Reason

For no reason, here is a picture of Pen and me at Doris Day's favorite French restaurant. Photo by Megan Abbott! Well, I thought of a reason: I quit social media, but maybe part of my brain doesn't understand that. Because this is the sort of thing that would wind up on social media. Speaking of which! Remember when I quit "blogging"? Well, I think there was a time when I really did. And I'll tell you what I mean. I poked around to see whether I had ever mentioned this restaurant before, and to my shock, it turns out that I didn't report my November 2019 trip to Los Angeles (when the above photo was taken) AT ALL! Usually, I will give you a little something from my wee little jotting book in the way of travel notes that no one reads. But nope! This trip was almost lost to history. Which would have been fine, honestly. But we're snowed in and I have nothing to do.

Martha Raye Agonistes

As I humorously tweeted earlier today, "Watching a Doris Day movie last night, there was a song lyric 'see the clown falling down, it's the best show in town' and I thought what town is this? They need more options in this town!" Now, if I'm going to be honest, it's clear from context that the singers are referring to the whole circus, not just the clown falling down, when they claim "it's the best show in town." Still, the lyric, which is by no less a genius than Lorenz Hart, if the credits are to be believed, lends itself to humorous misinterpretation, and so I stand by my tweet. On the other hand, the song is performed during a parade that has, like, a dozen snow-white horses outfitted with Pegasus wings, and (unrelated to the horses) the most convincing ape makeup and pantomime I have seen outside of Kubrick's 2001. Also, they have a caged Martha Raye in a bright red lion costume. Now, leaving aside the fact that the plot centers around a rundown circus that is about to go broke - in which case, maybe cut back on the elaborate horse costumes - I have to admit this "show" looks pretty great, maybe it is the best show in town, what the hell do I know?

Cold Leftovers

Well, hello. I thought you'd like to hear about this astonishing coincidence. I was eating some cold leftovers in front of the TV. That's not the coincidence! As I ate, I watched some of a Doris Day movie I had recorded for the purpose. At the conclusion of my repast, I turned off the movie, at which point the regular TV came on automatically. It was tuned to TCM, which happened to be playing a Tom Waits concert film. At the very moment of the program's sudden commencement I caught Tom Waits himself mid-sentence, expressing, through stage patter, his wish to purchase a novelty cigarette lighter "as big as an encyclopedia." If you are my friend, you will appreciate the nature of the coincidence. If I am being honest, however, there is at best a 50-50 chance I would have included Tom Waits's hypothetical "cigarette lighter as big as an encyclopedia" in my book about cigarette lighters, so I have decided not to add it to the official appendix at this time.

The Educated French Poodle

Yesterday on twitter I found out about this website ("click" here) where you can read old movie magazines. Idly typing the name of Doris Day, the first person I thought of for some reason, into the search bar, I came across this photo, the caption of which begins, "Smudgie, the educated French poodle, begs prettily for a peppermint stick." Every word choice in that caption was so interesting. I was like, that's one anonymous magazine intern who could really slap together a thought-provoking caption! Stories just spin out of it.

Sleeping Habits of Bob

I won't lie to you, this Bob Hope bio is kind of running together now. Everything's a blur. Lots of numbers. Like, how many acres of land Bob bought (10,000). I don't know. On the plus side, Jim Dees sent me this photo of Bob Hope here in town, on the University of Mississippi campus in 1973, with the homecoming queen. Dees said he went to see Hope perform and that an army of cue card men, real pros, zoomed and zipped all around him. Wherever Bob turned his head, there was a cue card! Dees said Bob made a lot of "local" jokes... about the neighboring community of Water Valley, for example. As I knew from the book, Bob always sent "advance men" to town ahead of him so he could personalize his act for a hometown crowd. I did notice that Bob's method for putting himself to sleep was similar to the one Nabokov wrote about, which I also remembered from the memoirs of monk and mystic Thomas Merton. Rosemary Clooney proclaimed Bob's sleeping method to be "very yoga-like." And when I was contemplating "blogging" about that, I thought, "What is wrong with you, Pendarvis?" Yet here we are. Oh, Bob said that he and Doris Day had an affair. And I thought Megan Abbott would like the detail that "publicist Frank Lieberman once saw Hope and [Marilyn] Maxwell check in for a night at a cheap motel decorated with tepees and a neon sign that said SLEEP IN A WIGWAM TONIGHT." And some of the near-death experiences Bob had during World War II were interesting, like Jerry Colonna making brave wisecracks as the plane went down over Alaska.

