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.

Hammer of the Chipmunks

Well, it was too hot to walk outside yesterday, so Dr. Theresa and I headed over to the gym. Afterward, we thought we'd grab our famous favorite grilled chicken salad from Proud Larry's. But there was unexpected roadwork in our way! So we had to get back on the highway and go the long way around. Inconvenient? Maybe! But we got to drive behind this truck (pictured, above) for a while. As you can see, the company logo is a chipmunk holding a hammer. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking "That's a squirrel holding a hammer." Look, I don't blame you. I said the same thing to Dr. Theresa at the time. Perhaps you and I both have been overly influenced by the time McNeil saw a real-life squirrel brandishing a stick ("click" here for more details, or visit your local library). But when I got home, I hit the "internet" for a closer look. The back of the truck treats us only to the top half of the industrious chipmunk. (I say industrious, but he's not really holding the hammer in a useful way, in my opinion.) When you see the whole logo, it is obvious that the tail is not a squirrel's tail. But I'll tell you something else: God knows where I got the energy, but I looked at some photos of actual chipmunks, and their tails were closer to squirrel tails, if not quite as lush, than the little stub I saw on this cartoon chipmunk holding the hammer. And I said to myself, "Well," I said, "I don't think the Disney characters Chip and Dale, who are chipmunks to my way of understanding, have this kind of realistic chipmunk tail either. Maybe, then, in this way, the hammer-wielding chipmunk was influenced by great cartoon chipmunks of the past." So I scrolled through several images of Chip and Dale before I found one in which their tails were prominently displayed. I was right, at least in the sense that the tails of the unfortunate Chip and Dale appear to have been snipped off to nub length. And then I thought, "Huh, I guess the people who invented Chip and Dale were like, 'Hey, we can't give them realistic chipmunk tails. They'll look too much like rats! Besides, longer tails are harder to animate.' And so on." At this point, my spirit died inside my body and I was no longer capable of human thought.

Cheese Statement

A character on DARK SHADOWS said "I find that cheese always helps me sleep." And, you know, DARK SHADOWS was a daily soap opera, so they would often enact a little recapitulation, or "recap" as I like to call it, of what happened at the end of the previous episode to keep it fresh in the audience's memory in those days before binge-watching. So at the end of one episode they did the old "using a ring with a secret compartment to poison the sherry but then the glasses get switched" bit, during which the statement "I find that cheese always helps me sleep" was uttered. Then, at the beginning of the next episode, we got to hear the guy say "I find that cheese always helps me sleep" again!

Sentence

Here's a sentence from Charlton Heston's journals: "The pope's apparently terminal illness canceled a cocktail thing."

Words

1. Dr. Theresa and I have been watching DARK SHADOWS, the original series. Yesterday, Angelique (pictured... photo taken directly from our TV!... spoiler, she's a witch!) said the word "gazebo," only, get this: she pronounced it "Ga-ZAY-Bo." I was instantly transported to 2007, as I usually am all the time. I remembered doing a reading from my second book at A Cappella, and I was reading from a short story that had the word "gazebo" in it. Suddenly, I froze up. My brain did a thing. Foreshadowing? I was like, wait, how do I say this word? I stopped the story cold and rambled aloud to the stupefied audience about the weird thing I was experiencing. "Is it Ga-ZAY-Bo? That can't be right. But I kind of want to say Ga-ZAY-Bo." It stopped not just the story but the event - and perhaps time itself - dead. Or maybe it did the opposite. Because for once in my professional life something got people interested. They were all going, "Ga-ZEE-Bo! Ga-ZEE-Bo!" So I felt crazy. Probably the only reason I remember this so well is that I "blogged" about it at the time ("click" here. I know you won't! I hate you!). Also, this nice guy I knew back then in Atlanta, Jamie Allen, "blogged" about it too, providing more details, which selfsame details I recall, though his "link" has become a "zombie link." He found it amusing that I could think even for a split second it was pronounced "Ga-ZAY-Bo." So, yesterday, when the beauteous yet evil Angelique said it that way, I paused the show and exclaimed about it and relived the whole experience, like Proust. Dr. Theresa seemed to recall the incident as well, and speculated it might be a "Southern" way to say gazebo. (We had previously researched Angelique, or the actor Lara Parker, who played her, and found out she went to high school in Memphis.) I was thinking maybe that's just the way people said it in 1968. I was alive then! I must have heard it somewhere. Anyway, this little kid on DARK SHADOWS, David Collins, came into the room (in the same episode) and also said "gazebo" for some reason, pronouncing it just as Angelique had, with a ZAY. And he's from New Jersey. What a night! Nor had the night concluded. I went upstairs and looked in the OED, which gives both British and American pronunciations with the everyday familiar ZEE, not the mysterious and intrusive ZAY. But here's the interesting thing. Ha ha, there's not an interesting thing. Among its historical examples of usage, the OED includes the spelling "gazabo" from 1828. Now, are you trying to tell me the person who wrote down "gazabo" was pronouncing it "Ga-ZEE-Bo"? Get real! To be fair, there is the spelling "gazeebo," two e's, in a cited work from 1843. And wait, there's more! The OED provides an alternative meaning for "gazebo." It's a rude expression for a guy. An example from 1896 has some dude being called "a cheap gazabo." There's that spelling again! Oh my God. We're really uncovering some big stuff here. I'm resisting the urge to look up "gazebo" in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG. 2. In the past few days or weeks, I used the word "descendants" in a couple of "posts." For whatever reason, I started wondering if I had spelled it right. And I hadn't! I put an "e" where the "a" should be. And I wondered... have I been misspelling it my whole life? Further research into the "blog" revealed... yes! I have been misspelling "descendants" my whole life. I haven't corrected earlier occurrences if you want to go back and search for them and look at them and make fun of me. 3. This one is about a string of words. To be specific, "A churchyard haunter at whom the owl hoots and the ivy mocks..." A character says it in BETWEEN THE ACTS, and the context implies he is quoting from a preexisting literary work, so I poked around a little bit, wondering what he might be quoting. My flimsy research indicates it's a mash-up or scramble of quotations, or possibly a jumble, or maybe nothing. So that settles it. But while I was looking around, I came upon a wonderful "web" site in which a scholar has catalogued all of Virginia Woolf's allusions to plant life. Well, maybe not all of them. I don't know. But a lot of them! And I felt pride because it has a "blogspot" address. There are so few of us left, I assume. Her entry on ivy ("click" here) contains, incidentally, a number of asides on owls, a bird with which Woolf seems to have habitually associated ivy. Well, I think we've covered everything. Just like ivy! 4. GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG: "gazabo (also gazab, gazabe, gazaboo, gazaybo, gazeaboo, gazebo, gazebu, gazeebo, gazimbat, gazuny, gezeybo) an awkward, strange or stupid person... also any fellow." 5. Update [added May 31]: A couple of episodes later, Angelique says "gazebo" twice in quick succession, each time using the more familiar ZEE pronunciation. Who got to her?

