Porn Star Names, Workable or Not

I was just informed that scrunchies have been inducing fashion despair in your better class of girls for, like, ever. Didn't know, and now I have that sort of post-car accident feeling of being hit by waves of the reality of the grim nearness of disaster. Because the fact is that if I had gotten a bald spot on my crown I would probably have grown a ponytail and held it back with a scrunchy.

The second thing is that we have a channel on our no-cable setup that plays bad movies continuously. It's called THIS. I don't know why. You would think that if you watched THIS you would find out the pun or catch phrase that THIS is meant to call instantly to the viewer's mind. As far as I know, there's nothing like that. It's just THIS.

But so if you want to watch TV and don't have much time, it's a pretty good option. You can walk in, turn on THIS, watch two circa-1972-AfroAmericans being blacksploited in bell bottoms with vertical stripes and groovy vests with no shirts underneath, and big moustaches, watch them go after each other by kicking kungfu style very near the edge of a tall urban building. That is maybe in a slum, probably. And one of them has a Zulu spear that he bends his knees a lot and thrusts out at the other guy and the spear flexes and wobbles at the furthest point of the thrust where he holds it for a minute so you can see his tricepts and the spear wobbles and the feathers near the tip fly about in the urban breeze with a tribal jauntiness that goes great, weirdly, with the bell bottoms. And you can imagine the evasive capering of the spearee well enough to need no assistance from yours truly.

Anyway, my real point is that I was just watching the opening credits of "Raiders of the Seven Seas" (1953), a title suggesting a degree of organization and follow-through that you would expect from a newly anointed Superpower. Sheesh: all seven? It has Lon Chaney Jr., Donna Reed, and someone named Yvonne Wood. So this all comes around to porn star names, as so often. But in this case the pieces don't quite fit together, if you'll pardon. That is, if it's Yvonne Wood (which it is) then she doesn't really have wood to deliver. And the whole near-medical bravura of the porn idiom is immediately punctured for your thinking viewer. And if it's Ivan Wood then he's saying right up front that he wants wood, when it is his job to deliver it. So on the one hand this would seem to be a movie about uncommonly competent and organized pirates: no starry-eyed rabblement, no casual hobbyists, no flighty chargers off on some impulsive tear with the oven left on.

But no sooner have you begun to enjoy the possibilities, amid the glow of the opening credits, of Yvonne Wood as a really workable porn star name, than you're disappointed by the suspicion that, for reasons too complex to twig all at once, it doesn't quite work. Like right after you break into Jello that has actually formed in the little bowl, and maybe been covered with prophylactic cellophane. Pure potential energy. And then--unalterably--absence: absolute nevermind: the uninterrogatable goneness of the utter, unrenewable, glossy plane. It was going to get mixed up in your stomach, anyway, but that's the sort of consolation unavailable to the cognoscenti. Jello is always eaten in a state of close-but-no-Kewpie-doll heaviness that is almost a metacliche. A cliche about a cliche. And maybe it would be possible to punch out the other side of this heaviness. But that would require giving up on perfection in this world. The movie gets five stars out of ten from IMDB. It's pretty good.

Perfume Review: Terre d'Hermes

We've known each other for years, Terry and me. He was best man at my wedding, and right afterwards my wife pointed out that he smells like rotten oranges. No way, I says, what do you mean rotten oranges? Swear to God, she says. Well. So after the honeymoon I see Terry at work and go up to him, you know, to catch up or whatever. And he gives me this big hug, right? And for the first time I smelled it. The top of his head smells like warm stones like since we were kids, but sure enough wafting up from his armpits there's this rotten orange smell. Not real strong or nothing but once you notice that a guy smells like rotten oranges you just kind of can't let loose of it, you know? And I don't know if this is like some Yoko Ono, ESP, woman influence thing. Because I can't figure how come I didn't notice it before. And now I find myself compulsively walking by his cubicle, especially on warm days, like how you can't stop smelling your hand sometimes after you've been chopping garlic or whatever.
And then recently the dreams start. There's a stone throne at the end of this long, low underground chamber, right? And Brenda, my wife, right? she's being forced forward, towards the throne, by this group of small but very strong and serious oranges. Or I think they're oranges, maybe they're like tangerines or something. It's dark. But they smell like oranges. Or like the armpits of oranges. I know this sounds crazy but just listen. And the oranges have this strange, serious, sort of angry, reverent look on their faces, and their eyes are glued on the throne. And Brenda is struggling and looking scared and disgusted but also kind of fascinated. Almost like she wants them to drag her over to the throne. And then I look and sitting on the throne is Terry. Friggin Terry that I've known since 6th grade, only now he's on this throne with these servants that are oranges. Or tangerines, maybe. And did I say they were in long robes?, the citrus I mean. What do you think it means, Doc? I'm not crazy or nothing, am I?