Li Kui

"Li Kui, naked as an owl, angrily seized a broken pole and charged up the bank to continue the battle." I'm still reading OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH because it's so dang long. Also, if something else comes up that I need to read, I feel okay putting it aside temporarily, because its episodic nature makes it easy to pick up where you left off and just dive into the next adventure. It might be longer than JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, the longest thing I've ever read! OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH has more pages for sure. But it's a set of mass-market paperbacks, so the pages are smaller. I guess we'll never know. I wonder what "naked as an owl" means. I recall that Travis McGee played a game called "naked owl" with a friend, but I think that involved the nakedness of the human participants, not the supposed nakedness of owls. What about all the feathers? It seems to me that feathers should count against nakedness.

All the Cokes Are Good

Last night, as I lay in bed reading THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL, I was given reason to recall the time I tried to convince Sarah Lloyd (with partial success?) that Queen Elizabeth II ate a foot-long chili dog every day. Andy Warhol claims that Eisenhower took the queen to a baseball game and bought her a hot dog. While I do find evidence that FDR once fed the queen a hot dog, I have trouble backing up the Eisenhower story. That, however, does not detract from Andy Warhol's point, "that she couldn't have had delivered to Buckingham Palace a better hot dog than the one he bought for her for maybe twenty cents at the ballpark. Not for a dollar, not for ten dollars, not for a hundred thousand dollars could she get a better hot dog." He makes his point more forcefully, I think, in an earlier part of the section, when he says, "the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good." This is, according to Andy Warhol, "What's great about this country," which means that reading about Andy Warhol on the Fourth of July is arguably more appropriate than what I usually read about on the Fourth of July, which seems to be werewolves. In fact, Jerky the Li'l Jerk meets Andy Warhol in today's episode of Jerky the Li'l Jerk.

Buckatunna Inventory

We went to visit my parents and Dr. Theresa was eating oysters, because that's what people do down there, and in an oyster she found a little, round, perfectly formed pearl! I have been eating oysters as long as I can remember, and I can't recall myself or anyone else finding a pearl in one. I have a strong feeling, however, that this is another "wild turkey incident." That is to say it's like the time I was excited to see wild turkeys standing by the side of the road and everyone told me that they see wild turkeys standing by the side of the road nonstop, every roadside is just lined end to end with wild turkeys. So I guess you can't eat a bowl of gumbo without finding a whole strand of immaculate pearls, good for you. Anyway, on our way back we stopped at a gas station in Buckatunna, Mississippi, to stretch our legs. In the course of leg-stretching, I wandered past the chips and gum and such, past what I would call "road snacks," to a corner of the store containing a couple of shelves of what I would call "pantry items." And I got so interested for some reason that I took out my stupid-ass jotting book and started jotting down what groceries were available at the gas station in Buckatunna, Mississippi: 1 squeeze bottle of Hershey's strawberry (!) syrup, 2 small containers of Thousand Island dressing, 1 small packet of brown gravy mix (generic), 1 small jar of maraschino cherries, 1 jar of bread-and-butter pickles, 3 bottles of breakfast syrup (one of them in the distinctive form of Mrs. Butterworth), 4 boxes of pancake mix, 10 large cans of fruit cocktail, 2 cans of barbecue-flavored Vienna sausages, 8 cans of Vienna sausages with jalapeno. There was more. But just as I was registering my surprise that there were zero cans of plain Vienna sausages, it was time to go.

Elvis in the Mariana Trench

Following McNeil's example, I watched WILD IN THE COUNTRY. It's one of Elvis's more somber and serious roles, a fact which my subsequent email to McNeil does not convey: "As you know, it begins with Elvis fighting and running. He runs through a bunch of chickens. He runs through a bunch of sheep. He runs into the woods, where we see a symbolic raccoon running and then a symbolic bear cub running. I thought he should run through a lot more animals. He should run through a bunch of monkeys! He should run through some dinosaurs! He should never stop running with and through and alongside all kinds of animals!" McNeil's eventual response was, "Footage of Elvis running through the Mariana Trench. That's the best I can do. I'm working outside. I don't know how those old-school guys did it." Later, I replied, "I have noted that in addition to Elvis singing a song about banana peels, Tuesday Weld uses a perfume made with banana oil. She and Elvis have a conversation about it." And that's a great transition. Thanks, me! Because as I was leafing through SWEET BANANAS to pick out choice bits for my upcoming reading, I noticed that there is an owl in it. The same owl in it at least twice! An owl I didn't even remember putting there. An owl I didn't notice even when I was writing about it. I guess I just can't help myself. Let's end things on a gloomy note because that's how life is and you need to face the facts. McNeil asked if I had ever "blogged" about Uncle Mort's burning down. The answer is no, because I had no idea that Uncle Mort's burned down. In fact, the last time I recommended Uncle Mort's as the number one spot near Jasper, Alabama, for country ham and eggs, it had already burned down!