Old Guys

The most important thing is that Sonny Rollins died. My hero! It's no exaggeration to call him my hero. At the bottom of this "post" I'll put a playlist I made based on the massive biography of Sonny Rollins by Aidan Levy, which Megan and I read for the Million Dollar Book Club. One of our most monumental undertakings. If he's not your hero already, maybe you'll read it and Sonny Rollins can be your hero too. Or just listen to him! Also valid. The playlist is not all Sonny Rollins. It's also music that is important to him or has a special place in the book. But it's somewhere to start. Now to turn to lighter matters. Remember that Virginia Woolf book I was going to read on the airplane but then I started OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH instead? Well, now Virgina Woolf's BETWEEN THE ACTS is my "nighttime book," in which last night I read "She became, of a sudden, solemn as an owl" and that is why it is going on the list I began in 2011 of books I read with owls in them, no one knows why. Well, soon I'll temporarily put aside either Virginia Woolf or - more likely, because the adventure will be easier to take up again when the time comes - my "daytime book" (the aforementioned OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH) because the Million Dollar Book Club has finally recovered from the DIARY of Witold Gombrowicz. We're going to read Charlton Heston's journals from 1956-1976, because we think that's the book Wallace Shawn talks about reading in MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, and I believe ever since the Million Dollar Book Club read Andre Gregory's autobiography some years ago we've been circling around Charlton Heston... and for whatever reason, Wallace Shawn has been calling to us more and more as the years go by. Literally! Not literally. It was Charlton Heston or a book about William Shawn (Wallace Shawn's father) by Lillian Ross, a Million Dollar Book Club favorite author. But our ways, moods, and instincts are oblique and terrifying.

Sizzling Celebrity Gossip

As you may have noticed, there has been no SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP of any kind anywhere in the world since June 26, 2012! That's a long time to go without any SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP! Well, fret with woe no more, dear reader! Our SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP team is back with all the latest SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP! ITEM! GEORGES PEREC remembers the first Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin movie he ever saw. SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP has learned that the movie was none other than SAILOR BEWARE! Perec also remembers BOB HOPE and THE THREE STOOGES. This guy remembers everything, I tell ya! That's the word on the street from SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP! ITEM! Remember when JACK PENDARVIS sat on an airplane next to a woman who knew all the descendants of the memoirist who wrote THE EGG AND I? That's right, the book that became the hit movie that kicked off the lucrative MA AND PA KETTLE franchise! Well! Today Pendarvis took a nap! Before he fell asleep, he read some of his "nighttime book" during the day! Like a libertine! And Perec's 470th memory (this guy numbers his memories, I tell ya!) is "I remember THE EGG AND I by BETTY MCDONALD." Most shocked of all? ACE ATKINS! Or we certainly assume that the bestselling author will be shocked when he hears of this shocking development of shock. Because in a recent neighborhood walk, he confidently asserted to Pendarvis, "She [Pendarvis's seatmate on Delta flight 2290] was next to the only other person on that airplane who knew who Ma and Pa Kettle were." Georges Perec would beg to differ, Ace! Has the famed crime writer sparked a white-hot literary feud with the dead French experimentalist, whose translators claim the likes of us could never understand his masterful and esoteric Three Stooges references? Watch SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP for developments! ITEM! MCNEIL has been watching the ELVIS movie WILD IN THE COUNTRY, in which, or so McNeil insists, Elvis "sings a song about slipping on a banana peel." When asked wasn't WILD IN THE COUNTRY one of the more serious Elvis movies, McNeil responded, "CLIFFORD ODETS! That's how serious!" No reader of SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP can fail to recognize the name of the high-minded 1930s playwright who penned the screenplay. "I wish I could have seen his face when he heard about the banana peel song," says McNeil. And so say we all. Here at SIZZLING CELEBRITY GOSSIP, so say we all indeed.

