My Lame Ass Movie Review

 

Wanna know in what movie white folks say ‘nigger’ five-hundred and ninety-nine thousand times?  In Tennessee Williams’ ‘Baby Doll’.  The black people sit around playing blues on harmonica, propped on trees, shaking their idle heads at crazy ‘ol white folks.  Carl Malden’s character is the big fool in the movie.  Eli Wallach is in it too, a Jew playing an Italian, or a ‘wop’, as is also loosely expressed in the movie.  Carol Baker (one of those sexy flat-chested woman I refer to in my other blog) is Baby Doll.  All three — great actors.

And I fucking loved this movie!   It’s well-acted and has a great script.  It’s risqué, original and more importantly genuine.  There’s an underlying context with all of these black folks in the periphery.  They’re a running commentary on the idiocy that occurs in the film.  And their presence is 100% authentic.  I don’t give a flyin’ fuck about the prolific use of the word nigger – in that region in that era, this is the way that the people spoke.  In the movie there are some blacks in action, working, but mostly they just sit around looking simple.  But there are white folks sitting around looking just as simple.  Oh my, and what about that character, Aunt Rose Comfort?  If she isn’t simple, I don’t know what simple is.  Boy, she was a trip!  And Carl Malden’s buffoonish character (buffoon, my favorite word) could certainly be labeled a smear on southern-hood for those quick to say something’s a stereotype.

In the context of the movie it all works.  But this kind of language, ill-placed in a badly constructed film would be offensive.  Which brings me to the pretentious director, Madonna’s ex, whasisname, uh, Ritchie, Richard, oh yes, Guy Ritchie… Yes, Guy Ritchie and Madonna please beat me over the head with the “ironic” idea that you’re so hip and naughty by going to a Halloween party in a priest and nun costume – come on.  I’m afraid so many people are blinded by what they think they should like, and by media trends, that they thought it was hip.

Guy Ritchie’s movie, ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ did everything it could to cover up the fact that he really wanted to say that black people are stupid, disorganized and not even smart enough to pull off a crime.  I saw it so long ago that I don’t remember the whole thing, besides, it was a piece of shit.  My boyfriend and I looked at each other at one point and shook our heads.  I said, “We should leave,” he agreed, and we left in the middle of it.  Now, THIS is a movie black folks should be offended by.  Guy Ritchie, this kind of a person is the scariest kind.  After this movie, and knowing that Guy Ritchie operates from a place of entitlement with regard to this “hip” illusion, I will never see another one of his movies again.  He’s one contriving motherfucker.  I don’t go to a movie, concert, museum or read a book to be told by the artist what to think and what the work is about.  If you need that to happen, go to my boy Guy Ritchie, because he’s thoroughly inauthentic, because he sucks like that!

Portuguese Love

 

At the Wave Hill gallery Sunday I explained Teena Marie to an artist from Portugal.  Why?  Be-cause, Teena Marie sang the Portuguese Love song !  I told her, “Teena Marie was a white American who sang like a black woman and she was a very popular R&B artist in the black community.  She went to Portugal and fell in love with it, and with this guy and she wrote this song.”   I sang with my eyes closed in passion and played air guitar to illustrate:   Come on in Por-tu-guese.  Say you love me baaaa-by.  Come on in Por-tu-guese, say you love meeeeee…  Saaay it to me, say it to me, say it to me, say you love me ba-by, Por-tu-guese love…

“Ohhh…,” she says when I finish.  “Yeah she really loved him, and on the beach and everything,” I told her.  We talked about other things too, but what started me on Teena Marie was our discussion of the Portuguese landscape.  I thought of Teena Marie on the beach with this sexy Portuguese guy playing his guitar.  By the way, I don’t think Teena Marie plays the guitar in this song.  I just played air guitar in my version, plus everybody knows Teena Marie did play the guitar anyway.

The artist was really friendly.  Her artwork by the way was kick-ass, photographs of trees completed by her sketch imaging.  She was intrigued by Teena Marie, so she got a pen and a piece of paper.  In her heavy Portuguese accent she asked, “How do you spell the first name?”  “Oh yes, it’s T-e-e-n-a,” I said.  I’m thinking, Holy shit!  She’s really gonna listen to it?!  I’m sure my fine air guitar and song rendition had everything to do with it.  I wonder what a woman from Portugal would think of a song about Portuguese love written by a white woman who sings like a black person…

Remember in the Exorcist They Thought it Was Rats in the Attic and It Was the Devil?

