"Blog"trospective 19: Adventure Time

Remember how I kept bragging about quitting social media? I guess it was a damn lie, because I briefly got on "Tumblr," as I call it, to answer questions about ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE Season 2 and the Adult Swim special THE ELEPHANT. But not MYSTERY CUDDLERS, which, as you may recall, they chucked down the gaping garbage hole to trash town. Well, all of that is over, by which I mean that everything I have worked on for the past number of years has been released and consumed and here I sit in the cold ashes. So! I thought I would make a catalog (below) of every time (?) I have mentioned ADVENTURE TIME or its various spin-offs on the "blog." That way, the hordes of acolytes I gathered on "Tumblr" can visit this "post" the way they might walk around a famous tomb or other, slightly more interactive landmark. I also encourage them to check out my previous "blog"trospective on THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, thought by many to be the ADVENTURE TIME of the 17th century. And now I give you a series of "hyperlinks" filled with ADVENTURE TIME tidbits and gristly byproduct. Eat up! actual cat sneeze inspires FIONNA AND CAKE---ADVENTURE TIME art show---ADVENTURE TIME artists Natasha Allegri, Kent Osborne, and Seo Kim appear on a panel in Oxford, Mississippi---ADVENTURE TIME clip sponsored by cream to get rid of your age spots---ADVENTURE TIME compared to Balzac---ADVENTURE TIME comic books sold out in New York---ADVENTURE TIME episode named after cat---ADVENTURE TIME features a line that is "classic Frasier"---ADVENTURE TIME joke (in "The More You Moe") based on when my sister visited my brother and me in Atlanta and I made her sit in my apartment and play hangman but my brother took her out to meet David Byrne---ADVENTURE TIME; Lovecraftian influence on---ADVENTURE TIME party at Kent Osborne's house!---ADVENTURE TIME podcast, poor performance on---ADVENTURE TIME wrap party---Allegri, Natasha; gets caviar out of a vending machine---allusion to THE SEARCHERS in ADVENTURE TIME---alternate, worse ending to "Time Sandwich"---Archimedes, Fonzie, Piggy, and Jan discussed in ADVENTURE TIME meeting---art students ask questions about ADVENTURE TIME---at a French restaurant with Pendleton Ward and Megan Abbott---Atkins, Ace; watches "The Box Prince"---before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting, Kent eats his fourth meal of chicken in a row---behind the scenes of writing fan favorite "The Box Prince"---belt worn to Peabody Awards---bent fork in Beverly Hills---Bergman, Ingmar; influence of on ADVENTURE TIME---big panel at Wondercon with Prismo, Flame Princess and more---birthday balloons from the office---book about weeds useful for writing FIONNA AND CAKE---"Bukowski with more stabbing" (assessment of a William Boyle short story during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting)---Burch, Ashly; inspired by PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET when writing the character of Martin Mertens---Burch, Ashly; photo of surrounded by Emmys---cat jumps in lap during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---CAT PERSON by Seo Kim on my recommendation shelf---cat refuses to do tricks during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---cat who looks exactly like Kent Osborne's cat shows up in ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Chuck E. Cheese a proud sponsor of ADVENTURE TIME---cheered up by Pen and Kent during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---coincidental resemblence between Coppola film TWIXT and "Root Beer Guy"---commenters have no idea how damn old I am---Cosmic Owl in context of ancient owl deities---Cosmic Owl spotted in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY---cross-cultural discussion of syrup in the writers' room---dancing to a playlist by Kate Tsang---dangerous ride on ice and snow undertaken during FIONNA AND CAKE meeting---Did Norman Mailer invent the Ice King?