Big August Wrap-Up

Well, folks, it has been a busy August sure as you're born. For reasons related to employment and general health, we have experienced the highest volume of monthly "blogging" since April 2016, when the TV blew up and I decided to "quit" "blogging" forever. Just a couple of notes as we head into September, with all its "mellow fruitfulness" as Keats put it, I think, or at least that's what they told me at the University of South Alabama. I got out my Aquinas this morning - shut up! - and noticed for the first time a handwritten, carbon-copy receipt tucked inside, belonging to the original owner. Now, you know how much I love it when I have clues about who owned a book before I did. You remember when I read June Havoc's memoir in the Million Dollar Book Club, for example, and the previous owner turned out to live in the same house where Eleanor Roosevelt used to live! "Click" here for details. Oh, what a time that was to be alive. When I read June Havoc's memoir, I mean. Those were the days. My Aquinas, however, formerly belonged to someone named "Father Michael," a priest, I assume. The clerk must have known him on sight! Or did he ask the priest's name, and did the priest answer "Father Michael"? Like, "That's all you're getting out of me, chump." Or maybe that becomes your official name when you're a priest. No, I've known a couple of priests in my life, and they had last names. (One of them, Father Dorrill, was the person who taught me the Keats poem alluded to above, which is a coincidence I only thought about later. Then I came back and added this intrusive parenthetical information just for you!) Or maybe "Michael" is a last name. But I don't think so. I mean, I know Michael is a last name sometimes, but somehow I think this priest just went around calling himself "Father Michael." That's fairly routine, I think. Show your parishoners you're just one of the fellas! It's fine. You can read about similarly named priests in the works of Bill Boyle, whose birthday is today. Happy birthday, Bill! Anyway, Father Michael got a ten-percent discount! For being a priest, I assume. I was shocked at the price he paid, though. It was $76.21 with tax, even after the discount! And that was on July 16, 1990. We're talking 76 big ones in July 16, 1990 money! I got it for less than half that, used, at A Cappella Books in Atlanta, where I once saw Bruce Springsteen making his wallet-toting lackeys pay for some art books. What else? Well, I watched a bit of WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT? this morning, and do you remember how McNeil was always looking for obelisks in movies? That was his big thing for a while, and I guess I caught the obelisk bug! Speaking of health issues. Anyway, in WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT?, there's an obelisk in THE VERY FIRST SHOT! Not merely the first scene, THE FIRST SHOT. And let me state for the record, it is the largest decorative obelisk I've ever seen in a movie. It's bigger than Jerry!

I Fall to Pieces

Hey! I thought you'd want to know I found THE COMPLETE GODS AND GODDESSES OF ANCIENT EGYPT. They were on a shelf, of all places! Wedged right in between the Oscar Wilde bio we read in the Million Dollar Book Club and MAMMALS OF THE WORLD: A CHECKLIST. You know what else I found? This month's electric bill. I looked everywhere for it for a couple of days and then I just paid it by phone. My friend Quinn had already made fun of me once for still using paper checks. Well, she wouldn't make fun of me. She expressed incredulity. Anyway, it was on top of a tall bookcase for no reason I can figure out. Despite all the efforts of medical science, I'm falling apart. Hey, Ward McCarthy and I once tried to adapt Tom Franklin's short story "Grit" into a feature-length screenplay called I FALL TO PIECES, but as we expanded it, the story became goofier and goofier (it is not at all a goofy story) and, indeed, distored beyond recognition. So no one enjoyed that. We called it I FALL TO PIECES because in the story, the bad guy - and here comes a spoiler for Tom Franklin's short story "Grit," from his first collection, POACHERS, and my description may be inaccurate and misleading, so there are two caveats here, and counting! - as I was saying, the bad guy is put into a machine and ground into tiny pieces of grit. Also, the good guy was falling to pieces in a less literal way, now that I think of it. Pretty good title! And the song that should play over the closing credits is obvious, making the job so easy for the hypothetical music supervisor. Oh, well. This "post" brought to you by the new "internet" that is no longer the godawful AT&T "internet." If I hadn't quit social media like the hero I am, I would be on there every minute of the day griping about AT&T and feeling like a big he-man who was really going to change the world.

