I wish I could go back to that time sometimes, when people smoked and drank constantly, over dressed, and were blatantly mysoginist racists. The closest thing I've experienced is the Kentucky Derby.

I really like the idea of "men are men and women are women," but the only place I can think of where that holds true is Texas. The "men" and the "women" in Texas both offend me. It's like a crude, unrefined version. What I want is the Ayn Rand version of masculine and feminine -- very purposeful and conscious choices on the parts of individuals. Call it "enlightened mysoginy."

Most of my morality comes from watching gangster movies, but (aside from Sean Connery Bond films) the only movies I see which depict a world I could feel comfortable in are from Japan. Sometimes I feel like I would be completely at peace with the world if I just moved to Japan. That's how I feel when reading Ian Flemming novels.

As bad as they are sometimes, on the unintentional humor front, they really do feel like the world of a superman. Have wondered about this for some time -- I may be wrong -- but I think Sonny Chiba movies are more like the Bond novels than the Bond movies are. It's just a world where any man, who thinks of himself as a secret agent or some kind of unrealistic badass (as all men should IMHO), can feel completely at home. Sean Connery is there; Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin are definitely there; and JFK is your personal drinking buddy. It's like Heaven.