 

Well what the hell is that scratching, scraping and skittering I’m hearing in my walls?  Listen, I know I’m a Halloween enthusiast (I only just took my Halloween decorations down a couple weeks ago, and I’m already planning this year’s Halloween festivities.) and I’m attracted to dark things — let’s just say, euphemistically, that I’m a fan of “life’s mysterious aspects.”  But I don’t think this warrants a visit from you-know-who. I went to church two years ago, and I’ve been known to say a few prayers.  I told management for my building that I think it’s squirrels in the walls and on the roof – I live in the penthouse, that is, the top floor.  I stopped myself from making a joke about you-know-who being in the walls, because I didn’t want to flesh that idea out too much if you know what I mean.  But hell if I didn’t see hide nor hair of any small furry animal on the roof when I went up there.  SO, WHERE THE FUCK’S THAT NOISE COMING FROM!!!!  Just so you know, other neighbors have heard it too – so it wouldn’t be just me who’s targeted to be his personal minion.  Hey look, like in the movie when they’re throwing holy water on Linda Blair, the power of Christ compels me, and my daddy bought me a bonafide crucifix from Italy, and I WILL use it if I have to!

I’m Late for Shabbos

 

I tell my buddy at work before leaving on Friday evening that I’m exhausted because I don’t get much sleep.  I want to run, but don’t know if I’d survive it.  This young woman’s a big runner, so we often discuss running and the races she participates in.  She’s much younger than I am, so of course she says I should go on ahead and do it.  “It energizes me when I’m tired,” she says.  “Oh all right.  I’ll try,” I say.  “Yeah, just run real slow,” she tells me.

I don’t know that I can refer to my running as running anymore, it’s more like jogging these days.  As years pass, I get slower and slower.  I watch young bunnies pass me by and remember the old days when I sprinted along with the wind in my youth.   I think with pride – “I’d beat your ass right off if I was your age!”   I do what I can now, sweating like a pig, taking forever to jog the few miles I try to tackle every week, swallowing my pride about how I look.

Having left work, walking on the path to the bus, I feel like I’m trudging through molasses I’m so tired.  My senses are dull, the color green in the trees and grass doesn’t seem that green, and my hearing is muffled.  Walking irritates me.  I stop an impulse to start whining, and my pocket book feels like a bag of rocks.  I hope I don’t run into anyone I know on the bus.  I work in the lush area of Riverdale, where you don’t find the heavy traffic of people that you find in midtown.  There you can hide from people in the throng of suits.  The idea of small talk overwhelms me and makes my chest tense up – the energy it demands, the cheerful façade you have to put up.  I am sure that a grimace would seep through the conversation and that the other person would think:  “Sandee is finding this conversation painful.”   At the bus stop, I prop myself on the garbage can, which smells like a dead rat, but I don’t care —  either that or I’m stretching out on the grass behind me.  The BX7 pulls up, I get on and think, ‘How the hell’m I goin’ runnin’?…zzzzzzzzzzzz…’

At home I put on my running clothes right away before I change my mind.  Should I drink coffee first why hell yes!  This’ll do the trick to propel me down the street.  I’m doing it, jogging down Seaman, toward Bennett now.  I’m on that stupid incline turning from Broadway onto Bennett, shit!  — This is the part of the jog where I start sweating — I’m sapped.  I coach myself, ‘Fuck it I’ll walk-jog, I ain’t fittin’ to have a heart attack’.  I’m fine as long as I don’t think too hard and don’t worry about how I look – the ego’s a bitch like that.

Four blocks into Bennett I hear the clacking heels of shoes.  It’s just a few yards behind me.   It doesn’t sound like the heels of a woman’s shoes.  The sound is a solid stride that comes from a man’s shoes.  It gets louder.  No, I think.  It’s louder now.  NO, NO!  I say to myself.  This person is merely walking.  I turn around.  He’s an…interesting, well, he’s a young Jewish/black kid, wearing a yarmulke.  He’s got kinky blonde hair, full lips, and other partially African features – I think, I know this kid – could life be weirder.  When I worked in midtown years ago, there was a black woman who’d get on the train with her obviously biracial son who was about three or four at the time.  She was dressed in orthodox Jewish clothes and the kid was wearing a yarmulke – this was that same kid now grown up, a teenager.  How many orthodox black/Jewish kids with kinky blonde hair could there be?  He’s walking faster and faster I can hear — race walking.  I look him in the face now as he’s side by side with me!  Through my huffing and puffing in my version of running, I say pointing at him, “You’re trying to make me look bad!”  I start laughing then.  He smiles and says, “No, I’m just late for Shabbos,” and he continues to walk past me.  He leaves me in the dust by two whole blocks!   The rat bahstid!  I’d just been passed by somebody walking?!  This is the funniest shit that’s happened to me in quite a while – I’m so invigorated by the humor in this that I don’t even feel tired anymore!  Between laps, I’m laughing my ass off when no one’s looking.