Four Quotations

1. "Poor ruffians, their lives vanished like a dream." - OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH 2. Okay, so when I got back from my travels, my schedule was a little mixed up, so once I was up when I should have been sleeping, watching TCM instead, and they aired an old trailer for the Bobby Van movie SMALL TOWN GIRL. You may recall it as the movie, previously mentioned, but not by name, on the "blog," in which Bobby Van hops around. Anyway, the trailer announcer says, of Bobby Van, "His dancing is as new as a rocket trip to the moon." And I thought, well, that's not true. It wasn't true then. It's not true now. And, in fact, it was never true. 3. I was going to call this "post" "Two Quotations," which is a much better title for reasons I cannot fully explain... not even to myself! For one thing, "two" is a cool word and "four" is a punk-ass word. And not in the good way! But something bugged me last night and I keep thinking about it and even though I know that no one will care about it, I also don't care that no one will care about it. So, my current "nighttime book" is I REMEMBER by the famed Oulipo writer Georges Perec. I should mention that it is, put simply, a list of things that Georges Perec remembered. So I'm lying there reading and I'm thinking, hey, I remember a number of these things. Hey, maybe I should count the number of things I remember that Georges Perec also rememebered. Hey, no, I'm not going to do that, what a waste of time, which has never stopped me before. Hey, but I'm already done with half of the book. To go back and start over seems like a lot of work. I'm not into that! BUT! I said to myself, BUT! When I skimmed over the introduction and the translator's note, didn't they kind of imply that I would remember none of this, and that I'd lie here scratching my head and crying my way through the experience? So I looked at the translator's note (by Philip Terry), which quotes ANOTHER translator calling I REMEMBER Perec's "most untranslatable book... a collection of brief rembrances of things and people that are indecipherable to anyone not French and not of his generation," which isn't true at all... and it must be admitted that a small dab of skepticism is applied by Philip Terry to the quotation. (As for Perec's generation, he was born in 1936, if you care. I don't.) 4. HOWEVER! In the introduction, the co-translator and co-editor David Bellos claims - of a stage adaptation performed in 2003 - that the "majority of the spectators of the show cannot conceivably share any of Perec's memories directly." Well, that's not true, is it? It's the "conceivably" and the "any" to which I principally object. Like... okay. Here's one example. Perec remembers that Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister. It's probably an exaggeration to say that everybody knows that. But everybody knows that. And they remember it the same way Perec remembered it, from hearing it or reading it somewhere. I doubt that Warren Beatty came over to Perec's house and said, "Hey, guess what? Shirley MacLaine is my sister!" So we all remember it just the way Perec did. In fact, both Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty are alive as I type this. It's not like Perec lived on a different planet a million years ago. So maybe Warren Beatty WILL come to your house and tell you who his sister is. It could happen! That's all I'm saying. I guess I should also stipulate that sure, a lot of the time I don't know what the hell Perec is talking about. But I've always enjoyed reading things I don't understand. Other people have told me that they "look things up." I get it. But I don't do it.

Abalone Biscuit Stick

1. McNeil dreamed - shortly before I left for Burbank on a bureaucratic mission that would stun and bore you - that I was transformed into a toddler and Donald Trump hand-fed me a biscuit. I did not report the dream at the time because I was about to leave on my trip and it struck me as a dream of ill-omen, best blocked out of my mind until my safe return. 2. I know you want to know what book I read on the airplane. Well, you're going to be so glad you asked. See, I had this one Virginia Woolf novel all picked out. It was the right size for the airplane. The content, delightful though I am sure it would have turned out to be, was of secondary interest. You see, I like to print out my boarding passes and slip them between the back cover and last page of whatever book I am reading on the airplane, and I don't like it if the edges of the boarding passes stick out too much. My boarding passes are printed on letter-sized sheets of paper, which I fold over once, maintaining the creaseless integrity of the printed matter. I told you you'd be glad you asked! Let's move to a new numbered section as I explain why I print out my boarding passes rather than checking in via an app on my phone. 3. My phone is too old! It rejects the app! 4. Anyway, I'm going to quote an email from Jimmy Cajoleas now. I don't think Jimmy will mind. "[Have you] read Water Margin? I'm halfway through the Sidney Shapiro translation (he calls it Outlaws of the Marsh) and I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever read in my life." 5. That made me remember I have a copy of that very translation! When I go to bed at night, I often lie on my side facing a bookcase where, as I recline in that position, Outlaws of the Marsh finds itself in my eyeline. I bought it in 2007, I think, and never opened it. And just about every night I look at it from bed and think, "Will I ever read that? I certainly doubt it! It's in a cardboard box containing four volumes!" I bought it at Square Books because when we first moved to Oxford, we had some people over for dinner, and one of them was teaching it in a class, and I got so excited hearing about Outlaws of the Marsh that I ran out and bought it and didn't open it for almost 20 years. So, the night before my flight, I separated Volume 1 from its cardboard-bound brethren. Though it is part of a larger set, the first book is the size of an old-timey mass-market paperback, hardly sufficient for securing my boarding pass in the required fashion. This was a new experience for me. Just when I thought I had done it all in this old world. Walking around with most of my boarding pass sticking out! Like some kind of hippie! 6. My seatmate on the airplane saw my iPod. Unlike the last person who saw my iPod on an airplane, she was not impressed. She said, "My husband has one of those and it drives me crazy." She didn't say why. 7. On a more positive note, she announced that she was from the same town as the woman who wrote the book THE EGG AND I, and she knew the descendants of the book's characters. She couldn't remember the name of the female lead in the movie version and I blew her freaking mind by saying "Claudette Colbert." Anyway, she was saying that Ma and Pa Kettle (supporting characters in the movie) were real people and I speculated that later movies about Ma and Pa Kettle (are you still reading this?), such as MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, were probably not based on true stories, as they were about fanciful things like winning a trip to Hawaii in an advertising slogan contest. Anyway, I don't have time to explain Ma and Pa Kettle to you. I "posted" a publicity still of them above, and I'll let that do the work. The important thing is that despite my know-it-all attitude about Claudette Colbert there is no movie called MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, as I learned when I looked it up minutes ago. It's called MA AND PA KETTLE AT WAIKIKI. And they're just working on a pineapple farm in that one! They didn't win a contest, as I needlessly misinformed my seatmate. Further research (WHY?) led me to discover that Pa Kettle does compose a prize-winning jingle in MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN. And that is the story of how all the Ma and Pa Kettle movies I watched as a kid eventually got mixed up in my head. Most of all, I was shocked to learn that Ma and Pa Kettle were from this woman's hometown in the state of Washington! I don't know where I assumed they were from, but it wasn't there. Sadly, we must now move on from Ma and Pa Kettle. I know you're disappointed. 8. My Uber driver's wife makes a living singing the national anthem at sporting events! You'd think he would have an interesting story about how someone gets into that line of work, but he didn't. 9. I broke my glasses. 10. I saw Kate, who brought with her a treat from Hong Kong: abalone-and-oyster-sauce flavored "biscuit sticks" (the latter two words in English on the box). They were thin, crispy little sticks and I could eat them all day. Savory, with, as Kate remarked, a little of the sweetness of the abalone coming through. 11. She also brought something from a side-trip to Japan: a sake-flavored Kit Kat bar. We tried that, too, and it made us want to throw up. 12. I ran into Cole Sanchez, who remarked, of my shirt, "Do we have the same shirt?" (He was not wearing the shirt - let me be clear: he was wearing a shirt, just not that one - but yes, it did turn out he had the same shirt at home.) Now, you must know, in order to truly appreciate this story, that we consulted Cole while writing the sartorially concerned Adventure Time episode "Bespoken For," because he is a stylish man who knows everything about clothes. So hearing that Cole and I have the same shirt made it a big night for me. I was telling everyone who would listen, "Cole and I have the same shirt!" Cole went home and rethought his life. 13. At the departure gate for my trip home, I sat next to a Pepsi vending machine. A man came and stood in front of it and coughed down into my face a couple of times. He stood in front of the Pepsi machine for five minutes, examining the various Pepsi products on display. Then he walked away, never to be seen again. 14. Dolph Lundgren is on my flight! Yeah! He's speaking Swedish! In the middle of a Swedish phrase, I hear him say "tough guys" in English. I thought, "If anything bad happens on this flight, he'll save us!" Dolph Lundgren's drink of choice? Cranberry juice. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was doing some kind of seated shadow boxing. His feet were subtly and elegantly "dancing," as I believe it's called in the boxing ring, as he cast some punches toward the seat back in front of him. He put on his shades before shadow boxing. "I'm living in paradise!" I jotted in my jotting book. The very sweet flight attendant, Diana by name, turned out to be a Dolph Lundgren fanatic, and addressed him with such giddy enthusiasm as the plane began its descent, to which he responded in such a cheerful and gracious manner, that I felt emboldened to turn around and tell him that he had given me confidence and peace in case of emergency.

