Out shopping tonight. Didn't buy a thing. It's the thought that counts, right?

Seeing good deals, but feeling close to a depression, and not just the emotional kind. America doesn't feel right to me now. Something might be happening. I sense a dark cloud. Maybe a dust storm coming.

Do you feel it at all?

Can't imagine riding atop a train like Woody did in "Bound for Glory" with all the Amtraks that are arriving at solid objects hard.

I think about how important Evel Knievel was to my childhood.

In Big Lots with my sis-in-law and can't find her for the longest time. Walking and walking. The store ain't that big. What's up?

A teenage pregnant epileptic has collapsed in the aisle and SIL (sis-in-law) is calling paramedics on her cell. She's a hero!

In another store, I have to sit in a chair for a bit to calm down and it's a demo of a back massager. Just what I need. Feels good. Too good, maybe. Something odd about it. Some weird AI vib.

I walk away feeling ill, like I have just been molested. Seriously. Not good. What's going on?

My head is throbbing again. Bad.

Outside it's cold. My head is wet with sweat. I can smell wood burning from all the stoves and fireplaces. I also smell BBQ.

I'm thinking I'm going to Fast in December. All month! Even Xmas, no dinner!

My stomach churned when I finished that sentence and I had to go throw up. I hate throwing up, unless it's part of a joke, or to get out of getting mugged.

My teeth hurt now. I don't know why. Acid? Acid from my stomach?

I could power an electric car with the battery my stomach acid could fill. Goodbye November! It was good hanging with ya!

Tried to get my oil changed today. Didn't work out.

When I first got here, I was told about a place that only charged $10 for an oil change!

My brother just paid something like $20 at his favorite place, so I felt; Him living here a long time now, knowing the area and me so new and finding a better deal, well, it was like I was all Clark Howard or something!

But when I went by, they had raised their price to $25 with a $10 mail in rebate...

WTF?!

Gawddamn Bush!

Just finished the book, "A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio" by Foster Hirsch and really enjoyed it even if I started losing sight in my right eye.

My eyes are so worn out!

I read the book all at once. My head has been throbbing. I'm allergic to something. I'm in a lot of pain!

But the book was helpful in distracting me. I'll be able to use this pain as a future "Sense Memory" I'm sure.

The book takes us behind the doors of the Actors Studio and we walk the path Stanislavski's system took to get to the U.S., from the Moscow Art Theatre to the Group Theatre, then on to the Actors Studio, the evolution of Strasberg's Method...

Brando, Pacino, and Dean!

Shelly Winters!!!

Makes me wish I had a time machine and knew what I know now and could observe the beginnings of these great actors!

And buy some winning stocks!

Picked up the book, "I Am Not Ashamed" by Barbara Payton put out by Holloway House on Melrose.

I used to drive friends by the publishing house to point out, "That's the house that pimps Iceberg Slim's books!"

Boy, Barbara Payton had some scary life!

As a kid, my mom had a huge stack of old movie magazines and I remember her talking about Barbara Payton and I always thought she was the subject of the TV show, "Peyton Place" you know, the one with Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow.

Anyway, a few years, actually many years back, I saw her in Hammer's "The Four Sided Triangle" and thought she was so beautiful. That film kinda rocks in a weird twisted way.

The book is a real horror show and Payton had a really horrible life toward the end. The book opens with:

"Today, right now, I live in a rat-roach infested apartment with not a bean to my name... The little money I do accumulate comes from old residuals, poetry and favors to men. I love the Negro race and I will accept money only from Negroes."

She used to make $10,000 a week when she was a movie star, then she ends up doing tricks on Sunset Blvd for $5.

Hollywood Sucks!

I just know she needed medication that pharmaceuticals hadn't invented yet and someone kind to love her and tell her she was special. We all need that, oh and the medication, too.

I just watched the DVD of Lindsay Anderson's "In Celebration" the David Storey play starring Alan Bates and a young and even then awesome Brian Cox.

