McNeil Month by Month

It's October 5! You know what that means! McNeil's birthday! And time for another roundup of all of McNeil's whimsical antics as reported by the "blog." Well, not all of them. One a month. Over the years! Also, not always as reported by the "blog." As I am sick of explaining to you uncaring ghouls, there are reasons why, during some months, McNeil was monitored instead by an analog team of experts. His capers during those periods are marked by asterisks. Now that we have the formalities out of the way, may we please commence with the celebration of this mighty man? September 2006: McNeil contends that he does not enjoy the "Little Dot" comic book. October 2006: McNeil furnishes a memorable quotation. November 2006: McNeil recalls playing Aerosmith on a jukebox. December 2006: First appearance of "McNeil's Movie Korner." January 2007: McNeil's system for winning at craps. February 2007: McNeil doesn't see what's so hard about reading a newspaper and eating a sandwich at the same time. March 2007: McNeil and I are talking about Bob Denver when HE SUDDENLY APPEARS ON TELEVISION! April 2007: Wild turkeys roam McNeil's neighborhood. May 2007: McNeil gets in touch with an Australian reporter regarding a historical chimp. June 2007: First McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival announced. July 2007: Medicine changes McNeil's taste buds. August 2007: McNeil's trees not producing apples. September 2007: McNeil pinpoints a problem with the "blog." October 2007: McNeil presents a video entitled "Jerry's pre-defecation chills." November 2007: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy. December 2007: What is McNeil's favorite movie? January 2008: McNeil explains why the wind blows. February 2008: McNeil admires the paintings of Gerhard Richter. March 2008: McNeil comes up with an idea for a Lifetime TV movie. April 2008: McNeil's shirt. May 2008: McNeil's apple tree doing better (see August 2007). June 2008: McNeil is troubled by a man who wants to make clouds in the shape of logos. July 2008: McNeil's apples are doing great. August 2008: McNeil refuses to acknowledge that Goofy wears a hat no matter what I say. September 2008: McNeil's grocery store is permanently out of his favorite margarine. October 2008: McNeil on the space elevator. November 2008: McNeil comes across an incomplete episode guide to HELLO, LARRY. December 2008: McNeil thinks the human hand should have more fingers. January 2009: McNeil discovers that gin and raisins cure arthritis. February 2009: McNeil gets a big bruise on his arm. March 2009: McNeil wants a job on a cruise ship. April 2009: McNeil attempts to rescue a wayward balloon. May 2009: McNeil visits the Frogtown Fair. June 2009: McNeil dreams he is watching an endless production number from LI'L ABNER. July 2009: McNeil sends text messages from his cell phone while watching a Frank Sinatra movie. August 2009: McNeil disagrees philosophically with a comic book cover that shows a mad scientist putting a gorilla's brain in a superhero's body. September 2009: McNeil resembles famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach. October 2009: McNeil wears a surgical mask. November 2009: McNeil reports that a bird broke the large hadron collider by dropping a bread crumb on it. December 2009: McNeil advises me to like the universe or lump it. January 2010: McNeil eats soup. February 2010: McNeil tells of the hidden civilizations living deep beneath the surface of the earth. March 2010: McNeil recalls a carpet of his youth. April 2010: McNeil starts wearing a necktie. May 2010: McNeil's DNA sample fails to yield results. June 2010: McNeil thinks up some improvements for the movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. July 2010: McNeil reads to me from I, THE JURY. August 2010: McNeil finds a hair in his crab cake. September 2010: McNeil has a cold. October 2010: McNeil sends a nine-minute clip of a nice old man speaking at a UFO banquet. November 2010: McNeil sits in his car and looks at pictures of Jennifer Jones. December 2010: McNeil fears a ball of fire in the sky. January 2011: McNeil watches DYNASTY. February 2011: McNeil sees clouds that look like guys on horseback. March 2011: McNeil composes a "still life" photograph. April 2011: McNeil is upset when I interrupt his viewing of MATCH GAME. May 2011: McNeil pines for some old curtains. June 2011: McNeil eats Lucky Charms brand breakfast cereal. July 2011: McNeil investigates the history of the Phar-Mor drugstore chain. August 2011: McNeil compares Dean Moriarty to Dean Martin. September 2011: McNeil learns a lesson about pork and beans. October 2011: McNeil finds an article describing Robert Mitchum as "Bing Crosby supersaturated with barbiturates." November 2011: McNeil did nothing in November. December 2011: McNeil discovers scientists creating rainbows in a laboratory. January 2012: McNeil impersonates Paul Lynde. February 2012: McNeil dreams of matches. March 2012: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy (see November 2007, above) used to chart the influence of Jerry Lewis on Carson McCullers. April 2012: McNeil disturbed by the art in his hotel room. May 2012: McNeil considers grave robbing. June 2012: McNeil's idea for "music television." July 2012: McNeil holds his negative feelings in check out of respect when the man who invented electric football dies. August 2012: McNeil reads me an old obituary of Charlie Callas over the phone. September 2012: McNeil concerned about T.J. Hooker's big meaty hands. October 2012: McNeil eats lunch at Target. November 2012: McNeil loves it when Bob Hope slips on a banana peel. December 2012: McNeil sees rocks that look like squirrels. January 2013: McNeil looks at an old, faded photo of a dog gazing into a Bath and Tile Emporium. February 2013: McNeil watches a video in which a hooded figure talks about "our criminal overlords." March 2013: McNeil wakes up at 6:40 in the evening, momentarily thinks it is 6:40 in the morning. April 2013: McNeil sees a singer who looks just like Bill Clinton. May 2013: McNeil is ashamed of himself for not realizing that Ida Lupino directed some episodes of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. June 2013: McNeil mails a cashew tree. July 2013: McNeil watches GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN. August 2013: McNeil recalls being rosy-cheeked. September 2013: A fairyland goes on in McNeil's head. October 2013: McNeil recalls tucking in his t-shirt. November 2013: The cover of a book McNeil buys says it is about Jerry Lewis, but on the inside the book is about Willie Stargell! December 2013: McNeil wants to visit an orgone box factory. January 2014: McNeil did nothing in January. February 2014: McNeil wonders whether Tom Franklin puts his hair in curlers. March 2014: McNeil takes a nap in the car. April 2014: The subject of McNeil pops up in an interview. May 2014: McNeil's emails on the "hollow earth" recalled (see February 2010, above). June 