What Happened

Uh, I don't know. Nothing. Maybe all those movies cooked my brain. I ran out of things to say. Who cares? One day I went to that used book stall I've told you about and found a copy of RICHARD III for $2. I've been lazily looking for it. It always seems to be out of stock at Square Books, though they have many, many other Shakespeare plays. Off Square Books too, where they keep their used stock. Is RICHARD III that popular? Do people treasure their ratty old paperbacks of RICHARD III? Are they buried with them? The one I bought has a lot of underlinings in it. The previous owner underlines something and writes "FANTASTIC!" next to it. A long while back Lee Durkee mentioned to me that RICHARD III had two hilarious murderers in it who reminded him of Beckett characters, but their best stuff was cut out of most productions. So I looked them up in the book and Lee was right and I was going to "blog" about it but suddenly the prospect seemed so wearying, sitting here typing up Shakespeare dialogue. I took a nap instead. I'm still not up to it. McNeil emailed to tell me there were some Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies coming on TCM last night. That reminded me of an email he sent in early April: "Hey, I was watching 'Send Me No Flowers' again the other night and I thought that we should make a pact. When one of us gets a terminal illness, the other should hang around like Tony Randall's character and make careless insensitive remarks and drink all the time. That gives one of us something to look forward to! Hahaha. See, I've already started."

Aerosol Valve

I'm on page 478 of this John Wayne biography, and on that page I found what I feel sure will be this book's most surprising sentence: "Wayne was living in a large ranch house with a couple of hippie girls he had picked up hitchhiking on the drive to New Mexico." Trust me, nothing in the previous 477 pages prepares you for that sentence. A few pages earlier I had been introduced to "Robert Abplanalp, the Nixon crony who had gotten rich by inventing the aerosol valve." It's funny to think of the Nixon crony who invented the aerosol valve, but most of all it's great because Abplanalp is almost a palindrome and sounds like a last name Jerry Lewis might try to say in a movie. Finally, I have learned that John Wayne wanted to make a movie with Doris Day (many of whose records he owned) and spent the evening after he won his Oscar getting drunk with Richard Burton, who lost. "Very drunk but, in his foul-mouthed way, quite affable," Burton pronounced. Ha ha, what do you have to do to get Richard Burton to call you "very drunk"?

Cat Name

I talk about sad clowns a lot here, but I can't take any credit for the sad clown angle of tonight's ADVENTURE TIME, storyboarded by the wonderful Graham Falk and just concluded in most of our large nation. It was entirely Pen's idea to make the character a sad clown; I was "pitching" (as we say in the business) for him to be a piano player for a torch singer in a seedy mob-run nightclub, like Cameron Mitchell in the Doris Day movie LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME. Strangely, it was also Pen's idea to name the episode "Sad Face" after one of our cats, Sad Face. I even tried to change that title a couple of times on drafts of the outline, but Pen kept changing it back. You may "click" here to see a drawing Pen did of Sad Face, with whom he was quite taken on his trip to Oxford. You will note that the drawing is labeled "Big Boy," which indeed became Sad Face's secondary name for a number of reasons. He was first called Sad Face as an aloof and slender feral cat who lurked mysteriously in the gray mist and shadows half-unseen and for whom we used to put out food. Those who say feral cats cannot be tamed have never seen Dr. Theresa in action. She made friends with Sad Face patiently over the course of several months. We caught him finally (ha ha! I know how boring this is and I just don't care) and took him in for his shots and had him fixed, intending to release him again, which we did, during a rainstorm! How terrible. What were we thinking? He didn't seem to care. But he came in one day and stayed in, this wraith who used to be able to jump over tall fences and run agilely if heart-stoppingly through the traffic in front of our house, back and forth across the busy and treacherous street like a maniac. He lost any desire to go outside ever again, just like me, and got comfortable and fat, just like me. So we took to calling him "Big Boy" instead of "Sad Face," though he still has a sad face, but a "happy head," as our young neighbor once observed. Anyway, I'll have you know Sad Face has lost a lot of weight since Pen drew that picture. For real! For further reading (ha ha! Don't do it!), remember when I was writing that dumb serialized fantasy novel for the Vice magazine and nobody cared? You will note that a daring brigand in it had a faithful horse called Sad Face.

