystal clear and the Hudson River shimmered along the shoreline from the late afternoon sun. I was glad to be back, and I'm going to stay in the city over the Thanksgiving weekend. I don't live far from the Macy's parade route; all I have to do is walk a couple of blocks and there it is. It's a fun atmosphere. The coffee shops are full of parents with their excited kids, and you can watch the floats go by through the picture windows while you sit at a counter and drink your java.

I'm looking forward to relaxing this long weekend. My mind really needs it.

In the past, I've frequently gone out to a stripclub the night before Thanksgiving and usually had a pretty good time. The clubs are often somewhat empty that night and the girls are more attentive to the customers to make up for the loss of clientele. Yes, it might be a nice way to break my stripclub fast, by going out for a couple of drinks and a lapdance tomorrow night.

I know I've been talking here about going out to clubs again and not doing it, but maybe I'm just waiting for when I really want to do it, rather than just doing it in a routine fashion. Maybe by feeling that I should stay away for awhile, my subconscious has been trying to make it a special experience again...

I wouldn't put anything past the power of my subconscious mind.

It’s ridiculous, but I had one beer with dinner and I feel as if I’ve had three. Is this the effect of middle age? Of course, I did wake up pretty early this morning, so maybe that’s part of the reason I feel so sleepy now. Nonetheless, I sit myself down at the computer to blog...

I watched a DVD with dinner, a Republic Pictures B-movie from 1950 called Lonely Hearts Bandits, in which a con artist and his vixen wife murderously fleece widows of their money. I picked it up at the movie memorabilia show I went to on Saturday. The cover art of a vampy blonde sitting in a robe with her long legs crossed cinched it for me, and I handed over my ten bucks to the dealer. It wasn’t a great movie, but enjoyable for its sixty minute running time (those old programmers could be short).

But yesterday I went to the Japan Society and saw a really great movie called Exchange Students (original English title, “I Are You, You Am Me”). Part of a film series called "1980s Irresistible Heroines," it was from 1982 and was about two high school students, a boy and a girl, whose personalities switch in their bodies via some inexplicable supernatural means.

The boy is a rowdy type, and he more easily adjusts to life in the girl’s body than the demure and very feminine girl adjusts to life in the boy’s body. For the boy, inhabiting the girl’s body is almost an adventure, and he is not all that restrained by it; for the girl, living in a male body is antithetical to everything she is and wants as a young lady. I imagine this reflects the gender roles in Japan back in the 80s, and if the film were made today, perhaps the girl’s reactions would be different--because my understanding is that even in Japan, many women have become far more aggressive and less ladylike of late. So maybe a 2006 version would show the girl enjoying her newfound masculinity. Or maybe that’s the angle they’d make the movie with here in America, where women actually seem to want to be men in a lot of ways (or at least do almost everything that males do).

Anyway, in this 1982 film, the subject wasn’t treated leeringly, given the potential exploitative situations of the boy now having a feminine body and the girl having a masculine one. Rather, it was treated realistically and almost matter-of-factly, and it was both funny and touching. Once they realize what’s happened, they simply accept the situation and try to live with it. They go to each other’s house and live with each other’s family. Only when it becomes unbearably difficult for the girl in the boy’s body (she really hates it) do they try to find a way to switch back to their own bodies again.

At the point where they finally accept that this is their destiny, to live out their lives in each other’s body, does fate takes a hand and switch them back; but by that time the film had touched on the very spiritual concept of accepting what you can change and what you cannot. Still, it was a movie, and its tone was gently comic rather than morose, so they had to be changed back or it would have felt too heavy and depressing. The end was extremely moving when, back in their own bodies, they have to part when the boy moves to another city with his family. Although most of the movie was in color, when they are in their correct bodies the film was in black-and-white--perhaps to imply that rigid gender roles make life less colorful.

The final black-and-white image of the girl running after the moving van as the boy leaves with his parents reminded me of the poignant conclusions of the wonderful Italian Neo-Realist films of the 50s.

An intelligent and thoughtful movie like Exchange Students really makes me feel energized. I went with my writer-artist friend ZP, and he enjoyed it too. I’ll definitely have to keep up with the film showings at the Japan Society from now on...and who knows? Maybe I could meet some Japanese gals there...I've known several Japanese strippers, and they were among the most friendly, sexy, and interesting in my experience.

Still, I sometimes feel lately that I'm fooling myself; that I'm a fish out of water in the regular world, and that sooner or later I'm going to have to accept that not only do I like the stripclub universe when it comes to meeting women, but it may very well be the only good place for me to meet them...

But that's another post for another time.

It seems to me that New York City is rushing the Christmas season upon us this year even more rapidly than in the past. Whatever happened to the concept of savoring Thanksgiving? It’s one of the loveliest days (and weekends) of the year. Yet I was in the Time-Warner Center at Columbus Circle early last week and the building was already giving a light show in time with Christmas music. Why don’t they put up some turkey decorations first, and play some turkey music? There’s gotta be turkey music they can play, right?

On second thought, maybe there isn't much, if any, turkey music. And I think I know the reason why. Have you ever heard a turkey say he's looking forward to Thanksgiving? The situation doesn't exactly lend itself to catchy tunes...I guess if Santa Claus dumped his reindeer after every yearly run and got new ones for the next season, you wouldn't hear too many songs about them, either.