2014: McNeil looks forward to getting drunk and making insensitive remarks as I lie on my deathbed. July 2014: McNeil watches Jim and Henny Backus play themselves in DON'T MAKE WAVES. August 2014: McNeil tells about Robert Mitchum's hangover cure. September 2014: McNeil exaggerates the fate of some owls. October 2014: McNeil is incensed that a candy apple costs eight dollars at the airport. November 2014: McNeil's heart overflows with joy. December 2014: McNeil continues his 7-year chimp investigation (see May 2007, above). January 2015: McNeil listens to a conspiracy theorist who says Jimmy Carter was replaced by a series of robots. February 2015: McNeil recalls doing a report about matches in the eighth grade. March 2015: McNeil takes to bed with the flu! April 2015: McNeil and I establish an amazing psychic link. May 2015: McNeil bitterly recalls the time he brought a John Wayne movie to my apartment and we never watched it. June 2015: McNeil dreams about a bearded Dean Martin. July 2015: McNeil has a disappointing encounter with the Grand Canyon. August 2015: McNeil sees a squirrel holding a stick. September 2015: McNeil is saddened by the news of Dean Jones's death. October 2015: McNeil watches STARFLIGHT: THE PLANE THAT COULDN'T LAND. November 2015: McNeil sends video of Joe Namath making and eating a sandwich. December 2015: A coincidence of the type McNeil especially loves. January 2016: McNeil is in a grocery store and they start playing "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea" over the speakers! February 2016: McNeil watches Don Rickles eat in a bathroom. March 2016: McNeil is duly thrilled when Megan Abbott goes to see CRACKING UP on the big screen. April 2016: McNeil swallows a gnat. May 2016: McNeil recalls the details of a screenplay we wrote in our twenties. June 2016: Destruction comes to McNeil's apple tree! July 2016: McNeil spots Dabney Coleman in an I DREAM OF JEANNIE rerun. August 2016: McNeil points out that Dean Martin had granddaughters named Pepper, Montana, and Rio. September 2016: McNeil is called a "filthy troglodyte." October 2016: McNeil advises me on what to do now that ADVENTURE TIME has been canceled. "I say take it easy for a while... just pretend to write when Theresa's around and then sleep or watch movies when she leaves. Oh hell, you know how to work it," writes McNeil.* November 2016: McNeil sees an owl while walking his dog at midnight. December 2016: McNeil finds an Airbnb listing by "eccentric millionaires" for a treehouse featuring "whimsical taxidermy."* January 2017: McNeil notices that there are lots of ants in his writing.* February 2017: McNeil roots for the guy who stole a bucket full of gold flakes.* March 2017: McNeil reads an article suggesting that all the gold on Earth came from the collision of dead stars and says, "Let's go get us some of this!" seemingly suggesting a trip to outer space.* April 2017: McNeil recalls that he was washing dishes in 2015 when the thought of Gene Gene the Dancing Machine came into his head. Then he discovered that Gene Gene the Dancing Machine had just died!* May 2017: McNeil watches ISLAND IN THE SKY with his dog.* June 2017: McNeil is happy to see a movie with rotary phones and "people looking up stuff in a filing cabinet for a change."* July 2017: McNeil begins alerting me to weather situations in my area like he's my mom.* August 2017: McNeil connects heavenly signs and portents with the death of Jerry Lewis. September 2017: A critique by McNeil inspires a choice of airplane reading material. October 2017: McNeil cruelly but fairly shuts down my scheme of crossbreeding an apple with a lemon. November 2017: "Death knows my weak spot!" McNeil exclaims.* December 2017: McNeil leafs through CARIBOU TRAVELER. January 2018: McNeil catches a cold and stays in bed watching old game shows, writing from his sickbed: "Bobby Van looks so healthy...but would be dead only 5 years later... GATHER YE ROSEBUDS!"* February 2018: McNeil gives me a good idea about how to win a coupla sawbucks from likely suckers. March 2018: McNeil's complaint about sleeping: "I dream way too much."* April 2018: McNeil watches a movie in which Dean Martin claims to "make a hell of an owl stew."* May 2018: I ask McNeil what lightning is for (see January 2008) and he explains it to me.* June 2018: McNeil's mom stumbles on an old book about the comical dog Marmaduke from McNeil's younger days and is excited to deliver it to him.* July 2018: While walking his dog, McNeil sees a bone fall out of the sky. August 2018: Having made it to season five, McNeil, though a stalwart fan, watches what he considers to be the worst episode of BEWITCHED so far.* September 2018: McNeil finds one page of a history skit we did in ninth grade. October 2018: McNeil emails a still from the silent movie BILLY WHISKERS, the subject of an innocuous, decades-long inside joke. Using me as an intermediary, he also consults Ace Atkins about the little-known film version of DARKER THAN AMBER... set in Florida but filmed, as Ace explains, mostly in Germany!* November 2018: McNeil asks me whether Jack Lemmon was left handed. I don't know.* December 2018: McNeil tells me about deluxe reissues of two Paul McCartney albums I've never heard of.* January 2019: McNeil says he only ever bought one cassette tape in his life. (It was Bruce Springsteen's "The River.")* February 2019: McNeil watches IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and finds it difficult to believe a hardware store would close that long for lunch.* March 2019: McNeil tells me about a used car dealer in his town who secretly dealt drugs and would use his commercials to let people know a shipment had come in. If this guy's dog was on the hood of his car in the commercial, he was ready to deal some drugs!* April 2019: McNeil is thinking about the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.* May 2019: McNeil follows up on an email from 2015.* June 2019: Working on a secret project with McNeil. It never comes to fruition. July 2019: McNeil sees a guy in a parking lot trying unsuccessfully to fit a rolled-up rug in his car.* August 2019: McNeil cuts down his apple tree. September 2019: McNeil remarks that Brendan Gleeson should play Donald Trump... a prophecy that came true!* October 2019: McNeil is at the dentist's office, where the muted cartoon on the television provides the caption "frightened quacking."* November 2019: McNeil is shirt shopping when he realizes that the age of some of his old shirts makes it likely that any new shirt he buys might be the last shirt he will ever need.* December 2019: McNeil watches the old Frosty the Snowman cartoon and is disappointed that Frosty lets himself get trapped in the hothouse again.* January 2020: There's a new vending machine at McNeil's workplace. It dispenses "gloves, knee pads, safety vests - even socks."