Square Bananas

Hey! On July 8 at 5:30, I'll be reading from my novel SWEET BANANAS at Off Square Books. You may "click" here for details, though I have just told you most of the details. Shall I tell you something else? Shall I? Hmm? That date is my birthday. So just think about what a tragedy that night might turn out to be. How can you afford to miss my ultimate humiliation? There will even be banana-flavored treats, which I cannot eat, because I take a medication that is high in potassium. A SINGLE BANANA COULD KILL ME! Okay, that part isn't true, as far as I know. But would you come to the event if I promise to eat a banana and see what happens? We'll have a countdown clock! Now, despite my glib demeanor, how this all came about starts with some sad news. Hingston & Olsen, the wonderful publisher who specialized in limited editions of marvelously intricate printed objects, has gone out of business. That's the only reason that copies of the very rare novel SWEET BANANAS are available. If you will pretend to recall, the original run was a limited edition of 365 copies with 365 different covers. Those are all gone. But there were a few extra copies in the warehouse - for safety, I suppose - without the covers. And they kindly asked me if I would like to have them and I said yes. And now I'm passing the savings on to you like some kind of mattress salesman. A box of 16 got lost in the mail, so you can look for those on the black market, I guess. But I sincerely doubt you'll beat my rock-bottom prices!

The Second in a Series of Reports

In Episode 521 of DARK SHADOWS a new character pops up and he's basically the devil. Anyway, a few episodes later, he says "gazebo" twice, both times with the unusual "Ga-ZAY-Bo" pronunciation. This has been the second in a series of reports on the way characters pronounce "gazebo" in DARK SHADOWS.

The Mystery of Barry Lyndon's Fart

I had fun last night watching BARRY LYNDON with Tom Franklin. Yes, that's my idea of fun, so go to hell. Speaking of going to hell! You should check out my great new comic strip. From the creator of Frowny 'n' Smiley comes Jerky the Li'l Jerk. He's the fun-loving little boy who tells people to go to hell. "Click" here for all the action you can stand. It's Jerky the Li'l Jerk! They're presented in reverse chronological order, so scroll up from the bottom, folks. You won't want to miss a single panel of America's newest sweetheart, Jerky the Li'l Jerk. Anyway, so I was thinking of all the people I've watched BARRY LYNDON with. I watched BARRY LYNDON with Pendleton Ward! (For details, "click" here.) I watched BARRY LYNDON with Lee Durkee! (For details, "click" here!) I watched BARRY LYNDON with Megan Abbott and Kent Osborne! Simultaneously! Looking back at the "post" reporting on my viewing experience with Pen, I thought, huh! I thought, gee! Didn't Pen make me stop the movie and replay a scene because he thought Barry Lyndon farted? And I couldn't convince him that Barry Lyndon didn't fart? And didn't I write this down? I thought it was on the "blog"! But after a long, humiliating search for "barry lyndon + fart" turned up nothing on the "blog" I started scanning other examples of my voluminous output, including my many, many unpublished novels. And you know where I found it? You'll never guess. You're not even here! No one is reading this. I've made my peace with that. Well, I'll tell you anyway. I did a thing for Popula where I just babbled into a digital recorder and transcribed the results, and it was there that I related the "Pen thinking that Barry Lyndon farted" tale. "Click" here for proof. How many things have I told you to "click"? Four? How many did you "click"? Zero? I guess you're busy. So, the "Barry Lyndon farting" story was especially difficult to find because for some reason I changed everybody's name when I was babbling into that recorder. I guess that was back when I valued privacy or human dignity or whatever it was we used to value around here. So I called Pen "Tex." He's from Texas in real life, though I think it was also a salute to the anarchic spirit of animation pioneer Tex Avery. For more about Barry Lyndon's farts, ask your pastor or visit your local library.