Ham-Fisted Doofus

After I finished reading the Apocryphal Gospels during the 11-day blackout, I turned to BLACKWATER by Michael McDowell, which seemed like a good, creepy thing to read in the dark. I had been previously impressed with the author's deep geographical and metereological understanding of the Gulf Coast of Alabama as displayed in his novel THE ELEMENTALS, so it was extra sad that in BLACKWATER, he misspelled the name of my hometown Bayou La Batre. One character suggests moving there as part of a scheme of vengeance, to which her husband replies, "What would you and I do in Bayou le Batre, that old place?" Which, if I am being honest, is something we used to ask ourselves, if only from time to time. The answer was to go down to Schambeau's or Red's Drugs and look at the new comic books! And to wander around in Schambeau's and wonder why Mr. Schambeau (his first name was Crum!) regularly stocked Purina Monkey Chow. Did someone in town own a monkey? If so, who? An unsolved mystery to this day! Truly, Schambeau's was a wonderful grocery store to stir the imagination. Well, when I first opened BLACKWATER, the title page popped right out in my hand! It simply removed itself from the book in what seemed, given the circumstances, an ominous sign. I was reminded of when McNeil called me a "ham-fisted doofus" because I once broke an egg in my hand in an attempt to remove it from its carton. This led McNeil to come up with the idea of chickens who lay eggs with edible shells. I could have sworn I "blogged" about both the thing he called me and his egg idea, but it turns out I put those two tantalizing pieces of the McNeil puzzle into two separate unpublished novels. Well, the hell with it. Here I am giving away these remarkable tidbits for free! I give up. Note for historians of the future: an email search indicates that McNeil called me a "ham-fisted doofus" on May 6, 2019.

And the Silently Silent Silence

Our electricity went out on January 24 and it's still not back! I don't think it's ever coming back. That's why I am daringly "blogging" without electricity. How? Magic, I guess. Anyway, remember last time we got snowed in? We all thought it was such a lark, a real hoot, such a giggly good damn time, as Ace went out with his 4-wheel drive and brought us back 100 chicken thighs and a single onion. This time it wasn't so funny! It wasn't so damn funny this time, was it? WAS IT! (Also, my use of the past tense is misleading.) For example, Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house). I would tell you about the time Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house), but I've already told Ace and Angela and Bill and Jimmy and Megan and McNeil and my mom and Adam and Hanna and Kate and Steve and Quinn about the time Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house), and I probably told some other people I am forgetting to mention, considering how we haven't had electricity since January 24 and I am going insane. As I jokingly (not jokingly! As Rob Schneider, so renowned for his eloquence, once put it, I was "kidding on the square") told McNeil, at least not having power gave me time to finish reading the Apocryphal Gospels. Now, McNeil had purchased that book by mail on the basis of the single story I repeated from it about young Jesus killing one of his schoolteachers, but I had to inform him that, aside from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which the latter story occurs, the only other "good one" was the Questions of Bartholomew. Bartholomew timidly stomps his foot on the devil's neck, for example! But in general I was afraid I had caused McNeil to waste his money due to my vivid descriptions of interesting things! After I sent the email, I did read another really good line, just one line, set off on its own, like a line of poetry - "and the silently silent silence" - in the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians. It hit me as Joycean! Later still, I did find the Gospel of Truth, as it was called, to be full of the kinds of mind-blowing theological wackiness that McNeil and I used to speculate about in high school as we walked around in the giant sewer pipes with our friend J. P. near the Ossie's barbecue in Mobile, Alabama. But I don't know if that one will strike McNeil the same way. Look, I've done what I can. Ossie's is where I first became acquainted with and existentially scarred by the motif of a pig wearing a chef's hat. We have to thank Ace and Angela for a lot of things during this ongoing experience, including the time they helped us not blow up (unrelated to the aforementioned house fire). Thanks to Tom and Beth Ann for the hot coffee and hot shower when we neeeded it most... so far. The list goes on. Perhaps some would prefer to remain anonymous. Most importantly, Angela gave me a head lamp that allowed me to read the Apocryphal Gospels in the dark!

Oh My Goodness

My current "nighttime book" is a Penguin paperback of the Apocryphal Gospels, translated by Simon Gathercole. I finished reading the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus goes to school at about age five. Anyway, the teacher starts to teach him the alphabet and Jesus isn't having it. He says (I paraphrase, sorry, Lord!), "Just tell me about the letter A. Then I'll see whether I think you can handle B." Naturally, the teacher does a terrible job explaining the letter A. So Jesus says (I'm quoting directly now) "Pay attention, sir, and understand the arrangement of the first letter. Notice here how it has diagonal lines and a stroke in the middle, and then you can see the alpha's lines pointing and straddling, joining together and parting, leading off and going up, circling and darting, tripartite and double-edged, of similar shape and thickness and kind, rectilinear, equilibrious, isometric and isomeric." All right! And here's the part I identified with: the teacher goes (quoting again) "Oh my goodness, my goodness, I am a befuddled wreck of a man!" which is exactly what I used to say every day when I was a teacher. Weirdly, you know what this reminds me of? So, when we were working on the ADVENTURE TIME episode "Diamonds and Lemons," which was a Minecraft tie-in, few of us knew enough about Minecraft. Taking myself as an example, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that it existed. That was it for me. So we had one member of the team (I think it was Cole Sanchez) who knew everything about Minecraft, and he gave us a crash course in its intricacies. Also, we watched people playing Minecraft on YouTube. And I remember there was one guy in particular who just played Minecraft and said "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" over and over. "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" fifty times in a row as he played Minecraft. "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness," he said, thereby racking up millions upon millions of "views." And that's when I knew writing was dead. That was the moment! I was like "I have no future." Because you don't need to hire somebody to write down "Oh my goodness" fifty times in a row for you. Though I bet Samuel Beckett might have tried it out! We may also recall the time I read an online reviewer who was persnickety in an unintentionally amusing way, and I thought, you know, I try to write characters who talk like this all the time, but why? Here they are already existing in real life for the world to enjoy. Anyway, when Jesus is eight years old, he kills an especially mean teacher. Kills him dead! Once again, the point of contention is the alphabet. At the end of that episode, Joseph takes Jesus home and tells Mary to keep an eye on him, quote, "in case people who provoked him ended up dead." That was the first time I ever laughed out loud at any Gospel, apocryphal or otherwise. Cole teaching us about Minecraft reminds me that we had a bee expert come in and tell us all about bees on SUMMER CAMP ISLAND. But my memory is that everything we learned about bees was too depressing to use.

