Larry

My best friend Larry, who has the Midas touch for rating movies, told me to avoid “Hanna” at all costs.

“Some chick being raised in a forest” he said with frustration.  “I left fifteen minutes into it.”

I knew I had to see it.  And see it I did at the ol’ Regency Theatre on Victory Blvd. near Laurel Canyon in North Hollywood.

I walk in and see Seth Lambs, the security guard, checking-out one of the many video games on one side of the movie theatre.

Lambs shakes my hand and smiles. The firm handshake is one between friends who have both been security guards.  I had a post at a mental hospital in Atlanta in 1986.

Lambs is about the best guard I have ever seen. Still in his twenties, he is diligent, quiet and helpful, but not without an edge.  I see hero written all over him.

The best thing about the Regency, next to their $1 hot dogs, is the $3 admission.

I come about five or six times a month, sometimes to see two or three films a day.

In an area with all the drama and tragedy of the Valley Plaza, it is always refreshing to have the Regency in all its bright orange Easter egg glory.

Lambs, an African-American student of the martial arts, is thinking of opening his own school.

I stand in the corner near the entrance writing my latest poem.  It deals with the women I have been dating and seeing recently.

Unavailable

in this vaudeville act

we can never be sure

one moment she is

a kangaroo on grape juice

the next a junkie on

her bony back

who is who

who am i

when will they accept me

gentle ben on lithium

when will they see

the fragile heart leaping

into madness

the rational albino

winking at humanity

the emotional troubadour

writing with eyes closed

but heart open

pen running out of ink

i run along levee

and dive into murky river

made of alphabet soup”

Maybe my heart will heal.

Maybe my soul will revel in consciousness.

Why is love so hard to find?

Why is pain so easy to welcome?

Lambs talks about his girlfriend problems.

“Give it one more week, a guy at this movie theatre told me,” Lambs says with a sheepish grin.  “And I have.”

Lambs, who has just moved to North Hollywood, likes the town.

“I don’t live too far away from you,” he tells me. “Maybe I can stop by sometime.  You got any video games?”

“No,”  I say. “Just a laptop and a large screen TV that’s been on the fritz for three months.  I’m about to get it back from the shop.”

Lambs looks down.

Earlier I saw “Hanna.”  Larry must have seen it with another pair of eyes.

It is easily the best film of the year so far.