You never know what you're going to see in Manhattan.

A little while ago I was walking near the West Side Highway, close to the Hudson River, after being dropped off by one of my co-workers who gave me a ride back to the city from my freelance job in New Jersey. There was a little lady with gray hair standing on the sidewalk across the street, next to what appeared to be a large bag. But why was she holding out a piece of celery to the bag, and why was the bag extending a little head and mouth to eat it? Because the "bag" was a turtle!

Verrrry slowly the turtle extended its stubby forefeet and moved ahead. I couldn't believe how quickly it ate that long piece of celery out of the lady's hand, though. The turtle looked about eighteen, twenty inches long. Its shell was a sandy color, as were its head and legs.

I was struck by how prehistoric the turtle looked--how, even though it was small, it seemed somehow massive in the way it lumbered ahead. I was also reminded of a giant turtle I saw in one of those cavemen movies once, I can't remember which--One Million Years B.C.? When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth? Those fifty-foot turtles always go after the chicks in fur bikinis. I can relate to those turtles.

No wonder turtles can live so long...looks like they hardly break a sweat. And celery must be good for their cholesterol.

The only thing that would have surprised me more was if the turtle had smoked a cigar and started telling jokes...

I didn't cross the street, so I didn't get any info, but that was okay. I just prefer to think of that lady living with a wisecracking, smoking turtle, just as somebody else would live with a sarcastic dog, and taking the turtle out for a daily constitutional whenever the turtle started getting antsy, or as antsy as turtles ever get.

That turtle sure was a nice change of pace from all the boa constrictors, parrots, and iguanas I've seen on the New York streets...

I still haven't seen any naked ladies there, though. And that's why I still need the stripclubs.

I’d planned to get up about 6 a.m. to commute to my freelance gig in New Jersey today, but after a convivial, tasty, and somewhat intoxicating Mexican dinner with friends last night, I awakened at 3:45 a.m. instead and couldn’t get back to sleep.

The food, sangria, and conversation were all quite pleasant, but perhaps I personally overdid the spicy salsa, chips, and several black olives (I love black olives), because my slumber was interrupted by an unsettling dream about the Japanese movie monster Godzilla rampaging through a darkened countryside. There was a train in the dream, and I think it symbolized my intestines.

After tossing and turning to no avail, I got up at 4:45, shaved and dressed, and turned on the radio only to hear that there was a big tie-up on the George Washington Bridge (which connects New York and New Jersey) that was possibly going to make my morning commute very slow. What to do? Simple: sit down with a cup of coffee and blog, and feel the total exhaustion of a day I haven’t even lived yet coming over me.

Since I’m so friggin’ tired, I’m going to exercise the freelancer’s option of putting off the commute until tomorrow. I can always do some work at home instead (if I can stay awake). Thanks be to Stinky, mighty and compassionate God of Freelancers, for this alternative!

Meanwhile, the battery in the moisture alarm in my apartment’s central air-conditioning unit seems to be expiring, and for the last two hours has been giving up a little chirping noise. So my first task today is to get one of the handymen in the building to open up the unit and replace the battery before that repetitive chirping sound makes ME stomp things like Godzilla!!!

I was looking at my last entry and I noticed that one of the ads above it was for "sugardaddie.com," an online dating service for wealthy older men and the young women who adore them. Since my current somewhat shaky financial status as a freelance worker would prevent me from looking for partners on such a site unless I lied through my teeth, maybe I can find other sites like "combodaddie.com," as in, I can afford to treat a luscious younger woman to any combo dinner on a Chinese take-out menu; or maybe there's sixpackdaddie.com, as in, I can splurge on a six-pack of a gal's favorite beer--domestic OR imported! Or maybe somewhere out in the cyber ozone there's a site called sugardaddieNOT.com, where a beautiful young woman will agree to date me--lapdance me--cuddle me, befuddle me, and drain me of my vital juices--simply because she likes me! But that site is probably located on another planet.

Just getting whimsical in my middle age...or maybe demented?

I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in four days. Why? At the end of last week, I learned of a schedule change that means a significant loss of potential freelance income for me in the next few months...crucial months in which I have to pay off credit debts I incur each year paying my self-employment taxes...crucial months in which I try to put aside money for my IRA, which provides a tax deduction I sorely need. I'd already been trying to make up for schedule cuts from last year, and only partly succeeded; now I have this additional loss of revenue to contend with...

See Cranky sweat...

And when I'm anxious, my sleep patterns are affected...