* February 2020: A comic book cover McNeil likes. March 2020: McNeil ponders inventing "powdered meat." April 2020: McNeil misremembers an idea we discussed in 2005. May 2020: Something McNeil and I noticed in 2014 comes up. June 2020: McNeil gets seven shots of novacaine.* July 2020: McNeil begins noticing obelisks. August 2020: McNeil goes fishing with Dean Martin in the realm of dreams. September 2020: McNeil finds an article that his grandmother clipped from a newspaper... on the back is an intriguing but incomplete item about murder among circus performers.* October 2020: McNeil tells me about a fusion reactor in France.* November 2020: McNeil has a dream about "the best chocolate milkshakes in the world."* December 2020: McNeil reminisces about fence posts. January 2021: McNeil's fascination with obelisks continues to inspire. February 2021: McNeil's decade-old observation about gin and raisins confirmed by the New York Times. March 2021: McNeil has an idea for a toilet that plays commercials.* April 2021: There's a photo of Jerry Lewis hanging in the breakroom where McNeil works, and he had nothing to do with it!* May 2021: McNeil watches a live feed of a stork's nest. He's pretty sure they're storks.* June 2021: Ernest Borgnine's personality is assessed at "a million watts." McNeil rates him 11 watts at most. July 2021: McNeil watches half of CHANGE OF HABIT and it's not as bad as he remembered.* August 2021: McNeil is envious that the fictional character Travis McGee gets to live on a boat.* September 2021: A guy at work asks McNeil if he has change for a quarter, because he's going to "drop a dime" on McNeil.* October 2021: McNeil and I coincidentally have doctor's appointments ON THE SAME DAY!!!!!!* November 2021: McNeil asks if I remember a song our high school band played at pep ralleys. It goes like this, according to McNeil (direct quotation to follow): "bom, bom, bom, bom-bom....bom, bom, bom, bom-bom....bom, bom, bom, bom-bom.....bom-bom-bom."* December 2021: McNeil dreams about Carol Channing... and within the dream, CAROL CHANNING HERSELF HAS A DREAM!* January 2022: McNeil and I correspond about a place where Eleanor Roosevelt used to live. February 2022: McNeil and I discuss a possible plot for something in which some crooks ask for a $250,000 payoff in quarters.* March 2022: McNeil is concerned about the sexual activities of some birds.* April 2022: Someone in McNeil's breakroom at work is listening to a recording of Jerry Clower, which upsets McNeil.* May 2022: McNeil covets a glowing orb. June 2022: McNeil and I debate whether the Falcon or Thin Man movies qualify as "serials."* July 2022: McNeil visits Albany, NY!* August 2022: I am given reason to recall the time McNeil swallowed a gnat (see the entry for April 2016, above). September 2022: McNeil finds a half-smoked pack of cigarettes that belonged to his grandfather. October 2022: McNeil is thinking about Leo Gorcey and abandoned motels.* November 2022: McNeil worries about 10 billion years that are unaccounted for. December 2022: I email McNeil about Frasier. January 2023: McNeil emails me about Dean Martin. February 2023: McNeil's irresistible influence. March 2023: McNeil's word is as good as gold. April 2023: McNeil's interest in the ubiquity of the Globe Illustrated Shakespeare. May 2023: McNeil has an idea about how a dog could win at blackjack.* (Why I didn't "blog" about this is a complete mystery.) June 2023: I recall that McNeil may or may not have once told me that glass is nothing but a slow-moving liquid. Anyway, it sounds like McNeil. July 2023: McNeil reports on a silver alien ball and a guy rubbing his feet on the silver alien ball. August 2023: McNeil sees some curtains he likes in an obituary. September 2023: McNeil finally remembers the title of a book upon which he presented a book report in middle school. October 2023: 40th anniversary of McNeil recording a Bob Hope double feature. November 2023: McNeil and I get into a disagreement about plums (not to be confused with the soup dispute of October 2023).* December 2023: A misunderstanding about Phyllis Diller, later happily resolved (see March 2024 below). January 2024: McNeil drives his family crazy by repeatedly singing "Eleanor Rigby" with customized lyrics featuring himself as the hero.* February 2024: McNeil finds the actual, tangible, physical volume of science-fiction upon which he precociously composed a book report some several decades earlier (for further details, see September 2023 above). March 2024: Misunderstanding about Phyllis Diller (see December 2023 above) resolved and put to rest. April 2024: McNeil reveals the details of his grandfather's shocking criminal activities. May 2024: McNeil's miraculous Canadian belt. June 2024: McNeil is worried about a giant catapult. July 2024: I am chastened by the stinging memory of McNeil's justified scorn (see October 2017, above). August 2024: McNeil boldly declares that Lena Horne should have played Dooley Wilson's role in CASABLANCA. September 2024: McNeil watches some Charles Bronson movies. October 2024: A McNeil discovery continues to reverberate, with life-altering consequences for the "blog." November 2024: I tell McNeil about my dream where a guy we knew in high school dressed a duck in human clothes and the duck didn't like it. December 2024: McNeil accuses me of eating pink Sno-Balls five days a week in eighth grade when, in fact, they were strawberry Zingers. January 2025: McNeil wonders whether Hank Williams went "to too many luaus." February 2025: McNeil explains the sleeping habits of dogs. March 2025: McNeil reads the Bible. April 2025: McNeil sees a commercial where a guy sprays deodorant down the back of his pants. May 2025: Photo unearthed of a young McNeil sporting white socks. June 2025: McNeil recalls buying a book by Albert Einstein because he thought it would make him look smart. July 2025: McNeil reads THE BRASS CUPCAKE. August 2025: McNeil can't bear to listen to Jack Palance read from his novel [actually a love story in blank verse? - ed.]. September 2025: McNeil relates the tale of William Faulkner's magical piano. October 2025: McNeil recalls reenacting a wine commercial starring Orson Welles for his cousins, who had never seen it.* November 2025: McNeil nixes our heist of the golden toilet. December 2025: McNeil accuses me of eating with utensils designed for babies. January 2026: McNeil and I dream about each other. That's right! I said it! February 2026: High school memories of high-minded theological discussions in a sewer. March 2026: McNeil dreams about Dolores Hope. April 2026: Reading Charles Fort brings to McNeil's mind a memory of an unusual cloudburst. May 2026: McNeil and I do what we do best: recast a movie no one has thought about in 70 years. June 2026 McNeil imagines Elvis Presley running through the Mariana Trench. July 2026: McNeil's punctuation. August 2026: McNeil and I discuss the pizza party we never had. September 2026: McNeil corrects my spelling. October 2026: McNeil and I text each other about WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT?, in particular the image above.