Let’s face it, the only things people really buy for Thanksgiving are turkeys and hams, and that’s not enough to satisfy the retailers anymore. So, at least here in the Big Apple, they’ve decided to blend Christmas into Thanksgiving--heck, they’ve moved Christmas up, and they’ll just drop in Thanksgiving like a station break--so as to get everybody spending sooner, and possibly spending more.

Well, changing the subject, it was just over a year ago (11/11/05) that I first met Lily in the stripclub; for those of you who are new to reading this blog, or just dropping in for a taste, Lily was a stripper I was hung up on for about five months until the early spring of this year, when my financial reverses forced me to cut back on visits to the tittie bars and stop seeing her. After all, as it turned out, it was primarily a classic stripper-customer cash-and-carry friendship, which I should expect as an ordinary middle-aged coot who still has an eye for the twentysomethings. It was fun while it lasted, but how quickly it all went by...

I went to another movie memorabilia show today. The hours there zoomed by as I talked movies with the vendors and bought a few DVDs and perused film mags and pinup mags too. Found an old burlesque magazine with a great fold-out picture of the late Candy Barr, one of the sexiest blond bombshell strippers of the 50s and early 60s. The pic was shot by the great glamour photographer Bruno Bernard and printed in that surrealistically vivid color that mags used in those days. That was a fun find...Bruno really caught Candy's simultaneously worldly yet innocent eyed allure.

Also found a magazine with a good article about, and pictures of, Frances Drake, a forgotten brunette actress of the 30s and 40s who won my heart at a tender age when I saw her on tv playing a very supportive British wife to Boris Karloff's dedicated but lonely scientist in 1936's The Invisible Ray. As ladylike as Frances was in the film, there was something erotic too in the very uprightness of the character she portrayed. Unforgettable image: she strides purposefully across the ramparts of a castle, dressed in a long flowing white gown...Miss Drake was extremely beautiful...she died in her late 80s just a few years ago, but I consider her immortal...

Check out The Invisible Ray on DVD to see what I mean about Frances. It's part of The Bela Lugosi Collection (Bela co-starred as Boris's scientific rival in the film)...

Candy Barr and Frances Drake. They couldn't be more different. Candy was a hardscrabble gal from Texas who made a notorious stag film called "Smart Aleck" and later went to jail on a marijuana charge; and Frances was indeed a proper lady. Although American-born, she spent time in England in her youth and later married a member of the British nobility. Before she gave up her acting career for her marriage, she worked in Hollywood with people as varied as Karloff, Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, and Spencer Tracy. But in my dreams, I walk into a stripclub and Candy and Frances are waiting at the door in sexy gowns, young again, and come up at the same time to offer me lapdances...

And into the champagne room I'd sweep them both, cost be damned!

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You can see pix of Miss Barr and Miss Drake below at the following cool websites.

FrancesDrakeAtShillPages

CandyBarrAtJavasBachelorPad

I went out to a screening of a new Chinese film last night. My writer-bodybuilder-streetfighter friend Rexx writes about movies sometimes, and he was able to bring me along. The film was called Curse of the Golden Flower, and it's an epic about a fictional Chinese royal family a thousand years ago. Enjoyable if gloomy--its plot includes incest, treason, and armed rebellion--its highlights are some pretty wild action scenes and battles, and the bosomy pulchritude of the "Chinese Garbo" Gong Li, in the role of the Empress, and starlet Li Man, in the part of the comely daughter of the Imperial Physician. Most of the females in the movie wore tight-fitting bodices that pushed up their breasts and presented their plump cleavage in a bold, jiggly shelf.

When I got home I got a call from an old boyhood pal in Chicago with whom I've kept in contact over the years. He's quite a dynamic person and nationally recognized in his field, and although our lives are certainly very different--he's married with children, I am not; he has money, I do not--still we seem to be able to maintain our forty-three year old friendship. Anyway, he called to tell me that his mother had passed away yesterday morning. It was not unexpected, as I knew she was quite old and ill. I was stunned, however, not by the news, but by the emotional numbness I felt, and my inability to really say anything comforting to my old pal. Have I really become so jaded lately by the litany of illness and the spectre of death? I am seeing many people struggle with these things now. Perhaps I'm at a more philosophical age, or perhaps the movie I had just seen had added to my numbness. Almost every major character died (brutally), and the only one left standing was the Emperor of China--which disturbed me, because the character was a mean, autocratic bastard and I wanted to see him get his.

Chinese superstar Chow Yun Fat was, obviously, quite effective playing the Emperor.

Back to my friend's call: I apologized to him for having only platitudes to offer, but he politely said that sometimes just platitudes could be comforting. He was calling me from the kitchen of his parents' house, and I could see the room well in my mind's eye, even though I have not been in that house for over thirty years. His mom was a kind but tough lady who'd survived the Nazis and came over to the U.S. to make a good life for her family as well as run a successful business with her husband.

She certainly had a better life than Gong Li's Empress in the movie, who lived in splendor but was being slowly poisoned by her husband, the Emperor.

Funny how reality and fiction get all mixed up together, and make one seamless emotional panorama in my mind...well, Gong Li certainly seemed real enough on that big movie screen. And I can still hear my friend's mother asking me in her Polish accent how I'm doing in high school...

Rest in peace.

Well, it's after four and all I had for lunch was a few Triscuits and a half shot of Jameson. Maybe I better take a shower, have a real meal, and get into a more upbeat weekend frame of mind.