A Weird Creature of the Night

Here's one of the many, many narrators of THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA: "Pliny says that elephants have been taught to dance, and that once they were found rehearsing in the moonlight." When I read that, I decided to find out more! I scurried downstairs like a disgusting little rat and nosed around in the bookcase where I knew I had seen my books by Pliny the Elder when I was looking for something else. I had just two volumes out of the huge, sloppy pile of books that make up his NATURAL HISTORY, and I was pretty sure I didn't have the one with elephants in it, and I was right. Noticing that one of my Pliny (the Elder!) books did not have a dust jacket, I recalled that I had bought it used in San Francisco, and as I strolled down the sidewalk with my purchase in hand, that's when (as recorded previously on the "blog" - "click" here, you uncaring monster!) I either spoke to Francis Ford Coppola or some guy with a beard. Then I remembered that after I walked away, I thought, "I should have gotten him to sign this Pliny the Elder book. They're both Italian!" Well, now, in what we call "the present," I'm glad I didn't, because then I would have known for sure whether or not this guy was Francis Ford Coppola, and I might have been disappointed. And humiliated! As it is, we all dwelled in what may have been a pleasant illusion, and what could be nicer? I can keep you in suspense no longer! I got hold of the Pliny volume with the elephants in it, and the reality of the anecdote was much sadder than the light tone of Potocki's narrator would have one believe. That's what I get for wanting to know things. As you can imagine, once I had book eight of the NATURAL HISTORY, in which Pliny promises to tell us all about animals - and delivers! - I skipped greedily ahead to the bird section, hoping to find some owls, which were, indeed, forthcoming. "The eagle-owl is a funereal bird, and is regarded as an extremely bad omen... it inhabits deserts and places that are not merely unfrequented, but terrifying and inaccessible; a weird creature of the night, its cry is not a musical note but a scream." Scarily put! But old Pliny gives the eagle-owl (not to be confused with an eagle) a fair shake: "I know several cases of its having perched on the houses of private persons without fatal consequences." That's a relief! Now let's get back to THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, which, although it hasn't had a single owl in it yet (except on the cover), does have monkeys riding vicuñas, which I only mention because my list of monkeys riding dogs has so few entries, whereas I am adding to this list of books with owls in them, upon which you never "click" anymore, all the time. Look, put down your quill, I know that a vicuña is not a dog. Which reminds me. I was reading that Lord Byron poem, and there's a character called the Chamois Hunter. And I was like, hey! This guy can't find his chamois, a small, soft cloth for polishing things! That's not really what I thought. What I really thought, given my capability for contextualizing, was, huh, a chamois must be an animal. I'm 61 now and I went my whole life thinking a chamois was just a kind of rag or cloth! I never gave a thought for the poor chamois who gave up its life, I assume, so I could polish up the trophy we won for the battle of the bands in 1989, largely because my brother was one of the judges. Which reminds me. Jon Host and I once rhymed "chamois" and "clammy" in a song.

