I ran into her at the birthday party of Michael Mailer, who threw the bash in his father’s old house in Brooklyn, a wonderful location overlooking New York harbour, a place that brought back many memories of wild nights with Norman. Jimmy Toback, the director of Harvey Keitel’s gem of a movie, Fingers — the only American film ever remade as a French movie — and the screenwriter for Bugsy, has directed some of Michael’s films, so we talked about sons and old movies. (Jimmy is an avid Spectator reader and likes it when I make it obvious how much I love my son, as he has an 11-year-old.)
Under the much-maligned studio production code, the elemental power of sexuality was ever-present, for a very simple reason. There was no nudity, only steamy build-ups. Sophisticated innuendo will do more for sex than any full frontal. Now there’s no more mystery, no flirtation, no romance, no sizzle.
Even the female body has changed. I used to die for Ava Gardner’s and Betty Grable’s curves, but today’s lot go for the efficient look, the sterile, athletic one that desexualises. The males are just as bad, especially the young ones. What I’d like to know is whether people in their twenties really are as stupid as the characters in today’s movies? Most definitely, I’d say, especially if they listen to rock music. The party broke up at dawn, and I left just before John Taki and his beautiful girlfriend hit the road. ‘Go home, Daddy, you’re going to have a heart attack’ was the last rude thing I heard.
The next day I read in the paper how Sandra Bullock had given $1 million for Japan’s victims, a small fact that she had failed to mention the night before. Now that’s what I call true giving. Every last penny will go where needed, unlike so many charities which spend the majority of donations on themselves.
And, speaking of Japan, here’s an American black female, a college grad who can hardly write or speak coherently, and a professional basketball player, on the earthquake: ‘They did Pearl Harbor so you can’t expect anything less. God makes no mistakes.’ Three years ago, this muscle-bound, brain-dead poor excuse of a woman demanded that a radio host be fired for some on-air racial insensitivity — he called her teammates mop-topped — and managed it. Tells us a lot about bogus degrees and bogus racial sensitivities in the home of the depraved.
About one month ago I wrote about the grotesque phoney Bernard Henri-Lévy, and how he managed to stop a 93-year-old war hero and camp survivor, Stephane Hessel, from speaking out about Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. (Hessel is Jewish.) Now his book, published by Charles Glass Books, an imprint of Quartet Books, is out in England and I urge all of you to get it. It’s only 37 pages and it sold 600,000 copies in France in one month. People like Lévy should not be allowed to push decent folk around.
I even heard some complaints about what I had written about that phoniest of phonies. That’s how scum like Lévy operate, speaking in whispers, calling in favours, promising things. Israel’s Gibraltarian intransigence and brutal occupation is to his liking. As are the wars in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Five weeks ago, I bet a friend a large amount that the evil clown Gaddafi and his seven jackals would still be in Tripoli on 31 December 2011. The good news is that his grotesque sons will not be spending time and stolen millions around the world’s playgrounds. The bad is that no cruise missile was fired as he was addressing the crowds three weeks ago. In my experience, when people vow to fight to the last bullet, they flee at the sound of the first one fired. This is what is happening in Libya. Both sides flee when the other attacks, except that the protestors have no weapons and don’t know how to use what they have got.
The rebels number only about 1,000, with no officers and no battle plans. They are students, doctors, merchants, translators, even some profs. There are no religious extremists, despite hints by Western correspondents who think anyone with a beard wants to stone women who drive. Their fighting is mostly street theatre, flashing the V-sign and shooting in the air. The mad dog’s troops are just as bad, except they are supposed to be soldiers and are well armed. Both sides flee at the sound of gunfire, but the protestors are more gung-ho. That’s as close as you’ll get to the truth about Libya, a country that has not been a country for a long time thanks to the megalomania and cruelty of the greased pig Gaddafi.
I started by writing about the fair sex and what a joy it is to see beautiful women even if one can’t seduce them, and ended up mentioning the bogus, effeminate and repellent clown Gaddafi. Now that’s what I call a real bummer.
Comments