I feel as if I've reached an impasse today. If this were a low-budget 1950s western, it would be called Impasse at Blog Canyon. I was feeling pretty blue yesterday, as probably was reflected in my last entry...cynical and grumpy...I feel somewhat better today, but not all that much. This morning, I wrote a long and self-pitying diatribe about the usual topics--strippers, women--which I didn't trash, but didn't want to post. I'm starting to wonder if I'm hearing an echo in the things I write...as in, "Haven't I said that before?"

I hope this Dostoevskyian frame of mind will pass. Maybe if I go out to a stripclub later, I'll feel better. And if I don't, well, I can always watch Diane Lane portray a 1950s Chicago stripper in the 1987 melodrama The Big Town, co-starring Matt Dillon and Tommy Lee Jones. I just picked it up on DVD.

...and what's happening is this: because my erotic attraction to beautiful but manipulative women is so strong, but my wallet is currently so weak, I am very, very frustrated by my inability to freely spend money in STRIPCLUBS--those temples simultaneously devoted to the entertainment of masochists such as myself and the financial enrichment of manipulative females.

Do I sound a mite judgmental? Well, I'm not in a mood to idealize anybody or anything.

As I can see by re-reading my last two entries, I am attempting to get vicarious (i.e., cheap) thrills by watching movies and reading books where men, masochistic to varying degrees, are captivated by femmes fatale of varying levels of harshness.

It is not enough.

"Vicarious" doesn't cut it for Sir Cranky, not as a long-term diet.

And an occasional evening at a Neo-Burlesque show is no substitute for a girl dancing on my lap and pretending that she thinks I'm a swell guy.

I guess it's time to find another stripper to be a sucker for...

She's waiting for me out there, her garter itching for my bills...

Maybe it can't be a regular habit anymore for Sir Cranky (unless I win the lottery), but an occasional wild night just might do the trick...

Stay tuned.

Nobody can say I don't have a varied palate when it comes to entertainment. I'm reading the 1892 Italian novel As A Man Grows Older, by Italo Svevo, the story of part-time writer and full-time insurance company employee eaten away by jealousy because of his love for a younger, flirtatious woman named Angiolina. The book is so intensely written that not only can you feel all the tortured emotions of the lead character and those of some of the supporting players, but you can even feel the rooms they live in and the food they eat and the town squares they stroll.

The protagonist naively fools himself into believing he can have a light flirtation with the gorgeous Angiolina, but he quickly falls under her manipulative spell and wishes for more...not unlike Sir Cranky with some of his strippers. Yes, regrettably, I see much of myself in the lead character who gets carried away with a woman who will never deliver all that he wants.

As A Man Grows Older is available in trade paperback from New York Review Books (www.nybooks.com). I found it at the Strand Bookstore discounted from $12.95 to $9.71.

Putting the book down for an evening (I'm in the middle of its 235 pages) to give myself a psychological break, last night I watched the 1955 Technicolor sci-fi epic This Island Earth, just released on a new DVD version from Universal. Flying saucers, mad mutants with pincers for hands, a doomed planet bombarded day and night with meteors, and the fetching Faith Domergue (a one-time protege of Howard Hughes) getting drenched in a stream so that you can see her bra through her blouse, and later being menaced (by a monster) while she's wearing a tight space uniform that reveals the shape of her stunningly bodacious bottom--yes, it all added up to fun entertainment for Sir Cranky, light years away from the neurotic angst of As A Man Grows Older.

Faith showed off her sexy hands in the movie too, with blood-red polish on her fingernails as she clutched at her chair while a meteor hurled towards the saucer. Though she died several years ago, and never achieved the immense stardom Hughes had planned for her, in my book she lives eternal in movies like This Island Earth, Cult of the Cobra, Where Danger Lives, The Duel at Silver Creek and It Came From Beneath the Sea!

As a femme fatale in Where Danger Lives and The Duel at Silver Creek, Miss Domergue's preferred method of disposing of her male victims was smothering! Well, when she turned those big beautiful but sad eyes (not to mention her pouting mouth) in a susceptible guy's direction, he was often a goner.

Just look at her photos on the excellent film buff site Brian's Drive-In Theater, and maybe you'll be a goner, too. The link to Faith's page is below.

BriansDriveInTheater

A couple of weeks ago I wrote how I thought Barbara Stanwyck wasn't the most believable choice for irresistible femme fatale in 1944's Double Indemnity, and that the then-upcoming starlet Mary Beth Hughes would have been a far better temptress. Ironically, it turns out that in 1945 Mary Beth made a film for the low-budget Republic Pictures called The Great Flamarion that cast her in a Double Indemnity-type role of a wife scheming to get a man to kill her husband. But the story is much different.

Mary Beth plays the assistant to "The Great Flamarion," a trick-shot artist embodied by that inimitable portrayer of Prussians, Nazis, severe scientists, and European smoothies and seducers, Erich von Stroheim. He was a great director in the silent era whose perfectionism and temperament contributed to the downfall of his filmmaking career. From the 30s on he worked as a character actor, and is most famous for playing Gloria Swanson's butler (and ex-husband) in 1950's Sunset Boulevard.

