Events Spiral Out of Control

What's a typical day like for me, you ask? What? You didn't ask? Who are you? Where am I? Most days I sit around looking up stuff like how many calories in an apple. Yesterday was different. I went out to see Beth Ann Fennelly onstage at the launch event for her latest book THE IRISH GOODBYE. I got into town a little bit early because the tradition is to have a quick drink at City Grocery Bar before the reading, at least that has always been my personal understanding. And look, I don't make it out to the bar as much since the famous unpleasantness of almost two years ago. So I was disinclined to miss out on my special treat. But get this! City Grocery Bar was closed for a private party! That happens from time to time, enraging me. It can strike at any moment! The private party, not the rage. Although that can also strike at any moment. There is no warning for either one. Anyway, Bill Boyle arrived early as well, so, with a little more than half an hour to go, we departed the venue (Off Square Books) and walked around the corner to Proud Larry's, which even the bartender there referred to as the "backup" for literary whatever the hell it is. Life? Bill didn't want a drink. He was just keeping me company and keeping tradition alive. So important! That's what I said to the golden-brown liquid in my glass so it would know it was not being consumed in vain. Anyway, we had a nice talk (Bill and I, that is, not the glass and I, though we got along great too) and then we moseyed back over at 5:31 PM, just one minute after the event's official start time. And let me tell you something: we couldn't even get in! Not only was every chair occupied, the rear of the store was packed with a standing-room-only crowd AND there were people kind of smushed up in the doorway and spilling out onto the sidewalk. Well! I wasn't really surprised by the turnout, especially for Beth Ann, though I have long assumed that literature is dead. An unsuspecting Dr. Theresa, meanwhile, was on her way, having just finished teaching a class, and I had to tell her to come pick me up at Proud Larry's instead. Please be assured I had already purchased my copy of THE IRISH GOODBYE upon my arrival. Anyway, back around the corner we went and I sat at the bar with Bill again and ordered some to-go food for Dr. Theresa and myself... our go-to order at Proud Larry's, yes, our to-go go-to, that's right, or our go-to to-go would probably be a more proper way to put it, two grilled chicken salads with the lemon-red wine vinaigrette. And, if we're really feeling daring, we cheat and split a quesadilla. And boy were we feeling daring last night! And look, you're not going to believe this incredible tale, but I had already ordered the quesadilla before looking at my phone to discover that Dr. Theresa had texted her request for a quesadilla. Yes, you read that right! That's the kind of magic that thirty years of marriage will get for you. What a night. What a world. What times we live in.

Winning

The other evening I went to City Grocery Bar to knock one back with Tom Franklin, but I stopped by Square Books on the way and got the new edition of CHOCTAW TALES, compiled by Tom Mould and Rae Nell Vaughn. There was a reading scheduled for the very same time that I was supposed to knock one back with Tom Franklin. So, to be clear, though I did not attend the reading, I did get the book, and that’s something, right? It’s not nothing! Get off my back! Anyway, the book was lying there on the kitchen counter a day or two later and Dr. Theresa said, “This looks interesting,” and I thought she was right! It did look interesting! Who was so smart as to pick up such an interesting book? Me? Wow, I’m great! Such were a few of my amazing thoughts. So a little later I opened the book at random and I think you know where this is going. Have I become too predictable? Has the spark gone out of our relationship, dear reader? In any case, I opened right to a story about an owl and a buzzard arguing over which of them was going to have the most children, which struck me as a pretty funny argument, but I’m not an owl or a buzzard or J.D. Vance. So the owl sits in a cherry tree and the buzzard knocks the owl on its ass with a dead branch... forgive me, the book is downstairs, I’m paraphrasing from memory. Also, I feel I’ve been saying “ass” on the “blog” a lot more frequently. Sorry about that, but not too long ago my brain went a little bit sideways. (See also.) Anyway, the buzzard wins and gets to have more children, if you call that winning. I left the “Animal Tales” section but kept finding owls anyway, including one really good one in the story of a mysterious old woman who chopped off a man’s head and fooled a bear and a couple of wildcats but anyway she turned out to be an owl and nobody saw that coming! I do care about things other than noticing which books have owls in them, but I can’t remember what those things are anymore, can you? Please help me.

Famous Cats of Mississippi

I am sure you will recall 2013 as the year that Pendleton Ward made our cat Big Boy (formerly known as Sad Face) famous in Japan. ("Click" here to assess the accuracy of my dubious statement. Big Boy is still doing fine, by the way. Thanks for asking!) Well, great news! We have a new feral kitten. Ace Atkins found her under City Grocery Bar. And thanks to my award-ineligible interview series ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, part 5 of which is AVAILABLE NOW, you can see a photo of that kitten, who has been named Teeny Houdini for reasons that I plan to put into one of a series of unpublished novels. If you "click" here you can get a free peek at Teeny Houdini, but the interview is behind a paywall, so you will have to pay good money (well spent!) to find out more about how Ace rescued her from under City Grocery. (I don't know if that's true. I think you've already learned everything. But! If you don't subscribe, how will you know about all of Ace's adventures on the set of the Pauly Shore movie JURY DUTY?) Ace took the kitten in to get her shots and so on, and when Dr. Theresa picked her up, the team behind the counter told her, as soon as they stopped quaking in mortal fear, "This cat will never be a sweet cat you can play with. She's a wild animal! This is a wild animal you're dealing with. You're in for a terrible surprise. I don't think you understand. This is a wild animal. Wild animal!" And then the guy carried her out to the car in the carrier, holding it way in front of himself like it had that thing in it that ate the cow (?) at the beginning of JURASSIC PARK. Well, Teeny Houdini is already as sweet as pie, so go to hell.

