Wow, so Blogstream is closing at the end of April 2011. I recently got the news when I stopped by. My visits haven't been frequent in the last couple of years, as I've been preoccupied by work matters and economic struggles as a freelancer. I also don't have the bucks for strippers anymore, and since this blog is named strippersversusdvds, it seemed problematic to keep writing on this topic...

The last time I went to a tittie bar, in July 2010, I met a very sexy girl but I decided I would just be spending money on her that I couldn't afford--so I stopped going. It's a lucky thing I stayed away, because recently and unexpectedly things have gotten financially far tougher, and the money I didn't spend on that gal has come in handy.

But who knows? I may drop in again one of these days...but I keep fighting the urge, telling myself not to throw away money on something so ephemeral.

Movies, in the form of DVDs, are NOT ephemeral. I can hold them and watch them and enjoy them over and over. I can savor the special features. The experiences I had with strippers, although fun, were more fleeting...

Ironically, even as this blog comes to a close, the DVD era seems to be ending for the general public. The Blockbuster near my house has just shuttered, like so many others across the country. I haven’t tried Netflix yet...although now that I get Turner Classic Movies since hooking up cable in late 2008, I’ve been catching up on many classics without adding to the clutter of all the books, movies, and magazines that I’ve collected over the years. Longtime readers of this blog will recall my posts about the intense experience of de-cluttering my studio apartment three years ago...

Does this mean DVDs “won” the battle over strippers for my heart and mind? Not really. If I saw a girl on a stage who really got to me--especially if she was Asian, as I seem to be totally hooked on the beauty of Asian women--I would probably be spending money on her, more than on movies, just as I did with Lily, who was my favorite stripper when I started writing this blog in 2005. Or Angela, who was a favorite a couple of years earlier until she quit dancing in 2004. I wrote about both of those beautiful women in various posts. I had good times hanging out with them, and I miss those fun, sexy evenings.

I can still see Lily's smile when I would slip a tip in the ankle strap of her shoe...she has such pretty feet...or Angela's long black hair covering my own head as she leaned over and pressed her amazing breasts on my face...

Ahhhh.....

If anything, in the last year I’ve concentrated on spending whatever extra money I have on girlie magazines, mostly from the 1950s. I’ve always loved those mags and find it very pleasurable to look at the beautiful figure photography from those days, as well as to read the articles about strippers and movie goddesses from long ago. There was a lot of good journalism and fiction in some of those magazines, make no mistake about it!

Yes, I confess I read naughty periodicals for the “articles” when I’m done perusing the pix! And I feel that if I spend twenty or thirty or even fifty dollars on a little stack of vintage girlie books from time to time, I end up not having the urge to spend a hundred or a hundred fifty dollars on a stripper's drinks and lapdances. Even for a stripper whom I really like, and would more than happily date in the "real" world. So instead, I spend dough to save dough...at least, that’s my rationale for still spending money at all when things are so tight! Maybe this is screwy, I dunno. I never pretended to be a beacon of wisdom or total psychological health. I didn't name myself "Sir Cranky" because I'm always on an even keel, in total command of myself! On the contrary, I can act pretty immature sometimes...

As far as this blog is concerned, I think I thoroughly explored the subject of dancers as I understand them. And it was fun to write about the various movies and books that I've enjoyed. Writing about personal stuff about other matters such as family relationships or catastrophic illness gave me a good outlet for stress, too, and I got kind encouragement and compassion from fellow Blogstreamers through some rough patches. But I always tried to bring my focus back to my central obsessions, strippers and DVDs. I aimed to remain true to my goal of presenting a well-rounded portrait of a guy who likes dancers, in order to dispel the stereotype that every peeler’s pal is some kind of loser or perv. Well, I am a bit of a perv...I’ve talked about some of my sexual fantasies here, nothing extreme but garden variety kinky, like role-playing. All in all, however, there was no great message or theme, just a depiction of one New York City bachelor’s life at a particular point in time--his mid-fifties. I tried to give you a sense of my friends and family, too.

I’m going to download this blog so I have a full copy of it, and re-read it again at some point in the future. Who knows, maybe I’ll find there’s enough material to assemble into a self-published book someday. If I do that, I’ll probably try to sell it myself via the Web, under the Sir Cranky moniker.

Dear readers, I hope you enjoyed this blog. Thanks to everybody for the feedback you gave me--you know who you are, if you’re still reading these ponderings. I appreciated the opportunity to look at other people's blogs and comment on them. There has been a lot of cool stuff on Blogstream, a lot of creativity and meaningful writing! Fine stories and photos and exhortations and introspection of all kinds. Thank you, Pioneer John, for making Blogstream possible--it was a great opportunity for me to get started writing on the Web! Good luck to you all.

The last two and a half weeks have been very busy. In trying to catch up financially, I've taken on a lot of freelance work. So I've been making somewhat better money again, after a solid two year slump with this recession (actually four years, since my "personal" recession began around 2006 with a sharp decline in the business I work in). I still have a good bit of credit card debt to pay off, but I am diligent about that.

