The Bicycle Thief (1949) The feeling is like bobbing in the surf. When the next wave comes on, you feel the surge as you are tossed to the top, lifted a bit so that you can try to shout to your friends, those lifeguards on the beach, and your lovers, sunning themselves in the sand. But they either can’t or won’t look your way and you are soon crashing back into the bottom ass over head, sucking the brine in thru mouth and nose. Certainly at this point two things are true; you know who your friends are. There is a patent difference between those who care and those who have only been paying you lip-service. Friends will wade out and will carry you ashore; buoy your sinking carcass. To the rest, safely on the beach, you are a burden; you call and they look away, somehow afraid you can drag them under too. Most people fall into the latter camp. Don’t be surprised at who isn’t running out into the waves with a life preserver, slow-motion style. You’ll find very few Hasselhoffs on the beach when you need’em. The second true thing is after the first mouthful of seawater, you don’t want help that much anyway. The ocean is nothing if not full and complete and non-judgmental… Frank pauses in this diatribe, abandons his dwindling audience in the hotel lobby as a young lady of the variety that can only be described as “easy” staggers into view. She just wants some food and to be told she’s pretty and at this moment she’s the prettiest gal in the world. Her boyfriend, she says has torn off from the place drunk in his 2006 Ford Expedition. She touches Frank on the elbow, not a lot but more than anybody else in a long time. And Frank knows that if makes some cheap, sleazy move, she’d be his til boyfriend comes a-weaving on home, probably with a police escort. Its one of those times that hangs heavy and pregnant in the air, where a guy knows he just has to ask. A few minutes in the back room may be just another meaningless stab back at boyfriend for her, payback for leaving, but it may just be salvation for Frank. She asks him the necessary prerequisites; does he have a job? How much does he make? When is he planning on leaving here? He furnishes her with muffins and a cigarette and refrains from telling her that the best way to get her revenge is to give a stranger a blow job in the men’s restroom. Criterion is once again re-releasing an over-priced classic, Vittorio DeSica’s The Bicycle Thief (1949). DeSica is the king of Italian post-war realism and though Frank Trautman prefers the cinematography of Two Women (1960) and the knee-jerk pathos of Umberto D. (1952), The Bicycle Thief is an important film, and probably the one you’ve had to watch in most Cinema 101 courses. There’s plenty of pathos here, too. An out-of-work Italian family man gets a reprieve in the form of a gig putting up posters. Unfortunately, his bike gets stolen, making the job impossible to do. Well, much has been made of the film and Frank won’t attempt to replicate, not when Ford Expedition has just breezed back in and scooped up the girl. She was pudgy and had cum stains on her “USA: Love it or Leave it” T-shirt anyway. And there’s a war on and you can watch it on the TV hung over the breakfast bar. And Frank is dizzy because it’s been nothing but cigarettes and Old Crow for three days now. Long Way Home Well I stumbled in the darkness I'm lost and alone Though I said I'd go before us And show the way back home Is there a light up ahead? I can't hold on very long Forgive me pretty baby but I always take the long way home Money's just something you throw Off the back of a train Got a handful of lightening A hat full of rain And I know that I said I'd never do it again And I love you pretty baby but I always take the long way home I put food on the table And a roof overhead But I'd trade it all tomorrow For the highway instead Watch your back if I should tell you Loves the only thing I've ever known One thing for sure pretty baby I always take the long way home You know I love you baby More than the whole wide world You are my woman I know you are my pearl Let's go out past the party lights We can finally be alone Come with me and we can take the long way home Come with me, together we can take the long way home Come with me, together we can take the long way home ~~Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan 2002

Der Untergang (2004) Frank is getting low now... For an intimate portrait of the last days spent by Hitler in his bunker, check out the all around exquisite but disturbing Downfall (Hirschbiegel 2004) (Sony 8/02/05).

Oliver Twist (2005) New Years Morning in Hampton

The cemetery caretaker has a white VW Beetle and it is parked out under the gardenias, improbably still in bloom. Gardenias were named not because they grow in a garden, but after Scottish naturalist Alexander Garden.