Encounter

I don't "blog" anymore. You may think I do but I assure you that I do not. Sometimes you need an update, though, don't you? I know how you worry! So the other evening I was at Ace Atkins's office and I thought I'd see if he had a copy of THE GREEN RIPPER. He said he probably had several. THE GREEN RIPPER is a novel by John D. MacDonald. You will recall that I gave up on John D. MacDonald. I don't get the appeal of John D. MacDonald. If you "click" here you can read some of the reasons why. But I know you won't. What is wrong with you? You beg me to "blog" but you can't take the time to "click" on the "links." Well! It is really none of my business. But John Hodgman was saying all these nice things about John D. MacDonald in the New York Times some weeks ago, and in particular THE GREEN RIPPER, and although this did not change my feelings about John D. MacDonald I was made sufficiently curious for the actions related above to be the result. Anyhow, Ace contacted me yesterday to say he had located THE GREEN RIPPER and I could come by to fetch it. So I did. Now I took Ace's copy of THE GREEN RIPPER with me across the street from his office to Square Books. As I made a purchase there, I remarked to the cashier that this was Ace's copy of THE GREEN RIPPER and not part of my haul. We got into a little discussion (Bill C. wondered whether it might be a first edition of THE GREEN RIPPER) and it was at this time that I opened the book and discovered it to be, if not a first edition, at least an edition signed by the author. I couldn't imagine that Ace wanted me to drag this copy around town with me! You may recall, though I doubt you will "click" on it to refresh your memory, the time I spilled rye all over Ace's copy of LA BRAVA. So I went back over to Ace's office and returned the signed copy of THE GREEN RIPPER. He was surprised! He had no idea it had been signed, but he looked at the signature and confirmed it - thanks to his expertise - as John D. MacDonald's very own. Ace quickly produced yet another copy of THE GREEN RIPPER to replace the one I had brought back. Copies of THE GREEN RIPPER are just scattered around Ace's office like so many throw pillows in a film by Nancy Meyers. Okay! Now it was time for me to go back to Square Books and meet my pal McKay McFadden, whom I had not seen in the flesh in some years. Before McKay arrived I had time to note that Travis McGee (hero of the John D. MacDonald novels) refers to fat people as "fatties" on the second page of THE GREEN RIPPER, not raising my hopes. (A few pages later, though I did not make it this far at the time, McGee's girlfriend boards his famous houseboat and announces, "Today I jogged with four sets of fatties." There are shady goings-on at her place of employment, which makes me think she will be dead shortly. As Ace once revealed the key to the Travis McGee novels: "The woman always dies." [Further along: "Last week I had a batch of fatties down by the barns" - ed.]) I also read (in another book entirely) about the time U. S. Grant wanted to give his coach driver a Christmas present, so he hurried back down the steps and fell and experienced the debilitating leg injury that was just the start of all the troubles and misfortunes shortly to snowball on him, culminating in his death. Then McKay appeared on the stairs! We greeted one another warmly and McKay said, "I'm sorry I'm late. I just had an encounter with a pig in the woods." I can quote her accurately because I immediately leapt up to borrow a napkin and a pen from the Square Books coffee counter, as seen here:

She went on to describe the "encounter," which was much more horrific, grisly, tragic, and bloody than anything I would call an "encounter," and I shan't disturb you with it on this festive occasion. Conversation moved on to pleasanter subjects and we found before we knew it that we had spent some number of hours catching up, a sufficient number of hours for me to happily inform McKay that it was just about time for John T. Edge's yearly ritualistic dispersal of sausage balls at the City Grocery Bar on the occasion of his birthday. McKay and I, having arrived perhaps five minutes before the party officially began, were, I believe, the first to retrieve sausage balls from the traditional brown paper bag, pellucid as it was with delicious grease. (It occurs to me that I have used the phrase "pellucid with grease" in my "professional" writing at some point - perhaps on more than one occasion; I know it has assaulted my brain repeatedly, in any case - and I apologize for the lazy repetition. I must think it's quite the literary turn of phrase! How I sicken myself.) "I miss my Oxford life," said McKay. I replied with some observation about the many charms of San Francisco, where McKay now finds herself most days. "Oh, it's DAZZLING," she replied, employing a theatrical hand gesture to indicate bedazzlement. And yet her tone belied her adjective! I have never heard the word "dazzling" to drip with such venom, nor seen it accompanied by such bitterly flashing eyes! Not long thereafter, Dr. Theresa arrived, arrayed in silver.