But with the increasing workload, I have to let off some steam, and so I've paid a weekly visit to the stripclubs. Didn't spend much, but just enough to feel like I was having some fun. Two or three lapdances, I mean. Still, in NYC in 2010, that means spending between seventy and eighty dollars in a half hour, if you include one beer.

I thought I'd found a dancer I could see visit regularly, she certainly had the looks I like, but she disappointed me by continuing to bring up the subject of the "champagne room" after I'd made it clear that I will not go in there because I cannot afford it. (And if I could afford it, in some fiscal fairy tale, I wouldn't go in there anyway, because I think it's an overpriced waste of money.) I suppose hope springs eternal in the brains of lapdancers, but usually they get the message if you're explicit about not being a "champagne room person" and they then wisely look at the upside of your regular visits and consider your modest but regular contributions to the wads in their garters as enabling them to pay their monthly cellphone or utility bills.

When a dancer keeps trying to get me do something I have said I don't want to do, I start to think she feels I'm stupid. Maybe I look stupid (or dazed) when I'm gazing at their lovely figures, particularly if they are dancing between my legs and rubbing their breasts on my face—but if they're listening to me before and after the dancing, they should know that I understand the game, and that while I empathize with their point of view as freelance workers/independent contractors (which dancers are in New York), I also have my own agenda—and I will indulge in the nonsense required by the yearning of my gonads only to a certain financial point. In other words, I am willing to spend seventy or eighty dollars for a thrill, but not hundreds of dollars in the champagne room for a fairly identical thrill.

Did I just call lapdancing "nonsense"? Well, I guess that's what I think it really is. Nonetheless, it is pleasurable to feel the closeness of a beautiful girl rubbing up against me. The fact that most of them would not give me the time of day in the real world is a downside I prefer to forget. Instead I focus rather on the upside, the fleeting but real sensuality I can experience in the world of instant gratification that is the stripclub scene.

It's been awhile since I wrote here...I've been preoccupied, as many others, with trying to regain my financial footing in this recession. Therefore, there's less inclination to blog.

Less money for leisure too, as I try to pay off debts I incurred when I lost work last year...

However, to reward myself for my labors, I've gone over to my old favorite stripclub for a little fun three times over the last two months. I hadn't been there for quite a long time. The girls I knew greeted me with the predictable "Hello stranger" and "Where have you been?" and then told me how bad business has been for them--no doubt an unsubtle way of nudging me to spend money and thus contribute to their "rescue" as damsels in monetary distress. But unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, my habits of greater frugality make it harder to enjoy spending money in these joints. Only when I stopped by over on the Memorial Day weekend did I not obsess over every dollar I forked over.

I suppose if I found one really charismatic dancer, I might be tempted to forget my penny-pinching a little, but probably not...since I don't have enough money to pinch.

A pleasingly pretty blonde danced for me on all three of my recent visits, which was nice but only to a degree. I was taken by her great work on the pole, climbing up and hanging upside down with strong thighs; and she also had quite a striking look about her with long lustrous hair. But after a few lapdances her moves began to seem somewhat mechanical and I got bored. Similar to when you read two or three novels by authors who are limited by their predictable formulas, whose tricks and devices become overly familiar--you're not inclined to keep seeking out more of their books. A lapdance is a kind of narrative, too, and the great dancers know how to throw little twists and turns into the ritual to make it seem reasonably fresh each time. In contrast, run-of-the-mill lapdancers merely rely on their looks and the base animal magnetism that exists mindlessly between men and women. That's okay for short-term gain, but to hook a long-time customer is a far more difficult task, especially to snag someone like myself who is an aficionado of dancers, who appreciates their art in its many possible dimensions--physical, psychological, erotic. Unfairly or not, I guess I seek a kind of platonic courtesan in the dancers I become most friendly with--platonic because I don't have sex with them, but courtesan because I like them to fulfill all the classic non-sexual functions of a lively paid companion--giving me warmth, conversation, and a sense of connection, however fleeting.

It's very rainy out tonight, a cold wet rain. I've stayed inside working part of the day, and surfing online. Talked to my sister in Chicago for a little while, just to let off steam about various work pressures. I try to be like Gary Cooper's movie characters, and just keep things low key if not bottled up, but it doesn't work for me and my more impassioned Romanian-Russian-Jewish temperament. But I wish I could be a stoic Westerner.

These days have been very stressful...as a freelancer, I'm finding that money is coming in slower than ever before, and I'm trying to adjust to a more constant level of anxiety than I had to experience when my work was more regular. As I've explained in previous posts, I recently lost a steady freelance gig I had for over sixteen years.

I wonder if stress starts to affect your memory? Sometimes my mind seems to go blank, and I can't think of what to do next, even though I have plenty I could do.

Like my tax prep. Or figure out how much I'm going to shift money from my savings account to my checking account to pay my expenses since my checks for freelance work are coming slower and slower.