---DIRTY GRANDPA (film) brought up during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---DJ Slime is not the same as DJ Plop Drops---DON'T LOOK NOW allusion---during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting, Pen comments on my messy hair---earliest "blog" mention of ADVENTURE TIME---eating at the Smoke House with Adam and Kate---emailing Adam about DC comics character the Spectre---executives won't let Martin eat those little creatures who are helping him out---fate of my favorite bar revealed during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---feeding a fish during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---final visit to the old Cartoon Network building---Finn sounds like a student of Pythagoras---flaunting an Emmy---Ford, Harrison and Martin Sheen; heights of discussed in ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Franzen, Jonathan; knows about my Emmy---Hanuman of Hindu lore somewhat reminiscent of Jake---going to the races with Pen---Grammer, Kelsey; sadly does not voice a giant mushroom---Hanna and I argue over Rory's best boyfriend---HEAVEN'S GATE allusion in ADVENTURE TIME explained---Hernandez, Gilbert; writes a Jerry Lewis reference into an episode, but it does not make it into the final cut---Herpich, Tom and Steve Wolfhard on oatmeal and Twitter---Herpich, Tom; drawing by evocative of Machen---Herpich, Tom; portrait of the author by---hiccups disappear during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---holding a Peabody---home office tidied before Kent arrives for an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Horton, Edward Everett; discussed in FIONNA AND CAKE meeting---I am presented with a machete in honor of my work on ADVENTURE TIME---I forget the title of THE BIG BANG THEORY during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---I get all excited by the first CHEERS reference on ADVENTURE TIME---I see Cher at the hotel where I stay for ADVENTURE TIME meetings---I see Garry Marshall at the hotel where I stay for ADVENTURE TIME meetings---I see Vera Farmiga in the hotel where I stay for ADVENTURE TIME meetings---I try to draw Lady Rainicorn on an apron---idea for an unusual bread pudding prompts thoughts of Cinnamon Bun---I unsuccessfully suggest "Glucupricon" as an ADVENTURE TIME episode title---idea to have Jake punch a mountain vetoed---in the recording booth with Anne Heche---influence of Shmoo on ADVENTURE TIME---INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978 version) influences ADVENTURE TIME---Jake-shaped cheese ball---Jansson, Tove; works of often came up in writers' meetings---Kay Lenz, whose film BREEZY inspired the name of an ADVENTURE TIME character, comes onboard to play another ADVENTURE TIME character!---Kent eats a chicken sandwich during a meeting---Kent's role in a local stageplay inspires an Ooo-style cuss word in ADVENTURE TIME: ELEMENTS---Kid President (?) visits the ADVENTURE TIME writers' room---Kim, Seo; thinks up a snake---King of Ooo hunts his subjects for sport---lack of toilets at Versailles discussed during ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Lawless, Lucy; role on ADVENTURE TIME---Lizard Princess---local record store owner wants me to bring my ADVENTURE TIME Emmy to the store and perform as "DJ Emmy"---maudlin reflections upon the cancellation of ADVENTURE TIME---McHale, Patrick; spills red wine on my nice white shirt---McNeil watches ADVENTURE TIME on Christmas Eve---McNeil's advice on what to do after ADVENTURE TIME cancellation---meeting T-Bone Burnett at the Emmys---memorable summary of "The Great Birdman"---Moynihan, Jesse and Cole Sanchez give me a BREEZY poster---obscurest pop culture reference in ADVENTURE TIME---Muto, Adam; recommends a hat shop---Muto, Adam; uses the Jack Kirby comic OMAC as an example in a meeting---my father, a lifelong machinist, contributes to "We Fixed a Truck"---my job in the ADVENTURE TIME writers' room DUNE book club---office is closed for President's Day, so Kent and I go to see 50 SHADES OF GREY---Olson, Olivia; has to scream a lot for work even though she has a cold---on Twitter before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Osborne, Kent; caught in a photo with Taylor Swift!---Osborne, Kent; dresses up as Finn---Osborne, Kent; eats from the SAME BAG of Utz cheese balls during writers' meetings FOR YEARS!---Osborne, Kent; gets out his lightsaber---owl wears shirt that says "OWL" on it---OZARK MAGIC AND FOLKLORE (book by Vance Randolph) useful in writing an ADVENTURE TIME episode---pants falling down at the Emmys---passing mention of Spirit Dream Warrior---Pen and I are asked to envision a prequel to Willy Wonka---Pen and Kent visit Faulkner's house---Pen thinks Barry Lyndon farted---Plastic Man as spiritual forefather of Jake the Dog---Pott, Julia; reveals during a meeting that she was in a Burt Reynolds movie!