We were able to boast to Tom Franklin (another recent arrival) that we had taken his picture off the TV screen. You see, he was once an extra in DEADWOOD, a show that Dr. Theresa and I are currently watching for the very first time. We proudly described the scene in which Dr. Theresa spotted Tom with her eagle eye and the pains we took to catch his fleeting image, and it was his sad duty to inform us that - although he indeed appears as an extra on the show - the person we thought was him was not him. Later at home we realized that the extra we thought was Tom had long hair and a graying beard, both of which Tom has at the present moment, but neither of which he would have had during the physical production of DEADWOOD. This is not Tom Franklin.

The Kings of Silence

So! I know I keep telling you how David Lynch is like Jerry Lewis ("click" this "link" or this "link" or that "link") but when I saw Bill Boyle at City Grocery Bar yesterday he had another way that David Lynch is like Jerry Lewis. Bill is rewatching THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and finds himself particularly taken with its long stretches of painful silence. I have noticed these before! In an article I wrote about Jerry Lewis, as a matter of fact, I referred to the very same "two full minutes of tense silence" from early in the film that recently earned Bill's rapt attention. This is related to Jerry's tendency to elongate a gag past any normal human boundary or recognizable shape. But never did I think - as Bill did! - to consider its relationship to some of the scenes in the new version of TWIN PEAKS, such as when (is this a spoiler?) a guy unexpectedly sweeps a floor for more than two minutes or a French person puts on her shoes. So that goes on my list of ways that David Lynch is like Jerry Lewis. Thanks, Bill! Bill also sent an appreciation that Martin Scorsese wrote, in which we learn, among other things, that Jerry directed parts of THE KING OF COMEDY. (Pictured, Dean Warfield staring at Julius Kelp in pained silence.)

A Satisfying Ululation

I was meeting Ace Atkins, Bill Boyle, and Tom Franklin at the City Grocery Bar at 4:02 PM, or as it is known around here, "Megan Abbott Time." But I was early so I stopped in Square Books and killed some time by taking the Flann O'Brien novel AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS off the shelf and idly leafing through it in a comfortable chair like a common thief of ideas. Now, you must remember that I read AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS back in that hazy time before I noticed that every book I read has an owl in it and must therefore be catalogued for the people of the future. So! Someone asks the legendary Irish hero Finn MacCool about what might be the sweetest music he has ever heard, and he rattles off a list of dozens of answers, many of which made me laugh, like "the whining of small otters in nettle-beds at evening... A satisfying ululation is the contending of a river with the sea." And somewhere in there was "the low warble of water-owls in Loch Barra." And I sat there for some time muttering it aloud so I wouldn't forget: "the low warble of water-owls, the low warble of water-owls." I don't know why I didn't ask for a pen and a scrap of paper. But when I got home I wanted to recall some of the other phrases too, so I got out my yellowed, falling-apart paperback of AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS and it was then that I also noticed, for the first time, Finn's tribute to "the long-eared bush-owl," which had somehow escaped me in the afternoon. At the end of his long list of pleasant sounds, Finn's friend says, "Relate further for us," and Finn replies, "It is true that I will not." Ha ha! (Pictured, the fanciful Ziphius, or water-owl, with a friend.)

How About an Apple, Chad?

As you know, I never "blog" anymore except when I do. For example, I am obligated to "blog" every time I read a book with an owl in it because it has to go on my big long list of books with owls in them ("click" here). A couple of weeks ago, I guess, I ran into Bill Boyle at Square Books, and you know how Bill is always recommending books. So I got the book he recommended and we went to the City Grocery Bar (pictured, with book), which is conveniently located. (Also pictured, a Benjamin Franklin pencil sharpener Ace Atkins gave me that evening.) So I've been reading this book and thinking, "Oh well, I can tell Lucia Berlin is not an owl type!" But suddenly last night she gave me some "ratty horned owls." And Jell-O, which is in the books I read almost as often as owls are. The Jell-O appears in the same sentence as the book of Deuteronomy, a good balance. I like those two proper nouns holding down a sentence from either end. I am also allowed to "blog" about THE BIG VALLEY. Hey! Remember when Heath really had a thing for apples in the first episode? So last night I was watching one in which this kid goes through a horrific tragedy, seeing his grandfather gunned down before his very eyes, so Heath is awkwardly holding an apple and he says, "How about an apple, Chad?" Apples are Heath's answer for everything! He also loves cleaning guns, especially when Audra is around, but not exclusively. I'm going to watch some more and make sure this is true. I'll tell you one thing, though. Jarrod is always staring into the fireplace. That's where he goes to stare!

Waaaaahhhhhhhh!

I don't know whether you can tell, but sometimes the faulty camera on Kent's computer bathed everything in a mysterious golden light, as in this "screen grab" of Kent with Julia Pott.

