A Case of Very Old Spice

Today's post features screenshots from This Man Is Dangerous, directed by Jean Sacha, staring Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution. Rather than give a recap and review of the movie, I'll just say that I really liked it. On the TOS scale, it ranks somewhere between "Arena" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" I'm going to have to see more of the Lemmy Caution films (besides Alphaville, which I have already seen). I really enjoyed the cinematography; the movie is replete with outstanding shots. 

I've taken some screenshots and arranged them in random order and fabricated a preposterous story to go along with them. The story you are about to read, has very little to do with the movie. I'm sure others have written better reviews. Instead, I give you, A Case of Very Old Spice.

A special dame gave me a ring on the telephone. I was all smiles, but she couldn't see that over the phone. I heard something in her voice that troubled me. She wanted me to drop by as soon as I could.

I came right over. She said that she had something to show me in the bedroom. There it was in black and white, all over the bedspread.

She wanted to read the newspaper, or do papier mache. I don't know. I couldn't stay. I sensed that there was something she wasn't telling me.  I didn't like the way she looked at the wall when she spoke to me. Maybe it was the wallpaper, maybe it was my cologne, I don't know. I wasn't in the mood for looking through the want ads. I told her I had to leave. The frail didn't stop me, so I went to see an old friend about a bird.

He showed me a few nice birds, but he said that he had an even better one. She was at a cottage in the country. He gave me the address. When I got there, the lights were on but no one was home...if you don't count the platinum blonde in the raincoat with a far away look in her eyes. They were glassy, unblinking eyes. She had assumed room temperature before I arrived. Apparently that bedspread was to die for.

I took the stairs; they went down in the way that stairs often do. Someone had left in a hurry. Dinner and drinks were still on the table. I thought that I would sample the spirits. Someone had other ideas. I dove under the table when the first shot sounded. After checking to make sure than my factory warranty had not been voided by any after market perforations, I came up behind my pistol. I knew that I could create a comical effect if I held it so that the shadow from the end of the rod rested on the tip of my nose. Absolutely no one can shoot straight when they see that. Besides, I was close enough to that bottle that it would probably attract any bullets meant for me.

The mysterious shooter didn't fire again. He had already heard his mother calling. I moved to the doorway. The rat ran rather rapidly right down the roadway. I held up my heater and attempted to time how long it took him to run from the rear sight to the front sight as a way of estimating his exact speed. The angle wasn't good; I couldn't make a decent estimate. I fired a shot that beat him to the corner instead of coming in behind him. Then I lost sight of him.

I drove back to the main road. As my tires hit the pavement, another dame rolled up in a pink Peugeot. (Honestly, everything in this story is black and white and shades of gray, but I swear the Peugeot was pink). She had eyes the size of dinner plates. They were mysterious things, like smoke-filled mirrors. We were out in the country, but I could see the mean streets of Paris reflected in her gaze.

She told me that my friend with the bird had sent her. The bird wasn't at the cottage. They had had to move her. Constance--that was her name--told me to follow her. Even if she hadn't had lips that held an unspoken promise they would never deliver, I would have followed her. I wanted to see if the other earring matched.

I followed her to an abandoned monastery a few miles down the road. She dashed inside as soon as we arrived. Maybe it was my cologne. I ran after her. I caught sight of her just before she disappeared behind the columns and up a stairway.

I ran up the stairs. Constance's eyes had changed. She was having a slapping contest with another skirt. This was the bird my friend had mentioned. Her father would pay big money for the return of his little girl. When I suggested that she ought not to damage the merchandise, Constance told me to go down stairs; my friend wanted to see me.

I found him playing pool. He put down the cue-stick and turned his back as I approached. I really needed to get some different cologne. He told me that while he was excited about the ransom that he might get for the wealthy frail upstairs, he couldn't get dancing off his mind. Did I think that was strange? Sure, I did, but I couldn't tell him. You just don't tell a guy his dancing dreams are dross.

He asked me to follow him. I did, but I had a queasy feeling about this whole situation. I wondered how I was going to get that bird out of the nest and back to her father. A reward would spend just as well as a ransom, especially if I didn't have to split it with Constance and my friend. Who was I kidding? He wasn't really my friend. We had met at that Yahtzee tournament in Cannes. As much as he had enjoyed Yahtzee, he had confided that he would rather be playing backgammon. That was his problem. He always wanted to do something other than what he was doing. I would've told him that was just life. Life shakes you up and rolls you around. You're the dice, not the roller. You roll as best you can, and every once in a while someone will yell, "Yahtzee!"

I didn't get to explain any of that to him. As we went through the door, he turned and grappled with me. The strange part was that he was humming, "The Blue Danube." That's when I realized that he wasn't trying to fight; he was trying to dance with me. He wasn't a very good dancer. I've seen Conga lines with fewer left feet.