You know, it's very British, but I was so into it because I have three brothers, there's coal mining in my family background, and they too are working class.

Three brothers (Bates, Cox and James Bolam, who was roommates with Marc Bolan back in the 60's and was the wear Marc Bolan picked his name from, altering it by one letter) return home for their parents' wedding anniversary. There's some unresolved family issues between the sons and their folks, and each other. Some of it about the mystery surrounding the death of their eldest sibling.

This was one of the American Film Theatre productions and boy I wish there were more of them!

I found this after watching some YouTube clips of Malcolm McDowell from his One-Man Play/Film about Lindsay Anderson.

I'm a fan of the director, Lindsay Anderson and I really dug this!

There are moments of my time where all my problems seem to fade and that's when I'm surfing the net reading Newspapers, Weeklies, Blogs, News Items from around the world looking for interesting stories about film, or filmmakers, oh and maybe UFOs.

Sometimes if the film related stories are good, I'll send them off to my friend David in Germany where he then plugs them into his fantastic cinema website GreenCine Daily.

I have to admit, I get a huge thrill seeing my name and website acknowledged by link for all the world of cinema to see. He doesn't have to do it, but he does.

Over the years I've been reading his page, I've learned more than any film school could possible offer and many times filmmakers have written me after I've posted a comment, or David has linked to me.

David has posted my short films on the site, too. I've made friends with filmmakers and film goers from all over the World. If cars ran on film content instead of oil...

The film loving friends I've made from Middle Eastern Countries because of GreenCine Daily couldn't be any better. Stories good and bad seem to open up a dialog and unite. Even if there's a disagreement about a film, at least there is talking.

I didn't really want to go somewhere and have Thanksgiving dinner with a big crowd.

Hard to believe this, but I am really shy, have symptoms of adult autism and quite possibly Asperger syndrome. So, I fought hard not to get out even though some great offers to be with family, friends, and even complete strangers opened up their arms to me.

Yet, I panicked and sweated about it.

My sister-in-law's sister has a big spread of food and lots of children all beautiful and smart and funny and her husband always opens his conversations with me like this:

"You're from California, right? I hate California, been there, hate it. Don't really like people from California either."

Fun guy!

So I went and ate and drank and goofed around with Grandma-in-law and the kids and you know what?

I had a great time!

Maybe I should only do things I'm afraid to do!

I just rented and watched Reg Park in "Hercules in the Haunted World" the other night and now he's dead!

HE JUST DIED!

This does happen to me a lot, see a movie, someone connected just happens to die, really It does seem weird to me.

Enough of this!

I won't even tell you any more when this happens, unless I see a movie by Uwe Boll or the Polonia Brothers.

Watched "Sunset Boulevard" again and boy that movie just rocks!

If you've never seen it and believe me there are people who haven't, you should! William Holden is so great and he's so trapped, in a way like Montgomery Clift in "A Place in the Sun."

I guess I watch this film every couple of years, it's a World I like to climb into every once in a while.

I got it out this time to look at the "Inland Empire" connections and David Lynch puzzle pieces.

They are there!

Watched Ric Burns Andy Warhol American Masterpiece PBS DVD and again I only seem to like there early beginnings of whatever subject a documentary is about.

I like Andy's story up to the opening of The Factory.

Don't care for the real sad druggy stuff, just his assembly line work ethic up around the Brillo box era.

I can stop the DVD after that.

Then again, I do like his film period. The "Screen Tests" film portraits.

I wish I had a DVD player that could shuffle the chapters like an iPod and shatter Andy's narrative.

There is some weird thing going on around here. I was just out driving, came over a hill and there was a deer dead in the road.

About a mile away, another dead deer.

Seems hunters shoot some deer, then realize they either aren't the right kind, or they don't have the right permit, so instead of being caught with it and getting fined, they drop it on the road. To rot.

Sad.

Spent some time returning to my youth by watching Mario Bava and Reg Park's "Hercules in the Haunted World" again and enjoying it.

