Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Naked City

Taking advantage of a two-day-off stretch from work over the weekend, I made one of my famous one-day excursions to NYC. Stopped into the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, finally walked the Brooklyn Bridge, grabbed some cheesecake at Junior's at Grand Central, caught up with the awesome Brooklyn Mike (of Jungle Transmissions blog fame, linked here just to the right). Had a pretty decent & inexpensive day of fun and discovery... and even managed to squeeze in a little moment with two of the locals.

On my way to Movie Star News, the only still-operating (and legit) "theatrical one-sheet" movie poster shop that I know of, I found myself moving north up 6th Avenue to the 18th Street area when I passed by one of NY's famous "adult entertainment" establishments... the kind with glowing neon signs reading "peep show" and "novelites" in the front window masked displays. These places are common in some stretches of the 6th-7th-8th Avenue area and nothing particularly unusual makes this particular "den of sin" stand out. Except this day. Two ladies of the evening were holding court at the front door. Author's Note: I placed "ladies of the evening" in the preceding sentence in red italics not to emphasise the phrase, itself, but to point out that (1) this happened at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and (2) I'm not entirely convinced that these ladies have, shall we say... always been ladies. Regardless, they they were and there I was.

"Hey, honey..." one of the smiling, buxom, low-cut top wearing creatures purred out to me. "Wanna come watch a movie with me?"

Normally, that would be an opening line dream for a guy like me. But like the Dyl-man says, I don't need a weathervane to know which way the wind blows. So, being me... A guy who loves to spread confusion and have fun with the masses... I just perked up, bulged my eyes, doing my best "functional but definately goofball bumpkin" voice and saying to the two aforementioned trick-turners... "Oh-boy-I-loves-movies-is-we-gonna-watch-that Watchmen-movie-I-loves-dat-movie-I-seen-it-twice-can-we-get-ice-cream-after-I-loves-me-some-ice-creams!!"

They just rolled their eyes and disappeared back into the store, presumably until I walked away.

People say there are a lot of weirdos in Manhattan.
I say... were just tourists. :)

DVD/Home Video Reviews:
No Country For Old Men: 3-Disc Collector's Edition ****
X2: X-Men United ****
Chinatown (1974) ****
Abbott & Costello: Buck Privates (1941) ***1/2
Man Stroke Woman: Series One (BBC) ***1/2 (see video below)
Keane (2004) ***1/2
Abbott & Costello: In The Navy (1941) ***
X-Men: The Last Stand ***
Ichi (2008, Japan) **1/2
Wanted (2008) **1/2