"Blog"trospective 13: When Megan Lived Here

Well, it really happened. Megan Abbott moved back to New York. Now what are we supposed to do? Besides vomit and weep I mean. I guess we will attempt to cope by constructing a "blog"trospective of everything Megan did while she lived here (this is not everything Megan did while she lived here): almost made John Currence break his neck---appeared on Anthony Bourdain's television program---appreciated Marlene Dietrich's talent for playing the musical saw---arrived at the record store just as David was putting up the new sign---attended a party where a little girl did that thing where you rapidly stab a knife between your splayed fingers---brought up Sigmund Freud a lot---by example, had me drinking negronis for a spell---called BUFFALO '66 "a child's fantasy" (not in a bad way!)---compared me to Cathy in WUTHERING HEIGHTS---considered a dance called "the mumbly peg"---contemplated the travails of Lucille Ball as a woman in Hollywood---declared intent to be meaningless---defined wildness---discussed Philip Roth a lot---displayed a cheery and tasteful novelty item---drank moonshine (twice... that I know of!)---during a visit by Kent Osborne she witnessed Kent eating chicken wings, which failed to be noted at the time---emailed me about Hank Worden---emailed me about orgone boxes---endured rude scoffing at a ghost story she repeated---expressed a correct opinion about THE GLASS KEY that I undermined with ignorant hyperbole---found a lone pom-pom (this happened more than once)---got scared by a creepy tree---guaranteed weeping---had her first belt of rye---heard Ace's master spoiler for the entire Travis McGee series---helped Dr. Theresa and me avoid trick-or-treaters---hosted a Jerry Lewis double feature---likened something to Poe---loaned me a pen---looked up "querulous" in her dictionary---meeting time at the bar was 4:02---met me at a bar after I improvised some iambic pentameter---participated in an ecstatic roar---pined for some oysters---planned to watch an Elizabeth Taylor movie---pointed a gun at me---professed a generalized affection for wax museums---read Claudia Roth Pierpont's book about Philip Roth---read my tarot cards via cell phone---received a visit from her parents---reminded me of an anecdote about Billy Wilder---researched "friendship clubs"---said something about Mary Steenburgen's accordion---sent me a picture of Bob Hope and Doris Day and Santa---sent me Dick Shawn's obituary---shared her knowledge about an illustrator who drew women with "impossibly long feet"---spent the last warm evening of the year on the balcony of the City Grocery Bar---spoiled a bat attack---started reading the new John Wayne bio---strolled past Robert Mitchum's house from HOME FROM THE HILL---studied the racy cover of UNCLE GOOD'S WEEK-END PARTY, a novel by Faulkner's brother---told a story I misheard about a Depression-era Shirley Temple cream pitcher (and she actually gave us a Depression-era Shirley Temple cream pitcher last night as a goodbye present)---took a picture of a bubble house---took a walk with me while I was wearing a hat (and bedroom slippers, not pictured)---used the old-fashioned term "smoker" to refer to a gathering of rowdy males (she was talking about Bill and Jimmy and me)---visited Elvis's birthplace---visited Faulkner's house with Laraine Newman---was followed on twitter by the manufacturers of a gross-sounding vodka---was harassed by an inflated Batman---was supposed to be on a panel with Adrienne Barbeau (the panel happened but Barbeau canceled)---watched a Norman Mailer movie---watched BARRY LYNDON with Kent Osborne---we possibly left some dvds at her apartment---went to a hobo festival---wondered about tight pants---wowed 'em at "Noir at the Bar."