He suddenly turned away. I could tell that he was holding his breath. He mumbled something about cologne. I'm afraid I lost my temper at that. I was getting kind of sensitive about that cologne. My grandfather had given it to me, his grandfather had given him a whole case; it had been in the family for over a century; it really was my grandfather's Old Spice. I took him in a headlock, and encouraged him to relax and think about roses and lavender.

He broke away, or passed out. I don't remember which. When I turned, Constance was watching. I grabbed her and started to dance; I was in the mood. She twisted in my grasp, coughing and turning her back to me. The move proved unfortunate for her; she got traces of my cologne in her hair. 

She ran for the hose but the wealthy frail wanted a drink, and she was faster. They struggled over the hose. 

The frail finally got control of the water. When she smelled Constance's hair, she did her best to help the poor girl wash off the cologne...from a distance. 

I decided to go for a walk and ponder my life choices, and how the day might have gone differently if I had not decided to wear grandpa's cologne. 

There's a certain clarity that comes with a walk in a picturesque locale; the fresh air coming through those windows didn't hurt either. The respite from that cologne helped me come to a conclusion.

I'd rather fight, than switch...or vice versa

The first home repair of the new year:
The frail told me that the light in the bedroom had burned out. She had already changed the bulb. The new one didn't shed any more light than an old shoe either. I grabbed the old bulb. It seemed fine to me. I hit the switch. The light pulsed like a warp nacelle, but just one time with each flip of the switch; it wouldn't stay lit. I had heard this story before. I knew the cure. I also knew that it would be the weekend before I could light up my doll's life with 120 volts and a 60 watt bulb. She knew the score. She would live with it until I was good and ready to make Edison's pet dance to my tune. 

(Picture from This Man Is Dangerous--which I also watched on Saturday. It's a great movie--French Noir featuring Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution. I'll do a write up on it...maybe Thursday)

It was a Saturday. The sun stared through a cloudy sky like a one-eyed man behind a smoking pipe. There was a foul smell in the air. It hit my nostrils like the stench of that frozen hamburger I had left in a drawer to thaw before Christmas vacation at college...and remembered two weeks later when the vacation was over. It was the odor of a task left undone. I had hidden the meat so my roommates wouldn't eat it before I got back from a late class--that part of the plan was entirely successful; nobody ate the hamburger; it was a long while before any of us wanted to eat hamburger again.

I checked my wallet for lettuce. I had enough for a small salad. I started the brown beast and drove it to the local mercantile. It was inside that I saw him. He was a big man, a Mack truck in a vest. I walked past without a word. I knew that I was in the right aisle.

He wasn't having it. "What do you need?" he said in a tone that he must have thought sounded helpful.

I wasn't sure that I liked his attitude. Maybe he was implying that I wasn't competent to find the right item. I wondered just who he thought he was, questioning my skills. I thought about politely bending his nose with a hard right cross to cure him from sticking it into my business. A couple things kept me from acting on that thought. First, I wasn't sure I could reach his nose without a stepladder. Second, I knew who he thought he was; he worked there; he had helped me at least one other time. 

"I need a light switch," I said with an air of casual electrical nonchalance. 

"There, on your left," he said, pointing. 

I'm pretty sure he said, "There," and not "they're." Either way, I saw the switches. 

"These are white, and those are off-white," he pointed to another basket. "What color did you need?" Apparently, the entire chromatic panoply of light switches consisted only of white, and off-white. 

Naturally, I had no idea what color I wanted. I didn't care. I knew I needed a 120 volt 15 amp switch. I looked at the picture on my phone that I had taken of the switch. 

"That's off-white," he said, looking at the picture.

I was impressed with the big man's grasp of the color palette, as well as his rapid application of the knowledge to the facts at hand. I had decided on white...ish. "I better get two," I said. I explained that this was not the first time that I had had to do this. Besides, there were two switches in the box. I figured that I might as well replace them both. 

Once again, there were two open checkouts. At one, a woman with 47 plastic storage boxes was fumbling through a purse. At the other, there was a guy I knew. I asked him if this was the quicker line. He said that it wasn't, but this was the only checkout that had the razor blades that he needed. I moved over behind the dame with the storage boxes. I figured those containers were meant either for Christmas decorations...or she had bad luck keeping pets. Probably the former. 

When I left the store, my acquaintance was still waiting in the other line. 

I had the element of surprise on my side for this caper. I cut the power and moved in under cover of darkness...or at least pretty poor natural light. In a matter of seconds I had cracked the combination on the cover; it was flat head, not phillips. Inside, things got a little tricky...I had to switch to the phillips head. I replaced the contents with the new stuff and replaced the cover. No one would even know that the box had been breached. 

When I restarted the juice, those electrons danced to give off a soft white light that would make angels blush.