---practicing saying "Wow" as Root Beer Guy---President's Day means nothing to Hanna K. Nystrom---Princess Bubblegum reads James Joyce to Finn and Jake (failed suggestion)---pyrographical portrait of Marceline by Emily Quinn---quoting Lady Rainicorn's mom---quoting Root Beer Guy---reading a book about magic before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---rewatch of THE WIRE influences ADVENTURE TIME---Root Beer Guy goes on a sexy vacation---Sanchez, Cole; as Adventure Time's resident clothing expert---Sanchez, Cole; teaches me the word "subluxation"---Shawn, Wallace; farts on ADVENTURE TIME---signing posters at Wondercon---some background on "Root Beer Guy"---talking about trombones too much in a writers' meeting---tiny beatnik---trying and failing to get LADYHAWKE allusions into ADVENTURE TIME---trying to explain a comic book in a meeting---Tsang, Kate; makes two single cheeseburgers into one double cheeseburger---twice-as-long season is twice as much work---visiting GILMORE GIRLS set with Julia Pott after an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Walch, Hynden; acting abilities of---Ward, Pendleton; draws Kent as "Galactus - Destroyer of Chickens"---Ward, Pendleton; rents a house with Cyclopes (yes, that's the plural of Cyclops) on the wallpaper---Ward, Pendleton; runs over a bottle---Ward, Pendleton; wants us all to dress as English peas to accept Peabody Award---watching ADVENTURE TIME with nephews---watching BARRY LYNDON with Pen---while locked out of my car, I find an ADVENTURE TIME-related coaster in my pocket---William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County mistaken for Ooo---winning an Emmy!---WINTER'S TALE (film) brought up in meeting---WIRE creator David Simon mocks Kent Osborne's difficulty with eating an egg---wolf dream and Dr. Doom discussed in meeting---Wolfhard, Steve and I sit next to Squidward in a bar---Wolfhard, Steve; creates hair apes---Wolfhard, Steve; inspired by Jamie Farr---working on STAKES---working on the Minecraft tie-in---writers' meeting sidetracked by David Lynch clips---writers' room produces DUNE book club---writing a poem in iambic pentameter for "Thanks for the Crabapples, Giuseppe"---writing lessons gleaned from ADVENTURE TIME meetings---Wynn, Ed; voice of inspires Choose Goose---Xayophone, Somvilay; plays Theremin during an ADVENTURE TIME meeting---Xayophone, Somvilay; wants a pizza with just mint on it. (JAKE THE DOG CHEESE BALL CREDIT: BLAIR HOBBS)

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

I'm sure some of you, if you existed, would be wondering about McNeil and why he hasn't bothered much with his bits lately... specifically, his "Li'l Bogie Bits," which is what we call it when he throws us a couple of bones based on the 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart he has been reading. Well, here's what happened: he thought he had left the book somewhere and lost it. Maybe in another state of the union, I think? But then he found it at home under a pile of... unspecified stuff. Of course, Freud would say that McNeil just doesn't care about his "Li'l Bogie Bits" anymore, so he effectively hid the book from himself. But Freud would be wrong! Speaking of Freud (and don't worry, we'll get back to the promised bits), McNeil told me he's reading SYNCHRONICITY by Carl Jung. I know what you're going to say! Freud isn't Jung. Well, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. All I know is I can't think of one without the other, like the two great flavors in a Reese's peanut butter cup. Like, when Freud and Jung were arguing that time and there was an inexplicable explosion in a nearby bookcase. I think I have that story right. And that reminds me of another story! I made it into a chapter of SOUR BLUEBERRIES, my novel that no longer exists on this planet. So I think I can quote it here and no one will care. And this is a true story, and I didn't even change Leslie's real actual name to protect her innocence: "That made him think of the time he and Leslie were arguing about Kubrick and Mike Nichols on New Year’s Eve and there was a loud bang from the other room and everybody ran in and saw that the oaken bookcase with all the film books on it had cleaved itself down the middle in despair and the film books were in a pile on the floor." Okay. What was I saying? Oh yeah, and then there was the time that Freud and Jung were on a train, I think, right here in the USA, I think, home of the "blog," and Freud got it in his head somehow that Jung was comparing him to a corpse preserved in a bog, and Freud swooned and fainted! I think I have that story right, too. But if I don't, who cares? Oh yeah, and what about when Frasier had a Halloween party and came dressed as his hero, Sigmund Freud? I feel, in a related matter, that Frasier would occasionally (though maybe not in the episode in question) make a sarcastic quip about Jungians. I don't have the sources to back that up. None