A Good Supply of Benzedrine

Watching CRITIC'S CHOICE from the Freudian angle this time. Rip Torn tells Bob Hope he wants to "make a monkey" out of him. "Overthrow the father image," Bob Hope extrapolates. "Sort of!" says Rip Torn, with an expression just slightly less maniacal than the one he wears in MAIDSTONE. Rip Torn later confronts Bob Hope in the nude! (Rip is in the nude, not Bob.) I can't recall whether this is before or after Bob Hope is about to bite into a hot dog when his son says something precocious about sex. "Sex? What's sex?" says Bob Hope, returning his attention to his hot dog with palpable dismay. Speaking of the precocious son, his best pal's dad is a psychoanalyst, and they sit in a part of the pal's apartment where they can overhear the dad (Jim Backus) with his patients, a conceit "borrowed" by Hope fan Woody Allen in at least two movies (see also). We are done with Freud for now. But I found some support for Megan's idea, stated long ago, that Rip Torn is kind of a beatnik in this movie. He boasts of having "a good supply of Benzedrine" at one point, Benzedrine being the stimulant of choice for beatniks as you know. Dr. Theresa shows the James Garner/Doris Day movie THE THRILL OF IT ALL in some of her gender classes (and wrote about it in her dissertation). That's the one where James Garner, as an obstetrician, gets more credit than the mother for producing a baby, according to Dr. Theresa's analysis. "I want to be a doctor's wife!" cries Doris Day (who has briefly become a "career woman") as the climactic epiphany of the film, if I am recalling Dr. Theresa's description correctly. There's something similarly creepy about CRITIC'S CHOICE, in which Lucille Ball, as the wife of the theater critic played by Bob Hope, is repeatedly mocked for trying to write a play. But you know, watching it this time I am struck by how much more realistically the situation is handled than it was in the TV show PARENTHOOD (which I used to call "the shoe factory show" because it used to take place mostly in a shoe factory) when Lauren Graham's character wrote a theatrical masterpiece without even trying and in fact without even realizing it was a play. That was an actual plot on PARENTHOOD! Now, when Bob Hope sits on a park bench and mercilessly rips apart Lucille Ball's first draft, he's very mean, but the words he says sound like actual words a person might say when critiquing someone's fledgling attempt at a form and, back to Freud, the movie seems to recognize his sublimated insecurity and rage. Ha ha ha, God I bore myself.

Good Wool

Hey that crazy Doris Day movie is on again. Turns out her husband in it runs a wool company. He makes a speech about what "damn good wool" this wool company has. Then when he talks about shaking up the wool business, some indignant wool expert sputters, "Sir, we sell woolens!" Very dramatic stuff. You know, a lot of Doris Day movies are about her being married to jerks and then at the end we're supposed to be happy when she decides to get along with the jerk. I have a feeling that's where this one is heading. But that's not why I summoned you here. I saw most of A STAR IS BORN on TCM the other day, the original version, and now I see why Scorsese put Lionel Stander into NEW YORK, NEW YORK, his STAR IS BORN style movie (though it owes more of a debt to the Vincent Minnelli remake). Lionel Stander (pictured) sure is hardboiled as the studio PR man. I'd say he might be one of the most hardboiled characters I ever saw in a movie. The movie is strange and compelling. It veers tonally from goofy slapstick (a grumpy landlord smashes a light fixture with his head; there's comical fainting and dish-dropping) to screaming, hellish nightmare by the end. Plus you've got that hardboiled Lionel Stander. Some of his dialogue is just great old-fashioned hardboiled cracking wise, like when he runs into Frederic March at the racetrack and March asks him, "What do they do with the actors when you're not around?" and Stander says, "They cut 'em into slices and fry 'em with eggs." There are lots more bitter gems, and you can see the scene on the TCM "web" site by "clicking" here. By the end, though, Stander is so hardboiled it's shocking. Big and depressing spoiler here... Frederic March, an alcoholic, drowns himself. Stander sits at a bar reading about it in the newspaper. He says, "First drink of water he had in years," and "How do you send a telegram of congratulations to the Pacific Ocean?" Whoa! The bartender laughs it up. Unlike the grumpy landlord, there is no comeuppance for Lionel Stander! I kind of wanted to see Janet Gaynor pop up out of nowhere and punch him in the gut. But his cold cynicism was triumphant.

