I'm going to see The Black Dahlia this evening, that new Brian De Palma movie based on the James Ellroy novel about the infamously unsolved 1947 murder case in Los Angeles.

I hope I can stay awake through it. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning today to commute out to my freelance gig in New Jersey, and although I tried to take a nap a little while ago when I got back to New York, I couldn't really doze.

I hate these lack-of-sleep days, during which the world seems even more like an off-center, surreal place.

Well, maybe a Brian De Palma movie is perfect for a day like this. Did you ever see his early flick Sisters? That was a pretty freaky mad killer thriller. Great music, too, by Bernard Herrmann, who also did the great score for Psycho.

I hear Rose McGowan has a small part in The Black Dahlia. Hmm, just to see her dressed up in 1940s clothes should be a treat...

Hey, I wouldn't mind savoring a bottle of HER bathwater...

Why don't these celebs start selling what the fans really want?

Better value than an autograph, for my money!

Any good guest knows that it is important not to overstay his welcome.

When you click on my blog, you are in a sense inviting me into the home that is your consciousness.

I do not want to bore people, and I wonder if the natural lifespan of this blog has been reached, and is in the process of winding itself down, almost independently of what I might feel.

I truly wonder how interesting people still find this. I enjoy writing about my interests, and I’m also reluctant to stop writing here everyday, because writing as Sir Cranky has become part of my identity--however anonymous that identity is. Just a handful of people in my life know that I write this, but people on Blogstream and here and there on the Web seem to follow it, or at least click on it, judging by the number of visitors I get each day.

Still, one of the disconcerting things for me about writing it has been seeing how limited my mind and imagination are starting to feel after more than a year of daily entries.

As my life has changed over the last twelve months, I’ve moved somewhat away from the topic of strippers and more into discussions of movies and books, as well as the financial problems of freelancing and living in New York in general. But lately I feel as if I’m repeating myself. Maybe I write about different movies or dancers, but I seem to find in them outlets for certain recurring obsessions of mine like the femme fatale fantasy.

Because my initial goal in starting this blog was to give people as complete an insight as possible into the life of a middle-aged fan of both strippers and DVDs, I also wrote about my kid sister’s health problems and my reaction to them. I may get lapdances, but I was also upset about my sister and wanted to discuss the situation. I wanted to put a human face on the type of person so often ridiculed in our culture: the fan of exotic dancers.

Still, I wonder if the blog is starting to reflect the fact that I am stuck in a rut that is not only difficult to get out of, but which I may not be all that willing to emerge from...

I don’t especially like things to change...

While I enjoy communicating with my fellow Blogstreamers--you know who you are--and it's worthwhile having this blog simply as a means to do that, I want the blog to add up to something more than a diary; perhaps what I am trying to do here is write an online book. Or maybe I have just wanted to write a book, period, and doing it here has been the most expedient method for me. The protocol of writing proposals and pitching projects and trying to convince first an agent, and then a publisher, that what I want to say is worth printing and being paid for, just seems so overwhelming and time-consuming--and, judging by the struggles of my book-writing friends, is a total crap shoot these days...

In any case, although a sudden loss of potential freelance income is going to force me to make some alterations in my work, I can feel myself being dragged with great reluctance into an uncertain future.

I guess I'm wondering if this, too, is part of the story of strippersversusdvds.

The memorabilia show I was referring to in yesterday's post, and which I was so anxious to attend, is my favorite of the year--a vintage paperback collector's show held only once a year in Manhattan.

I spent six very pleasant hours there, browsing through the books and talking with my dealer friends about authors and artists. I even forgot to eat lunch, so satiated was I by the sight of all those eye-filling tomes.

I wanted to pick up a some titles by one of my favorite writers, Charles Williams, a prime paperback suspense scribe of the 50s and 60s about whose fantastic book A Touch of Death I wrote here a few months ago when it was reprinted by Hard Case Crime. Well, I lucked out and found three vintage out-of-print Williams novels for twenty bucks. The pleasure of reading the books in their original copies is that when you take a break from the stories, you get to look at the evocative cover art.

I don't know exactly why I enjoy this show even more than the movie memorabilia shows, to which I am also addicted, unless it's the simple fact that I love being surrounded by all the amazing images of sultry femmes fatale, which 50s paperbacks have in gushing abundance.

I suspect this is infantile of me, but I guess my dream girl would look like the torrid tight-skirt teasers on the covers of these books, complete with seamed stockings, bullet-bras, long fluffy tresses, heavy makeup, and stiletto heels. Of course, when she's not busy teasing me, she would be sweet, maternal, nurturing, and a good cook.

Since women like this do not exist, at least not in my sphere of actual or possible acquaintances, I eagerly seek out the visual twilight zone that emanates from the covers of vintage paperbacks. For, as far as the eye can see in the hotel ballroom where the show is held, there are glimpses on book covers of these mythical feminine creatures, these whore-madonnas for which, in spite of common sense, my heart, brain, and crotch still yearn.

If you'd like to see samples of the types of images of which I speak, well, I made the acquaintance of a woman who was selling reproductions of the work of her late father, one of the great masters of 50s cover art, R.A. Maguire. I bought several reasonably priced laser copies of the cover art and original paintings, and when I got home I checked out the R.A. Maguire website as well. So if you want to get a peek at some of the most beautiful illustrations of those days, with the kinds of fantastical females who capture my cranky fancy, just click on the link I've included below and check out the galleries on the site.