Speaking of Fox Mulder

I wanted to “post” this earlier, but the AT&T “internet” stopped working over and over. Anyway, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. I got one of those junk headlines that you get on your phone, something like “The Queen’s Favorite Sandwich That She Ate Every Day Since She Was Five – And It’s So Basic!” So I took a screen grab of it and sent it to Ace. That’s all we do all day every day, grab stupid things that appear on our phones and text them to each other. Then I texted the same screen grab, with its accompanying photo of Queen Elizabeth II, to Sara, along with my own humorous commentary: “The answer? A foot-long chili dog.” Sara’s reply was something like (a close paraphrase here): “OMG, really???” So I sadly had to reply that no, Queen Elizabeth II did not, as far as I know, eat a foot-long chili dog every day for 90 years. As Sara expressed it in a subsequent text, her tragedy – ha ha! she didn’t say tragedy – is that she “wants to believe.” Just like Fox Mulder from the X-Files! I added that part. Speaking of Fox Mulder, I was reading another old comic book about The Atom, and he was fighting these tiny guys who lived in a cave and rode around on the backs of bats. The editor interrupted the story to announce that tiny people of a proper size for riding small flying rodents into battle most likely really existed at some point! He insisted, in the capital letters typical of old comic books: “THE ELVES, THE BROWNIES, THE LEPRECHAUNS, THE FAIRIES, ALL MAY BE FANCIFUL RECOLLECTIONS OF A RACE OF TINY HUMANS! CHARLES FORT WRITES OF THEM.” Naturally, I was interested to run across this use of Charles Fort's captivating ramblings as evidence. I always thought Charles Fort would be a big deal on the “blog,” though he has never ended up in even 10 “posts” so far, after all the “blog’s” horrible countless years of thankless and unwanted existence. You remember Charles Fort, of whom it was once recorded on a book flap that he "collected and published reliable accounts of colored rains, living things falling to earth, unknown objects in space and in the oceans, people who have mysteriously appeared and disappeared." Charles Fort, to whom Tom Wolfe casually alluded: "Cassady began fibrillating the vocal cords, going faster and faster until by dawn if he had gone any faster, he would have vibrated off, as old Charles Fort said, and gone instantly into the positive absolute. It was a nice weird party." Charles Fort, whose glowing owls inspired the owls in my own second book. Charles Fort! That’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to say Charles Fort. Oh! In conclusion – and you will have to pardon me in advance for blue language on a level such as never, in my memory, has been attempted on the “blog” before – I watched THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY again, and as I was looking it up afterward in Fujiwara’s excellent monograph, I ran across Jerry Lewis’s defense of the puppet sequence from THE ERRAND BOY, which, having grown wise over the years, I now welcome with arms open wide. In fact, I’m ashamed of some of my earlier “posts” in which I seemingly apologize for Jerry. Back in those days, I just wanted everybody to like me! Now I don’t care anymore. So, Fujiwara interviews Jerry, who says of the part of the movie in which he, Jerry, cavorts tenderly with (if I recall correctly) a flirtatious, languorous ostrich puppet and enjoys maudlin interactions with a little finger-puppet clown… Jerry, who says of himself, actually, “We call that a director with steel balls.” And I was like, you know what? He’s right!