A drunk teen wrecked his Dodge Stratus up on Mullberry and reported it stolen. "Stratus" is used to describe flat, featureless clouds of low altitude varying in colour from dark gray to nearly white. The Dodge Stratus additionally comes in Inferno Red and Midnight Blue Pearl.

The Liberty Tax Center mascot at the corner of Coliseum Drive and 14th collapsed dropping her signboard and torch into the morning traffic and sending her crown clattering into the sanitary sewer. Acute myocardial infarction is commonly known as a heart attack; it occurs when the blood supply to a part of the heart is interrupted causing an oxygen shortage that damages or kills heart tissue. It is the leading cause of death all over the world. And the prostitutes leaving Infinitys at 2 AM are able to go out back and around into the adjoining Travelers Inn to duck out of the early morning mist. They can sneak past the night auditor when he gets up for a smoke or to fold linen. They’re safe to crash on the second floor lobby til they open the breakfast bar at 7. They aren’t considered prostitutes if not paid out right for sex. Try bringing groceries. It works for your wife. As the sun comes up with its toothy unnerving snarl, the geese scatter from the broken striped parking lot of the Odd Lots. They don’t know where to land since they put up the convention center or the movie theatre or the new highway interchange or the mega stores on Power Plant. Canada Geese choose their mate at the age of two. Most couples stay together all of their lives. In the human species, material culture has damped the effects of environmental conditions on differing reproductive rates. Thus free, “cultural selection” dictates that mates are chosen based on prominent social tastes and mores. These include economic or prestige status, and current standards of beauty. Those deemed inadequate by the herd generally do not mate, except in extreme circumstances, including advanced states of intoxication, desperation and poverty. Flunitrazepam, formerly marketed under the trade name Rohypnol, is a drug which is a benzodiazepine derivative. It has powerful sedative, anxiolytic, and skeletal muscle relaxant properties. It has been wrongly used by the disaffected members of the human species to increase instances of copulation. Frank squashes a Lucky Strike and polishes off a Yuengling as the new day comes. He is off from work for a good 23 hrs. and will attempt to make the most of it. Mostly that will entail watching his kitten Junior Bonner bat at the daddy longlegs leaving his fiber in the screen mesh outside the patio door. He’ll also sew a button on his faded RedHeads. Frank is a Hanged Man. a simple man. He goes to work; just do his job and come home. Seven days a week. And after that, most nights does more work then. If he is meek all day it is for no more reason than in today’s litigious society anything you say can and will be used against you. It happens; it has happened before; it will happen again. Those who are unliked are often at risk, and it is a slippery slope. And he is at best, single and unliked. Brutish, ugly, without a woman’s refinements. Again, it is a slippery slope. Puccini speaks to him. Also Glen Fry. Puccini was a nineteenth and twentieth century composer of operas. Fry is an twentieth and twenty-first century composer of “country rock.” Frank is often busted broke. Working to pay for a car so to be able to go to work. Sunk by thousands of bucks in student loans for a $15 dollar a week cost of living increase, just enough to cover the $60 increase in monthly rent. Surely to keep things at status quo one would hope, but it is a slippery slope. And if he drinks and smokes too much, it is because of all above. He does so only when lonely and that means all the time. But a simple man, going to work, doing the job.

Frank's goal for the new year is either to shoot a new film or himself in the head. And he wishes his best to those that will help him do either.

Oliver Twist (1839) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is a novel about a juvenile pickpocket that makes it out of poverty. It was improbably translated at least 23 times into film, the most recent and improbable of which was by Roman Polanski (1933-present), a statutory rapist. The film is beautifully done, as are all of Polanski's films. Sets, actors, music, photography, effects and costumes are all invariably excellent as is Ben Kinglsey’s (Sexy Beast; Glazer 2000) portrayal of Fagin. It’s all so perfect that it’s perfectly dull. “Three-Chopt” is a common name given to roads in Virginia. Some early colonial roads were marked by three notches in a tree, indicating that they were laid in during the reign of King George III (1860-1820). There’s a sign up on Three-Chopt Road just off West Merc that says “Dead End,” but if you brave it, press on, and ignore the damning signs, it surely takes through the suburbs and out to the Interstate. That’s just one of many ways out of this god-damn town. Take it, brother. It’s a new day. Have some more.