First day of Spring

I don’t like winter. There’s no other way to put it. The cold numbs my brain. The grayness outside, the low leaden clouds, the cold rain, as cold as if the sky was melting ice, falling to earth bit by icy bit, drains my will. Winter is a great annual unwanted parenthesis in my life.

But springtime…well, that’s a whole other thing. A realm of different colors, smells and tastes. It is a time of activity. Just as in soon to come summer, even idleness is an activity in itself. The brain synapses begin firing like out-of-control neural bombs, authentic fireworks of ideas daring me to give them form. In rest, inner restlessness.

The image above, culled from a well known image bank, has been used for several ends. If I remember correctly, I saw it in an advertisement for an insurance company. But that is irrelevant. For it speaks of springtime, inner calm, sublime beauty, quite eroticism.

Today is the first day when the weather outside is really hot, with a balmy breeze gently rocking the cradle of this newborn Spring. And I feel like that image draws me into the inner realm where the gentle erotic ghosts of springtimes past still roam. And I am there, dancing among them, while the sun shines down on a pair of beautiful legs.

Face of an Angel

The face of an Angel. The body of a sinner. It doesn’t matter that she’s the villain of this particular episode of BONES (2005-2017), although one just finds that out in the end. This is, after all, a nicely done whodunit-procedural-crime-series. And it doesn’t matter that I give this info up ahead. One needs not be particularly attentive to the intricacies of plot structure to figure it out when one first catches a look of Lena Brodsky (then Emily Foxler, actually Emily Baldoni).

Her manner is all professionalism, and yet conveys some insecurity. Her Ukranian accent (how refreshing that this was done prior to the 2022 Russian invasion, when Ukranians could still be villains, and not just washed-up saints), or what passes for it in TV-land, makes her voice oh so sexy and as inviting as those deliciously pouty lips and those clear grey-green eyes. And those long, long legs… they just make you wonder… Can someone with legs like these be so innocent as those sweet big eyes imply? Can someone so hot really feel even a little insecurity? Or is it just a mask? A way of allay suspicion, just as the bejeweled belly of a black-widow spider makes it look just an object of natural beauty?

Some women are just like that. They look so sweet and so innocent, they makes us want to do things for them. And to them. And if you fool yourself, even for a tiny moment, that you’re on top of things, they’ll bite your head right off.

Summertime and guns

I like the barrenness of this beautiful film poster for 1988’s BACKFIRE. I like the way the paucity of information fires up the feverish search for meaning in a thunderstorm of firing synapses. I like the way its emptiness invites us to pour our feelings into it.

It gives us nothing, as if it has nothing to give away. There’s only color, and light, and shadow, and a pair of beautiful leg, and a gun. And us. Mesmerized. There’s no place to speak of. Just surfaces. Somehow I think of a beach house. And of a summer morning. Maybe it’s the way the light pours in from left side that makes me think if that shadow is that of an open door. A door that opens onto the beach, onto the ocean. If so, his she leaving the house? Is she waiting for someone to come? Is someone lying behind her on a rumpled bed with light linen sheets, in a pool of blood? Blood, yes. Red is the color we don’t see on the poster but as a flimsy trim around the film title. But that’s the red of burning embers. It speaks of passion, of sweaty sex. The idea of blood comes from the huge gun on the woman’s slender, elegant, left hand. Somehow one feels the imminence of something drastic. A crime, perhaps. Is she the perpetrator? Is she about to become the perpetrator?

And who is she? We don’t know. We see only those long, firm and sexy legs. Are they Karen Allen’s? Are they the same shapely legs we saw dangling above the Well of Souls in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)? It doesn’t matter, for that is just the actress playing the mysterious woman whose light summer dress the cool summer breeze – a sea breeze, perhaps, coming through the window above the blood-soaked bed? – is pulling aside to allow us to ogle. Those legs. Those enticing legs, so relaxed. No, if there is a crime, the deed has already been done. And, again, somehow, one feels she’s the culprit. Those legs, so perfect, suddenly bring to mind images of a slim anklet, and other mesmerizing legs, those of Barbara Stanwyck as the primordial femme fatale in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944). Surely, that’s what our girl must be. A femme fatale. A killer. A man eater.

And yet, all that blue, all that sense of a luminous morning seem to want us to dispel the nightmare. That light, that summer dress, those naked legs, I don’t know why, makes me think of my favorite of all Edward Hopper’s paintings, 1943’s Summertime. It's as if they are the same girl; perhaps some kind of girls find themselves in the same situation, facing the same choices, having to overcome the same adversities, throughout time. In Hopper's painting, there’s also a wondrous summer morning, awash with light. A curtain flutters on an open window, just like the skirt of our unknown woman’s summer dress. Also, in Hopper’s, there’s a girl with a half-bent leg and a summer dress, a light seethrough summer dress that also reveals much of the girl’s legs. And she is there waiting for someone (or maybe just leaving the building where a similar drama has played itself out?). Her left hand is hidden from view. And one wonders, is she holding a gun? Has there been a crime? Is she the culprit? I love that painting. The paucity of information fires up the feverish search…

Ghosts of Summers Past

Back in the nineties, I enjoyed staying up well into the night, just writing. I used to tell myself that it was the sound of the world asleep that helped the ideas flow. But there is something more to it. The sense of going against the grain of society, just like a modern day vampire. It adds a frisson all its own. For at night, one becomes someone else entirely. Even if only inside one’s mind.