I Oversimplify

Stopped by Square Books today on my way to lunch with Tom Franklin. Picked up a book about death. It's by a guy named Terry Eagleton, whose name I mainly recall because Dr. Theresa was reading a lot of his stuff while she was trying to become a Dr. ... So, right away, he refers to the universe as "a Creation not conspicuous for its self-irony," which made me laugh. It also made me think of what the author of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years memorably called "the embarrassing non-sequitur of death." One sentence later, Eagleton calls comedy (I oversimplify) "a capacity of of conceptually sophisticated animals involving a salutary self-distancing unavailable to worms and slugs." I get it!

The Miracle of "Hyperlinks" Explained

You folks know how much I love "hyperlinks"! They give my "blog" its special "texture"! As Mevelyn once said, they turn the "blog" into a bewildering and maddening dream within a dream, just the way you like it. Oh! That reminds me. Beware of zombie "links"! When I was putting together a recent "post," I noticed that back when Megan first told me about Lawrence Welk's sexy daughter-in-law, she included a "link" to a Lawrence Welk fansite for more information. I put that "link" on the "blog." But as I noticed the other day, that particular Lawrence Welk fansite must have gone belly up, and the "link" now leads to a webpage for, shall we say, libidinous Germans. Don't worry, I took care of it! But despite my vow to find and eradicate all ancient zombie "links" from the "blog," which I made when I was unemployed, it seemed too hard, and I gave up. Anyway, that's not what I meant to talk about! So, here's the kind of coincidence enjoyed only by McNeil and myself... wait! First I have to reiterate, in case you don't know, that almost all "hyperlinks" on the "blog" lead to the "blog's" most recent previous mention of their subject, lending the "blog" its distinctive ouroboros shape enjoyed by one and all. So! In yesterday's "post," I mentioned two great songwriters, Paul McCartney and Dolly Parton. Okay. Are you ready to have your mind blown? The prior "post" mentioning Paul McCartney AND the prior "post" mentioning Dolly Parton were BOTH, by utter chance, illustrated with photos of... you guessed it... Jack Palance! If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself. I know you won't. I pity more than scorn you.

Lost and Gone: Memories of Mr. Belding

I texted Kent Osborne immediately when I read that Mr. Belding from SAVED BY THE BELL died. Kent used to know everything about SAVED BY THE BELL! He probably still does. Once Kent and I were at a karaoke bar called Dimples, which, I have since heard, or so I believe, was torn down. But that's not the point! Though it's close. As I recall, Kent and I butchered Paul McCartney's "Jet." But that's not the point either! So I remember Kent saying, "I heard Mr. Belding comes here a lot." And then he was ecstatic when Mr. Belding showed up! And the night ended with Joey Lauren Adams and Mr. Belding and me singing Dolly Parton's "Jolene" together, speaking of the recently departed. There used to be video evidence! But like so many things, it is lost and gone. Now, Mr. Belding would never have remembered this (or did he?) but Kent and I had already met him once, in the late 1990s, at which time he recorded the outgoing message for Kent's answering machine. He was just sweet and adorable! Mr. Belding, I mean. Based on our two brief encounters. And I'll tell you something about life. Joey and I went to Dimples again a year or two later, just before it was (I believe) torn down, and we sang Lloyd Price's version of "Stagger Lee," or tried, but they stopped the music and sprayed us with foam cannons to get us to shut up. It just goes to show you, nothing gold can stay. That's the point!