McNeil's Li'l Sausage Bits

Welcome once more to "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," where McNeil reads a 700-page Humphrey Bogart bio and I pass the savings on to you! As you may recall, we were on the fence about whether the casting of Dooley Wilson in CASABLANCA was a legitimate bogie bit. As McNeil put it, Wilson "was not their first or even second choice, but....that's how sausage is made. I'm not sure that's how sausage is made." Which reminds me of a whimsical quotation from a whimsical narrator in my beloved bestseller (it's neither beloved nor a bestseller) MOVIE STARS: "There is a reason no one wants to know 'how the sausage is made.' How the sausage is made is terrible." And here you may note the most significant difference between my "blog" writing and my "real" writing: on the "blog," that second sentence would have ended in an exclamation point. And, honestly, in most of my "real" writing too. I wonder why I didn't do it! But we are getting far away from McNeil's li'l bits. McNeil says that Lena Horne was considered for the role of Sam! He also contends, rather boldly, that CASABLANCA would have been "twice as good" if Lena Horne had played the role. And I do say that such an observation indeed qualifies as a bogie bit. Another bogie bit is of a sad nature, as it depicts Mayo Methot, in a drunken rage, getting herself wedged tightly behind a sofa somehow. But let's get back to sausage. By a weird coincidence, I was listening to an opera when I received the first bogie bit alluded to above. That's not the coincidence. So, in a while, I was like, "What the hell is this opera about? I don't speak whatever language this is!" And I looked up the plot on the "internet," and this guy in the opera gets in trouble for eating a sausage on the moon! I guess you think I am making that up. But I will tell you the name of the opera - THE EXCURSIONS OF MR. BROUCEK - so you can look it up for your damn self. So I was like, "Sausage!" And, believe it or not, it was, by another coincidence, the second opera I had listened to THAT WEEK about somebody going to the moon. (The other one was Il mondo della luna by Baldassare Galuppi... and I can almost swear that Haydn wrote an opera with a similar title and subject matter, but now I am just showing off my knowledge of moon operas.) This is getting long, but I have more to tell. I just hope the lousy AT&T "internet" doesn't stop working before I'm done. We're getting something better installed on Monday! Leslie came over to watch INLAND EMPIRE the other night and we couldn't finish because the AT&T "internet" crapped out. So we turned off the lights and put on these plastic toy rings that have colored lights shooting out of them and Dr. Theresa requested Kraftwerk, so we danced around to that for a while, and then switched to a playlist by Kate Tsang. But the main point is that... you know all those books I am reading all the time in various circumstances? Now I've had to add a book that I put next to my laptop in my home office for whenever the "internet" goes kerplunk and I'm just sitting there with a stupid look on my face and nothing to distract me from the terrible abyss. There are books littered all over the place around here, it's a sad mess. Oh! So... one of the most recent books I had downstairs, on the side table near my favorite chair, was DAISY MILLER by Henry James, which somehow I had never read before. And in it, a character quotes from MANFRED, the poetic drama by Lord Byron, and I liked the quotation, so I dug out the old SELECTED POEMS of Byron and started reading MANFRED. And I hadn't made it too far, just to lines 196 and 197 of the first scene of the first act, and what did I see but "When the falling stars are shooting,/And the answer'd owls are hooting"? And you know what that means. Well, as long as I'm here, I'll mention a message I received yesterday from DJ Gnosis, who said he had gotten a news alert about his own old "blog," and when he checked it out, he saw that a "web" site called - I think - casino.org had discovered a 2008 "post" of mine, and a contemporaneous "post" by DJ Gnosis commenting on it, about the time I "posted" the first-ever photographic evidence on the "internet" of the existence of the Foster Brooks robot that used to live in Las Vegas until it was dismantled and sold for scrap metal, as we all must be eventually. Quoted in the article? Foster Brooks's own daughter! I would "link" to the article, but, being in the midst of a nightmarish effort to scrub old zombie "links" from the "blog," I am no longer much inclined to "link" to outside sources. Nothing against casino.org! Anyway, this on the heels of my 45-year-old letter inspiring McNeil to watch HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK. Given enough time and patience, such meaningless things can happen.

My Proudest Moment

Don't worry, I have lots of "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" on deck and ready for takeoff... two of them, or maybe 2.5 (I'm not sure that "Dooley Wilson was a drummer, and did not play the piano" counts as a bogie bit). But something else has happened. McNeil was moving the contents of some decaying cardboard boxes in his attic to a plastic storage bin when he came across not only a movie script we tried to write together (not the one mentioned previously in "Jennifer Lawrence Admires a Conch" ["click" here]) on stationery from my dad's auto parts store, but a letter from 45 years ago in which I recommended the film HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK. McNeil watched (and enjoyed) it for the first time last night, thanks to my 45-year-old rec! It just goes to show you that dreams can be real. Never give up!

Caramel Laryngitis

Last night Dr. Theresa and I were watching a movie called SKYJACKED, about some poor saps getting skyjacked, and from his radio tower, the mousy character actor John Fiedler said to pilot Charlton Heston, "You are five by five," which those of you who recall with fondness a certain "blog" "post" from October 28, 2019, will know why I am telling you, and if you do, will you please tell me? I had a lot of good reasons for not typing this. I was like, well, no one will know who John Fiedler is. He has a certain kind of voice I associate with Sterling Holloway and Percy Helton, and nobody knows who they are, either. It's a voice... well, laryngitic, high-pitched, and to use Megan Abbott's adjective, caramely. (It's her birthday today! Happy birthday, Megan!) I was surprised that John Fiedler's voice wasn't as caramely or laryngitic as I recalled in his SKYJACKED performance, though it did remain high-pitched. "I should put a photo of John Fiedler on the 'post'!" Or so I mused silently to myself in the privacy of my own home. He was a meek patient of TV psychiartrist Bob Newhart and he was cast against type as - John Fiedler spoiler alert! - Jack the Ripper on STAR TREK. But even if I add such details, no one will know who he is, and even if I "post" an image, no one will know who he is, they will be like, "Who's that?" and I really should "post" a photo of Percy Helton instead, though I won't, because certainly more people have forgotten Percy Helton. Furthermore (I continued to think), I believe I learned somewhere around 2009 that the "blog" is only allowed to upload a certain number of images, and when you go over the limit, the "blog" people just unplug your sorry ass and your "blog" disappears. Pardon my blue language! But it's all so distressing. That's no excuse. Anyway, I've been doing this for (dear God!) for just about 18 years now, and will a pointless image of John Fiedler (bespectacled, to the left of the aforementioned Newhart) be the thing that brings us all sweet relief?

