Hot Dog Island

I really should have finished reading the Huya and Tuya section of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS before I filed my report yesterday. On the next page, Tuya refers to herself as a "she-owl"! She also calls herself "your little mouse... your green frog... your coney." She has more cute nicknames for Huya, too: "my little bat... A crafty corncrake... dearest toad... my penguin... my mole..." I had to look up coney, I'm sorry. I know you think less of me now. In this case, it's a rabbit. The OED tells me it can also refer to a hot dog, a meaning going back at least to 1902. When you think about it, Coney Island is Hot Dog Island! Endearingly, one of the citations in the OED is a newspaper article from 1959: "Jim enjoys eating coneys and fried chicken." I don't know who Jim is, but it was big news in 1959!

Be of Good Cheer

JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS features a domestic scene of Potiphar's aged parents, adorably named Huya and Tuya. Tuya addresses Huya with a number of peculiar endearments. "Right you are, my swamp beaver," she says. (This is the excellent translation by John E. Woods.) A couple of paragraphs after that: "How true, my good spoonbill." Soon afterward: "Then be of good cheer, my little owl." I only had to read to page 703 to find the owl! The book isn't even half over yet. I read 702 pages thinking, I bet there aren't even owls in the region. My mother-in-law is Egyptian, and yet, shamefully, I wasn't sure whether there were owls in Egypt (see also). I'm still not sure. I guess I'm just taking Thomas Mann's (implied) word for it. I've read three Thomas Mann novels now (well, 2.5, but I'm getting there!) and they've all had owls in them. Could Thomas Mann be the German Charles Portis? By which, of course, I mean to remind you ("click" here) that every Charles Portis book has an owl in it. Wait! I just remembered there are owls in the Bible. So I must have known there were owls around there somewhere. I haven't had my coffee yet! And I'm down to a cup a day for health reasons! Which is why I must conclude with my accidental discovery just now that the "blog" addressed the question of owls in Egypt a full decade ago ("click" here), with similarly lazy results.

Wolves

I had nightmares about wolves the other night... and let's leave aside for a moment that the very first dreams I recall from childhood are nightmares of wolves... so naturally I was telling my ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE coworkers about my nightmares of wolves, and believe me, they are always thrilled to hear my descriptions of my inner turmoil. Anyhow, Adam wisely asked whether I had read something about wolves before going to bed. I said yes! In fact, I had read an old comic book in which Dr. Doom plunges to certain death, having been attacked by a pack of wolves. Adam reacted to this news with surprise: "Dr. Doom was defeated by WOLVES? He fights the Fantastic Four!" If I paraphrase, it is only slightly. I did not get into this part, but Dr. Doom had removed his chest shield for reasons too dull to explain. I will (and did) say that he was fighting a character called the Shroud, of whom I had never heard, despite the fact that the comic book in question came out in 1976, possibly the peak of my comic-reading years. The Shroud, by the way, is a shockingly blatant Batman rip-off. Shockingly! However, that need not concern us here. It is much more important that I use the excuse of wolves to mention something loosely related. I was in Square Books the other day, poking around, and I opened up a book called THE SLAVIC MYTHS by Noah Charney and the delightfully named Svetlana Slapsak. In it, I read "Count Jan Potocki was one of Poland's most revered writers and Enlightenment intellectuals. His masterpiece, THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA..." blah, blah, blah. I knew that already. BUT! "On 23 December 1815, this brilliant, worldly man absconded with one of his mother's silver teapots, made out of it a bullet, had this silver bullet blessed by a priest and then shot himself in the head with it... because Jan Potocki believed he was a werewolf." That's something I didn't know! This revelation caused me to purchase the book. As you know, I consider standing in a bookstore and reading no better than being a sneak thief. As long as I have you here, let's tidy up some "blog" business. I see that this will be my ninth "post" in April. I have not "blogged" with such frequency since October 2020, troubled times during which, as you know, I was required to revive this most decisively defunct "blog" in order to cheer a grateful nation with my wry reflections on the foibles of humanity. I need to reemphasize here that the combo of quitting social media and forced recuperation have left me with little else to do. I told Tom Franklin, "Hey, I've been 'blogging' about those old comic books you gave me," and he was like, "I didn't know 'blogs' existed anymore." And they don't.