Three days a week for over four years I got to see some variation on this beautiful sight, beamed to me from Burbank as I sat right here in Mississippi, usually with my cat Pan. Today it happened for the last time. I want to thank everybody, but especially my constant comrades from the writers' room: Adam Muto, Pen Ward, Kent, Ashly Burch, and Julia. Here are Pen and Ashly in the writers' room looking serious.

Here are Ashly and Julia and Adam in the writers' room looking smiley:

There's nothing to say! How could there ever be a better job with better people? I want to thank Kent Osborne for recommending me for the position to begin with. I don't know what to say about Adam and Pen, except maybe that they're the Apollo and Dionysus of ADVENTURE TIME. Ha ha, that's horrible. [Here there was excised a long panegyric in which Pendarvis compared Pendleton Ward and Adam Muto to William Blake and John Milton and William Faulkner and Jack Kirby and H.P. Lovecraft and Dante in really flowery and completely accurate ways they'd both hate. - ed.] The brilliant (in every sense) Ashly Burch gave us an electric jolt just when we needed it most. I got truly downhearted when she left the show. I felt like a drug addict when they take away the drugs! But then Julia parachuted in at perhaps the most mind boggling moment in the sweeping arc of the series (no spoilers!), just totally undaunted, and showed incredible spirit and ingeniousness that encouraged us to press forward. What an example she is for everything you'd hope to be, including a dazzlingly original thinker and a true friend. Kent always got us rolling. He created a mood in the room that encouraged deeply personal storytelling and brought out the best in everyone. He's a crafty wizard and he'll lead you to your epiphany by misdirection, you know, like one of those monks who cracks skulls with a stick and BANG! You're enlightened. Only Kent would never do that. He's more like... uh... Chuang Tzu. I don't know, Chuang Tzu didn't hit people with sticks, did he? I don't have time to look it up because I need to go get a drink. If he did, I'm sure it was for their own good! Anyway, Kent would never hit anyone with a stick. If you click back over all my ADVENTURE TIME posts (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) you'll see the debt I owe to each and every one of these creative people, as well as all the amazing board creators I'm not even mentioning here, many of whom were often in the writers' room themselves, even the ones who left their mark before I came onboard, and all the other artists, and everyone involved in the production of the show, and the nonpareil cast. Well, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. I love you all. To repeat myself one more time, I'll never have a better job with kinder people or be part of something of which I'm prouder. I don't suppose I should tell you who worked on our story for the series finale but I will 1) say that it's a murderers' row and 2) guarantee that you'll faint. For four years I got paid to sit around and make up stories with some of my favorite people. I really can't complain. Okay, I'll be at City Grocery Bar crying into an old-fashioned if you need me.

Fcritching Loud

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM got in my head last night and I swear I can't remember why. But I lugged out a big old facsimile of Shakespeare's first folio, which I bought so Lee Durkee and I could compare our folio facsimiles - we know how to have a good time! And I looked at Puck's last speech... "If we shadows have offended"... or "fhadowes," ha ha! You know how that old-timey printing makes some s's look like f's. Good times! And then I saw that previous speech of Puck's, which I didn't quite remember, even though I remember tons of lines from A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM because I was in it when I was a teenager! That didn't deserve an exclamation point. I played the pivotal role of Snug the Joiner. Anyway, I saw the line, "And the Wolfe beholds the Moone," and thought, "Oh no! There is going to be an owl in this speech!" And there was: "the fcritch-owle, fcritching loud." And then I was like, I want to hear someone saying these lines. So I found a free streaming video of an old BBC (?) production and boy could you tell why it was free! It was copied from a terrible print. There were scratches and slashes and blotches all over the film, and the color was grotesquely faded. It was so washed-out that you couldn't read the white credits over the white sky. And I thought, "I'm not going to watch this!" But then came along the young David Warner, the young Diana Rigg, and the young Helen Mirren as three of the young lovers, all so captivating! And then some lump playing Demetrius. It's not his fault! I'm sure the actor is fine. Demetrius is just a big dud. He's no Snug the Joiner! Everyone knows if you ranked all the lovers Demetrius would come in last in every poll. But everyone else was so good that the blotches and slashes and missing frames and washed-out atmosphere started to seem like plusses... like... in fact... a line that was quoted to me from A MIDSUMMER'S DREAM one night in City Grocery Bar: "Trust me, sweet, out of this silence yet I pick'd a welcome." I couldn't stop watching it! It's a truly bewitching play! And then here was young Judi Dench, telling her fairies about "the clamorous Owle that nightly hoots," and I was like, okay, I definitely have to "blog" again, just this once, and you know why.