What Else About Doris Day Today

Hey guess what? Steph just told me they have a dog park in Cincinnati named after Doris Day.

Hey Doris Day Is From Cincinnati

Michael Griffith just wrote me from the University of Cincinnati to tell me that Doris Day (pictured) is from Cincinnati. I had no idea. So you see how everything comes together!

Certain Musty Old Letters

You know whenever I go on a little plane trip I like to jot down some things about it to tell you when I get back and then you don't read it and I don't really care. Sometimes I get lazy and don't jot until the trip is practically half over. But this time I STARTED JOTTING BEFORE THE TRIP EVEN BEGAN. I was sitting on the couch, waiting for time to go to the airport, and the Fox Movie Channel was on and I took out my special jotting notebook and start jotting down some things about this scene in this Doris Day movie that was on. Doris Day wore a backless, sparkling orange dress. A fat German guy was swatting grapes into the air for some reason. One grape fell into the butt section of Doris Day's dress and she inadvertently started a "dance craze" by trying to shake the grape out of her butt. I was thinking about how smutty everything used to be. I couldn't think of what to read on the airplane. I was really hoping for ANCIENT EVENINGS, but Bill Boyle isn't back from his trip home yet, and anyway he writes me that he has lost the tattered old copy of ANCIENT EVENINGS he had when he was a teenager, and which he had planned to bequeath to me. So I impulsively grabbed THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL - this despite my reservations about VILLETTE as good airplane material, and VILLETTE was by Charlotte Brontë; THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL is by Anne, the Brontë nobody likes! Ha ha, just kidding, Anne Brontë. But one of the first things I read at the airport was this: "It is a soaking, rainy day, the family are absent on a visit, I am alone in my library, and have been looking over certain musty old letters and papers, and musing on past times... having withdrawn my well-roasted feet from the hobs, wheeled round to the table, and indicted the above lines to my crusty old friend..." Well, that is just the kind of thing I want to read on an airplane. Something about the hobs really got to me, and I don't even know what hobs are! My mellow mood was abetted by gin, my go-to remedy for fear of flying. I eavesdropped on a woman who was ordering crab cakes at the "Sun Studios" themed bar at the airport (!) and the book made me think of how Kelly Hogan and I used to write letters all the time, back when people wrote letters all the time, and how Hogan recently told me she keeps mine in a waterlogged suitcase in her once-flooded garage and sometimes she takes them out. Oh no, I said, don't remind yourself needlessly of the inanities of that callow twerp, and Hogan clarified: "I don't read them - I smell them." An intoxicating brew of moldy sentiments! I was met at the airport by some grad students from the University of Cincinnati, where I was set to speak. I should thank them all, and especially the ones who drove me around while I was there and tended to my every need, and who, in fact, were responsible for my invitation: Luke, Steph, Justine, and Woody - and there were so many more, all nice. Luke and Woody were waiting by baggage claim with a huge poster with my name on it - decorated as well with several startling portraits of me, drawn by Luke's undergrads. They had been reading my short stories in Luke's class and he asked them to draw what they thought I looked like. One had given me a neck tattoo! Another, according to Luke (I haven't yet had a chance to examine the poster in detail, though Luke says he is mailing it to me) wrote her phone number on the poster, and "Call me" - ha ha ha! Woody and Luke drove me into the city, remarking cheerfully as we went over a bridge, "Obama cited this as a dangerous bridge that needs work." I shouted repeatedly to Woody and Luke that I wanted to go "somewhere fancy" for dinner. They said they'd take me to "the fancy hot dog place." Maybe they were kidding, but it WAS a fancy hot dog place, though not pretentious like some other fancy hot dog places I have heard about. It was called Mayday, very welcoming and comfortable, with excellent beer, friendly service and a pleasant, dark atmosphere. My hot dog contained