Weird

I never read the western-themed comic books as a kid. This is the kind of information you want from me! But let me get to the point. As you know, Tom Franklin brought me a bunch of old comic books while I was in the hospital, and then he brought me even more old comic books after I got home, and the western ones turned out to be among my favorites, because, among other reasons, they had the most owls in them - a longstanding and inexplicaple concern of the "blog," of course. Here's the update you've been craving: I bought even more old comic books for myself! One I especially like is called WEIRD WESTERN TALES. Often, the back pages of WEIRD WESTERN TALES will contain a story about a superhero I never heard of prior to the recent events elucidated above, the mysterious El Diablo. He's great! Anyhow, in one of these WEIRD WESTERN TALES of El Diablo here, there is a character named Wise Owl. He's not an owl, he's a guy! I don't read talking animal comics! I'm a 60-year-old-man! I only read comic books about magical cowboys.

My Dear, Suspicious Friends

Not to brag, but I did successfully predict the hottest new trend of 2024: Rachel and the teraphim! Marilynne Robinson covers it in her new book READING GENESIS. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I picked up that book just because I knew Rachel and the teraphim would be in it. Oh, my dear, suspicious friends. Nothing could be further from the truth. I guess a few things could be further from the truth. After all, I know about the contents of Genesis from my many mornings in Sunday school. And the story of Jacob, which includes Rachel and the teraphim, also contains my favorite Bible character (as this important document ["click" here] from fifteen years ago will confirm), Esau. I was a bit put off by the very rough treatment given to Esau by Thomas Mann. Marilynne Robinson goes easier on him in the end, though she does call him a "boor," ha ha! I seem to be forgetting the task at hand, which is to show you why you're all wrong about me, all the time. See, I happened to find READING GENESIS at Square Books, and I remembered seeing something nice in the New York Times about it, and I've always meant to get into Marilynne Robinson somehow or another, and that's all there is to it. Though I did text Megan that I thought it was going to be a good companion piece to JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. Yes, that's the kind of thing we text about! Sometimes! And I was right. I dip into READING GENESIS for just five minutes at a time, and that just twice a day, right before I take my blood pressure. I probably read somewhere on the "internet" that you should relax for five minutes before taking your blood pressure. And what could be more relaxing than the Old Testament? Even though I am going through READING GENESIS at such a modest rate, I'm getting near the point where it's going to present spoilers to me as I continue with JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, which I am reading at a much faster clip. I mean to say that Robinson covers in a paragraph what it takes Mann tens of thousands of words to get across. You would think I would be immune to spoilers, given my supposed familiarity with the narrative, but lots of times Mann will tell of an outlandish incident and I'll think, "Well! No way that's in the Bible!" and then I'll look, and there it is in the Bible. Oh! Remember how I said that I loved THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, but it took me about 100 pages before I really got into it? The same goes for JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, except it takes 200-400 pages to get going.

Of Mice and Dogs

Yesterday, when I was telling you the shameful story of how McNeil's grandfather stole a copy of PAL JOEY, I was looking for something to "link" via "hyperlink" to the words "PAL JOEY." You know how I love to "link" to things! Indeed, if you examine the "blog" with the eye of a scholar, you will soon realize that it is designed in a secret way to be nothing more than a never-ending loop of "hyperlinks" that an immortal person could enjoy forever. (And, as I have emphasized repeatedly, it works much better on your laptop than on your phone, due to the extra bells and whistles. But I'm not the boss of you! Also, you may not exist.) Anyhow, I could have sworn that I had mentioned PAL JOEY on the "blog" before. But as far as I could tell, I had not. So I went ahead and "posted" the damn thing. Pardon my salty language! Later on, I thought, wait a minute, I could swear I "posted" at least a photo of the time when Laraine Newman and I went to William Faulkner's house and one of us (I couldn't remember which) held up, whilst being photographed, Faulkner's own personal copy of PAL JOEY... presumably purchased legally. Turned out I had not "posted" that either... until now! (See above.) Meanwhile, McNeil has been emailing me his thoughts as he begins to read his grandfather's stolen copy of PAL JOEY: "On page 35 of Pal Joey and so far only a dog has shown up. Joey mentions 'mouse' a lot, but that's just when referring to a female human." To be clear, McNeil brings up the dog because he was hoping for an owl. He also learned, from the eponymous Joey, the term "one-arm joint," which he passed along, and I looked it up in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG, which cites, in clarifying the definition, PAL JOEY itself, as I was thrilled beyond measure to report back to McNeil. Just another endless loop.