A Fantastic

Bill Taft came back to town! But not to rock and roll. There are more sides to Bill Taft than that! He was here for an academic conference on mass incarceration, you heard me! I went to a thing where Bill and his friend and coworker Sarah discussed their work teaching literature in prison, and I swear I was sitting there feeling guilty about how much I hated teaching. I was like, "I should have done more with my life!" Oh well. Bill and Sarah were inspirational. I even went out and bought a copy of MEASURE FOR MEASURE afterward, from that used book stall I like. I was moved to action! If you want to call that action. And in the second scene a guy named Lucio shows up and I was all, "Who the hell is this guy?" So I looked in the dramatis personae, I think you call it, and it said, "Lucio, a fantastic." And I was like, "What the hell! That doesn't help me at all." Luckily I met Sarah and Bill at City Grocery Bar later, so I was like, "What's a fantastic?" And Sarah said, "A fancy man!" And Bill said, "A fop?" He said, "A dandy?"

Sixteen Cucumbers

Mom came to town for a visit. I brought her to the genealogy room at the public library - a strange, dark little room. I can't believe I never "blogged" about that room before. But now I remember: I thought it was good enough to put into one of my failed novels. So I jotted some notes about it in a special jotting book which is now at the bottom of a pile of some other special jotting books, never to be seen again. We poked around the genealogy room and found a thin volume of reminiscences from a man whose name I believe was Glover Moore (?). When Glover was a lad, he and his sister Alice had a pet pig who enjoyed rolling over to have its belly scratched with corncobs several times a day. The pig's tail had two curls in it but sometimes it would run and the curls would straighten out. As it ran, it would say, "U-r-r-gh! U-r-r-gh!" I believe that was the spelling. Anyway, they ate it. The family ate it. I am sorry to tell you. And I was sorry to read it. The pig was "loyal to the end," wrote Glover Moore. And I closed the book and said to my mother, "Glover Moore and his magic pig/ Scratched it with corncobs/ ... 'til it got big." And Mom replied, "I've seen pigs caught and heard them squeal/ Getting ready for the great big meal." And I looked at her across the table and she said with a touch of sadness, "It's true." We also found something called the SNIPES FAMILY COOKBOOK, which included a facsimile of a long letter dated 1899, from Pearl Snipes of Benevolence, Georgia, to her beau Oscar Morrison. Pearl tells Oscar how she received his previous letter while she was at dinner and couldn't eat another bite. Sister teased her about the contents of Oscar's letter, so Pearl ran and shut herself in the other room. The family stood at the door and tried to get her to tell what was in the letter, but she wouldn't reveal a word. She is relieved to have it confirmed that Oscar hasn't been sporting about with another woman. She asks Oscar to give everyone her love and "keep a double portion for yourself." Mom said, "She was forward, wasn't she?" I said, defending Pearl Snipes, "She was his intended!" The letter was signed, "Your devoted intended." I think I have most of that correct. You can't remove the books from the genealogy room, so you have to stuff all the details into your head. Neither Mom nor I had thought to bring pen or paper. I will add that Pearl Snipes placed charmingly arbitrary phrases in quotation marks, kind of like Mattie in TRUE GRIT. The cookbook had a recipe that called for sixteen cucumbers and water with "enough salt to float an egg." There was also a recipe for "Bohemian Coffee Cake," which Mom wanted to copy for Dr. Theresa, having determined with one of Mom's favored genealogy websites that Dr. Theresa is, in part, of Bohemian descent. I said that the coffee cake probably wasn't ACTUALLY Bohemian (there was a recipe for "Martha Washington Cake" with cherry Jell-O, and I don't think Martha Washington ate that) plus there were many stern warnings posted, as I have already noted, about removing materials from the room. As we were leaving the library, whom should we encounter but Carla, who used to work at Square Books, but has recently become a librarian, long a fond wish of hers. Carla showed us her "staff picks" selection, which included my first book. How nice! I know she had lost all hope of ever seeing me at the library. I ran into Carla at the City Grocery Bar and she upbraided me for not being the faithful library patron I had sworn myself to be. She had never seen me there. So it was a sincere "staff pick," I think, with no thought I would ever hear of it. She put me on the shelf with THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, one of my favorite books, and QUEEN OF EARTH, a good movie (pictured). So I felt all right. And I was like, "Hey, Mom, look at that!" Carla told us that the genealogy room is an entity entirely separate from the public library, though housed in the same building - hence the many prohibitions. It has always been empty, in my experience, and running on the honor system, I suppose. There are a number of butterscotch-colored molded plastic chairs stacked up high and teetering in there, and some boxy, dead-looking computers. And Dennis the Menace panels in acrylic stands on the tables, for reasons that elude me. The Snipes family is mightily represented in several thick binders, though as far as I can tell they have no connection whatsoever to Oxford. There is so much Snipes material scattered around that I briefly wondered (though knowing full well the contrary truth) whether the Snipeses were some undiscovered inspiration for the Snopeses.

We Break In Bob Hope's Coasters

Last night Dr. Theresa cooked chicken in Kent's honor. I showed Kent some of Bob Hope's coasters that I bought at an auction. In an impulsive and correct gesture, Kent used one of Bob Hope's coasters for his beer. Soon we were all using Bob Hope's coasters! We had never used them before, although Dr. Theresa has used one of Bob Hope's ashtrays and, as I am sure you will recall, one of Bob Hope's cocktail forks to check the consistency of her figgy pudding last Christmas.