The Disgraced Mime

In THE ANNALS of Tacitus, we meet "one Cassius, a mime disgraced for his use of his body." (tr. A.J. Woodman)

Icy Cold Banana Malteds

Some weeks before I dreamed of McNeil doing a duet with Paul Simon, McNeil dreamed about me. And here, I'll just cut-and-paste a portion of McNeil's email: "I forgot to mention that last night I was dreaming and I and some others (who I don't remember) were standing in a kitchen chatting and the phone rang. A land line. Your voice was on the other end apologizing because you didn't know how you would be able to make it to Las Vegas. After the call everyone was...okay, but no one was planning to go to Las Vegas, so...then a bunch of other stuff happens in some dream sequences, and then back to the kitchen and the phone rings again. You're more apologetic than ever - because you just can't seem to finagle that trip to Vegas everyone wants to take. Again, no one knows what you're talking about. But we politely say, 'Oh, gee, okay.' And hang up. I have no idea what that's about. I guess the point is that you're not even showing up in my dreams anymore, Pendarvis. You're phoning it in. Like Bob Hope in I'll Take Sweden." The subject line of McNeil's email indicated, probably correctly, that I am too lazy even to show up in his dreams. I'm not sure it's worth it to mount a defense of I'LL TAKE SWEDEN. I'm tempted but it seems like a lot of work (see my laziness, above). Also, as I was typing this, I received another email from McNeil, which immediately took precedence, reminding me, as it did, of when we were in our twenties (or younger?) and wrote a movie together in which Greenland was firing off ICBMs, which, in their case, meant Icy Cold Banana Malteds. That was McNeil's joke! I can't take credit for it. I'm not even sure he remembers that detail, as it was not mentioned in the email. So maybe I could have stolen his joke after all. But that's just not my way. Anyhow, McNeil is claiming that we are "prophets" now that "our script is about to play out." I don't necessarily agree that we are prophets, though. I think that's really something for our worshipers to decide.

Advances in Boiling

Well, I'm reading another book with an owl in it but let's talk about something else first. I'm unemployed, so I can make this "post" as long as I want. So, McNeil emailed me a photograph of a physical newspaper-like object he was reading, and he said the byline belonged to Anya Groner. He wondered whether this could be the same Anya Groner I used to teach. I strained my eyes but could not discern individual letters of the font displayed in such a miniscule fashion by McNeil's photograph. Still, I could tell the article was about bears. And in my heart, I knew that Anya would love writing about bears. So I said "Yes!" before I even asked her. So then I asked her. And... "Yes!" Yes, Anya wrote the article about a bear attack (content warning: bear attack!) and sent me this "link" ("click" here) that even my old eyes could read. Check it out! Another thing McNeil and I emailed about was how I dreamed about him betting on horses and wearing a tuxedo and doing a duet with Paul Simon, in which they played saxophones as well as playing guitars and singing. McNeil contended that I was really dreaming about myself, because I used to play the saxophone and I have bet on horses... once! But I was ashamed for McNeil to think that I only used his face in order to dream about myself... though I've heard it said (haven't I?) that everyone in your dreams is really you. So! I did not mention this to McNeil at the time, but in the dream I was sitting around near a guitar and Paul Simon walked up and asked whether I played, and I was like, "No, this is my friend McNeil's guitar. He'll be back in a minute." In the dream, then, I did make a distinction between myself and McNeil, who really does play the guitar. All right! I'm reading and very much enjoying THE ELEMENTALS by Michael McDowell, whom I am happy to claim as a fellow native of Alabama. And allow me to quote: "Big Barbara complained it was hotter than a boiled owl." Now, in our previous literary encounters with owls of the boiled variety, we have observed them to be drunk (as in "stewed") most often, but also tough or sore. I do believe this is the first time we have heard of a boiled owl being "hot," but I guess a boiled owl would be hot indeed, especially right out of the pot. I should mention that the illustration for Anya's bear article is by Blair Hobbs, who also made the iconic cheese ball that illustrates my recent "blog"trospective about my work on ADVENTURE TIME.

Say No to Chiromancy in 2026

Well, Kate Tsang sent me an amazing present - a tiny replica she fashioned of my novel SWEET BANANAS. I placed a penny beside it so you can see just how tiny a replica it is. In the foreground, that's Bob Hope's ashtray, but that's another story. I was going to photograph the tiny replica in the palm of my hand to emphasize its tininess, but then I decided I didn't want the palm readers of the "internet" to know everything about me and my future. Hey! You know what that makes me think of? The time Dr. Theresa and I went to a dinner party and the host had a few drinks (or maybe that was us) and told us that he had belonged to a secret society in Greece with 13 members, and each member specialized in a different occult art! And his was palmistry. I'm sure he read our palms that night but I don't remember what he said. All I remember is that his wife, who was from Italy, made a big pot of spaghetti with tomato sauce, which everyone ate except for the chiromancer, who sat at the head of the table nibbling on a lettuce leaf.