The light of day brings clarity. It shines on one’s limitations, brings forth the smallest imperfections; it draws you inwards, as the world presses down on your…hesitation. Yes. One hesitates a lot more during the day hours. Things are less certain. The clarity of form, breeds insecurity about intent. Can you reach what you desire? If so, will it live up to your expectations?

Somehow you withdraw when life proves willing. Again, you feel insecure. Unsure about making the choice, taking the step, accepting the risk. Again, yes, you hesitate. You fear to miss the right choice of words, to provoke the careful filigree to dissolve in a hapless mess. You fear failure.  

Oh, but at night. The whole world changes. Working at night, especially in those hot summer nights when the sweat runs over your skin on the wee hours of the night, like a cool blanket of molten lava pouring from your erupting, feverish mind, the ghosts of the day come alive. And all of life palpitates with promise.

Loosing yourself on the stillness of the air, without the merest hint of a breeze to flutter the curtains, you’re the sorcerer supreme of your all multiverse of desire. All hesitation is gone. Action seems incapable of error. Imperfection is erased, failure not a possibility. What you have denied is now yours to grasp. The stuff of your dreams is now putty in your hands.

And once day comes again, its light is no longer frightening. Hesitancy is gone. Every trembling doubt is answered with crystal clarity in the afterglow of creativity. You have beaten the blank page. You poured your dreams into the world, bereft now of insecurity, naked for all to see. Unashamed. Confident.

Such is the intensity of realisation, that you erase yourself from the picture. Your dreams have taken form and, when morning comes, they’re all that remains. Like ghosts of hot summer nights.  

Legs can speak for themselves

Until Martin Scorsese made Cybill Shepherd slow-walk through a crowded room in TAXI DRIVER (1976), moving like a black hole of appeal that drew in everybody's attention, if you wanted press on the viewer the allure of a female character you panned your camera from her feet, up her legs until finally you revealed her face. Yeap, that's how it was. And I can already hear the feminists screaming their flat chests out about objectification of the Woman's body, male gaze rape and misogyny.

Well, I beg to disagree... In fact, women's faces are just like men's faces - only prettier. I mean, they convey emotion and sometimes, they convey personality. But legs... man, that's another game altogether. You can look at any man's legs and you only see a man's legs. But look at a woman's legs, starting from bottom up, and they speak volumes about what you'll get when you reach their eyes.

Yes, they can elegantly convey...

... relaxed waiting...

...lusty anticipation...

...job hunting savvy...

...job hunting anxiety...

...lustful invitation...

...conscious naivete...

...and even hauteur and brains.

So don't talk to me about women's exploitation. When you see a man peeking at your legs, know that he is paying homage to the female body's total expressiveness. And probably, enjoying it too.

I fell in love with Amy Amanda Allen...

... as soon as I saw THE RABBIT WHO ATE LAS VEGAS (Episode 7, Season 1, 1983). Although that isn't entirely true. Melinda Culea, who plays Triple A in the cult series The A-Team (1983-1989) is one of those actresses whose screen presence is charged with that kind of sensuality that makes one both want to cuddle and do dirty things to her, irrespectively of which one does first. Although her character, a journalist, was the pivotal element that led the viewer to the A-Team in the two-parter first episode of the series, she wasn't given much to do in the following episodes... that is, besides being pretty eye-candy with a promise of intellectual depth. Not withstanding, her interplay with the other characters (specially with Dwight Schultz's Howling Mad Murdock) is always funny and nice, and it was not gladly that we saw her disappear from the series after only 25 episodes.

So, in truth, I fell in love with Amy Amanda Allen from the start. Who can resist a sexy investigative reporter that follows doggedly a crack commando unit, surviving as soldiers of fortune, to engage them in a foreign mission and than has the gall to blackmail them into accepting her as one of them? Not I, rest assured.

And she was sexy from start of episode one, wearing a pink dress on a Mexican beach, smiling that warm smile of hers, playing at being the all-american sweet-heart. But it wasn't until episode 7 that she got to wear an unforgettable mini-skirt, carried in Face's arms. Man, the way the light played on her stockinged lithe legs... Everything in her was luminous sensuality, from the red suede boots to the dark patch of panties peeking from the shadowed valley of unfulfilled promises between her shapely thighs.

Amy would ware some other mini-skirts and short-dresses on later episodes of the show. Bu you know what they say: there's no love like the first love, and no memory moment carries more magic than that one.

We miss you Amy.

I fell in love with Daisy Duke...

... when I was but a teen. And how could you not? She was sassy, smart, sexy and a she-devil behind the wheel of a car. I remember going to high-school carrying a Dukes of Hazzard ledger, graced with wonderful pictures of Daisy (Catherine Bach) and her hypnotically short denim shorts.

Yes, for the teenager I then was, Daisy Duke had the most gorgeous legs in the entire world! And since then, her legs have inhabited my memory as such. They were long as ideal female legs should be, shining under the sheer hose she seemed to perpetually wear. And the show knew it, displaying them openly as the eye-catching treasures they were (both getting her in trouble and out of it... along with the viewers out of our minds).

Strangely, Daisy never stroke me as a breasty girl. All that leg, climbing all the way to that shapely buttocks of her, dominated my mind for the years since I've last seen the show in 1985.

Yesterday I was watching the first episode of the first season of the cult TV Series (The One-Armed Bandit, 1979), and the revelation was breathtaking, as the screencap above can well attest.