Don't worry, Bob Hope! We are putting your stuff to good use. When Kent opened a couple of beers he humorously placed the bottle caps on Burt Reynolds's eyes, as seen here. Later, Kent and I walked up to the City Grocery Bar, where we happily ran into Lee Durkee and talked politics on the balcony.

Movie Theater Pizza

About a month ago, when DIRTY GRANDPA opened, I mentioned in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting (in which I regularly participate from Oxford, Mississippi, while everyone else is in Burbank), that I wished Kent were in town so we could go see DIRTY GRANDPA together. Kent reminded me that he was coming here for a visit soon. I said I wasn't sure whether DIRTY GRANDPA would be playing, and Kent predicted it would still be "the number one movie in the country, like TITANIC." We shared a chuckle, you may be sure! So Kent finally got to town, and DIRTY GRANDPA was still playing, and we went to see it, accompanied by Bill Boyle, a De Niro expert and completist. Kent and I arrived at the movie theater an hour early, ha ha! But it is not a joke, despite my ha ha. Kent ordered himself a little cheese pizza from the movie theater's kitchen. I prayed to God he would consume it before Bill arrived. Bill, as you know, makes the best pizza in town, and such a movie theater cheese pizza would be an affront to him!

So Bill arrived and we all stepped into the movie theater to watch DIRTY GRANDPA, on practically the one-year anniversary of when Kent and I went to see 50 SHADES OF GREY in Silver Lake. Bill and Kent and I had the whole place to ourselves for DIRTY GRANDPA! But just before the movie started (or was it just after?) an earnest young couple came in to test the boundaries of their tender new love by going to see DIRTY GRANDPA. The credit sequence was striking, as you may see above. "It's like a Godard movie!" I kept screaming into the emptiness. I was also proud to notice that Dirty Grandpa wore a hat just like a hat I wore when I was twenty. Here you can see it on the movie poster Kent photographed right outside the theater. I think a bird has pooped on the Plexiglas, just under the "n" in "Grandpa."

Or that may be the designer's flourish, emphasizing the dirtiness of the Dirty Grandpa. After the movie, Bill and Kent and I adjourned to the City Grocery Bar to discuss many aspects of DIRTY GRANDPA.

Famous Novelty Pencil

You've heard about famous writers jotting things on bar napkins! Well, her features are obscured but trust me: this is famed author Mary Miller writing on a bar napkin with a giant novelty pencil belonging to Chris Offutt (his torso looming in the background). Yes, it is a giant pencil, but it really works. I saw the whole thing go down.

Photo by Bill Boyle.

Red Light, Winter Light

Early yesterday I rewatched WINTER LIGHT. It had been on my mind because we talked about it in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting last week. And then when I saw Bill up at the Grocery, he and I talked about it; it's Bill's favorite Bergman film. In the evening, Dr. Theresa wanted to watch a movie so we scrolled through a bunch we've recorded off of TCM. "What's RED LIGHT?" said Dr. Theresa. I didn't remember. RED LIGHT is a George Raft movie, kind of noir, a revenge movie, a crime film... and just like WINTER LIGHT it turned out to be about a crisis of religious faith, with a similarly impassive lead performance. Strange coincidence! George Raft has a big speech in a church, concerned with what WINTER LIGHT calls "God's silence." Of course, George Raft ends it by hurling a candelabra through a stained glass window - a flashier gesture than Bergman's characters are comfortable with. Spoiler alert: God kills Raymond Burr. He's the bad guy in RED LIGHT. Raymond Burr, I mean, not God. Do you think I'm kidding? A cop standing over Raymond Burr's smoking corpse says (I paraphrase), "Well, I guess this proves it: God exists!" So, a fairly big departure from the ending of WINTER LIGHT.

Feels Like Leonard

Well I was up at the old City Grocery Bar last night talking to Bill Boyle about this Don DeLillo book LIBRA. I quoted a line of authorial (close third-person) description - "He had that expression of where's the coffee." - and said it reminded me of Elmore Leonard... for, among other reasons, the punctuation, or lack of it, including the choice of the period over the question mark. This book had often been reminding me of something, and I finally realized, with that phrase, that it was Elmore Leonard. "In Leonard it would have been dialogue," Bill said of the phrase. And he was right. And I realized that a lot of the dialogue had been reminding me of Elmore Leonard, too... I think particularly the dialogue by members of the demimonde: gangsters, strippers, club owners (Jack Ruby). But there are a number of things I am too lazy to do, including looking for examples, researching the admiration (if any) DeLillo might have felt for Elmore Leonard (or George V. Higgins, as Bill suggested), checking to see if I used "demimonde" or "close third-person" correctly, so many things, so much laziness.