Enjoy!

R.A.MaguireCoverArt

I am prey to unreasonable fears when I am anticipating doing something pleasant. For example, when I was an adolescent and looking forward to going on a date with some girl I really liked (or lusted for, that would be more accurate), until the very moment I left to pick her up for our date, all week long I would be afraid that something would happen that would prevent me from meeting her on Saturday night--that some disaster or serious problem would derail the longed-for event. This is one reason why I am not readily at ease with women; since puberty, I have seen them not just as people, but as modes of escape from a life I felt was dreary. That's too much of a burden to put on anybody. Growing up in the claustrophobic atmosphere of my particular family, I longed for adventure and romance and beauty, and put too much weight on my relationships with girls to supply those things.

Sometimes I would imagine that my father would get into an accident on the way home from work--and I would have to cancel my weekend date and stay home and help out in the aftermath of the mishap. Naturally I felt very ashamed of what I saw as my awful self-centeredness, but I think now this was a neurotic, obsessive form of what I normally felt in adolescence--that family life kept me from having a pleasurable and interesting life. I know now that adolescents are prey to all sorts of confusing thoughts like this, but back in the 60s when I was a teenager, all I felt was that I was a terrible and selfish person if I could be more concerned with meeting some chick than with my father's well-being. Growing up in the family-centric Jewish environment, these feelings made me feel like a traitor not just to my own family but to the tribe in general. I think this is one reason I craved the anonymity and freedom that a life in New York seemed to offer.

So, more psychologically sophisticated now, I recognize those fears as the tangled thinking of a particularly screwed-up teenager. But I bring this up now because, ironically, as I look forward to going to a once-yearly memorabilia show soon, a show chockful of the items I like to collect--videos, books, magazines, pinups--I have been experiencing the same dread and fear, that I'm not going to be allowed to make it to the show and enjoy myself.

This has truly been a rough several months for me. I wonder if the anxiety over my sister Jenny's illness, my loss of income as a freelance worker and my subsequent financial inability to cut loose as I used to in the stripclubs (which made up fifty percent of my social life), and my foot-dragging on various minor health issues of my own, has whittled away my confidence and replaced it with feelings of middle-aged limitation and mortality.

Jenny has gotten good reports and her treatments have progressed remarkably well, but the anxiety such a crisis provoked is long-lasting and not easily dismissed. The universe made its point well: my sweet kid sister is vulnerable, and so are we all.

On the other hand, because Jenny is healing, I should also remember to thank the universe.

Anyway, all these worries are why I cling so fiercely to my pleasures of collecting and browsing, as they take me away for a few hours from my almost constant pessimistic frame of mind.

As I've said before, film noir is not fantasy world to me, but portrays the dark vision I have long held of life. It's not a matter of the chicken or the egg; my pessimism came first, and seeing film noir only confirmed it.

Now that I've gotten all this off my chest, let me go out and try to cheer up by taking a walk in the pleasant autumn sunshine.

Last night I went with my writer-artist friend ZP, who looks like a tall Kafka, to the opening reception for an art exhibit celebrating thirty years of Fantagraphics, the publisher of counterculturish graphic novels and comics. The opening was held at the Society of Illustrators on the Upper East Side.

Fantagraphics published Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Ghost World, on which was based one of my favorite movies of recent years, the story of two punkish young women, played by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson, drifting through life. As we looked at the pamphlet for the exhibit, which prominently featured the Clowes rendering of the character who was memorably embodied by Thora, ZP said, "Whatever happened to Thora Birch?"

"I ask that question about every two months on my blog," I replied.

So why HAS Scarlett Johansson become so much more of a movie star than Thora? I just don't get it. Somebody illuminate me. Is it just because Scarlett wears ultra-fashionable clothes so well, and is a darling of mags like Vogue and Bazaar? Maybe Thora is discriminated against because her curvy, busty body is not the ideal of this Age of Anorexia. But I wouldn't have Thora any other way...

Thora Birch is a solid gold Bathwater Girl! And what is that, you ask? A gal who is so sexy that guys would line up to drink her bathwater. I know there are chaps who would queue to drink Scarlett's too, but I have a feeling the flavor would not be as refreshing.

Refreshing, of course, being a relative term...

To each his own bathwater, I suppose.

ZP has told me that he would duly savor a vial of Amanda Peet's.

I wonder if women have Bathwater Guys?

Somehow I get the feeling women would rather give their chosen sex idols a bath, or share a bath with them, rather than quaff a cup of their sloshings...

But I could be wrong. Illuminate me.

In Ghost World, the fine character actor Steve Buscemi plays a fortyish guy, an eccentric loner and vinyl record collector, who gets involved with Thora's feisty character, Enid.

Talk about a sex fantasy for a middle-aged male filmgoer named...Sir Cranky!

There's one scene where Thora wears a cat-girl mask that I've never forgotten.

Here kitty, kitty...

The way Steve gets tangled up in his desire for Enid reminded me of how I feel about some of the strippers I've known.

As the old song says, "A pretty girl is like a melody..."

...that you can't get out of your head!