Missing Gods

As you know, I used to say I had stopped "blogging" but now I have stopped saying I have stopped "blogging," for reasons I have listed repeatedly for no one. Anyway, there are so many interesting things happening every day that it is almost impossible not to "blog," don't you agree? For example, I know I bought a book at Square Books... let me check my private records... yes, yes, it seems that in May of this year - almost certainly on the same day I received a new belt that caused quite a stir - I bought a book that caught my eye, a book purporting to contain a complete list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt. This is not to be confused, of course, with my DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT DEITIES, a work of a broader scope. For a while, as I can recall by way of the images that dance so merrily inside my brain, the book I bought about the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt - "COMPLETE" the cover boasted! - sat on the low-slung marble-topped side table where I keep a few books for browsing as I loll about in my favorite chair like a dissolute dandy of yore. I eventually moved the book because it was taking up too much space. I think it interfered with the old cat when he tried to use the table as a means of access to my lap. BUT WHERE DID I PUT IT? The book, I mean, not my lap. That is what I have been trying to figure out for three or four days now. The good thing is that if I ever find the book, it will give me something else to "blog" about, thereby staving off (or helping me embrace?) the abyss. Now you get it!

Sex-Crazed AI

I guess you want to know how my project is going, the one where - ever since McNeil found a former outside "blog" "link" to a literary treasure that had been salaciously commandeered by sex-crazed AI robots (FOOTNOTE! I originally titled this "post" "What's Up With Zombies," going so far as to research whether or not "With" should be capitalized in a title, before changing it to "Sex-Crazed AI," which I felt would "generate" more "clicks") - I am slowly "clicking" on every previous "blog" "link" to make sure that insidious zombie "links" are replaced by a wholesome alternative. So far I've looked at between 250-300 "posts," I estimate, out of 6910, as of this one. So it's going to take a while. I have to say that I can't believe I've "posted" just 6910 times so far. It feels like 691,000. What a wasted life. But that's not your problem! Oh, as I go through these old "posts," I am also deleting any image, or dead spot where an image used to be, that was originally acquired by what I later learned (around 2008?) was the ignorant and problematic method of "stealing bandwidth." Very often, as a result, if you "click" on an old "post" (I know you won't! Partly because you don't exist), you will see former me excitedly advising you to check out a real groovy accompanying image that isn't there. You know what? Who cares?

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits: No. 8 in a Continuing Series

Welcome back to "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," the only place on God's whole wide "internet" for all the latest, littlest bogie bits! McNeil recently read about Humphrey Bogart being stabbed in the back by his wife, which reminded him of the time - as reported by this very "blog"! - that John Wayne pulled an apple corer out of Bogart's - or "Bogie's" - back. Now, is the incident mentioned by McNeil the same one previously remarked upon? Well, there are similarities and discrepancies. The weapon in question, for example, is a knife in McNeil's telling, not the more anecdotally colorful apple corer put forth by Scott Eyman in his Wayne biography. Furthermore, to quote McNeil's paraphrase of the Bogie bio he is reading, the wound was "patched up by a doctor who would do such things on the QT for $500," not extracted by a movie cowboy in a bar! I got my John Wayne book off the shelf and cross-referenced a few things. First, yes, in "both" cases (or the single case, as it may be), it was Bogart's wife Mayo Methot who did the stabbin'. (This reminds me of the only good advice I ever gave a student, back when I was teaching. She announced that she was hitchhiking across the country with a kitchen knife for protection, and I said, "You need a stabbin' knife." Now you understand why I'm not teaching anymore. I suggested something with a serrated edge, as I recall. To be clear, if such a thing is possible now, this was after she had insisted that nothing I could say would dissuade her from her plan.) The Wayne bio contains compelling details, such as the name of the restaurant into which Bogart wandered with something sticking out of his back (Eugene's, which was on the Sunset Strip), and the name of the maitre d' (Al Murphy) who didn't want to let Bogart in because he owed the place $600. In perhaps the most telling detail of all, after Wayne removes the apple corer (putting "his foot on Bogart's back for leverage"), he takes Bogart "to the hospital to get stitched up." Now, this could be where the biographies converge. The book McNeil is reading even includes the name of the family friend (Mary Baker) who recommended the shady doctor. Both versions seem so plausible! I suppose we may conclude that they are describing the same event, unless Mayo Methot stabbed Humphrey Bogart on two separate occasions, once with an apple corer and once with a plain old knife. Now, is this unlikely? Or is it likely that if your beloved sweetheart stabs you in the back once with one thing, she might stab you on another occasion with some other kind of thing? I have no statistics on that. In the end, maybe if you choose to believe it was an apple corer or a knife tells a lot about what kind of person you are. Like one of those "personality quizzes"! One thing is for sure: there's always plenty to ponder when you get stabbed figuratively in the brain with another episode of "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits"!