Celebrating 20 Years of Crap

Well, yesterday I finished the fourth and final volume of OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH. It didn’t end the way I thought it would! Checked in with Jimmy, but he has only recently cracked open volume three, so I have no one to talk to. But that’s not why we’re here, is it? As sorry as I am to admit it, today marks the 20th anniversary of the "blog." What a waste of time! What a monument, indeed, to the wasting of time. Just in case you don’t want to go back and read all 6,455 previous "posts," I am going to attach "hyperlinks" to the single greatest "post" from each year. Ballots were sent to Nobel prizewinners, movie stars, and rulers of nations. Results were tabulated by an army of robots. 2006: I mash my middle finger while attempting to get the suitcase out of the trunk. 2007: I think I see a spider on the hand soap dispenser. 2008: I drop a French fry on the floor. 2009: Emily shows me her wisdom teeth. 2010: G. Gordon Liddy’s commercial for gold. 2011: Is it 2011 already? Many (ha ha!) would assume my big long list of books with owls in them to be the obvious choice here. But there’s a problem with that! Though initiated in October 2011, which date it retains, the owl list has been regularly updated ever since and so cannot be said to belong exclusively to that year. The list of books with owls in them is for all time! And all people! And all owls! No, the greatest "post" of 2011 was when I eavesdropped on a conversation about someone who displayed dinosaur bones at her wedding reception. That being said, remember when I cleverly observed that James Ellroy simply can’t resist the term "night owl"? Well, I was too busy to tell you, but last week I was reading a different James Ellroy book than the one which provoked the comment, and I have to admit this one is comparatively light on night owls. He’s exercising uncharacteristic restraint! In the 300 or so pages I’ve read so far, he does use it twice with a hyphen ("night-owl"), as an adjective. So that’s exciting. 2012: A guy pulls my teeth while telling me a story about B.B. King. 2013: A cool name for a dog. 2014: I out-crazy an authentic New York City crazy. 2015: Lawrence Welk’s sexy daughter-in-law. 2016: Scarlet fever isn’t all that. 2017: Critiquing a quip that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes to a dead alligator. 2018: A bone falls out of the sky (photographic evidence included). 2019: An omelet named after my novel has been taken off the menu. 2020: Counting wienies. 2021: We sit around the house talking about Jonathan "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Edwards. 2022: What they put on pancakes in Sweden. 2023: The New York Times throws its considerable weight behind Skippy brand peanut butter. 2024: Prayed over by a fudge manufacturer in an airport. 2025: The fork I’ve been eating with for close to sixty years is lost forever. 2026: Ending on another bummer, as seems appropriate, I leave my hat behind at my parents’ house. So many things lost. Forks, hats, omelets, time. All right! There it is, the "blog" in one neat package. See you on September 27, 2056, for the 50th anniversary. In hell! (Pictured, the hat, in 2019, at the Los Alamitos racetrack with Pendleton Ward.)

Buckatunna Chicken Mat

Life took us once again through Buckatunna, where we stopped at the same gas station, only this time there was a chicken guarding it. The chicken did not stray from what I suppose we should call the welcome mat outside the gas station. I contemplated the chicken. I thought about how, when we have recorded for you here the stories of various chickens hanging around various commercial buildings, the chickens have always congregated in groups. I felt bad for the presumably lonesome chicken. Maybe that's my problem, not the chicken's! Our journey continued to Grand Bay, Alabama, where I noticed a restaurant called New York Pizza. I took a photo of it and sent it to Bill Boyle, who is from New York and very particular about pizza. He replied in astonishment that the lunch special appeared to be 18.99 for two slices and a drink! That was also how I had read the sign, which was blurry due to my lack of skills of all kinds. Later that night, my mom and I vowed to get to the bottom of it! We raced to our precious enhanced telephones, which were replete with information and modern capabilities. Mom said the special was 8.99 for two slices and a drink. I blew up the photo, like David Hemmings in BLOW-UP, and conceded that what Bill and I had taken for a 1 could well have been a dollar sign instead. I relayed the information to Bill. He said it was still too much. Anyway, glancing over the menu of Grand Bay, Alabama's New York Pizza, I observed that they offer a "pickle slice." That is to say, a slice of pizza with pickles on it. Here's the thing! Get ready! Just the night before, my brother had been sitting at the kitchen table, saying, out of nowhere, quote, "I can imagine a slice of pizza with pickles on it." Later, I checked my email and saw that McNeil had written to inform me that in 2007 I misspelled the title of the movie BUONA SERA, MRS. CAMPBELL. It has been corrected!

Grits in Zurich

Last time I checked, the grits had made it as far as Zurich.

Shaft Punctuation

Well, now that the Million Dollar Book Club has finished its most recent selection - which, as Megan and I were discussing, is mostly a list of people having sex in piles of rotting garbage for art - I have returned to the final volume of OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH, in which our army of former bandits has come up against a military formation called... wait! Remember when McNeil was trying to get me to worship "The Monad"? So, they come up against a formation called "The Great Monad." Can this be a coincidence? Or does everybody just have monad fever? Anyway, these guys are completely flummoxed by the Great Monad! And nothing gets to these guys. The last time they were this upset was back when they were still bandits, about 400 pages ago, and they ran into their greatest adversary... a guy who is good at throwing rocks! I'm not kidding. Individually and as a group, these guys have triumphed over impossible odds again and again, but all of a sudden they're saying "Ow! Ow!" and falling off their horses because they met - seemingly for the first time in their lives - someone who can throw rocks. Don't worry, they eventually get the rock thrower - whose nickname is the Featherless Arrow - to come over to their side, so they can use his rock throwing powers for their own purposes. And yet not even this guy who is good at throwing rocks will be much use against the Great Monad! I'll keep you posted. So, the other night it was Dr. Theresa's birthday and we were driving around singing the theme from SHAFT. One thing we saw was a bunch of golden glinting orbs in a thicket, and then a baby raccoon emerged, and the golden glinting orbs were the eyes of its many brothers and sisters. But the point is we were driving around before that, singing the theme from SHAFT, and to my surprise, when we got to "no one understands him but his woman," Dr. Theresa belted out, with great confidence, "Joan Shaft!" And I said WHAT! Well, it turns out that for her whole life, Dr. Theresa has heard, I suppose, a comma after the phrase "no one understands him but his woman," a comma leading to a syntactically very logical end to that sentence, which would be giving the name of the woman to whom Isaac Hayes is referring, one "Joan Shaft." Dr. Theresa's theory was further bolstered by the fact that prior to the supposed introduction of "Joan Shaft," the protagonist Shaft is referred to by his surname alone. I had to burst her bubble on her birthday and inform her that there is no Joan Shaft. The backup singers are, of course, supplying us with Shaft's full name, John Shaft. Then, as a refreshing break from my mansplaining, the baby raccoon came out of the thicket. It was just like that Walt Whitman poem about the astronomer.