You Called Me a What?!

 

I had planned to write about the crushes that I’ve had on the men in the Hasidic community on Bennett Avenue, or on how erotic armpit odor is (hey look, it has raging pheromones in it, I think – or something like this).  But as I was getting ready to broil my meat, thinking of phone calls I had to return after eating, I thought about one woman on the list, and how she was the first woman who had affectionately called me a bitch.  Now this was back in 1993.  Because I am mad corny, or shall I say, incredibly corny, (okay, really, I’m not that corny) I was absolutely taken aback when she casually said in the most laid back, sexy voice, ‘Okay bitch, so I’ma call you back tomorrow aight’.  ‘T-tomorrow – oh, okay’, I stammered.  I’m thinking, she called me a bad word but in an affectionate tone.  Does this mean, like, I am her bitch, or is it a new way of saying honey, or baby, or dear?   Did she mean to offend me?  Should I get on the A train to her house and invite her downstairs for a round of fisticuffs?  This apparently is some newfangled way of speaking that I haven’t been acquainted with as of yet, I figured.  Maybe when she calls back tomorrow, I’ll show her I know what time it is and say ‘Why, good morning to ya bitch!  How are you today?  So, bitch, what’s on the agenda?’

Since then I’m everybody’s bitch.  ‘Bitch!  You drank all my Jack Daniels’ – ‘Hey bitch, what’s up,’ they all say.  And I’m down with the program today, reciprocating this term of endearment with the utmost jocularity.

Peace out bitches!

I Don’t Need Titties Because I’m That Good

 

I like it when people tell you that you don’t have any titties.  I forgive them.  My sister, who’s 18 years younger than I am, was only 10 when she pointed at my chest and said ‘you don’t have NO tit-tays!’  And my mom, she’s extremely complimentary regarding everything about me, so it didn’t really count when she said, while I was getting dressed:  “Oh my, you didn’t get any at all.”  At the café where I work, as I approached the register with my grilled Panini, my friend, the worker in the cafe teased, “where your titties at girl?”  So I told her with a bravado-tinged inflection, “I don’t need titties because I’m that good.”  Sometimes when I see a sexy flat-chested woman (Hey, buddy, they do exist!) I’m thinking, wow, you know it’s kind of cool to not have any because all the energy is focused you know, down there.  Well, this is what I tell myself.

I do have something there.  I’m not flat as a board – they just might not be that noticeable if you’re standing far away from me and your vision isn’t good.  Maybe then I could be mistaken for a man.  Back when, I used to get really thin for a period of time – I’d smoke lots of cigarettes, run, walk and ride my bike everywhere – you can do that in your twenties without keeling over.  My figure might have been described as boyish.  A woman quite a few yards away in the locker room at the gym yelled out “There’s a man in here!” as she pointed in my direction.  I have a sense of humor so I didn’t cry over it.  As a kid, the boys called me “Chester.”  But damn if I wasn’t confused when the neighborhood early-developed girl with the big ones said, “Wait, they call me “Chester.”  These little dudes needed to get their shit straight – how in the hell do you recycle an epithet like that?!

When I was eleven I was with my little friends who talked about just getting theirs after winter.  It was springtime.  My one friend — this is so sweet — she says to me, nodding, “Don’t worry, you’ll get yours too, probably after next winter…”  Well, I’m waiting.  Though I hear that there is time because sometimes in menopause they grow.  But then it would be too fucking late!

I had at one time, long ago in my youth, thought about breast implants.  I figured God didn’t program me for big titties because it would be too much for people to take, why, with me being such a nymph already – I jest!  But seriously folks, I learned not to give a damn, which is the attitude most older people have to take about shortcomings, because we’ve reluctantly accepted that we don’t have a @#*! choice anyway!  Dad told me not to get breast implants.  He said that I needed to surround myself with different types of people and to expand my mind and to be more creative about the way that I perceived myself – I really only just added that last part – because it seemed to be in the gist of what he was saying anyway.