Two Knights and a Non-Knight

I am pretty far into THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA and there have been no owls, even though there are owls on the cover. But there are plenty of other things! Like, these two knights are talking and this one knight is like, "Alas, we all must die. Only the hour of our death is not certain." And the other knight is like, "Wait, who has told you all these pleasant novelties? It must be a mortal with an extraordinarily witty turn of conversation. Is he often invited out to supper?" And when I read that, I thought, "Hey! 'Is he often invited out to supper?' must be the 'He must be fun at parties' of the 18th century!" And then I thought, is that something people even say: "He must be fun at parties"? I think I've said it. I think, for example, when I went to see Dr. Theresa get an award - before she was a doctor! - and the speaker at the ceremony, for some reason, was a guy whose whole life was spent studying the sense of smell in lobsters... on that occasion, I do believe that as he went on for some time about the sense of smell in lobsters, I turned to our friend Chuck, who was seated next to me, and said, "He must be fun at parties." So I did a "google search" for the phrase "must be fun at parties" and turned up 145,000 matches, so I guess it is something that people say. More and more often, since my little medical hiccup, I wonder whether I know certain things or only think I know certain things. On the other hand, maybe I was never sure. As I type this long series of thoughts, I am in unbearable suspense about whether the "internet" will stop working, as it often does now, thanks to the good folks at AT&T, ties with whom I am assiduously working to sever forever as we speak. (As further evidence of my mental state, I just looked up "assiduous" to see if it means what I think it means, and it does, almost.) Oh! So a few pages later in THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, someone (not a knight) is playing a cithara, which took me straight back to the "blog's" big cither/citer/cithern/cittern/kithara/zither craze of 2010. (Citterns were poised to make a comeback in 2011, but it didn't take. Though I will say that as I continue to examine the "blog" for zombie "links," I am astonished to find that the "Frequently Asked Questions about the Renaissance Cittern" webpage not only survives, it was updated - ! - as recently as April 2023. I guess they found out something new about renaissance citterns.) Now, did I immediately assume that the cithara I read about in THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA was identical with a kithara? Good God, no! I learned my lesson back when I stupidly assumed that a cither and a cithern were the same thing ("click" on "link" after "link" for the incredible details). I'm so glad we had this talk. Postscript: Yes, as predicted above, the godawful AT&T "internet" ceased to work at a vital juncture in the composition of this delightsome bagatelle. (Continuing a theme: I second-guessed myself about the existence of "delightsome" as a word and did not find it in the dictionary that came with this laptop. When the "internet" began to work again, however briefly, I checked out the OED online, which cites numerous uses of the word - well, maybe "numerous" is going a bit too far - beginning in the 15th century and ending only a few years ago, in what seems to be an advertising brochure: "our Sheraton Lagos Hotel teams have come up with a line-up of delightsome and inspiring culinary options." Ugh! Now I see why my computer doesn't want me to use "delightsome.")