Saw this a few years after it's original release, I think at a Drive-In Theatre in Kansas City. I remember being left in the car alone by my brother who went to the snack bar to hang out with school friends.

There is some scary stuff in it!

I think I liked Reg Park more than Steve Reeves, just because Reg seemed friendlier. When his friend falls from a vine stretched over a chasm of either molten lava or boiling polenta, Reg stares unable to do anything about it.

I tried to get my brother to watch the DVD with me for old time sake, but he wasn't having any of it.

Just read, "Fast, Cheap, and Under Control: Lessons from the Greatest Low-Budget Movies of All Time" by John Gaspard and found it fun and interesting.

The end section is kind of a summary on what to look out for if you find yourself making a movie with no money.

There are these stories, not in the book, but about Stanley Kubrick taking these notes and typing up the details in small pocket size notebooks. Things he encountered while making films.

Boy, it would be nice to read those notes!

I had "Another Steven Soderbergh Experience" today watching "Bubble" and boy did I like it!

He is my hero!

This movie is the kind of stuff I want to make. It reminded me a bit of "Gummo" and "Dancer in the Dark" but mostly it reminded me of the people and life I'm encountering around here.

I highly recommend this film!

This is the one that was simultaneously released on cable, DVD and in theaters, where I ignored all locations until I was ready.

I was ready today!

I'm so excited!

Usually I'm not judgmental, but in this case...

I get to Judge People!

I'm in great company!

If you are a Missouri Writer, get to writing and figure out what kind of bribe you think I'll take!

Watched "Seabiscuit" again on DVD today and I like that movie!

Trying to get my brother and wife wife to watch it with me, but they hate anything I like, so they're making excuses why they can't do it.

I explained to them that there's narration so everything is spelled out for them and that seemed to hurt their feelings. Well?

When ever they are watching a film I like, this is what I hear:

"Now, Who is that guy?"

"Why did they do that?"

"That wouldn't happen."

"What's this movie about?"

"YOU like THIS movie?"

There is one fantastic moment in the film when Seabiscuit is about to win an early race and there is a great song that starts playing... Holy Crap I LOVE that scene, it's just so powerful!

I want to find that song!

Having internet troubles!

Email I send out doesn't make it and I'm not getting all the email letters sent to me.

I think someone has hacked my accounts and are reading incoming and outgoing letters.

Send me something just to see if I get it!

Watched, "American Graffiti" and "More American Graffiti" again. I've seen them way too many times.

What can I say, I love "American Graffiti" but, I'm not that crazy about the writing in "More American Graffiti." Sometimes it just come out so silly. I do like the way the different New Year Days are in different film styles!

Was just watching the tv show, "In the Heat of the Night" with my sister in law, she loves the show, the episode was, "Home Is Where the Heart Is" and as the credits were rolling I saw it was directed by Leo Penn.

Leo Penn!

Sean Penn's dad!

The show also had Diane Ladd as Maybelle the Madam.

Alan Autry the Mayor of Fresno of course was Sgt. V. L. "Bubba" Skinner.

Going back to Leo Penn, he has worked on some of my favorite shows in the past:

"Fame"

"St. Elsewhere"

"Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected"

"Trapper John, M.D."

"Kojak"

"The Bionic Woman"

"Little House on the Prairie"

"The Name of the Game"

"Bonanza"

"Gunsmoke"

"The Fugitive"

"Star Trek"

"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"

"Lost in Space"

"I Spy"

"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour"

"The Untouchables"

"Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond"

"Arch Oboler's Comedy Theater"

And I kid you not, that doesn't even scratch the surface. The man worked EVERYDAY! He had the most amazing career! AND he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era!

I know he died sometime late in the 90's but at least he saw how successful his three sons, Sean Penn, Chris Penn, and Michael Penn had become.

Took my brother to see, "American Gangster" and I think he liked it, I know I did.