I find that financial stress takes the zest out of everything. I watch movies, but my mind is always feeling I should be working instead, or figuring out some scheme to get more dough. Sometimes I don't feel like eating. Other times I waste hours on the Internet, surfing and reading until my eyes hurt. There's always some bit of esoteric knowledge or exotic beauty that captures my attention online.

The old battle between which I preferred more, strippers or DVDs, seems quaint. I don't think I could enjoy a strip club right now, unless of course the most beautiful girl of the Doris Day type was there and lavished her attention on me and gave me free lapdances and bought all my drinks!

DVD-wise, I have plenty of movies to watch, but feel too distracted to put them on the machine. Although I will sometimes turn on Turner Classic Movies and sit there and watch whatever's on for awhile.

I like listening to Robert Osborne introduce the movies on that channel. He's a very personable host, full of affection for the subject. I'm sorry I didn't get cable years earlier, so I could have enjoyed him all along. Might have made the last decade better.

Watched that new show "How To Make It In America" on HBO; it's pretty good, although the two main twentysomething characters seem like they're never going to get their shit together and achieve something. The plot is about how they're trying to hustle deals and make it big in the modern Manhattan of hot models, sexy parties, and the interconnected art and fashion scene. The characters' lack of focus in their strivings brings back melancholy memories for me of my own twenties, when I and my actor and writer friends seemed to work without strong plans on how to properly build our careers. Still, the actor Bryan Greenberg, who plays Ben Epstein, has a memorable quality about him; a kind of handsome urban Jewish melancholy not unlike that of John Garfield's so many years ago, if less rough-hewn and street-tough. I'll keep watching, but I have a feeling it's going to get grim. But that's okay, because Garfield's movies didn't always end on an upbeat, and maybe they were more memorable for it.

Well, here it is New Year's Eve again. Almost 2010! It's hard to believe Y2K was ten years ago, with all those fears that our technology would grind to a halt with the beginning of the 21st century. I remember I stocked up on extra bottled water, sandwich fixin's, and took an extra C-note out of the bank just in case ATMs stopped working.

I stayed home that New Year's Eve, because the Times Square crowds were huge and, living in Midtown Manhattan, I'm right in the center of it. I felt kind of like a stick-in-the-mud, staying in that once-in-a-lifetime turn-of-the-century night, but even as I type these words now I can hear folks blowing horns on the street and remind myself I'm better off inside.

Nobody can accuse me of not paying my nightlife dues. I certainly spent plenty of time and money in lots of places, strip joints or otherwise, on a good number of New Year's Eves. But now I have one glass of wine and one beer with dinner, as I did tonight, and I'm ready to fall asleep.

The movie I watched on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1999, was The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I think in hindsight that it was a good choice. Because if anything, people have shrunk (metaphorically) over the last ten years, becoming ever more obviously powerless pawns in the hands of both the ultra-wealthy and the politically connected, as well as all the other forces in this world that seem to have made life much more of a struggle. I think if people pursue their entertainments and diversions now with an even greater intensity, it's because their despair at feeling like they matter in the scheme of things has never been greater. It feels like we live in a time of almost unending bullshit, and people really need their fun to relax their weary brains. Whether it's with sports or lapdances or movies or iTunes, we incredible shrinking people need to chill.

Maybe I shouldn't have had Triscuits and Swiss cheese for dinner tonight. I was going to take out some Chinese, but the crowds outside were insane and I knew I would have trouble getting back to my apartment. So I went back upstairs, got out the crackers, cheese, and a shot glass of Paul Masson Rose (yes, I like to drink cheap wine out of a shot glass) and a can of Natural Ice, and watched a 1937 movie with a pre-famous Rita Hayworth called Paid to Dance, about government agents bringing down the "dance hall racket." Not a great movie, but I love anything about the history of sleaze entertainment. Someday I'll have to write here about my experiences in the last sleazy dance halls in Times Square. Or maybe I already did? I guess this blog could use an index right about now.

I had the notion of maybe going out to the stripclub and getting a lapdance at midnight, as a way of bringing the New Year in with something pleasant. This has been a rough year, and I thought maybe a lapdance at the stroke of twelve would bring me good luck. But one time when I went out to the club on New Year's Eve, the girl I was hanging out with left me just a few minutes before midnight; the reason she did that was because of a superstition of her native country which was that whomever you spent midnight with on New Year's Eve would be in your life the coming year. I guess she didn't like me enough to risk that.

Well, we'll see. I'm drinking some water now to wake up from the effects of beer and wine, and sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop, one of the great candies of my Baby Boomer childhood. Maybe if I feel adventurous, I'll go out and get that dance. I have my coupon for free admission at the ready.

Happy 2010 to everyone, and especially to my pal Sid, with whom I chatted early this evening and who reminded me I've been neglecting this blog! I guess I've just been more clammed-up than usual.

Yours in curmudgeonry,
Sir Cranky