A Man and a Woman's Movie

Didn't plan anything for tonight?  You do know it's Valentine's Day? Looking for last minute ideas?  I've been served up a mountain of dross from hacks pitching everything from edible dark chocolate panties to  red suede Valentine Uggs.  Along the way I secured this not at all surprising nugget: 10% of the under 25 crowd would interrupt sex with their partner to check a text message.

I grew up with this 1966 soundtrack playing in the house so despite the, "...whaba-dhabba-dhap"  chorus that might seem so dated to you... the music still grabs me by the gonads and my heart.  I understand it does the same for some women. "Twitchy" is an expression I seem to remember. A Man and a Woman is available to rent and buy on iTunes. I can't find the original soundtrack but I'll keep looking and report back if found.

The film, which I first saw in 1972 at the Flick movie theater in Colorado Springs, has a little bit of everything.  Car crashes, stunt men, Samba, French countryside, cigarettes and Anouk Aimée.  It and she would leave a helluva impression -- Mostly, the importance of  understatement and restraint despite my short attention span.   Everything is about mood and the mood is a love story told very slowly and with death everywhere. Even in bed. It takes its time.  Just like you should take yours tonight.  Especially if this is your first viewing. 

Order this on your iPad, grab a bottle of something with bubbles, order in some Chinese dumplings and see what happens.  By the way, you might want to surprise her with a shearling coat.  A shearling coat and this movie could set you up for the rest of the year... but only if you put the phone away. 

Esquire's Subliminal Seduction

When I was 12, I had a cousin who was a golf pro, somewhere on Hilton Head Island. He drove a white Porsche 912 (he wasn't that good of a golf pro) and was dating more women than James Bond.  I worshiped him. As an only child his parents kept his bedroom, just as he left it, sometime in his early 20s. Whenever we'd visit, I was lucky enough to get his room and his room taught me a lot.

A giant plastic bottle of VAT 69, holding what must have been over $299 worth of pennies, sat on the corner of a desk with a piece of glass covering snap shots of girl friends. Steel drum albums from the Carribean waited for me under bookshelves filled with paperbacks, a few dirty,  and piles of Esquire magazines.

I would sit on the edge of my cousin's bed and stare at the Esquire pages of adults living out their happening lives as steel drums danced from a Marantz receiver.  Booze ads were everywhere.  Large breasted women were everywhere. And everywhere people in Esquire smoked.  20 years later my ex-wife would rightly observe that my idea of being a man was limited to smoking, drinking and breasts.  She wrongly attributed this to Playboy. It was Esquire and... I've always been a leg man.

When I look back at old issues of Esquire, I see where my idea of manhood originated.  Those  old Esquires, smelling of dusty years that make me sneeze, still grab the 12 year old in me --still unsure of being a man.  Of having paid the right dues, made the just sacrifices and fought the good fights to hold  onto my character.   This'll  be my 55th new year.  I still don't think I write well. I know I can't balance a check book. I have no discipline.  There's an awful lot I know I can't do.

But when I look at the January 2013 issue of Esquire  -  I'm reminded of who I am. Sure, most of the smoking is gone but the booze ads are still there as are the large breast-extruded actresses who offer up what they find attractive in a man.  Happily, it's always for sale but I ain't buyin' anymore.  A watch isn't going to define me. Neither is the scotch I drink, the tobacco I smoke or pictures of girl friends under glass.

Having said all that -- I have no idea why I just bought a bottle of Old Crow. I should'a bought the White Horse.

Belgians...

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