To get my mind off my problems, I spent the weekend reading a true crime book about the unsolved Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles in 1947. I guess I needed a LOT of distraction...the tome was called The Black Dahlia Files, by Donald H. Wolfe...published by ReganBooks...it theorizes that gangsters killed the Black Dahlia, which was the nickname for a Hollywood wannabe named Elizabeth Short. She had a sad life drifting through Tinseltown, hustling drinks while she tried to get into the movies...and it all came to a brutal close. My interest in this case was sparked by the new Scarlett Johanssen film The Black Dahlia, which was just released, and which I plan to see next week.

The Wolfe book was a fast and fascinating read, and its portrait of corruption in mid-20th century Los Angeles was extremely ugly...the book basically implies that it was the coverups of the city government and police department that prevented the case from ever being solved. Light reading, indeed! But it did take my mind off my anxieties--although it filled me with other anxieties about the endless cruelty and immorality of the world. I take things to heart, I'm afraid...

Anyway, the changing freelance situation might be a good kick in the pants for me. Perhaps I've been coasting...and perhaps now that I need to find more outlets of work, I will network more and expand my freelance clientele in ways I hadn't thought of before...I've been making a list of all potential avenues of new income, no matter how trivial or far-fetched they seem...

Too bad I can't just take off my clothes for a living, like some people I've known...

On the other hand, given how ordinary I look, maybe I can announce I'm taking my clothes OFF, and people will tip me to keep them ON!

Well, if I don't have enough money to hang out in stripclubs like I used to, at least I can watch Mary Beth Hughes movies on DVD!

I've written about this now-obscure 1940s starlet before, discussing the films I Accuse My Parents, The Great Flamarion, and The Lady Confesses (the latter of which co-starred Hugh "Leave it To Beaver" Beaumont in a most unusual role).

Last night I watched Mary Beth in a 1948 low-budget noir called Inner Sanctum, available on a low-priced DVD from www.oldies.com.

It's a creepy story about a man named Harold (well-played by Charles Russell, a kind of poor man's Dana Andrews) who accidentally (?) kills his fiancee on a train platform, and is on the run from the cops and living in a small town boardinghouse. There he meets the sultry but down-to-earth Jean (Mary Beth Hughes), who makes a play for him. She's one of those film noir dames who's always picking the wrong guy...

The film has some strange characters, like the hyperactive tweenager Mike (Dale Belding) who saw Harold dump his fiancee's body on the back of a train. Mike actually wears a beanie with a propeller on top, and seems susceptible to tics; and no wonder, with a mother (Lee Patrick) who is anxiously over-protective of him in a way that's guaranteed to turn Mike into a total mess as an adult.

But Mary Beth is the star of this movie, even though some of her line readings are a little too seductive, bring her character to the edge of caricature. But who cares, when she's so beautiful to look at? The camera lavishes long closeups on her pinup-perfect face, dimpled smile, and laughing eyes, and the DVD player is uniquely suited to a viewer's appreciating these qualities. I replayed Mary Beth's scenes just to watch her flirtatious dialogue and rueful 40s "dame-ness." It's a total mystery to me why she didn't become a bigger star.

There's another gal in the movie, Eve Miller, who has quite a fetching face as well, but she's a raven-haired "Black Dahlia" type as opposed to Mary Beth's blonde. Indeed, the movie came out the year after the infamous 1947 Los Angeles murder of the Black Dahlia, an aspiring Hollywood starlet whose brutal killing has never been solved (and which is the subject of the new Brian De Palma movie of that name). You can almost feel an echo of the Black Dahlia case in the script of Inner Sanctum, a clever concoction by screenwriter Jerome Todd Gollard. The movie was directed by Lew Landers, who helmed one of Bela Lugosi's greatest and most over-the-top vehicles, 1935's The Raven.

As always, I want you to see what I'm talking about, so I've included a couple of links below. One is to a site from a tv station that hosts a crime film series; it has has an amusing review of Inner Sanctum, complete with a few of its more outrageous lines; and the second is to a site presented by "Atomic Glee" that has pix of Mary Beth from Inner Sanctum in its gallery. You can see the exact closeups I'm talking about in image pulls from the Inner Sanctum video.

I gotta say, watching Mary Beth Hughes talk is almost as enjoyable as a lapdance was from my erstwhile favorite stripper Lily...and as ultimately frustrating! I just wanted to climb into the tv and take Mary Beth in my arms...

Mary Beth passed away in 1995 in her mid-seventies. But these gorgeous old actresses seem immortal to me sometimes, existing forever in some timeless dimension poignantly accessed through the DVD player.

AlamedaTVCrimeStreet

MaryBethHughes