Experiments in Intercourse

First of all, relax! There is nothing at all wrong with the "blog." The culprit that drove me mad was just a curious virus that only I could see, infecting a particular browser in the hotel's business center... the very business center immortalized (in a tastefully fictionalized version, of course) in my almost-new book MOVIE STARS, suddenly the toast of New York town! I, however, was out in Los Angeles, and I brought my jotting book of precious jottings, but in my new anti-"blogging" spirit, I jotted nearly nothing on my trip. And yes, I made that decision out of pure spite! Okay, I will tell you one thing. Julia and I walked up to Ako and I said, "Ako, tell Julia what you told me about the miraculous powers of coconuts!" And Ako shouted with hilarious urgency, "IT'S NOT TRUE!" It turns out that I have been going around telling lies that Ako accidentally told me about the miraculous powers of coconuts. One day, as she related to us ruefully, she was telling the same story when it dawned on her with the force of epiphany how suspicious it sounded. So she looked it up and was mortified at the extent to which she had been misleading an innocent coconut-buying public for so many years. Then she explained to Julia and me what the powers of coconuts REALLY are, and to be honest, the coconuts still sounded pretty miraculous. Okay, I feel bad for you, so I am going to tell you two funny things from the airplane ride home. There was a peperoncino garnishing the plate of food they gave me. So I bit into it. It was just a small, ordinary peperoncino but it seemed to contain an abundance of juice. The amazing quantity of juice expelled even by my rather timid bite squirted all over my personal airplane video screen. It even squirted onto the ceiling over the passengers in front of me! So it dripped down on them and they urgently pressed the button to summon the harried flight attendant. "The airplane is leaking bright green fluid!" they told her. "We're doomed!" Or words to that effect. So I had to confess that I had squirted the peperoncino juice that had rained down on them like the stinging hot portent of a deadly malfunction. Then I was enjoying THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H.G. Wells, my chosen airplane reading, and I suddenly came to a chapter called - in embarrassingly big letters - "Experiments in Intercourse"! Ha ha! So I put my thumb over the word "intercourse" so the guy in the next seat wouldn't think I was reading something too sexy for an airplane. Wells just meant that his heroes were trying to find a way to communicate with the moon men. He didn't mean anything dirty! He meant "intercourse" in the sense of "communication." That's how people talked back in crazy times! But I hid it with my thumb anyway. Okay, I'll tell you two more things. Look at this picture. Adam says it's okay to show it now. I was going to wait until season seven of our show had concluded. There are still two more wildly surprising episodes to come but Adam says the titles are out there in the public now and everybody knows them so it doesn't matter. Well, some quite literal spy took this spy picture with her sneaky spy camera very early in the season and spread it around the "internet" without compunction, our most personal and private business, including some very revealing episode titles, though I don't believe I've given a large enough representation for you to see them. But the funny part is the map of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County that's on the wall. Look and you will see it! You may furthermore recall when it was presented to Kent and Pen. Scores of young detectives taken in by this remorseless charlatan and thief thought it was some kind of map of a previously unknown territory of Ooo, the land where ADVENTURE TIME occurs - as did, no doubt, the budding Mata Hari herself. Well, there are probably tons of 13-year-olds all inspired and debating ABSALOM, ABSALOM! now, propelled forward by their initially misguided researches - so everything turned out all right; aren't you as sure of it as I am? In my preferred version of these events, the emotionless miscreant helped everybody learn and grow even though she was trying to hurt and spoil! I'll finish up with something I've been sitting on for a month or so because I don't care about you anymore. I started reading a book called THE YEAR OF LEAR, about KING LEAR, sort of, and it has owls in it, but not even the same owls that KING LEAR has in it! Some other owls. Thomas Dekker is describing a miserable denizen of a plague house: "And to keep such a poor wretch waking, he should hear no noise but of toads croaking, screech-owls howling, mandrakes shrieking."

I Feel Bad

[Before you read this and get all worked up, it's fine now. We're preserving it because historians of the future will need to know. - ed.] Hey! It looks like some weirdos have hacked my blog and added a bunch of links to shady-looking websites. So please don't click on any of links you see here, even though most of my links are great! But none of them can be trusted right now. I have not put any links in this post, for example, so if any appear, they were placed here by some criminal who is probably just trying to feed his or her family by selling - as far as I can tell - cheap clothes, cigarette lighters and knockoff Pop Tarts. I love you all and will try to fix my blog when I get home from Los Angeles. If I can't fix it I'm just going to delete the whole thing, yes, the whole darn blog, even though I worked on it for ten years and it is the only way I can remember anything that ever happened to me during that time period. So enjoy it while you can, if "enjoy" is the right word. I'm in the very lobby where I once saw Garry Marshall and now he is dead. I was going to link to that very remembrance [like so - ed.] but the post is riddled with suspicious commerce and mysterious links to shady enterprises. I will mention that this very day Kent and I sat in his office and watched Garry Marshall's scene in LOST IN AMERICA for inspiration. Normally I would put a hyperlink on Kent's name and it would be fun for everyone to click on Kent's name and see all the wonderful waggery [like this. - ed.] he has gotten up to over the years. But criminals - and the lax security robots of the Google corporation, I suppose, who make it impossible to speak to a sympathetic human person - have conspired to ruin everything we hold dear. Well, anyway, Donald Trump is running for president and just look what happens.

Listen to the Owls

You'll understand why I'm breaking my silence! I'm reading the new Shirley Jackson bio recommended by Megan Abbott, even though I read a different Shirley Jackson bio just a few years ago. This one has owls in it! I would never be surprised by the sudden appearance of owls in a book having anything to do with Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson says that her publisher has "an owlish aspect" and within a page or two she is comparing herself to an owl as well. Finally, some hundred pages or so later, we get actual owls. "Shirley liked to sit and listen to the owls calling outside," we are informed.

Funeral Bikini

Email from an excitable McNeil. "Wooo Hooo" it was titled. That's right, three o's. Or six. Half a dozen o's lined up like eggs in a carton. "I saw Dabney Coleman in a bit part on I DREAM OF JEANNIE last night!" McNeil wrote. Which reminded me that Dr. Theresa and I had seen Dabney Coleman in an early COLUMBO, a fact I duly reported to McNeil in response. Dabney Coleman played the thankless role of a flunky on the police force, a type often seen in COLUMBO, but Dabney Coleman really put in some effort, ferociously smacking his gum in every scene and creating a vibrant presence. One might say a character! Even though I knew better I was like, "Wow, Columbo's gettin' a sidekick!" Here we see Dabney Coleman giving guest-murderer Martin Landau the old stink eye as Columbo gets to the bottom of things. But that was long ago. Dr. Theresa and I have already made it to season four, the one where Robert Conrad is the guest-murderer. Columbo goes to his house and Robert Conrad's secretary is there wearing a bikini! Columbo is surprised! Columbo is thinking, "I guess anything goes these days!" I realize that "secretary" is an outdated term but that's what they call her. Then Columbo tells them some guy is dead. And I ad-libbed a line for Robert Conrad. I said in a deep, growly voice, "Why don't you change into your funeral bikini, baby?" Well, it got a laugh from Dr. Theresa. I'm not googling "funeral bikini" because God knows what would happen. So I apologize to the thousands of others who have no doubt already made this same wisecrack in whatever dubious context. It's July already and you know I have to "blog" about McNeil at least once a month so I can do his regular birthday tribute as promised, even though I'm not "blogging" anymore, obviously.