The Latest News

Yesterday? Yesterday McNeil and I spent most of our time recasting IT STARTED IN NAPLES, a movie no one has thought about in 70 years. This morning? This morning Dr. Theresa was making a healthful smoothie and the blender got clogged, rendering the healthful ingredients immobile within. I said, "Don't stick a spoon down in there." Anyway, Dr. Theresa stuck a spoon down in there, and there was a smoothie explosion all over the kitchen. There was smoothie on the ceiling! And that is only one of the many, many places where there was smoothie. Smoothie where no smoothie should be, to paraphrase Billy Bragg. I said, "It's like some terrible Bob Hope movie!" (Specifically, it was like BACHELOR IN PARADISE, which isn't terrible at all.) Dr. Theresa said, "Are you going to write about this in your diary?" I replied, "You bet I am!" She said, "You should put it on your 'blog.'" I said, "I didn't think you'd want me to broadcast it." She said, "I give you permission. You can do a public shaming like they did in Salem." I'm sure you recall the subject of her doctoral dissertation.

Pee Demon

Well, Gideon Bohak was right: I did learn something from Chapter 6 of ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC! "Peeing between a palm tree and a wall might leave the demon who resides there no choice but to attack you." (See also.)

A Bad Habit of Dead Opera Composers

I don't like it in an opera when a character lets out a sudden scream of horror. I don't mean a wail of despair that has been musically interpreted. I'm talking about an unmusical (or should we say extra-musical?) scream of horror befitting the action of the scene but very jarring if you don't brace yourself. And even if you do brace yourself! Maybe especially if you brace yourself! Imagine the powerful lungs of an opera singer deployed in such a manner, screaming a scream that would make Brian De Palma himself ask if it could be toned down a little. After deep and extensive reflection, I can think of a number of operas that do this, and that number is two. It really jangles my old nerves. I won't call out the opera composers by name because don't they have enough problems in our crazy world? And also, they are dead. I know why you're doing it: you're trying to see if I'm paying attention. Well, guess what? I'm not. Get it together, dead opera composers!

Of Donkeys and Robots

So I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC and Gideon Bohak, the author, is telling of an "erotic spell" in which a charm is written on a piece of tin, to which he adds the parenthetical statement "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Let me explain. This is nothing like the Gideon Bohak I know. Well, there is a footnote in which he makes a fond, gently humorous allusion to his hometown. But the violent whimsy of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" is present nowhere else in this academic... some might say dry as burnt toast... work. Well! Gideon Bohak does favor a jaunty exclamation point in his parenthetical statements (as seen in the example already given), which might count as whimsy if you are a scholar of ancient esoterica. Before I continue exploring this thought, I want to say that I wonder what Gideon Bohak's editor thought of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Did Gideon Bohak have to fight for it? I am developing an enhanced sense of respect for Gideon Bohak. Anyway, so, yes! In the very next paragraph we have an example of Bohak's penchant for parenthetical exclamation points. He has moved on to a spell which requires the magician (or is it the client?) to "take meat of a donkey in your mouth." I'm sorry I told you that. But I had to! Because Gideon Bohak presently adds the parenthetical statement that putting donkey meat in your mouth is "not very kosher!" Exclamation point his, I reemphasize. He goes on to examine cultural depictions of donkeys as "stupid, stubborn, and lazy," which reminded me, by way of contrast, of the other book I am reading right now, THE ILIAD, in which mules have been put forth more than once as some of the greatest animals you'd ever want to meet. They're always plowing fields faster than an ox, or pulling a big tree trunk down the side of a mountain. Those are the two things I can remember mules (in both cases, metaphorical mules) doing in THE ILIAD. Which brings me to another subject! Last night in bed, as I read THE ILIAD and Dr. Theresa worked a crossword puzzle, I suddenly shouted, "Hey! There are robots in this book!" Let's let that hang in the air for a while. Because I also want to say that I ran into Kelly Kornegay in Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of weeks ago, at the 50th anniversary party for Lemuria Books, which I didn't even tell you about, because why should you know every single thing that goes on in my life? Anyway, Kelly and I were talking about THE ILIAD, and she mentioned living in a new place where she can look out the window and see a donkey, and I got to tell her about the heroic mules of THE ILIAD. Pretty soon it got dark and Ace Atkins and I were standing in front of a stage watching 92-year-old bluesman Bobby Rush, of whom I took a photo with my very own phone and perhaps I will "post" it below. Also, there was a guy dressed as a cowboy who did some of the greatest dancing I've ever seen. He was up there all by himself dancing in his cowboy suit while opening acts played, and finally I thought, I should go dance with this guy! Let's get this party started! And Ace took a video of it, which I texted to Dr. Theresa (who had stayed home) so she could see my moves, and she immediately texted back "Have you been drinking?" And that's an interesting question but I bet you want to get back to the robots I read about in THE ILIAD last night. "They were made all of gold, but looked like living women." So you know I immediately thought of the DC comics characters the Metal Men, just as Homer intended. Furthermore, I checked Emily Wilson's endnote, and she calls them "robot women," so I'm not just coming to crazy conclusions. In fact, I think somebody installed A.I., because "They had a consciousness inside their hearts." And as I was lying there marveling about the golden robot women with consciousness in their hearts, I remembered thinking that I had noticed robots in the RAMAYANA as well. And I didn't just lie there and think about it for a change. I hauled my sorry carcass out of bed and went upstairs and found the RAMAYANA and refreshed my memory about these hydraulically powered automatons: "mechanical men, silently driven by falling water in some hidden way." And much like them, I am now running out of steam.

