Your Source for 'Ff'lo

Found myself tonight with no Netflix in the house & the only library DVD used up & the gift VCR spitting out the tape (so no gift Celebrity Poker tape tonight) & a bowl of noodles in a mixed-mushroom bechamel sauce I'd wanted to eat in front of moving pictures. So there was the copy of Desert Hearts I bought a good while ago. I watched the director's commentary, which was pretty dull as those things go (she talks a great deal of it about fundraising for the film, which is okay and all, but enough is enough), and the trailer, and now I want to watch the movie through again one of these nights. Even though I've probably seen it 5 times on video by now.

I remember being excited about going to see it when it came out ('86). Went with a handful of folk to a theater in DC we had to search for --- the West End something? --- and I seem to remember we all liked it. I know this baby dyke did. (Baby bi-? Not as pithy, fer sure.) I think I'd heard ahead of time that it had a sex scene that took place in broad daylight with actual sound, and in which you could maybe even figure out pretty much what the women were up to, wonder of wonders. Stevie called the film Desert Dykes, and that's remained my affectionate nickname for it ever since.

On one hand I chuckle at how bold and "out there" the movie seemed at the time; on the other hand, I mourn that the flood of lezbo flicks since has slowed to a trickle, if that. But it was the beginning of something. Some spell of dyke cinema. And I was more than willing to look past a few moments of awkward screen acting and forced dialogue to buy into the picture. Plus the setting (in time & place) was great to be in, completely apart from the lesbian element. That kitchy cowboy decor stuff I do dig. The casino interiors, too, and the exteriors... Transport ya, they do. Or me, anyway. And the songs worked so well in it. (That's one interesting thing the commentary reveals: in the end the rights to the music cost a full quarter of the movie's budget.) Some of the tunes: "Leavin' On Your Mind" -- Patsy Cline
"Rave On" -- Buddy Holly
"Get Rhythm" -- Johnny Cash
"Blue Moon" -- Elvis P
"Be Bop A Lula" -- Gene Vincent
"Wondering" -- Webb Pierce
"Crazy" -- Patsy Cline
"He'll Have To Go" -- Jim Reeves
"Old Cape Cod" -- The McGuire Sisters
"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" -- Kitty Wells
"Cry" -- Johnnie Ray
"I Wished On the Moon" -- Ella
It's no deep analysis, nor even a well put-together reminiscence, but that's a little of what I'm thinking about that movie tonight.

     

Let it snow, indeed.

I cashed in $7.40 worth of bottles and cans at Joe Hiller's tonight. He's decided to let the bloody Salvation Army stand a wage worker outside next to one of those kettles ringing a bell, dammit. Now it's just Trader Joe's and maybe the Whole Paycheck where ya don't have to walk by those mutherfuckin queer-haters. (Don't pardon my French.) Okay, I should say, to walk by those workers representing and collecting money for those mutherfuckin queer-haters. Better?

Anyway, in there I ran into two fellow MRers (MRsians?), also stockin' up before the storm. Took my time gleaning my various ingredients---yes, mostly ingredients, not so much stuff already cooked and frozen in plastic-covered plastic then boxed. I'm imagining being snowbound, after all, with time and psychic space to cook. Among my gleanings were some cheap criminis and last-minute-brainstorm sour cream. (Any guesses where I'm going with that? Stay tuned.) I drove home, lifted the windshield wipers to ready-for-snow position, and carried everything inside, including enough kitty food we can hole up here for a good long time.

Did up the few dishes (so nice to have few to do up) and started cooking, with Dinah Washington and Ella on shuffle in the living room. It was warm in the kitchen before long---thus the topless chef. The dish in progress? Third Generation American's Improvisational Instinctual Stroganoff. Winged it all the way, and it came out purty good, even with unconventional noodles for the dish---little tight corkscrews, the last of the pastas in ex-Gran(d)ma-out-law Edna "Peg" Rider's gift package of almost two years ago now.

Wonder what my Russian great-grandparents would think of my cooking tonight. I always presume I'd meet with naught but contempt in the eyes of most of my dead ancestors. But perhaps they'd be sympathetic with me on some level. Maybe at least they'd like me thinking of them, and wondering about their knock-off stroganoff. "Stroga-knock-off?"


Later I watched the rest of Clash By Night, 1952, with Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, and Marilyn Monroe. Noir-y, but not exactly. Atmospheric, for sure, but not in the usual noir way. Fritz Lang. I honestly didn't know where it was going, and that was good. Found myself, moreover, unsure of which way to root: that the selfish wild-card people who callously blaze paths of destruction through other people's lives are hopelessy so and can never reform, or that they aren't, necessarily, and could/might/may.

Like, think of that (uncomfortably physically violent but) compelling scene in All About Eve in which Addison DeWitt gets harshly direct with the eponymous Miss Harrington, telling her (in his disturbingly dominant/patronizing way) how they're alike, and (basically) scum, and that they thus belong together. And then he calls her on her shit big-time, in brutally (but beautifully cut-to-it) specific detail. The K**** K***ss moment, I could call it, after the woman who taught me what I needed to know to understand Eve.

In that movie, Addison's right; those two are hopelessly selfishly compulsive and wanton. I won't say what goes down in this movie, in case anybody's still reading at this point & might want to see it. But I remain ambivalent. What do I believe? I want to believe there can be redemption, as you might guess. That's the sucker I am. But sometimes I let myself root for come-uppance, such as Eve is destined for, and I enjoy the thought of it, in a base kind of way. I think I do believe that those karmic consequences come about, if only in ways the offenders may never consciously have to admit. Now whether there can be redemption without, say, the devil in question going into a 12-step program or something dramatic like that, I really don't know. It would take tremendous emotional courage, that's for sure.


The snow's letting up a bit. But the sky's still shrouded with it, and the streetlight looks sepia yellow with all that white whiteness around.

Taking the trash out tonight, I met a neighborhood lesbian and her daughter. The woman had heard that a couple of women had moved in to this house. She gave me a little run-down of known lesbians over on her block. It was cool! I like especially when she went to inquire about my "woman friend," coming up with those words in that awkward moment in which one gives one's best stab at not offending the lesbian you've just met, who may think "gay" is a radical adjective to apply to herself. I don't know what it was about my response that made her think the L word would be okay, but after that she did.

Now to tend to fantasy baseball draft picks. Yes, it's that season: a young woman-friend's thoughts turn to baseball. . .