Grits to Sweden

Yesterday I mailed some grits to Sweden. In return, I expect to receive some canned fish meatballs. "They taste like nothing," Hanna assured me.

Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility

Oh, so you say you CAN handle the kind of stuff McNeil and I talk about? All right. I'll give you the straight skinny, and then you'll be sorry. So McNeil sends an email: "Reading The Apocryphon of John and it's blowing my mind. BOOOOOM. In a way it makes the vicissitudes (!!look at my big word there!!) of the OT God a little easier to understand. I said a little. And I'm talking bout the Monad, y'all...which is what people really should be worshipping, I guess." All right! So it looks like McNeil is starting a cult and trying to get me to worship "The Monad." So I'm like, hey, I think I have that book around here somewhere. But I look all around and I can't find it. BUT THEN! I remember an anthology called THE GNOSTIC BIBLE, which is on a shelf behind glass, and I have to move my blood pressure machine to get to it, and I can barely be bothered to make the effort. Finally, I drag my old carcass over there and take it down and I'm like, hey! And I email McNeil: "one of the sections is called The Secret Book of John, which seems to correspond to the book you're talking about. For example, it mentions 'The One,' which a footnote explains is 'The Monad.' And so on. So let's get busy, Apocryphon style!" And there was some other stuff McNeil brought up about A.I., but let's not get into that right now. We have enough problems! Oh yeah, and McNeil had given me an assignment, which was to study "the passage about halfway through, maybe, where man is created. There is a long long list of people who worked on the project - and how they felt about it afterward." I still haven't done that. Sorry! So McNeil follows up with "There should be a place we meet and discuss the Apocryphon - a place like Omaha or Des Moines - and in a pergola near a nature preserve or something so it seems spiritual and also inexpensive. We could wear hats like they do in Masters of Atlantis." And I shoot back my own suggestion: Yankton, South Dakota! McNeil goes "At that pizza place you're obsessed with - but only if they can provide us with a SCIF." And I don't know what the hell a SCIF is and McNeil has to explain it to me. But about this pizza place... see, for my 60th birthday, I thought McNeil and I could meet at a pizza place I knew about through one tweet, back when twitter existed. The way I remember it now, this place had a pizza with crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on it, which was named (the pizza was) after Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Because you know how much they loved crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on a pizza! I even looked up local forms of entertainment and I think I found several casinos in the area. Alas, that plan came to nothing. A lot of things came to nothing that year. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Hey! Speaking of religion, I see that the announcement is up at Square Books: I'll be "in conversation" with Tom Franklin about his new novel DEVILWOOD in February! So I can finally tell you... remember when I said I was reading a manuscript with owl balls in it but it doesn't mean what you think it means? Well, that book with the owl balls in it is DEVILWOOD, as can finally be revealed. Owl balls!

The Short Version

You know, several days ago, McNeil and I had a pretty good thread going about James Franciscus, and in my heart I was like, "Oh, there's a rich vein of 'bloggable' material here." Then I was like, "Well, I better find a photo of James Franciscus, because no one knows who he is." Then I was like, "Gee, how am I going to explain what McNeil and I are talking about?" Then I realized that once I began explaining James Franciscus, I would have to explain a lot more things, and pretty soon I'd be explaining the universe. And then I got depressed. The short version is that McNeil got some information about a James Franciscus movie from one of his old books, but when he consulted the "internet" about it, he discovered that THERE IS NOT EVEN A SINGLE ALLUSION TO THIS MOVIE ANYWHERE ON THE "INTERNET." And then McNeil blamed Elon Musk for creating this new reality we live in, in which the James Franciscus movie McNeil wants to see has been erased from what we laughingly call "existence." We laughingly call it that! Laughingly! Anyway, the main thing is you know three things about me: I have a "daytime" book I read during the day. I have a "nighttime" book I read at night. And I have proven that every book has an owl in it. Therefore, it should come as no shock that yesterday during the day I found an owl in my daytime book and during the night I found an owl in my nighttime book. But let's dig deeper! Just like a burrowing owl! My daytime book is a Million Dollar Book Club selection by J. Hoberman, all about the avant-garde art scene in New York in the 1960s. In a footnote, I noticed a place called "The Night Owl Cafe." And I was like, "You can't hide from me in a footnote, owl!" So, at night, I'm reading... well, remember when I was reading that James Ellroy book while I took my blood pressure? And I chose it because it had a reliable-looking and charming spine? But I didn't really care for the words on the pages of the book itself? Anyway, I was in Square Books the other day and I bought the sequel (see also). So the narrator calls Richard Nixon a "foul owl on the prowl." A few pages later, someone calls our narrator a "night owl." And that reminded me of how James Ellroy seems to love the phrase "night owl." And who can blame him? I will conclude with the astonishing fact that in yesterday's reading, both my nighttime book and my daytime book namechecked the film THE CRY OF JAZZ (see also). All of which reminds me, Dr. Theresa says I'm supposed to take my blood pressure today.

I Hate Everything

I keep seeing this commercial where some curly-haired jackass bites into a giant freaking hamburger on a pretzel bun and then he is magically transported to a "pub" because this giant freaking hamburger on a pretzel bun is just like being in a "pub." And I sit there thinking, is that what people eat in pubs? A giant freaking hamburger on a pretzel bun? That looks like it has a lot of gross stuff crammed onto it? And then I think, what is a pub? I've been in a couple of pubs but they were in Scotland, so does that count? And I just asked Dr. Theresa, hey, says I, remember that place that called itself a pub that was on our street in Atlanta? And both of us remembered it and could even picture it, but we couldn't remember the name. But so what? Is it a pub just because you call it a pub? Anyway, I hate everything.