Real Turtles

Two quick examples to show you how the Southern Foodways Symposium is. 1. I was up at City Grocery Bar tonight with Alice Randall (THE WIND DONE GONE). And she was like, "I'll tell you a story I never tell anyone, because you bought my drink." But the drink I "bought" her was club soda, which I'm almost 100% positive is FREE! But she told me the story anyway, and no, I'm not going to tell you what it was. 2. Next thing you know I was eating turtle hot dogs with a CHEERS writer. That's not a euphemism! The hot dogs were really made from turtles. We talked about how he developed the character "Paul." And I told him all about Steve Wolfhard. But Steve drew this illustration (above) about a CHEERS character called Pete, whom I don't even remember... not Paul, as I erroneously told my turtle-devouring friend! Oh well, life isn't always perfect.

Juvenile Possum

I was sitting up at the City Grocery Bar the other day, drinking and reading THE DECAMERON. And I was like, "THE DECAMERON really reminds me of Faulkner!" Maybe because I was in the middle of the town square of Oxford, Mississippi, and drinking. But also because this character was a horse-trader and he spouted off a whole page of dialogue about his feelings for this woman, and when the woman responds only with silence he spouts off another page of dialogue in what he imagines is HER voice, and that sounds like Faulkner, doesn't it? And then Jonathan Franzen walked into the bar. And I said, "Hi, I'm Jack. Jon Langford was in town this weekend and he told me to say hello if I saw you." And Jonathan Franzen said, "I know, he told me. I know about your Emmy." Ha ha! That was a funny thing to hear upon meeting Jonathan Franzen. Reader, I balked! Is that the correct word for what I did? I don't know. I was discomfited. Is that a thing? I couldn't think of what to say. I said, "Oh!" But that reminds me. When Langford was in town a bunch of us went to lunch with him and he started talking about his affection for the soap opera ALL MY CHILDREN, and especially a character named "Janet From Another Planet." And she was an evil twin, and sometimes tormented her sister's husband by pretending to be her sister. It was generally agreed around the table that a husband would be able to tell his own wife from her sister, twins or no. But I remarked that ALL MY CHILDREN was just indulging in a tradition going back at least as far as THE DECAMERON. In THE DECAMERON, men are always fooling women (or the other way round) by just putting on somebody else's cloak and creeping into a bedroom when it's dark. Finally, when I was flying back from California, the iPod played Bob Dylan doing a version of the old love-and-murder ballad "Frankie and Johnny" while I was reading THE DECAMERON, and I was like, this song is just like THE DECAMERON! (Photo by Kent Osborne. He said he was going to get a "candid shot" but he made me wash my hands a second time so he could get it... that's not candid!) So when I left City Grocery night was falling. My only job was to pick up the cat food on the back porch before a possum came along after dark and got into it. And when I got home there was already a possum eating leftovers! I shooed it away. It was a likable possum. It had been coming around a lot. Dr. Theresa saw a "juvenile possum" (her phrase) that had been struck by a car on our side street the other day, and I fear it was the same possum. And now the floodgates of memory have opened!

I remember that when I was trying desperately to meet Matt Weiner after the Emmys, this guy (pictured) was walking with Matt Weiner and Harry Crane and he seemed more approachable so I kind of poached him from the group and I was like, hey, remember in THIS IS THE END when your head pokes through the door and then a demon gets you? And he was like, yes. And then I reminded him of some Sonic commercials I had seen him in, and then I asked him wasn't he in CAKEY: THE CAKE FROM OUTER SPACE? which surprised him. Anyway, he was nice as I recited his own credits to him Chris Farley-style and Matt Weiner sprinted into the distance, along with all his hopes and dreams, maybe, or mine, who knows?

Like Animals

Don't be like me! I missed Marcella and Her Lovers at the Lamar Lounge last night and heard nothing but great things about the performance, which apparently ended with Jon Langford and Barry Mills on washboards and a mesmerized Chris Lopez - an instant Marcella and Her Lovers convert - on cowbell and Dr. Theresa on tambourine! Meanwhile, I came home early from City Grocery Bar (that's Langford and Megan Abbott - those two overheard discussing the work of Arthur Machen - and me and Hogan and Bill Boyle, oh, and Julie Mills peeking from the corner!) and fell asleep on the couch and when Dr. Theresa came home she fell asleep in the living room too (the very living room where, surreally and wonderfully, Langford and Hogan had been having band practice earlier in the day) and we slept in the living room. Like animals! So don't miss the rest of these wonderful events that Dr. Theresa and her department are throwing this week. Beginning today! I mean, yesterday. That's why I got up so early to tell you.

A Squirrel Holding a Stick

I guess you wonder where I've been. Well, friends, you might just say I've been everywhere... and nowhere. For you see... what? You didn't notice I was gone? That hurts! In any case, the pleasant occasion of my absence was the 4th Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. My apologies, as I am sure you have these details memorized, but more than three years intervened between the first and second annual festivals, and more than four and a half years between the second and the third. So it may stun you beyond repair to learn that less than a year has gone by since the previous McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival and this one. Let's see, that makes for an average of one Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival every two years, yes, we're finally catching up. No sooner had McNeil rolled into town than we cranked up THE BAD NEWS BEARS (original version). We started with it because one of us, I won't say which (it was McNeil) fell asleep five minutes into it during the last festival. Next: THE WILD AFFAIR, a Nancy Kwan vehicle I learned about ("click" here to learn likewise) from "She Blogged By Night."