The theatre was fairly crowded.

Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors, but I remember him saying something about never playing pimps, thugs and or gangsters. I know this is suppose to be a classy film, still...

Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, is also one of my favorite actors, too, remember, "Black Caesar?" Fred Williamson plays Tommy Gibbs, a street smart hoodlum who worked his way up from the bottom of the barrel to the crime boss of Harlem.

Williamson said in a cool documentary called, "Baadasssss Cinema,""NAACP and CORE - they're the ones who created this terminology, "black exploitation." That has to be clear, on the record. It came from them. It didn't come from the white press. ... Who was being exploited? All the black actors were getting paid. They had a job. They were going to work. The audience wasn't being exploited. They were getting to see things on their screen they'd longed for."

Hunting Season has started around here and just for fun I picked up a couple of 90% off WalMart Halloween costumes. One is a Moose outfit and another is a Deer, but both are for 3 year olds, so I need both to sew together to fit in them.

I'm so cute and can't wait to see the looks on those hunter's faces when they see me prancing through the woods!

Just read "Land of a Thousand Balconies: Discoveries & Confessions of a B-Movie Archaeologist" by Jack Stevenson.

Some great stuff and nice memories in that there book!

I already read his, "Dogme Uncut: Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, and the Gang That Took on Hollywood" and "Desperate Visions: Camp America: The Films of John Waters & George & Mike Kuchar" and liked both of those.

Still need to pick up his, "Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Story of Haxan, the World's Strangest Film, and the Man Who Made It" I remember seeing that film in Dallas, TX with a wild party going on underneath the screen. Boy, those were the days!

Just watch, "Rosemary's Baby" the other day and the portrayal of Witches as Satanists seemed as dated as the wardrobe. Still a good movie!

I'm reading, "Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith" by Andrew Wilson after going through his Harold Robbins book and so far I'm digging it.

Patricia was a hot goth lez chick from Ft. Worth who is the kinda girl I fall for. Talented, depressed, dark, brilliant, dangerous... Uninterested in me.

Highsmith’s diaries are opened by Wilson who shines a light into her personal life and her thoughts as a writer. Wilson figures out where "Strangers on a Train" and where her most famous character, Ripley, came about.

She has huge infatuations with women in her work and life.

Her lesbian novel, "The Price of Salt" (which I'm reading as soon as I can) was inspired by Kathleen Senn, who walked into the toy department of Bloomingdale’s where Highsmith, 27 at the time was working. It's like a lesbian, "Shopgirl" kinda/not really...

Highsmith was turned on by Senn. Before it was called stalking, she tracked the woman down to her address, and watched her. She writes:

"I felt quite close to murder too, as I went to see the woman who almost made me love her when I saw her a moment in December, 1948. Murder is a kind of making love, a kind of possessing. To arrest her suddenly, my hands upon her throat (which I should really like to kiss) as if I took a photograph, to make her in an instant cool and rigid as a statue."

Kathleen Senn inspired "The Price of Salt," even though Highsmith never had any contact with Senn. Wilson tracks down the woman’s family. Highsmith never knew that the glamorous woman she encountered in Bloomingdale’s that day, went into her garage, started her car, and killed herself never knowing the part she’d played in literary history.

There's a great photograph of Highsmith young and nude taken by one of the few men she was attracted to. You can sense she was trying to be more comfortable with her body and experimented.

I'm only halfway through the book, but I'm so into it!

Watched "James Dean: An Invented Life" by Mark Rydell today on DVD.

I had seen it before on TV, but seeing Mark Rydell in Woody Allen's "Hollywood Endings" the other day, I wanted to watch this again. Rydell seems like an interesting guy.

James Franco is just amazing, I think. The film has some really good performances like, Michael Moriarty and Edward Herrmann.

It's funny, I like biographical movies and books, but I seem to like just the beginning parts of the subjects early struggles and then I get bored when they reach their peak and their downfall. It's like I'm thinking these are some kind of "How-to" videos on whatever the subject.