We Shall See

Let's cover a variety of topics! We have nowhere to go. 1. I was reading the New York Times on my phone just like a teenager and I saw they have made a list of the 30 greatest living songwriters. And I raged silently to myself, "I thought I solved this problem years ago!" The problem, that is, of people making lists of things. The year was 1999. People started making lists of everything. I think it was the upcoming century that had them in a panic. They thought if they made lists of things, they could stave off the death of the universe. That's just a theory. After a decade or so, I got really sick of reading lists. So I struck! Like a mighty panther! My hilarious anti-lists would put an end to all this listmania... ha ha, remember when Ken Russell made a movie called LISZTOMANIA? I enjoy peppering my interesting observations with pointless crap like that. What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah! So I made my anti-lists, like "The 50 Greatest Things That Just Popped Into My Head" for THE BELIEVER magazine... and after PASTE did their own "Greatest Living Songwriters" (to which I admit I contributed a blurb on Chuck Berry, who was, it may amaze you to learn, alive at the time), I sent them a joke list, which they published, of "The Greatest Dead Song Writers"... I included, for example, King David from the Bible. You remember him! And then, at the top of the list of dead songwriters, I put Bob Dylan, who was alive, and still is, as of this writing, as far as I know. But I'm about to go on a walk around the neighborhood with Ace Atkins (so I was wrong about having nowhere to go, if you consider walking in a circle somewhere to go), and who knows what might happen by the time I come back to finish this "post"? I make no promises. Anyway! The exciting thing was that a USA Today interviewer told Bob Dylan that PASTE had called him the greatest dead songwriter, and he laughed! That's the main thing I wanted to say. I just wanted to remind you about the time I made Bob Dylan laugh. 2. Yesterday, I filled you in on what's going on in my nighttime book (horses are crying, natch) but I neglected to mention my daytime book, ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC. Well, I'll tell you. Mostly it just says "In Chapter 6, we shall see" this and "In Chapter 6, we shall see" that. I've been hearing about how great Chapter 6 is going to be since the introduction! Something better happen in Chapter 6, that's all I can say. Because not much has happened so far, unless you count "more study is needed" as something. I checked the Table of Contents and Chapter 6 is the last chapter in the book. Well played, Gideon Bohak! 3. McNeil emailed me about Charles Fort. That was exciting! Nobody ever emails me about Charles Fort. McNeil called Charles Fort "Mark Twain's nutty cousin." As evidence, McNeil cites the lines that Fort sticks in about "once a page" (according to McNeil) as he catalogs various inexplicable phenomena: "In my own mind there is distinguishment between a good watchdog and the fleas on him".... "To have any opinion, one must overlook something." That's a great one! McNeil deduces imaginatively: "Fort found these on crumpled up pieces of paper in Twain's drawer" and concludes with a Fortean memory of a cloudburst he, McNeil, once witnessed, approximately 24 inches in diameter. 4. I told Ace I would give him three guesses which Elvis movie I had been watching this morning, and if he got it right I would give him a million dollars. His second guess was TICKLE ME. Anyway, now I owe Ace a million dollars. Unless... to quote Megan after she was informed of the incident, "Are you sure he just didn't want you to tickle him?"

Crying Horses

Last night in THE ILIAD, these horses started crying. These were some upset horses, I tell you! "Hot tears flowed from their weeping eyelids to the earth." And such. I thought "Surely Emily Wilson will give us a footnote - or an endnote, to be precise! - about these weeping horses." But why did I want to be precise in the middle of that sentence? That's the real question. Precision is always a mistake. Anyway, I did check and she provides a note about how the horses' heads are bending so low in grief that their glorious manes get dirty dragging the ground, but nothing about their red hot tears of woe. Now, bear in mind, these are magic, immortal horses, so they have different standards than the common horse you rode to work today. I'm kind of slow with THE ILIAD because I get in bed at night and everyone immediately starts stabbing each other. In the book, I mean. I'm like, "Wow, these guys never stop stabbing. They love it!" And pretty soon I'd rather be asleep. Poor me! I'm as sad as a horse sometimes.