Here is a photo from "She Blogged By Night" showing Vidal Sassoon cutting Nancy Kwan's hair for the movie. I am sure you recall how badly Ms. Kwan was treated by a film in the first MMKFF. She was thanklessly blown up! So we wanted to make up for that by watching a movie in which she is treated in a kindlier way. Although she is at least not blown up in THE WILD AFFAIR, her character is treated almost as shamefully by the seemingly endless parade of sleazes she encounters. Kwan holds the movie together, though, and the article from "She Blogged By Night" argues for her agency. Still, it seems to us that Nancy Kwan can't catch a break. Then we watched CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT and Paul Schrader's BLUE COLLAR. Here's something that McNeil noticed: earlier in the day I had made an incongruous reference to the character "Mr. Bentley" (pictured) from the TV show THE JEFFERSONS.

In BLUE COLLAR, a TV is tuned to that show and the characters are discussing, by name, none other than Mr. Bentley! Plus, a scene from THE BAD NEWS BEARS had reminded me of a similar scene from CATCH-22, a fact upon which I remarked at the time. In BLUE COLLAR, Ed Begley Jr. is seen reading a paperback of CATCH-22! Make of these astounding coincidences what you will. McNeil also observed that both Richard Pryor in BLUE COLLAR and Bob Hope in our previous feature, CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT, boasted of having "a new technique": Pryor's for bowling, Hope's for kissing. We came very close to a direct Hope reference when Richard Pryor angrily imagines what he might do as a union rep: fly up to Palm Springs on a private jet and play golf with Gerald Ford. Why didn't he say "Bob Hope" instead? But he didn't. And there's nothing we can do about it. McNeil had me pause BLUE COLLAR so that he could expound at some length upon his admiration for the curtains Richard Pryor's character had in his living room. As you well know, the curtains in movies are one of McNeil's main concerns. My nonfiction cigarette lighter book, which has already been typeset, makes reference to close to a hundred movies and TV episodes, I think. I wish I had rewatched BLUE COLLAR sooner, because I would have certainly included the euphemism that Pryor yells at his union rep: "You can flick my Bic!" Richard Pryor comes up quite a bit in my book, and one sad and terrible fact I know from all my research is that Pryor used a Bic when he set himself on fire. But let us turn from thoughts of tragedy: I believe it was between BLUE COLLAR and Robert Altman's QUINTET that McNeil and I looked out the window and saw a squirrel holding a stick. An unusual sight! The squirrel seemed to be holding the stick with some intent. McNeil compared it to the scene in 2001 when the ape-people learn to use weapons. But the squirrel did not have a sufficient attention span, and soon abandoned the stick without putting it to any use. "He almost had it," I said.

"So many dogs eating so many dudes," I idly remarked during QUINTET. McNeil and I agreed that the dystopian snowscape would have benefitted greatly had Jerry Lewis driven through in a ice cream truck, hollering, "I can't sell this stuff!" But he didn't. And now it is my sad duty to report that this is the very first McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival not to include a Jerry Lewis movie. Pathetic! And now a digression. Ha ha! This whole thing has been a digression. But we took a break from watching movies and walked up to the City Grocery Bar, which has undergone a recent facelift. For one thing, the men's room is no longer just a hellish trough. I kind of miss the hellish trough! The new men's room is sparkling and elegant, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Owner John Currence tells me that he rescued the piece of sheetrock that has Kent Osborne's still-pristine drawing of his cat on it from the old men's room wall. He plans to frame it and put it in a shadowbox on a wall of the bar! Now, if you drink at the Grocery often enough, you might get your name and usual drink on a brass plaque on the bar one day. And the occasion of our break from the film festival was that Ace Atkins and I have been accorded that honor as part of the general refurbishment. Now. For reasons I cannot recall, McNeil had requested that I get my hands on a copy of the Elvis movie LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE for this year's festival. When the subject came up at the bar, Ace - an Elvis expert - began an excellent discourse on the film's place in the Elvis canon, up to and including the provenance of the dog in it! (In addition to the actual dog, LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE is the movie notorious for making Elvis dance with a man in a dog costume.) Naturally, Ace was invited to join us for the showing - a rare and welcome intrusion into the insular world of the McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. Plus he brought Popeye's fried chicken! So our last three films - QUINTET, THE PALM BEACH STORY, and LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE - all use dogs in striking ways. The last two - THE PALM BEACH STORY and LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE - also costar Rudy Vallee. So that's weird. I had a bunch of other stuff to say, but aren't you tired? I guess this year's theme was... dogs?