Watch "Ciao! Manhattan" on DVD today.

Used to be a pretty close friend of L.M. Kit Carson who was Edie Sedgwick's one time boyfriend and got lots of stories about their time together. She plays Susan Superstar in this film, but it's pretty clear she's playing herself.

Kit and others told me how she was taken advantage of by Andy Warhol and all the others, for her money and her celebrity status. I have to admit being obsessed with Warhol and his work, but I imagine it was just like Crispin Glover as Andy in Oliver Stone's "The Doors" when Kyle MacLachlan's Ray Manzarek tells Val Kilmer's Jim Morrison, "Man, let's get out of here, these people are vampires."

Still, there was something interesting about, "Ciao! Manhattan," it had a good look, the improvisational quality about it was kinda dreamy and Edie has amazing tits that even when she was on her back they still stood up. She was so beautiful.

A huge sadness fell on me after it was over.

More Writer's Strike fallout leads to more opportunities for me:

"Hi Jerry,

I'm currently in production on a project entitled "Food Palaces" for the
Travel Channel. For this segment, we will be doing a profile on Bob's Big
Boy and would like to possibly feature a color image of you and your
then-bride at Bob's. If you have, we'd like to get a very hi-resolution (10+
mb) of the photo of you two. Thanks, friend.

Prometheus Entertainment"

I have no pictures of my wedding at Bob's Big Boy in Toluca Lake. If someone out there does, they should send them to Prometheus.

I can tell there's a Writer's Strike going on when I'm being approached by Hollywood:

"Hey Jerry,

I work for a couple of writer/producers at NBC. They're pretty interested in the paranormal and it looks like you have a lot of interest/expertise in that area.
The guys asked me to track down a phone number for you so they could give you a call and pick your brain.

Could you pass along information where you can be reached?

Thanks,
Ryan
Assistant to O'Doherty & Israel"

If this is the same O'Doherty and Israel, I believe they did "3rd Rock from the Sun" and "The Tracy Morgan Show."

I've been working on a show about a ghost hunter show for sometime that I believe would be funny, sexy and scary, I wonder if this is what Hollywood wants?

I've been suffering from some allergic reaction to what some are saying is Cedar. I love cedar trees, so I don't know why they are disagreeing with me so.

There has been lots of burning going on in this area; farmers burning off brush to clear their land, homes having their first cozy fires in the fireplace for the season and of course cross burnings.

All of it ending up in my nostrils!

My head is throbbing!

A friend who is knowledgeable in all sorts of things suggested I get some local honey because it will contain pollen from this area and somehow that will make me feel better. Yet, I have been unable to find any!

Every health food store I go into and believe me, there are only a few around, tell me they have been unable to get local honey as well.

I use to wish that bees would go away, because I hate getting stung, but now I need the bees!

Bees COME BACK!!!

Rented Michael Palm's "Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen" DVD, I've been wanting to see it since I first heard about it.

Ulmer worked on low-budget pictures that allowed him creative control as a filmmaker, making a nice collection of B-movie masterpieces. The documentary features interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Wim Wenders, Joe Dante and Ulmer's daughter Arianne.

I remember reading John Belton's, "The Hollywood Professionals" where Ulmer was part of it and I always wanted to know more. This documentary includes Ulmer's 1942 PRC movie, "The Isle of Forgotten Sins," with Gale Sondergard as John Carridine's love interest. I love the special effects in this flick; out of focus miniatures and table top sets... Fun!

He's still a hero of mine even if his past is as fuzzy as his special effects.

Being that this is the first of November I was planning on doing one of my famous Fasts, however it was pointed out that Thanksgiving is located somewhere inside this month.

So I will pig out until next month!

My brother had another set of pigs slaughtered by Amish boys. Their freezer is still jammed packed with pork from last year's butchering. But I think all this meat is going out to others as Xmas gifts, cause nothing says we love ya, like the other White meat.