The Hoary Story

You know, whenever I think about the word "hoary," which I do several times a day, as we all do, I think of it in pejorative terms... in the sense, though they do not use the word "hoary," you will find in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, when its characters quote what is, ironically (?), a hoary chestnut: "That gag's got whiskers on it." This, to me, these whiskers, these regrettable whiskers, this, they, they bespeak hoariness. If I were in a middle school essay contest about "What Hoariness Means to Me," I would quote, "That gag's got whiskers on it." BUT! All right, I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC by Gideon Bohak, and Professor Bohak has used "hoary" twice so far, at least twice that I've noticed, and both times, he seems to mean it in a nice way! So maybe I have "hoary" all wrong, like everything else. Okay, so the other thing is, I'm reading in ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC about a certain root that will kill you if you pluck it out of the ground, due to its magical powers, so what you do is, well, you trick an innocent dog into doing your deadly dirty work for you. I don't like that. I don't like it one bit! But as I was reading it, I thought, "Hey! I already know about this magic root!" And the footnote informed me that the anecdote was extracted from a book by Josephus I have already read. It just goes to show you the benefit of reading mostly ancient things for a long time: pretty soon, you will be reading the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over because you have sucked out all the juices of antiquity, leaving nothing but the bone-dry husk. So that's something. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize for a second time that I am not in the manosphere (I read somewhere that the manosphere loves to contemplate ancient times with ugly little smiles on their stupid faces).

Sorry, Haters

Hey! Remember when I predicted THE ILIAD was going to have an owl in it? And I put it on my big list of books with owls in them before I had confirmation? Remember how you called it the ultimate act of hubris? Remember how you said nothing had ever been more hubristic in all of history than the time I said THE ILIAD was definitely going to have an owl in it? Well, well, well. I'm so sorry to disappoint you. Zeus "sat there hidden in the fir tree's branches, just like a screeching owl."

Magic Mauling

My current "daytime book" is... listen! I'm just going to cut-and-paste an email I sent to McNeil: "I was reading a book called ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC [by Gideon Bohak] and it mentions a Bible story which seemed vaguely familiar to me... I'm shocked that it didn't make a bigger impression in Sunday school, or maybe I have been repressing it all these years. Anyway, some little kids make fun of the prophet Elisha for being bald, so he causes a couple of 'she bears' (King James Version) to come out of the woods and maul them!"

What I Think

I think I could teach one of our cats to play volleyball.

The Pendarvis Art of Living

Yesterday I got a promotional email from Square Books, saying that Gin Phillips would be on the Thacker Mountain radio show. And I was like, "Gin Phillips, Gin Phillips. Don't I know her? Did I maybe do some readings with her in Atlanta?" Digging deep into the "blog" archives, which must now substitute for my memory, I realized I was thinking of Hollis Gillespie. Now, Gin Phillips and Hollis Gillespie... are those names really so much alike? No. But I understand why my brain would think so, even if it had not been famously zapped in an unfortunate incident from the recent past. Anyway! Before I thought to check the "blog," I decided to do an "internet" search of my name alongside the name of Gin Phillips, hoping to confirm what turned out to be a false recollection. AND! The good old A.I. robot that pops up unbeckoned whenever I search for something helpfully informed me that I was the author of the books THE PENDARVIS ART OF LIVING, YOUR BODY IS CALLING YOU (see also), and, of course, my renowned novel CIGARETTE BOY. You are perhaps unfamiliar with what I laughingly call my work, so let me explain that none of those books exist. YET!

It Bleeped

Reading Tacitus, I get to a part where this guy dreams there's gold buried under his field. So he runs up to Nero like Chicken Little and says "There's gold in my field!" You can see where this is going. There's no gold. And Nero... well, you know how Nero is. Anyway! So! The translator, A.J. Woodman, is crazy in love with footnotes. There's hardly a page without multiple footnotes at the bottom... or "foot." And are his footnotes dry? I don't know. Is the Sahara dry? I'm assuming the answer is yes, although I can easily imagine a big smart nerd who would tell me otherwise. Anyway, A.J. Woodman's footnotes are so dry they make the Sahara look like the grotto at the Playboy Mansion, as Dennis Miller would put it, causing us all to throw up. But in this singular case, A.J. Woodman's footnote is... whimsical? I don't know what it is. Here, I'll quote it: "'Dream guided treasure hunter to Roman coins' (headline in The Times [London], 11 December 1998)." So that footnote gives us nothing, really. That's not like A.J. Woodman! And really, the Roman coins found in 1998 could not be more different than the gold dreamed of by Caesellius Bassus, which was "not in the form of money but in a raw and ancient mass." (Also, unlike the Roman coins found in 1998, it didn't exist.) I guess A.J. Woodman just thought it was a fun story. It's still a mystery, if so, why he suddenly and very uncharacteristically wanted to be "fun." And certainly it would be going too far to postulate that he put forth the headline from the Times of London as a counternarrative... as if to say, "Hey, sometimes a dream CAN lead you to buried gold! Never give up, kids!" I couldn't find the article (I didn't try too hard), but I found the same story reported in the Irish Independent a full day before the Times of London picked it up. Here's a paragraph: "'In my dream I could see myself in the middle of the field pulling up a haul of coins,' Mr Roberts (46), a plumber, told a treasure trove inquest in Newport, south Wales, yesterday. 'When I had the same dream again a few nights later I took a few hours off and went to the field. I took just two paces and my metal detector bleeped.'" A treasure trove inquest! I didn't know about those. You know what this puts me in mind of? The other day, McNeil told me he had dreamed of salmon patties. And that was weird, because the day before - that is, the day leading to the night of McNeil's dream - I had been thinking about salmon patties! AND... later that night (the night AFTER McNeil's dream), Dr. Theresa - having been privy to neither my salmon patty thoughts nor McNeil's salmon patty dreams - suddenly announced, "I'd like to make salmon patties!"