The titty-less thing happened when I put a curse on myself.  When I was 11, I told my cousin Nay Nay that when I turned13 like she was then, mine would be bigger than hers.  Somebody shoulda tol’ me — could this not be more hilarious?!  My cousin didn’t let me live that one down for a while!  I guess my cousin could say that karma’s a bitch, but I’ve got another word to the wise for the prepubescent girls of America – okay now look this up – it’s hubris!

Subway Car Break Dancing Hate

 

Hey, I’m all for self-empowerment.  I like the mindset of the entrepreneur, especially the young entrepreneurs on the train, the ones selling candy, the comedians, those a capella guys.  At times the entertainment value of these performances leans towards the alternative — hell, I even like that tone deaf guy who bangs on the bongo with the hole in it, and that guy who sings with the two-stringed guitar that he found in the garbage.  And who says you need teeth to be a subway car performer?  The subway car break dancers, they’re the ones that I’m on the fence about.  I’m a very nervous train rider.  I have panic attacks in tight places where I’m confined for a period of time.  When I start thinking that there isn’t enough air in the car, I start hyperventilating.  And most of the cars you can’t walk through, so you’re trapped.

The break dancers, a jaunty bunch who tend to burst in on the scene suddenly, while you’re preparing to read your New Yorker.  On the A line, they generally come in on 59^th Street where the train going uptown is non-stop express all the way to 125^th Street.  So for 66 blocks, over three miles, you’re part of a captive audience.  They engage in lightening speed acrobatics to the chants and yelps of their fellow break dancers, and of course to the accompaniment of the boom box.  That screaming, the sudden movements, the loud music in the tight car — now this is enough to make me take my clothes off and go screaming up and down the aisle – for some reason claustrophobics like me think there will be more air if they take their clothes off.  Yeah, I know it doesn’t make any sense…  My neurosis, it also involves a fear of being kicked in the jaw by the one doing back flips to ‘It’s Just Begun’ by Jimmy Castor.  What am I supposed to do if he breaks my jaw with his flailing foot?  This ain’t Cirque du Soleil, but a rag tag bunch who probably don’t give too much thought about the precision of their movements.  Ah, see – I’ll bet you never thought about that one.  There are people who are amazed at the spectacle of these performers, and some who find them novel.  But I watch through fear-widened eyes.  I strain my head as far back as I can into the wall of the car, take shallow breaths, and pray for the performance to end without anybody getting kicked in the face.

King of the bums

Yay!  Spring’s here, and in spring, John comes back to live on the bench by the historical house.  I don’t know where he goes in the winter and I miss him terribly.  Once the lilac trees and tulips start blooming around the historical house, I look for him on the bench.  There are other bums out there but he’s popular.  The others are a brood of unfortunates in tattered clothes and greasy hair.  Besides, the other ones can be, I’ll just say — non-communicative – one shook his penis at me before he went to take a leak behind the bushes.  Now how rude was that?!  And the one with the pompadour, well he mostly communicates with himself.  But John knows their language and speaks to them all regularly.  John has an entourage of homeless and non-homeless people and he shares his food and liquor with bums on neighboring bench units.  He holds court and commands a certain respect.

I must say he’s rather good-looking — Latino, reddish brown colored.  He said he was gay, but that was when he was drunk out of his ass.  I get jealous when John doesn’t notice me walk by the bench where he lives because he’s talking to somebody else.  Let’s say he doesn’t say hi because he’s speaking to a pretty, well-dressed woman.  I wonder then if I’m unworthy and worry that he has a hierarchy of friends, and that I’m on the lower rung.  After all I do work a low-skilled job, and dress like a bum, uh, I mean, I don’t dress as fashionably as some of the other types with whom he chats.  Sometimes he talks to them in Spanish because he’s bilingual.  I only know one language, this one — I could kick myself for not paying attention in Ms. Pina’s Spanish class!  I calm myself, “Oh silly, he didn’t say hello because he simply didn’t see you.  It isn’t just that he prefers someone fancier.”

