This is what it sounds like when Kong cries

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings was OK. However, compared to his King Kong, LOTR was a pithy, fractured "fairy" tale that made me think Orlando Bloom made a pretty enough girl. Jackson's Kong made me cry real Man-Tears, and think I was eight years old on a Saturday afternoon, and made me want to fuck Naomi Watts in my jungle lair gently and sweetly in that Tenacious D (not safe for work) way, and beat my chest in the movie theater. Yes, it could have lost a good half-hour and that whole Jimmy "substory," but not bad for $9.50 on 34th Street. I remember another lifetime ago watching John Belushi on SNL playing Dino DeLaurentis doing an interview after the release of the 1976 production of King Kong raving about "whenna my Kong die, ever-a-body cry. Nobody cry whenna Jaws die!" Yes, I cried when Jackson's Kong died, as well as a few times before when I realized he was going to die (what we literary types call "foreshadowing.") Who does an ape have to rip apart with his bare hands to get a break in this town?

But Kong is the perfect love story. Talk about being wrong for each other. But perfect like Romeo & Juliet and Tristan & Isolde because it captures the essence of love: it doesn't have a happy ending. The only "happy ending" connected with "love" you're likely to get is the one on a massage table for an extra C-note. But the more I learn about love, the more I know what it isn't and what it is. Love is dangerous and tragic just like any other drug. Love has no regard for your safety or well-being. Love makes you climb the Empire State Building, not because it's a brilliant strategem, but because there is no other place to go except to one's own destruction. I'm vaguely surprised that love hasn't been classified as a Schedule I controlled substance by the DEA yet. It's not like anyone in the current Administration uses it.

They've outlawed Ecstasy, which is basically love in a pill, and if you've never taken Ecstasy then fuck off with your retort, it's the overwhelming and temporary feeling of love after you've happened to take a pill and, yes, it will turn you into an E-tard. But the feeling, the chemical reaction, is very similar and undeniably wonderful. The only problem is that you lose all discrimination. You just love Everything. Even though I don't take E anymore (because I like being able to discriminate and retain what brain cells I have left), I'm still convinced that existence is a series of chemical reactions in your particular bag of meat. The great thing about love is that it makes you think it's more than all that, that it has to be more than that. It's OK to yearn for that pastoral plane where you are not alone, where there is a communion between you and everything else, that there may actually be some sort of transcendental parental figure watching over you. But, irony of ironies, all these thoughts get in the way of the other chemical reactions that keep the meat bag alive. Ain't life great? I know I sure as hell don't want to accept the preceding truths, that's why love is so great even though it's bad for you. It goes back to what I always say: The truth is what humbles you, but it's the lies that keep you going.

Love has made me do many, many questionable things that upon reflection become even more questionable. And even though other drugs were involved, love was the most judgment-impairing. It almost makes me wonder why they let people who love each other get married. They wouldn't let you get married if you showed up to the ceremony drunk or stoned, so why in love? Yeah, climbing up the Empire State Building seemed like a good idea at the time. Love is a memory that is not sullied by an intruding reality. Be careful out there.

But speaking of chemical reactions that keep the meat bag alive, I highly recommend Barney Greengrass, The Sturgeon King for brunch. Simply put, up on the Upper West Side, it's where one gets one's Kosher foodgasm on. Such a nice piece of fish there.

Oh, and I've discovered that ice skating with a good friend in New York around Xmas time at night and falling on your ass a half-dozen times surrounded by skyscrapers and colored lights followed by Burek is good for the soul.