I Owe You Nothing

I owe you (?) the end of Dolon's tale. Come on, you know Dolon! Everybody's favorite character in THE ILIAD? The man with the polecat on his head? Yes, that Dolon! As if there could ever be another. So last night in bed I came to the conclusion of his sorry plight. Maybe you'll be happy to hear that Diomedes didn't spear him like he spears everybody else. But then I would have to tell you that for a change of pace, Diomedes just chopped Dolon's head right off! And get this: "Dolon's head, still speaking, rolled in the dust." How about that? You know what that reminded me of? Well, lots of things. So many things that I began to worry about myself. For example, I believe there is a scene in AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD wherein a decapitated head kind of goes "cha cha cha cha" and the eyes look around as if to say, "Hey! What gives?" I am not sure whether the scene in question, if it truly exists, was the wellspring whence arose an inside joke shared by Dr. Theresa and myself, where we sort of... act like a skull going "cha cha cha cha cha cha"? You had to be there. I am also put in mind, though the situation is a bit different, of Sir Everard Digby, referred to by John Aubrey as "the handsomemest man in England." Here, I will save you the trouble of "clicking": "When his heart was pluct out by the executioner (who... cryed 'Here is the heart of a traytor!') it is credibly reported, he replied, 'Thou liest!'" And then there's the execution I read about in Tudor (?) England: "When the executioner held up the head, its eyes and lips moved." Anyway, I can't stop thinking about the "polecat cap," as Emily Wilson calls it. After Diomedes chops off Dolon's head, he grabs the polecat cap and dedicates it as an offering to Athena. Just what Athena wanted!

A Swarm of Bees

I was reading THE ILIAD last night and here come Diomedes and Odysseus, sneaking off to spy on the Trojans. As encouragement, Athena sends along a "dark night heron." And I was like what? No! It should have been an owl! I don't mean to tell Homer how to do his job. And now I'm going to tell you something else, but wait. What about this Diomedes? I had no memory of him from however much I made it through THE ILIAD last time. This guy! I don't know. His self-confidence gets on my nerves. He just goes around spearing everybody like they were Vienna sausages. And when you get him out of bed, he puts something on: a whole lion he happens to have "lyin'" around, ha ha. That's my own clever wordplay, not Emily Wilson's. When I typed it, I thought, "I must be exaggerating!" So I double checked. And (now I will quote Emily Wilson's translation) "Diomedes wrapped around his shoulders a massive golden full-length lion skin." Okay! Gross! Later on, he's tormenting a poor Trojan who's wearing a polecat on his head. What a contrast! You can see why Diomedes irritates me. You strut around in your lion suit running your spear through everybody you meet and this other guy's wearing a polecat for a hat, give him a break! Now, "polecat" is Emily Wilson's word, and it's what my grandfather in Alabama called a skunk. I was like... is this guy wearing a skunk on his head like Davy Crockett? (I know Davy Crockett didn't wear a skunk on his head. But if you ever really study the TV show, he is wearing an ENTIRE raccoon on his head. Freeze a frame and you can see its poor exed-out eyes. But don't do it! It's very troubling.) So I looked it up, even though I long ago vowed never to look anything up, and I assume she means... well, I don't know. I didn't look up much after all. I did see that the European polecat has anal scent glands, so good for him. And I don't think Emily Wilson implies the guy is wearing a whole polecat. But really what I want to mention is that I finished Gombrowicz and returned to Tacitus as promised. So you can breathe a sigh of relief! Over here in Tacitus, Rome is having some bad times, accompanied by the usual signs and portents. You know how that is! "The Capitol was occupied by ominous birds." I know what you're thinking! You're thinking I wish or assume that these ominous birds were owls. But I don't care. You don't know me at all! I just like the phrase: "The Capitol was occupied by ominous birds." A little later, some more bad times come up and "on the pinnacle of the Capitol a swarm of bees took up occupation."

Mom Right

When I was growing up, there was a local grocery store Mom didn't like. It's still there and she still doesn't like it. But now that I am adult man with sophisticated opinions, I am always like, "Mom, it is just a grocery store like any other. Why do you go so far out of your way for groceries?" And then I continue to lecture my mother on a variety of topics. I'll tell you, though... I have a single vivid memory of this grocery store from childhood. I don't know why it should be vivid. It involves a cigarette. It was the late 1960s or early 1970s. Cigarettes were everywhere. So that's not why the memory is vivid. Three of my four grandparents constantly blew cigarette smoke into my cherubic face. Benignly, I add! But anyway, I saw the back of a guy kneeling in a white uniform at a dairy case... putting in milk bottles... he turned, and I saw his face... he had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a cigarette with, probably, the longest ash I had ever seen. Or ever have (when not deployed comically, as in the case of Nathan Thurm or a 20-year-old infomercial for a blender)! It seemed miraculous that the ash hadn't fallen off his cigarette - which was mostly ash! - and into the whipping cream... anyway! Somehow it filled me with uncanny horror. I don't know why we were even in that grocery store, the one Mom didn't like. None of this is the point. Some of it is the point. Now I'm going to reveal the kind of personal detail that has security experts quaking in their boots. Sometimes, Dr. Theresa and I like an apple and an orange at night. We have been off desserts ever since some medical shenanigans. So, yes, sometimes an apple and an orange will hit the spot. For whatever gendered reason, it is Dr. Theresa who peels the apple and orange as part of the elaborate ritual. She likes peeling an apple! What do you want me to do? So... oh! I forgot to say that Dr. Theresa and I frequent the forbidden grocery store when we are visiting my parents. And this time, we happened to bring back some apples. So... afterward, when we would have our apple and orange, and the apple turned out to be insipid, I would say, "Is this one of those ****** apples?" (Here, I named the grocery store Mom doesn't like.) And every time, yes! The flavorless apple came from that grocery store. Finally, I was obliged to call Mom on the phone and say, "Mom, you were right!"

