He Makes Coffins

Look, it's Mary Miller and me at Tom Franklin's big annual birthday party. Mary kept saying how nice my hair looked so Lizzie took this picture. I don't know. Does my hair look that nice here? I am doubtful. Doesn't it look like a hairpiece? I kept explaining to Mary that whatever had happened to my hair that she was so taken with was just because I was sweating so much. It was hot! We live in Mississippi. Moments after this photo was taken, Tom Franklin shaved my head entirely... AGAIN. That's becoming a birthday tradition too, I guess. I was just complaining to Dr. Theresa that Tom left too much hair on my neck. "He did a better job than last time," she said. I don't think she cares! As my friend Brian pointed out on twitter, I now look "like the lifer in the yard [he'd] go to for advice as a new inmate." But I deleted my bald "selfie"

because I wanted to pretend not to be a vainglorious fool. I was just reading about vainglory in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. He's against it. Okay, here. HERE'S A TRUE HISTORY FACT. Last time Tom shaved my head, JFK's granddaughter was present! I saw her the next day in the town square and she tried to engage me in conversation but I couldn't recall who she was. I thought maybe she was a former student who wanted to talk about grades or something! Gross! So I dismissed her curtly! Later I realized my mistake but nothing could be done. Well that's what I get for being a huge jerk all the time. I tweeted that last night and deleted it too. I also tweeted about the guy who, right after Tom shaved my head, handed me his business card and yelled, "I MAKE COFFINS!" Well, let's see, I saw Semmes at the party and he said he was recently sitting with Bob Rafelson (!) on Rafelson's balcony and telling him about how I forced Dr. Theresa to watch the movie HEAD while we were dating and it didn't go over too well and then they tried to call me, but the number Semmes had for me was out of service. So that's the story about the time I didn't get a phone call from Bob Rafelson.

And I had a funny talk with Cynthia Joyce about how movie sex scenes were edited in the 70s. She said she was watching Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway going at it in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and couldn't figure out what anything was. "Is that a hairy knee?" she found herself asking during one shot.