Cool Hand Harlow
11/02/2005 12:11 a.m.
If you find yourself in a discussion about movies, I have found that you really can’t impress most people with declarations like, “Cool Hand Luke was put in prison for cutting the heads off of parking meters while under the influence.” You want to end a conversation, say something like that.

You need to keep it simple. For example, it is okay to say “Cool Hand Luke was a cool movie.” Most people will agree, even when they don’t know what the hell movie you are talking about. Better still, say something like “That Adam Sandler movie breaks me up.” You are sure to be a hit.

It is ill advised to quote classic dialog like “Sayin’ it’s your job don’t make it right” or “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate” or “I’m a shakin’, boss” or “I can eat 50 hard boiled eggs in an hour,” lest your audience give you a bludgeoned fish stare.

Am I sarcastic and bitter? Absolutely. This is caused by my shrinking skull which is applying an ever increasing pressure on my big brain, a known and natural phenomenon that occurs and creates crotchetiness in the elderly.

Speaking of movies, I have a new favorite movie scene to replace the one from “Doctor Strange Love” in which Acting God Slim Pickins rides the nuclear war head like a bucking bronco, while slapping it with his Confederate Civil War hat and joyfully yelling “Yeehaw!” My new favorite scene comes from “Wings of Desire,” which I was forced to watch by Katya.

This scene involves a young girl, perhaps five years old, with coke bottle glasses and missing teeth. Someone, probably her mother, is strapping her into leg braces. She looks up at the camera (actually at the angel character in the film, as only the children can see them), and smiles the most heart-warming and heart-breaking smile. That alone is worth the price of admission.

The sweetness of that scene has left a footprint in my mushy gray brain matter. I keep seeing that little girl in my mind, her face, her expression, and each time I feel a wash of emotion for a second or two.

I really am a pussy boy.

Style-wise, I believe I best like a Punk and Rockabilly hybrid look. I like the snarl and sneer along with the do-it-yourself ethic. All in all, it suits my Bad Ass nature (Have I contradicted myself here?).

While I’m not particularly tough, I believe I could have posed and thrived quite nicely in the punk era. Even I could have successfully been a hard guy amongst such scrawny and sickly fellows as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious.

I’m not to sure about the Rockabilly scene. I think guys like Jerry Lee Lewis would have pummeled me to pulp, and I lack the mechanical gene found in most males so I could never soup up a flame emblazoned street rod (Changing the wiper blades on my Jethro Bodine Double-naught Spy Mobile recently ended in a terrible blood letting, though I most certainly know the expletives for the Rockabilly roll.).

In these, my declining years, I have taken to dressing as some kind of down and out, screwball, geezer-boy geek, which is somehow appropriate. Black novelty t-shirts with screen prints like “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” “Eraserhead,” and Charles Bukowski, combine with droopy Levis and my black and white checkered canvas shoes (and don’t forget the black wayfarers).

Needless to say, Gentleman’s Quarterly does not call.

I will say this: The absolute worst style from my lifetime, which is rapidly approaching the .5 centuries mark, is happening right now. This is the one where the young lads wear ill-fitting trousers pulled so low down on the buttocks that their old-man boxer shorts ride many inches above. What an embarrassing style. Dad was way ahead of his time. Who knew?

By the way, I just recollected a style that surpasses them all, regardless of time or place. I saw it in documentaries of a tribal people , perhaps from the Amazon basin, and not only are the ladies topless, but the gentlemen wear these fantastic, long, bamboo pecker poles strapped to their groin and extending like a massive erection right up to their eyeballs! Have you seen this? All day long, they strut around their village with these enormous symbols thrust up in phallic glory!

How I would love to live in such a society. Imagine, your humble narrator navigating the hallowed halls of Corporate America with a big old pecker pole! This is the stuff of which my dreams are made! Tomorrow I begin my campaign for a change in the dress code.

Is my development arrested? I am afraid so.

Lastly, I will end with the words of my fictional hero, Cool Hand Luke:

“Sometimes nothin’ can be a pretty cool hand.”

and Todd Rundgren:

“A handful of nothin’ is all that I need,
It contains plus and minus of everything…”


I am listening to Klaatu