It was my last workday off for this grand vacation, and I sensed some sadness creeping toward me. Vanquished it with several peanut butter sandwiches, before running a few errands:
2-5. Just more errands you couldn’t possibly care about and I barely do.
On errand #4, though, it was a challenge not laughing out loud when a man on Muni tapped his girlfriend or wife on the shoulder, pointed at a McDonald’s out the window, and suggested cheerfully — like he’s a commercial — “Let’s eat at McDonald’s!” She smiled enormously and rang the bus-bell, and they happily toddled off and ate McFood for McLunch.
It’s best not to judge, and I tried not to ... but didn't try very hard. I've eaten McD or Burger King thousands of times, and might tomorrow — they both have factories in my neighborhood, and sometimes I’m too lazy to make a sandwich at home. But it's something else again, something space-alien weird if you ask me, to be so gol-durn happy about it.
And we were on the 14 bus, rolling through San Francisco's Mission District, past at least a hundred terrific little burrito places, Chinese take-outs, and family-run burgeramas. With all that, I can't even half-understand the joy in that man’s voice when he said, “Let’s eat at McDonald’s!”
♦ ♦ ♦
I ate up a fine double feature at the Roxie tonight.
The Strip (1951) is hip to the beat on the music scene, daddy-O, along L.A.’s Sunset Strip. Louis Armstrong sings a song, but of course he’s just a background player in a band with such greats as Mickey Rooney and William Demerast (Uncle Charlie on My Three Sons). Rooney plays a drummer (yeah, right) who gets mixed up with the mob.
Noir it’s not, because Rooney is too cherubic to be believable with a dark side, but it’s fun. Take a look at that gorgeous Marilyn Monroe lookalike hatcheck girl, who keeps getting brushed off by Rooney all through the movie.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is as cynical as I am, with dazzling pricksmanship by Tony Curtis as a smart-and-sour PR man, and Burt Lancaster as a back-stabbing big-city newspaper columnist. This one has buckets of witty quips, lies, half-truths and more lies, setups, put-downs, and still more lies, in a world where everybody wants something and anybody will stop at nothing to get it, whatever it is — just like life, only life doesn’t have such a smartass script.
It’s a marvelous movie, the three-cherry slot machine winner of the week. With the possible exception of Ace in the Hole, I’ve never seen a movie so acerbic. Sweet Smell plays in Berkeley next month, and I already want to see it again.
From Pathetic Life #7
Friday, December 2, 1994
This
is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago,
called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but
might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting
things, so parental guidance is advised.
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