John’s been in a wheelchair for the last year.  His homeless son’s been pushing him around in it.  Well, he said it’s his son.  Another time when he was drunk cruising up Broadway in his wheelchair he yelled out that the guy pushing him in the chair was also gay and that he was his son.  “Hello my lovely,” he said to me cross-eyed drunk, “This is my son.  My gay son, and I love him.”  I hate it when John gets like that.  I was comforted to see that his son had come here to take care of him.  When he’s sober he always asks me what’s new and tells me to have a good day at work.  He tells me to bring an umbrella if I decide to come out later when it rains.  Sometimes we kick a little neighborhood talk.  We’ve talked about who really started that fire on 211^th Street, and when that lady who feeds all the cats in the neighborhood was hit by a UPS truck.  I used to blush terribly when he’d ask me to marry him.  When he saw that I had a boyfriend, he respectfully flipped it and asked us when the wedding would be and if he could come to it.  He was really nice to my boyfriend which I appreciated — I so wanted my boyfriend to feel welcome in the neighborhood.  John never never ever in all of the years that I’ve known him, asked me for one red cent, except for that one time.  “You know mama that I’ve never never ever in all the years that I’ve known you asked you for nothing, but this one time.”  I was touched, though very concerned about his financial trouble, so I gave him a buck.  In the back of my mind I wondered if this would put me in good with him, so that I’d never feel like I was on a lower rung of his hierarchy again, but then I reminded myself that I am a worthy, capable, albeit unilingual woman who doesn’t have to buy friendship from anybody.

Euthanasia Mobiles

 

Once this has been totally legalized, these would be a great idea.  The mobiles could be painted in bright designs, to take the stigma out of euthanasia – inside the mobile could be a party atmosphere.  We could have some with pictures of beautiful women and men surrounded by clouds, hands out, beckoning, calling those thinking of suicide to ‘come, come’, ‘you can do it.  I did!’  The truck could have a theme too, like an ice cream truck.  It’d be rolling down the street playing Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’.   The slogan would be ‘Come, let’s just put you out of all of that ‘ol misery.’

You see my biggest fear is that I’d shoot myself in the head, miss the important artery and wind up being a vegetable.  Or I’d hang myself, the rope breaks right where my brain’s been starved to the point of no return, and I’d be the drooling idiot nauseating the entire family at Thanksgiving dinner.  Auntie Barbie would have to feed me.  For some reason she’s the only one that I’d take to without writhing in protest since I’d be unable to talk.  My sister would be mad and would shove the fork into my mouth with the intent of stabbing me I’m sure.  My brother, well, he’d say, ‘She did this to herself.  Let her starve to death!”  I wouldn’t even be able to laugh at the irony of that.  Auntie Barbie’s the most sensitive of all of my mother’s sisters plus she’s a nurse.  The food would roll out of my mouth back onto my plate in a heap of mush.  Everyone’d try to be evolved about it but in reality, they’d think it was gross.  Auntie Barbie would roll her eyes at them and keep feeding me, martyr that she is.  She’d tell them that God spared me from death for some reason because he had some special purpose for me then she’d prop up my bobbling head and wipe excess saliva from the side of my mouth.  But regardless, some of my relatives, ever so quietly in the back of their head would still wish that I hadn’t missed my shot.  If you think about it, after all this was a goal that I’d sought that I hadn’t been able to achieve.  But oh well.

So you see, the mobiles would eliminate the possibility of this kind of an error.  They’d be staffed with the finest experts in the medical community.  And the mobiles would be great because they’d come right to your door.  All you’d have to do is call 1-800-U Kill Me and they’d be there lickedy split.  Because face it, most people thinking of killing themselves are too depressed to drive or to take the bus anywhere to some kind of a euthanasia center.  The mobiles would even encourage more people to kill themselves perhaps.  People who normally wouldn’t consider such a thing would entertain the idea now because it would be so darned convenient.  We could rid ourselves of all types of nuisances who need only a nudge to go through with it; the self-pitying depressives that suck the lives out of us, the ones who go around blaming others for their misfortunes; people who call you ten times a day because they can’t figure it out for themselves – you know, those people David Byrne talks about in ‘Psycho Killer’, the ones who start a conversation they can’t even finish, the ones who talk a lot, but aren’t saying anything.  What about those miserable gossips who can’t find any value in their own lives?  And then there are the ones whose looks you don’t like; people who stink; people who look at you funny; people who let their car alarms go off while they’re standing right there; people you see everyday who don’t say hello; people who don’t deserve the good fortune they’re receiving while you haven’t gotten shit that you’ve asked for…okay, okay – so I’ve gone a little off track with this last group, but you get my drift about the other ones, don’t you?