The Wonderful World of McNeil

McNeil has stumbled across a copy of the novel PAL JOEY that his grandfather checked out of the library... it's 58 years overdue! (See proof above.) The discovery led McNeil to reflect upon his own tardiness. He still has a copy of WITHOUT FEATHERS that was due back on May 26, 1982. "I guess it runs in the family. We get busy and forget!" McNeil's email concludes. Incidentally, McNeil dug out "his" WITHOUT FEATHERS and opened to page five, where he read "The only thing you'll do is in collaboration with an owl."

Innocent Merriment

I was listening to Haydn's Drumroll Symphony... yes, I was! Shut up! And I grew curious about the almost modern-sounding melody line at the very beginning, so I thought I'd see if my quaint and trusty old MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC had anything to say about it. Well, sorry to report that they devoted just one short paragraph to that work, containing nothing on the subject which had captured my interest. But! Underneath that paragraph was one on the Toy Symphony (now [and I use the word "now" loosely, considering the relative antiquity of the volume] attributed to Mozart's father), for which the following instrumentation was catalogued: "penny trumpet, quail call, rattle, cuckoo, screech-owl whistle, a little drum (in G), and a little triangle." This, Milton Cross and his associates conclude, makes for "innocent merriment to delight both young and old." It also makes the MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC - Volume I, at least - a book with an owl in it.

Outlaw Pants

As you know, I tell you every time I read a book with an owl in it for secret reasons that no one except we (as I believe is gramatically correct) will ever understand. As you also know, Tom Franklin brought me a bunch of old comic books when I was in the hospital, and in one of them, the masked cowboy known as Vigilante met up with some real rascals (spoiler alert! they were reformed and had been framed!) known colloquially as "owlhoots." I don't suppose any of us will ever forget that. But what you DIDN'T know was that after I got home from the hospital, Tom brought over a fresh stack of old comic books! I was lying in bed reading one of the new batch last night and this character the Two-Gun Kid shoots Jesse James's pants off him! He does it in order to embarrass Jesse James in front of a bunch of schoolchildren. It's an odd choice, but hey, he's the Two-Gun Kid. He uses his two guns to shoot off Jesse James's pants, what's the big deal? Here, let me give you a direct quotation from the Two-Gun Kid himself: "LOOK, YOUNGSTERS! THE OWLHOOT WHO HOLDS UP STAGES IS HAVING TROUBLE HOLDING UP HIS JEANS! AND NOW, JESSE... DANCE!" What may we conclude? Let us consider: Vigilante is a DC character, while the Two-Gun Kid was created by Marvel. Therefore, though these mighty giants of comics publishing were adversarial in every other way, the term "owlhoot" was universal enough to bridge the immense gap between them. Can't we all learn a lesson from that in these trying times? Sidenote: I was going to title this "post" "I Shot Jesse James...'s Pants," an allusion to the Samuel Fuller film I SHOT JESSE JAMES, but no one would have understood or, had they understood, cared.

TV Memories

Last night I turned on the TV, which happened to be tuned to TCM, as it often is, and I saw a super special guest co-hosting a movie presentation, and I was like, "Hey! That's a guy who fired me once!" Actually, he fired Barry and Sven and myself, and we all got in a car (well, not the guy who fired us, but the rest of us did) and drove straight to Manuel's Tavern, suddenly jobless, and on the way there, we saw a dead man lying in the street. I realize now that I recounted this story in an anthology about bars called COME HERE OFTEN?, which I assume still exists in some form, if you'd like more details. I'm not sure there are more details.

Teraphim For Real

Almost exactly two years ago, I made my famous prediction that 2022 would be the year of Rachel and the teraphim. Maybe I was off by a couple of years! Because guess what I just read in JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS by Thomas Mann? That's right: a chapter about Rachel and the teraphim. It took me a while to get there, because the book is so big and heavy that I wasn't allowed to lift it during a recent medical adventure (not the most recent medical adventure).