Names

I told you how everyone in OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH has a nickname. Over halfway through volume three, we meet a guy called "the Ugly Son-in-Law." This guy is so ugly... and it sounds like I'm about to tell a Rodney Dangerfield joke, but it's just part of the plot... he's so ugly his wife dies from looking at him! Speaking of names, I saw the rapper-turned-actor Ludacris in a vitamin commercial. Ludacris tries drinking an unpleasant smoothie, but he just can't do it! In disgust, he exclaims, "Man, when did health get so LUDICROUS?" I view this as lazy writing. Sorry, writer of the Ludacris vitamin commercial! Anyway, Ludacris puts aside the terrible smoothie and happily takes his vitamin. So he should have used the homonym (if that's the correct term) for his own name as a positive thing. It should have been saved for the end of the commercial, when he's happy. He should have swallowed his pleasant vitamin and said, "Man, health just got LUDICROUS!" Like it's a good thing. I am seeing some problems with this approach. I do not envy you, vitamin writer! It may interest you to know that I saw two different Ludacris commercials for two different products back-to-back! Immediately before the vitamin commercial, Ludacris and the race car driver Danica Patrick were trying to talk me into getting some kind of insurance (?) that pays for your auto repairs. They were like, "Who's going to pay for your next car repair? YOU?" They meant it in an encouraging way, in that it wouldn't have to be me if I just paid a small monthly fee for their service instead. But the tone struck me as "Who's going to pay for your next car repair? YOU? Don't make me laugh! Look at yourself! You couldn't pay for a stick of gum!" You may ask where I encountered back-to-back Ludacris ads. Why, on the old people channel, of course. The old people channel is what I call the channel that shows things old people might like, for example, the sitcom HAZEL, which is about a wisecracking maid who helps rich, often withered, white people get everything they desire. My relationship with HAZEL is complex. I guess I talk about it a lot. In recognition, Ace Atkins bought me a HAZEL coffee mug I drink from at least three days a week. Most other days I drink from a souvenir mug from the Smoke House that Ace brought back from a trip to Los Angeles. And when both of those are unanvailable, I drink from a giant mug that informs me I am a "diamond in a rhinestone world." Ace got me that one too. Maybe that's what he really thinks! Anyway, Ace buys most of my clothes and personal kitchen accessories.

Zoological Adjustments

Well, well, well. I guess you'd think I was pretty foolish if I went out and bought the first few books of Aristotle's METAPHYSICS just so I could fact-check Thomas Aquinas when he says there's an owl in it. But that's just what I did. And hold onto your hats! There's NOT an owl in it! Here's what it says in my brand spanking new (by which I mean 1933) translation of the METAPHYSICS: "just as it is with bats' eyes in respect to daylight, so it is with our mental intelligence..." That's right! It's bats! Not owls! NOW what are you saying? I bet you're saying "Money well spent!" I troubled myself to scrounge about halfheartedly on the "internet" to find out why Aquinas says owls instead of bats. And you know, I found out a couple of things, sort of. I skimmed over a scholarly article called "Power and Limits of the Human Mind: On the Arabic Reception of the Analogy of Bats and Daylight..." Look. There's more to the subtitle but I'm getting tired of typing. It's like an email I got from McNeil this morning. He was writing about the movie DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! but had the energy to type only "Dr. ... kidding" (ellipses McNeil's). And I mocked him for it! But look at me now. Anyway, if I'm reading it correctly, this guy (his name is Amos Bertolacci) says that when translating from Greek to Latin, people began subsituting "owl" for "bat." And he explains why, but I don't think I understood it. Here, I'll quote it for you: "The interpretations of the bats’ analogy in Latin philosophy and theology have a different character from the ones considered here: Latin translators from Greek made Aristotle’s text less problematic by means of zoological adjustments, i.e. by identifying Aristotle’s bats with other night animals (night ravens or owls)." Then he goes on to say that some people even substituted eagles for bats! That's just crazy. (The latter being my conclusion, not Mr. Bertolacci's.) The article led me to another "web" site containing, in full, Thomas Aquinas's critique of Averroes's gloss on Aristotle's metaphysics, where I read with my own two eyes and my own pea-sized brain Aquinas taking Averroes to task for his bat observations... leading me to conclude (and bear in mind "I ain't no doctor with a degree" to quote Aretha Franklin) that Aquinas knew very well that they were bats in the original, not owls! All of this is to come to the shocking point: for the FIRST TIME EVER, I am going to REMOVE a book from my BIG LONG LIST OF BOOKS WITH OWLS IN THEM. So long, Aristotle. You had your chance! And you blew it. To quote Bill Boyle imitating Robert De Niro in COP LAND, "YOU BLEW IT!!!!!"

Aquinas Mania!

I'm sure you've been keeping up with the adventures of Jerky the Li'l Jerk, that rascally rapscallion who has stolen America's heart by telling people to go to hell. In that case, there is no need to remind you of Jerky's recent encounter with Thomas Aquinas. In order to compose that little masterpiece, I first fetched my "concise translation" of the SUMMA THEOLOGICA. Well, friends, that "concise translation" was a little TOO "concise"! Ha ha, what a fix. So I had to crawl around on the "internet" in search of the mot juste, as I call it. Then I started thinking, "Jack," I started thinking, "why don't you have a COMPLETE edition of the SUMMA THEOLOGICA in several volumes like a normal person?" So I tracked down just such a set. I made it to page three of the first volume, you will be impressed to hear. And that's where I read about "the weakness of our intelligence, 'which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature; as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun.'" As you can plainly see, due to my expert rendering of the punctuation, Aquinas is quoting from something there, which appears to be, based on his note, the METAPHYSICS of Aristotle. All right! That means that not only does the SUMMA THEOLOGICA have an owl in it, it borrows that owl from another work with an owl in it, a nesting phenomenon, if you will, which we have examined before, and I would include a "hyperlink" to prove it, but I'm starting to depress myself. And you! (Please "click" on this important correction.)