In The Great Flamarion, Mary Beth and Dan Duryea play a married couple who work together in Flamarion's vaudeville act, portraying illicit lovers who are caught dining with each other when husband Flamarion bursts into their hotel room. Flamarion takes out his jealous anger with pistols, doing trick shots that break champagne glasses, snap off Mary Beth's shoulder straps and hair ornaments, and pepper a wall behind a ducking Duryea.

But Mary Beth's character is a veteran con artist as well as a cheating wife, who is tired of Duryea--who in turn is drinking to drown his own jealousy about his straying spouse. Mary Beth hatches a plan to make the stern and stiff Flamarion (who has no friends other than his pistols) think she is in love with him, even though he's over thirty years older than her. She brings out the tender lover long buried in the glum, bullet-headed Flamarion, only to try to convince him to "accidentally" kill Duryea during the act one night so that she can go off with him. But in reality, she wants to hook up with a studly trick bicycle rider in the same vaudeville show. Ah, we older men must watch out for these slick Eye Candy Eves! They're not all sweet.

Mary Beth makes a good seductress; she is just so beautiul to look at, with her lips made up in the dark 40s style and her charming dimples disguising her total lack of morals. She sure would have done a job on Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, especially with the ankle bracelet Stanwyck got to wear! And von Stroheim is brilliant and poignant as he portrays the older man whose long-buried emotions blossom when he foolishly lets himself fall under the spell of this deadly conniver. In fact, although I loved to see Mary Beth in action, the very best part of the movie is when von Stroheim is alone and waiting to meet her in a lavish hotel suite. Dressed with Continental sophistication in double-breasted suit and white gloves, he is the iconic picture of a man dangerously in touch with his Inner Romantic as he orders roses and orchids and gardenias for the suite, the better to dazzle his young mistress. You can guess how the story turns out, but if you want a fast-paced peek at three memorable stars (because Duryea is poignant too as the alcoholic lovesick hubby), check out The Great Flamarion. It's a budget DVD available from www.oldies.com.

Just to give you a flavor of the pairing of von Stroheim and Hughes, I located a site on the Web called MovieGoods which has old lobby cards and posters from The Great Flamarion. Click on the link to see the melancholy duo of avaricious adulteress and tragic dupe, especially the poster that shows Mary Beth holding one of Flamarion's pistols as he dolefully looks on.

And here's a shout out to my friend Sid, who recently moved to Cleveland. Von Stroheim is one of his favorite actors.

MovieGoods

I just discovered that today is the first anniversary or birthday of Blogstream. I didn't realize this site started last year precisely on September 4th. Pioneer/John has done a great job giving us this place to write.

I've been on almost a year now...started on September 16, 2005. When I started writing this a good portion of my leisure time was spent in stripclubs. Now, for the various reasons I discuss in my entries, I spend less time in the clubs...one reason is that I spend a good amount of time writing here everyday...at least an hour, sometimes two or three when I start waxing profound (or I'm just trying to simplify some long winding sentences)! Maybe I should re-title the blog "Strippers vs. DVDs vs. Blogging."

I love to write as must be evident from all the words I pour out...as far as strippers, this summer I've gotten into the Neo-Burlesque scene as a fan...this is a form of performance art that hearkens back to the striptease of the 40s and 50s. It's a cheaper alternative to traditional stripclubs, and not quite as addictive--which is good for the wallet, although I don't feel the same compelling urge to hit the Neo-Burlesque shows as I did to visit my favorite dancers at regular jiggle joints.

I've seen a lot of DVDs this summer, too--especially burlesque DVDs of old 50s striptease movies. I was watching one of my favorites last night, Something Weird's Best of Burlesque two-disc compilation, and I jumped around between the different segments of dancers. But two sections I most enjoy watching over and over again are "Parade of Girls," shot in black-and-white in a burlesque theater in the 40s. It goes on for several minutes with a full chorus of dancers in costumes and headdresses slowly walking back and forth across the runway while a tenor stands in the middle of the stage singing "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms Were To Fade..." There is something very poignant about this number, between the music and the images of the dancers who, if they are still alive, would be in their eighties or nineties. As they criss-cross the stage, you can sometimes see them smiling out into the audience, probably at their favorite fans and stage-door Johnnies. This number always puts a lump in my throat.

My other favorite section is Patti Waggin's solo in Too Hot to Handle, one of the feature-length burlesque movies on the discs. Anybody who wants to be a Neo-Burlesque dancer should study the way Patti uses her body, face, and hands in this number. There is something ineffably cute and life-affirming in her sexy, happy dance. To me she is the one of the greatest.

I'm grateful that Blogstream has been around this past year, so I've been able to both share my enthusiasms with you, and to read about other people's interests and lives. May Blogstream long prosper!