Socks Are the New Beans

Thank God for McNeil! How many times have we all said that, or at least felt it in our bones? In this instance, I am saying it regarding his relatively lonely position as an expert on the "blog." If McNeil didn't "click" on our forgotten "links" in a cold, scientific quest for knowledge, he never would have noticed - as he did just last night! - that an old one, shrouded in the impenetrable haze of the "blog's" very beginnings, had become outdated, and what once had been but an innocent "link" to a fan site for a beloved literary figure I hesitate to name, so as not to drag him into all this, had been taken over, at some point, by a saucy "internet" purveyor of sexy shenanigans I hesitate to describe. So much makes me hesitate these days! Suffice to say, the "website" in question, according to McNeil, though he did not use the following comparison, sought to do for socks what an Andy Warhol novel I read did for baked beans. Back when I made the ancient and troublesome "post," back when the "link" I provided was quite free of such carnal associations, I myself was but a blushing dewy apple-cheeked lad of a mere 43 years of age, and I could not imagine that the "internet" was such an impermanent thing, subject, as we all must be, to the ravages of time, or that devious forces - robots, most likely! - might comb the "web" for dead "links" to replace with their own sinful robot dreams of how sex probably works. Speaking of the ravages of time, three years ago, I thought of a solution to this problem, at least as it pertains to this "blog," but implementing it thoroughly would require effort, and effort is not a thing to which I am currently inclined. So what I am saying is this: just watch out, that's all. No, no, I'll get around to it. I'll fix everything! You just sit there and I'll fix it all. Don't you worry about old Jack.

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bit #7

I can hardly believe it's already time for another Li'l Bogie Bit! But I'll tell you: I just ended a job, and I've already gone over all the other reasons that I no longer say I've quit "blogging," even though most people don't even know what "blogging" is or was, including me. What was I saying? Oh, yes, McNeil sent another of his li'l bogie bits. I'll quote it directly from his virtual mouth! "Bogie had trouble crying on demand for a director, and his second wife, Mary, thought that odd because offscreen he cried at card tricks." One thing I love about our popular (with McNeil) recurring feature "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" is the mystery. The things unsaid! But that's why they are bits and not... boulders. Like... what kind of card trick could make Humphrey Bogart cry? Sure, I can see you crying if someone pulled a coin out of your ear. "How'd that get in there? Waaah!" Or if you're worried about the welfare of a magician's pigeon as it is being stuffed into a lacquered box. But to weep at the sight of the three or clubs or whatever, even if you find it unexpectedly in your own pocket, well, I frankly find it excessive. Pull yourself together, Bogie! In conclusion, I hear some of you griping that I have given you TWO li'l bogie bits, one about Bogart not being able to cry on demand and another about him crying in his spare time. You are wrong. Those are interlocking parts of a single bogie bit. If you don't like it, go somewhere else for your bogie bits! I'm getting sick and tired of your constant complaining.

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits: 4-6

Welcome back to what some say is everyone's favorite "internet" feature, McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits! Our friend McNeil is already up to Bogart's third wedding in the biography of that icon he is reading. It seems that the drink of choice at the splendid affair was something called a Black Velvet, which I could research and tell you all about, but I have decided not to. You don't care about me! Why should I care whether or not you know what a Black Velvet is? The main thing is it got everybody really drunk really fast. That's bogie bit #4 for you collectors! The Black Velvets caused the character actor Mischa Auer to take off his pants and run up and down a long table. You know Mischa Auer best from Hellzapoppin. No you don't! Philistine! I can't keep spoon-feeding you details about who Mischa Auer is. I have my own life to live! Allegedly. Whether or not Mischa Auer was wearing underpants was not divulged in McNeil's email. In conclusion, I have a leftover bogie bit that I forgot to include in the previous installment. It seems that Humphrey Bogart's boyhood nickname was "Hump." For no very good reason, it reminds of how John Wayne took banjo lessons from a boy named Fat. And THAT reminds me of the time that John Wayne pulled an apple corer out of Bogart's back. It had been jabbed in there up to the hilt by his clearly upset wife, though whether said wife was the one alluded to in bogie bit #4 is beyond the scope of our current narrative. Furthermore, the thing about having an apple corer jabbed in his back does not count as bogie bit #7. Bogie bits come only from McNeil. Get it straight!

