The basic queer essence of Calamity Jane, in pictures. 

Since watching Casablanca, I've had a yearning for old films, especially sexist old films.  I think it's quaint how mindless women were portrayed and handled and passed about in old movies.  I don't support that paradigm, mind you, and I'm not going to go into a Women's Studies analysis of it.  

No, the pleasure I derive from it is "haha, you wouldn't be able to get away with that today!" Anything like that, dated things in films delight me.  And I'd long been meaning to watch films from The Celluloid Closet.  And what do you know, Calamity Jane manages to both be rather sexist AND queer all in one! I loved it!

A cute butch-femme domestic montage ("A Woman's Touch") and the infamous "Secret Love" (wherein Jane returns to wearing pants and sings about a love she hid and now is free), and the dressing room scene where Jane pins Katie to a wall, eagerly offering to help her undress.  And astounded by her prettiness. 

It's a cute little musical aside from all of the camp, anyway.  I didn't find the Lieutenant character redeeming or interesting at all, which shocked me because I have a natural bias for pretty men types in tidy uniforms.  In fact, I would have been happy if he'd been written out of the story entirely.  Which would kill the story, admittedly, you'd have no one for Katie to marry except for Jane and Bill, and the west unfortunately wasn't so wild back then.  

I want to watch a lot of old movies.  I want to watch a Doris Day and Rock Hudson flick, but Pillow Talk doesn't look very interesting.  A very darling friend of mine has recommended I watch Double Indemnity.  

Deep down, I suppose I'm just a little wistful and sad.  And if I look back into an older, more innocent imaginary world, then maybe I'll find my own innocence looking forward.  

I think that for writers, there needs to either be a veil of deliciously florid dishonesty or a punch in the face of brutal chair-leg of truth honesty.  Perhaps it's the bipolar speaking, but you're either Oscar Wilde or Hunter S. Thompson.  And I'm working on a book at the moment, that's dense and harsh and what I imagine would happen if Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs got drunk together one night, traded stories, shot the shit, and then topped off the whole venture by vomiting into a blender; this book is their crude rejected smoothie.  It's the closest thing I've written to biography, and so far,cannibalbeets ,snipervolk , andthe__seeker have made appearances in it -- all under aliases, except for Sevastian, because he's the kind of gentleman whose name I desperately want to get out there.  I do adore him after all.  

Still reading Tropic of Cancer.  Recently liking the pseudonym "the Artist Formerly Known."  Mdme. Nouvelle has to step into the scene this summer and make her debut as a personality.  

Monday, I was contemplating the possibility that I might die.  Like, that I might be dead instead of writing this, due to a bad dietary decision.  I didn't eat for 48 hours, and hardly drank anything out of terror and discomfort.  I managed a bowl of soup finally, a few hours ago, and a can of tea over the course of the day... After surviving such an experience, instead of bliss or relief, I am overcome with a very cold numbness. My body is still cold, the way it was when I was ill, but I am not shaking or sluggish anymore.  And with that lack of urgency, I've decided I am going to watch a lot of movies for a while; it'll be nice to get away from the written word for a bit.  I still think I might be internally bleeding a bit.  If I am awake tomorrow morning, I might go see a doctor just to get the whole ordeal prescribed off.  I think this numbness is survival instinct kicking in -- you can't be frantic and emotional when you're an animal scraping moment by moment to continue living in a brutal condition.  Not that I am, mind you, but I think I've fooled my body into believing such. 

Movies! I've downloaded:
The Girlfriend Experience
Moliere
The Mechanic
The Saddest Music in the World.

I'm contemplating watching Skin Deep, but why bother when I've already watched Californication for two seasons? 

Regarding Vegas, I've made up my mind that one way or another, I'm going to get out there next month, per AT LEAST one benefactor.  It's amusing to think... how this might work out.  What strange situations can I get us all into? Instead of a car full of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers, a trunk full of corsets, cameras, stripper heels and...

Problematic; this numb survival state, it's almost tempting to put myself in grave peril all over again.  I don't want to bleed inside or outside in particular, but this current state of mind... I know for a fact that if I was in danger at all, I'd be able to handle it perfectly rationally.  Perfectly.  And that's almost a challenge, to see what kind of bullshit I can put myself through and survive with a cool head.  Fortunately, also rationally, I realize that's a very idiotic idea to begin with.  

I want to show my newest benefactor All About My Mother -- I think she'd enjoy a film like that.  I just recalled, as well, Maria Full of Grace, and by grace, that movie means cocaine.  I don't recall exactly why I watched a movie like that... but I'm sure that it was when that lovely independent theater house was open locally and my mother was on a foreign film kick and would watch ANYTHING with subtitles.  That was a harsh and horrifying film.  I liked it, though, enough to contemplate watching it all over again.  I'm also downloading Oldboy, so I can yell at my roommate to stop being so lazy that he misses out on like, the coolest film ever.  

In other news, I don't care much for Will Smith as a performer; he's too clean cut and safe, but... as a person, he's kind of really neat, and I'd like to meet him.