Constant Taras Bulba Updates

Remember when I live-tweeted KING RALPH? Well, your good friend Elon Musk certainly put an end to all that, didn't he? Now I just text Ace Atkins my descriptions of movies. :(

Big Peanut Inside You

Speaking of M&Ms and unpublished novels, one of my unpublished novels contains this paragraph: "I thought up a commercial where a doctor shows an anthropomorphic M&M an x-ray and says, 'You’ve got this big peanut inside you. I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.' And the M&M bursts into uncontrollable sobs, but he eventually gets a grip. He walks out in the waiting room and there’s his wife sitting with her pocketbook on her lap. She’s an M&M too. She has this beautiful, expectant look on her face. Close-up on the M&M. His eyes are vacant. He’s in total shock. What’s he going to tell her? His life is spinning out of control!" End of quote. Scientists of the future will be able to piece together all my unpublished works from the pathetic shards provided here over the decades. By the way, I am proud to confirm that, yes, March 2026 is the month with the most "blog" "posts" since April of 2016, infamous as the period in which our TV blew up and I stomped my little hoof and swore never to "blog" again. Then we had the pandemic, leading to what I have creatively taken to calling "these times we live in," during which, little by little, I began to "blog" more and more, just to put a little smile on the face of the world. How’s that going?

No One Tells Me Anything

I just saw a commercial indicating, or so I thought, that there are purple M&Ms. I felt very upset because no one tells me anything. Then I looked it up and I guess you can't find a purple M&M in the bag. She is just a fanciful mascot for promotional purposes. I know this will be a "zombie" "link" one day, but on the M&M "web" site you can examine her workout routine and the advice she would give her teenage self. That's right, this M&M was once a teenager. I would have expected their life cycle to last three years at most. Oh, this really takes me back! The Hawaiian Punch FAQ upon which I doted once is just a "zombie" "link" now. Thank God, then, that I had the foresight to quote it: "Punchy has been revamped with contemporary fashion and music to appeal to modern consumers. He still has the punch! ... The long-time spokesman for Hawaiian Punch was given a more contemporary look that appeals to teens." That's my favorite kind of writing, which may clue you in about why most of my novels remain unpublished.

High-Profile Fans

Here's something that blew my mind and maybe it will blow yours. But I doubt it! Your mind can't be blown, can it? You've seen it all! Your mind has crusted over with blow-proof grit. Anyway! I was watching BONJOUR TRISTESSE yesterday, and I texted Megan something about it - Megan Abbott, that is, as her surname will become significant in the following tale. So, the movie is over and I'm responding to a text from Megan about something else... Andre Gregory, if you must know. Yes, yes, Andre Gregory is the sort of subject we text about, that's how we are. Not that it matters! Because I had recorded BONJOUR TRISTESSE from a showing on TCM. So after the movie, host Ben Mankiewicz gets on there to remind me what I just saw, in case I forgot. And this time, he says how BONJOUR TRISTESSE was not a big critical hit upon its release but now it has... and here I will quote... "high-profile fans such as The New Yorker's Richard Brody, writer Megan Abbott, and actor Amy Poehler." Wait! Back up! Did you notice that middle one? I was texting Megan at the same time Ben Mankiewicz yelled her name from my TV. Maybe he wasn't yelling.

Sleeping and Dreaming of Dreaming and Sleeping

You know, and these are the words you've been longing to hear, I believe I will tell you something about McNeil's dream of Dolores Hope after all. To wit, in McNeil's dream, Dolores Hope was concerned about her napping habits. And that brings up something important for everyone to ponder. It seems to me that McNeil is always dreaming about sleeping and dreaming. To be clear, people in McNeil's dreams themselves sleep and dream. Is that "normal"? I mean, do you dream about sleeping? Do you dream about dreaming? I don't think I do. Do I? I need some reliable statistics. My friend Mevelyn has described the "blog" itself as being like "a dream within a dream," but she was referring to its intentional ourboros-based design as a byzantine labyrinth of frustration and woe. What I'm talking about here, though, is real sleep! Real dreams! Within real sleep! And real dreams! My use of the word "real" bothers me a little, but isn't a dream inside a dream just a dream? That is, as "real" as the dream within which it... aw, screw it. Pardon my bold use of the vernacular! Do I even have evidence to back up my analysis of McNeil's dream content? You bet I don't! I tried corroboration for a few seconds, but do you know how many hundreds of thousands of times the word "McNeil" appears on this "blog"? It stymies both research and sanity. All I can offer is the anecdotal scrap that in December of 2021, McNeil dreamed about Carol Channing having a dream. Are you happy now? Can I get on with my life? Ace and I are supposed to walk around the neighborhood when he finishes his cereal. Do you know how long it takes Ace to finish his cereal? It's like Waiting for Godot around here. One day I want to see this magical cereal bowl that never empties.

The 11-Day Blunder

Just when I thought I would have nothing to "blog" about today, McNeil reports having a dream about Bob AND Dolores Hope! Now, am I going to tell you the dream? No. It having been previously established that you don't know who Bob Hope is, how much less, given the scummy world in which we live, would you have cared to learn of Dolores Hope? And shame on you for that. You're what's wrong with America! Why, if you tried to even think of the concept of Dolores Hope, you would be instantly confronted by and sucked into the greedy abyss of your own soul. And maybe that's what you want. How am I supposed to know? Good for you! So... why am I telling you this, then? I'm glad you asked, imaginary voice in my head! Well, today will be the eleventh day in a row I have "blogged." I haven't double checked, because I just don't care that much, especially since A.I. informed me that I wrote Bill Boyle's novel GRAVESEND and I witnessed what the future holds as far as meticulous accuracy goes, but I'm very certain that today, whatever day it is, marks the most days I have "blogged" in a row since I got demoralized on April 27, 2016, when our TV blew up. I had a little fit and claimed to have stopped "blogging." I was all sad inside like a weepily smiling clown because I had "blogged" for "almost 10 years"... ha ha! What a chump. It's been nearly 20 now! And yes, I'm throwing up as I type these words. It's not as easy as it sounds, throwing up while you type. What was I just talking about?