Having a Small Get-Together

I was reading in one of these old comic books about all of his superhero friends throwing a bachelor party for the Atom. And here's the thing! All his superhero friends are regular-sized, and here's the Atom at his bachelor party, and he's about a damn inch tall, pardon my language, and he's sitting in a teeny tiny little chair that can zoom around for convenience. But here's the thing you need to know about the Atom... yes, you NEED to know. Get over yourself! Anyhow, although the Atom uses his shrinking powers for the good of humanity, he doesn't HAVE to be a damn inch tall all the time, pardon my language. He can be any damn - pardon my language - size he pleases, up to and including the size of his regular human self. So why is he sitting there like a clown during his entire bachelor party being one inch tall while all his human-sized friends hang out drinking beer and eating cake? That's my question.

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

Welcome to the newest recurring "blog" feature since... I don't know when. Since before the TV blew up and I quit "blogging" because I was so dispirited by the blowing up of the TV set? That's right, you're just in time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits"! Was McNeilileaks our last recurring feature? It was very topical whenever that was... you know, the leaks era of history. When we'd cram "leaks" together with some word to make some other word. Most recurring "blog" features justly wither on the vine, like "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis" and the unlamented "Today's Weather." But we here at the "blog" believe that "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" has a dandy future indeed. In part, that's because McNeil, "inspired," I guess we'll call it, by the Million Dollar Book Club, is reading a 700-page celebrity bio of his own choosing. Because I am all tied up with all the various books to which I have committed myself, some of which I haven't even told you about, and find myself unable to join him in the endeavor (in fact, the bio is one I never read, and finally sold to Off Square Books during a long period of unemployment) McNeil has promised to pass along juicy morsels about the life of Humphrey Bogart as he absorbs them into his mighty brain. And he has given me permission to pass them on to you! Before we get started, I should say that I'm nervous about starting a recurring feature right now. It could be a lot of typing for nothing! Let me explain. The other day, a big old water pipe exploded - much like the TV of yore - under our house (the TV was not under our house) and some guys from the water company came by and dug up our yard. One of them took his shovel and severed a cable "linking" us to the "internet," much like the plow cuts the worm in William Blake's famous aphorism. Anyway, this same guy with the wayward shovel "fixed" the problem, but now the "internet" quits working at random times and AT&T, the worst company in the world, makes it nearly impossible to ask a human to come out to the house and look at what's going on. They just don't care! So all these carefully chosen words may vanish as I type them into the abyss. All right! That being said, we're already three bogie bits behind. Let's get started! BOGIE BIT 1: McNeil summarizes Bogart in his prep school days: "perennially bored, few friends, never cracked a book, oddly naive and vulnerable." BOGIE BIT 2: "During the depression, Bogart and his then wife had to move to some shabby apartment along the East River. One of their neighbors was a comedy writer who used to place his meal in a bag, shake it up, and then dump it out on a plate before eating it. No reason given why." As you may well imagine, the latter detail provided some grist for the usual hilarious email antics of McNeil and myself, as I fancifully pictured the comedy writer placing bread, ham, and cheese in the bag and shaking it up and presto, out comes a ham sandwich! Oh, what fun. McNeil replied that he was imagining mashed potatoes and gravy in a bag. Then he remarked, memorably, "Everything was a salad to this guy." I think that's a direct McNeil quotation, though I admit I am not double-checking. BOGIE BIT 3: Young Bogart used to sit in an arcade and play chess against all comers for a dollar a game! I might be forgetting something, but I believe those are all your bogie bits for the moment. Goodbye for now from all of us at "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits."

You Remember Him

Really enjoying the innocence of this old comic book I'm reading about Superman, you remember him. It's an issue of ACTION COMICS from 1965, in which Superman practices "super-ventriloquism" - his word, not mine! - a power I don't recall from the considerable time I spent researching all his mind-blowing superpowers in 2010. And then two guys on a tandem bicycle try to rob a bank. Ha ha! You can't make this stuff up.