lamb sausage made with cherries! So you will have to admit that was fancy. Somehow people already knew when I walked in the door of the fancy hot dog place about my work with ADVENTURE TIME. Someone wanted me to sign an apron for the kitchen. "My favorite is Lady Rainicorn," she said. She kind of went "Ah!" when I started drawing something at the bottom of my inscription, but it was just a stupid heart with an arrow through it. I'm the only person associated with ADVENTURE TIME who can't draw, reliably disappointing all I meet. It's understandable and even delightful to me that the students at "literary events" now are more interested in ADVENTURE TIME than in my books, which are but dubiously in print - in fact, I have a lawyer working right now to discover who is getting that tiny kickback on the rare occasion when a copy is sold. It's not me! I stayed in a nice bed and breakfast near the campus. My vivid and relentless dreams that first night took place - as if I were awake - in the actual room where I was sleeping, and were populated by humorous, cherubic ghosts or pixies who wanted to remind me whenever I became too relaxed that THEY were in charge. The room and bed were very comfortable, let me stress. But I was tormented all night by mirthful pixies - a first for me - and was tired for the reading. I didn't really want to read from any of my old, dead books, so I read from my cat book that no one wants to publish. As I was preparing my selections - the introduction, part of Chapter One, and the conclusion - I realized that most of the book has been published in bits and pieces, as I've cut it up and used it in lots of different stories and articles and the like. I'm sorry, sort of, that it's never going to appear whole, as "my cat book," though I see in retrospect it is perhaps unwise to write a 10-chapter novel in which nothing happens until the last half of Chapter Eight - a little wholesome advice I was able to impart to the young writers who attended the reading! In the Q&A and in her poetry, my fellow reader Marisa Crawford made some good points in favor of the use of pop culture in literature. One of her poems had Joan Crawford in it (and another made telling use of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART FIVE!) so I was glad that by coincidence I was reading the Joan Crawford section of my "cat book." After the reading, a bar. I sat with two other grown men - the head of the English department and the poetry editor of the Cincinnati Review - and we all talked about our kitties. I noticed that the openly sentimental discussion halted when Chris Bachelder came back to the table! Or maybe I imagined that. Did he exude the air of a man who would not tolerate such weakness? He was friendly and funny. But the cat talk did cease with his approach. Mr. Bachelder is a writer whose fiction I have always enjoyed and admired. I was meeting him for the first time, and we had fun trashing various McSweeney's editors. Ha ha! Not trashing. Affectionately ruminating upon their individual styles and methods. The conclusion of my cat book was published in McSweeney's, and I mentioned how the editor had made me change "solar plexus" to "abdomen." The poet at the table (Don Bogen) kindly took up for "solar plexus." Then we talked about why I had cravenly reverted to "abdomen" during the reading that day even though I had brought an old manuscript with "solar plexus" typed on the page. The strange tyranny of the absent editor! The next morning at the bed and breakfast I sat there reading this in THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL: "I thought it but reasonable to make some slight exertion to render my company agreeable." And I thought, yes, THAT is the kind of sentence I want to write all the time, and no other, editors can go to hell. And then Anne Brontë introduced some complicated plot business about trying to fetch a ball of cotton that had rolled under a table without disturbing a cat. WHY CAN'T ALL WRITING BE THAT? But that was the next day. The night before, as the students were about to leave the bar, I had the sudden urge to inquire, "Where do you go to sing karaoke in Cincinnati?" Luke knew. So a group of us walked some blocks to a gritty, narrow, cash-only joint called, with refreshing lack of irony, Junker's Tavern. Here is a picture of some of us getting ready to go to Junker's Tavern. That's Justine and Luke.