Chicago Millionaire

My current "nighttime book," as I call it because I read it at night, is an Elmore Leonard western. In it, we meet a millionaire from Chicago who comes out west to show off with the fancy pair of guns he keeps in a rosewood box. He shoots "bottles, cans, pine cones at twenty paces, chimpmunks, ground squirrels, ospreys and horned owls." Don't worry, something bad happens to him. Anyway, this means that GUNSIGHTS is a book with an owl in it, a type of book I have devoted my life to cataloging, I guess. No one told me it would be like this.

Talking Hamburgers

You know, in OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH, every character has a nickname. There's the Black Whirlwind, the Red-Haired Demon, the Dry-Land Crocodile, the Elegant Tiger, the Blue-Faced Beast, and so on. There's even the Timely Rain! But then toward the end of the second volume, we get the Magic Calculator. Ha ha! He's a guy who is good at math. But is that really funny? I don't know. Right after the Magic Calculator comes the Elfin Flutist. And I was like, are these nicknames becoming progressively less bad-ass? I was reciting such observations to Dr. Theresa in the car yesterday and she was like "Uh-huh." I can't say she seemed that interested! Then I tried it out on Tom Franklin at lunch. "The Magic Calculator!" I said. "Ha ha ha," I continued. Tom laughed politely. It all got me to thinking about an occasion quite a while ago when I was going over the history of humanoid hamburger characters in various media and Hanna yawned. And I said with wry self-knowledge, "Is my catalog of talking hamburgers boring you?" And Hanna said, "No, it's riveting." My wry self-knowledge was suddenly replaced with some other kind of self-knowledge! Maybe I need a personal focus group to try out topics on. You know what? I'm going to email Jimmy about the Magic Calculator.

You Just Got Bartlebyed

In today's installment of Jerky the Li'l Jerk, Jerky meets Melville's immortal character (well, he dies in the story, but you know what I mean) Bartleby the Scrivener. Jerky tells Bartleby the Scrivener to go to hell, because he's the rascally little boy who tells people to go to hell. Then Bartleby says "I would prefer not to." You know Bartleby! Ha ha ha. What a guy. Then, in the final panel, he adds, "You just got Bartlebyed." Anyway, I think it would have been great in the original story if every time Bartleby the Scrivener said "I would prefer not to" he would have added "You just got Bartlebyed." I did a search of the "internet" and found zero matches for the phrase "You just got Bartlebyed." As its inventor, I hope to get in on whatever money can be made from this exciting phrase.

Li Kui

"Li Kui, naked as an owl, angrily seized a broken pole and charged up the bank to continue the battle." I'm still reading OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH because it's so dang long. Also, if something else comes up that I need to read, I feel okay putting it aside temporarily, because its episodic nature makes it easy to pick up where you left off and just dive into the next adventure. It might be longer than JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, the longest thing I've ever read! OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH has more pages for sure. But it's a set of mass-market paperbacks, so the pages are smaller. I guess we'll never know. I wonder what "naked as an owl" means. I recall that Travis McGee played a game called "naked owl" with a friend, but I think that involved the nakedness of the human participants, not the supposed nakedness of owls. What about all the feathers? It seems to me that feathers should count against nakedness.

All the Cokes Are Good

Last night, as I lay in bed reading THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL, I was given reason to recall the time I tried to convince Sarah Lloyd (with partial success?) that Queen Elizabeth II ate a foot-long chili dog every day. Andy Warhol claims that Eisenhower took the queen to a baseball game and bought her a hot dog. While I do find evidence that FDR once fed the queen a hot dog, I have trouble backing up the Eisenhower story. That, however, does not detract from Andy Warhol's point, "that she couldn't have had delivered to Buckingham Palace a better hot dog than the one he bought for her for maybe twenty cents at the ballpark. Not for a dollar, not for ten dollars, not for a hundred thousand dollars could she get a better hot dog." He makes his point more forcefully, I think, in an earlier part of the section, when he says, "the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good." This is, according to Andy Warhol, "What's great about this country," which means that reading about Andy Warhol on the Fourth of July is arguably more appropriate than what I usually read about on the Fourth of July, which seems to be werewolves. In fact, Jerky the Li'l Jerk meets Andy Warhol in today's episode of Jerky the Li'l Jerk.

Buckatunna Inventory

We went to visit my parents and Dr. Theresa was eating oysters, because that's what people do down there, and in an oyster she found a little, round, perfectly formed pearl! I have been eating oysters as long as I can remember, and I can't recall myself or anyone else finding a pearl in one. I have a strong feeling, however, that this is another "wild turkey incident." That is to say it's like the time I was excited to see wild turkeys standing by the side of the road and everyone told me that they see wild turkeys standing by the side of the road nonstop, every roadside is just lined end to end with wild turkeys. So I guess you can't eat a bowl of gumbo without finding a whole strand of immaculate pearls, good for you. Anyway, on our way back we stopped at a gas station in Buckatunna, Mississippi, to stretch our legs. In the course of leg-stretching, I wandered past the chips and gum and such, past what I would call "road snacks," to a corner of the store containing a couple of shelves of what I would call "pantry items." And I got so interested for some reason that I took out my stupid-ass jotting book and started jotting down what groceries were available at the gas station in Buckatunna, Mississippi: 1 squeeze bottle of Hershey's strawberry (!) syrup, 2 small containers of Thousand Island dressing, 1 small packet of brown gravy mix (generic), 1 small jar of maraschino cherries, 1 jar of bread-and-butter pickles, 3 bottles of breakfast syrup (one of them in the distinctive form of Mrs. Butterworth), 4 boxes of pancake mix, 10 large cans of fruit cocktail, 2 cans of barbecue-flavored Vienna sausages, 8 cans of Vienna sausages with jalapeno. There was more. But just as I was registering my surprise that there were zero cans of plain Vienna sausages, it was time to go.

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!