I'm in the middle, doing my thing where I think it's hilarious to look surly in a photo, but it never is. It was a good evening, though I got tired and made Steph and Luke leave before they could do "Mambo #5." Back at the bed and breakfast, the ghosts returned only once in a dream, as parody ghosts with greenish faces and CARNIVAL OF SOULS style dark rings under their eyes, but dressed in colorful rags, shouting, "God bless us, every one!" with Cockney accents and well-meaning but gruesome smiles.

On the plane back, the narrator of THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL was saying, "I was by no means a fop - of that I am fully convinced" and I was like, "Right, pal, keep telling yourself that!"

Bob Hope and Doris Day and Santa Claus

Hey Megan Abbott sent me this photo of Bob Hope and Doris Day and Santa Claus for Christmas.

McNeil's Movie Korner

Oh boy! It's time once again for "McNeil's Movie Korner." McNeil writes to say he was "BLOWN AWAY" (caps his) by the similarities between LOVER COME BACK, which he watched a week or so ago, and MAD MEN. The creators of MAD MEN "obviously had that film in mind," he says, "because Rock is definitely Don Draper, Doris/Peggy, and even Tony Randall is a lot like Pete (in the way he looks and acts)." [And his character's name is Pete! - ed.] Speaking of old Pete, a second email from McNeil, hot on the heels of the first, adds that McNeil's younger kids love a movie called ALASKA. "It stars an early version of Pete Campbell, played by a 17-year-old Pete Campbell!!!! He acts exactly the same!!!!" McNeil breathlessly reports.

Hay U.

... is what I should have called that last "post." Because we were learning about hay! And it's an all-around better pun. You remember my friend from "She Blogged By Night." Turns out she also made hay by night, contrary to the popular hay expression, or at least she knows a lot about hay. She informed me that the name of the machine I misheard as "hay tanner" is actually "hay tedder." If I had that "post" to do over again (bearing in mind its reference to "crooners"), I would have finished it off with a youtube video of someone singing "Hey There." How witty that would have been.

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again dear friends to "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up," your one spot on the "internet" for all the latest fabulous celebrity news of fabulous celebrities in the news. The great American filmmakers John Sayles and Maggie Renzi were in Oxford last night. Mr. Sayles appeared at Off Square Books to read from his new novel A MOMENT IN THE SUN. (The government now requires "bloggers" to mention things like this, so I will say that A MOMENT IN THE SUN is published by McSweeney's, where I also do some work, and they sent me a copy.) After the reading, practically the whole audience headed over to the City Grocery Bar, and so did Mr. Sayles and Ms. Renzi. Yes, since you asked, somehow I managed to bring up Jerry Lewis. Mr. Sayles did not react with horror. He said of Jerry, "He did it all." I was comparing the structure of Mr. Sayles's book THINKING IN PICTURES with that of Lewis's THE TOTAL FILM-MAKER. (The fact that they both "do it all" accounts for the similarity, I think.) Mr. Sayles politely pretended that he might get himself a copy of THE TOTAL FILM-MAKER someday. Dr. Theresa and John Sayles discussed 19th-century illustrators and Lizzie Borden! Ms. Renzi and I spoke of our shared affection for Doris Day. It was funny and interesting to hear John Sayles and Maggie Renzi very knowledgeably discuss WITH SIX YOU GET EGGROLL (pictured). Many things were spoken of by many people in many combinations! Then we went home. Dr. Theresa and I were awakened at 3 in the morning by the sound of some animals attacking one another maybe. I'd like to pretend there is some chance it was an animal party, but who am I kidding? There was some cooing or whimpering, some screeching, and a third unidentifiable noise - as many as four or five animals involved from the horrific sound of it. We did something stupid. We went outside with what turned out to be an extremely weak flashlight to see if we could help whatever animal needed help. Luckily (for us, I guess), we never found the source of the terrible sounds (which kept going on and on), although at one point Dr. Theresa swore they were coming from the top of a tree. Well, I couldn't get back to sleep after that. I watched several episodes of THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW that happened to be on, and in between chuckling, I contemplated the abyss. I am glad we were not devoured by angry raccoons or what have you. Step outside your nice little house in the middle of the night and you suddenly find yourself in hell. So that's something to think about! As Lillian Gish says in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, "It's a hard world for little things." That's it for this edition of "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up." Until next time, stay away from wild animals that are fighting, remember that only the thinnest of dreamy membranes protects you from the nightmarish wilderness that secretly surrounds us all, and keep "reaching" for the "stars"!

Sadly

I am devoting the rest of my life to "posting" extremely short little "posts" about the relationship of Doris Day and Jack Carson, as related to me by Megan Abbott. Here's the latest: "Sadly, she dumped him for that husband of hers that stole all her money... what a heel."

A Picture of Doris Day and Jack Carson Dressed As Rabbits

... is what this is. Provided by Megan Abbott. See also.