of this is the point. The point is (well, this might not be the point, either) that I was telling McNeil about an Elmore Leonard novel I was enjoying and McNeil said he was envious, because he wasn't making a lot of headway with SYNCHRONICITY (in a subsequent email, he indicated that he was starting to get into it and groove on its vibes, though not in those words). Explaining that he wished Jung's examples were simpler, McNeil wrote, with what I took as plaintiveness, and I believe this is a quote, "Why not cats walking through a door?" So I closed my email and I opened up Elmore Leonard and I read "A cat walks in the room..." WHAT! So I emailed McNeil back and said, I believe, "Synchronicity!" or some other smart remark along those lines. Now for the bogie bits, which I will now attempt to reconstruct before your very eyes through the power of memory. One of them was... hmm... I guess Bogart was getting sick of Sinatra coming over to the house and drinking up all of Bogie's booze, and also (if I am recalling correctly) putting the moves on Lauren Bacall, who was Bogart's legally wedded wife. What was the other one? It had something to do with Bogart winning an Oscar. McNeil did not specify the movie, but I am guessing it was THE AFRICAN QUEEN. I'm not looking it up because I don't care about anything anymore. Anyway, Bogart's buddy tells him if he wins he should act real cool and snarl "It's about time" and casually walk offstage like some kind of tough customer. So Bogart is like, "Wow! That's a great idea! I'll do it!" And then he wins and gets up there and blushes and giggles and cavorts about the stage all giddy and squealing. That can't be right. But as I have already expressed, I don't care. I was reading more of the Elmore Leonard in a doctor's waiting room today. I took it instead of my prescribed waiting room reading material. After that, I stopped by Square Books because my copy of THE ICEMAN COMETH had arrived. I ordered it because I was watching the movie version the other day, and the character Hugo, played by Boss Hogg from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, said what I could have sworn was "Life is a crazy monkey face!" So I was going to check the text and see. So Dr. Theresa is driving us home and I'm flipping through the end of THE ICEMAN COMETH and I find Hugo saying "Hello, nice, leedle, funny monkey-faces!" And another time he goes, "Hello, leedle Don, leedle monkey-face!" I don't know, maybe he's all about the leedle monkey-faces the whole way through, though where I got "Life is a crazy monkey face!" I don't know. In my defense, Boss Hogg isn't exactly Demosthenes in this role. And he is forced by the author, as you have witnessed, to say things like "leedle." When I read the whole play, which I promise you I never will, perhaps I'll come across the exact line that I misheard. Thank you. This has been "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits." Now leave me alone!

Didn't Mean to Be So Hilarious All the Time

Hey, remember when I said I was going to "go out on a limb" and call something a "viola da gamba"? You were probably chuckling wisely that I had spouted a real mouthful, like something right out of a Frasier script! Because, of course, as the OED tells us, "viola da gamba" means "literally, 'leg viol.'" Yes, I left the final "a" off on purpose, just like the makers of the OED. Hey, man, if you don't know what a viol is, I just feel sorry for you. Anyway, as I am sure you put together long before I did (just minutes ago), a leg is a "limb" of the body. Ha ha ha, wonderful. Mine is such a waggish wit. It hurts! This reminds me, in a roundabout fashion, of the time Kent asked if I wanted to see the stoop from SEX AND THE CITY and I replied with an astonishing swiftness worthy of Churchill, "That's no way to talk about Sarah Jessica Parker!" My witticism in that case, while demonstrably unfair to Ms. Parker, was based on the word "stupe," as I am sure you will recall will fondness, which I felt called for explanation at the time, thus ruining the joke, such as it was. The OED tells us that "stupe" goes back as far as 1722, and provides this example: "Leaving this Old Stupe, the Keeper conducted me to a Gentleman, who was not so far advanc'd in Years," proving that ageism, among other things, was alive and well in 1722! I think my wonderful twinkling humor has taught us a thing or two today. POSTSCRIPT: My records reveal that it was Tom Herpich, not Kent Osborne, who offered to show us the stoop from SEX AND THE CITY. And here I was just yesterday, getting on McNeil's case for misplacing a bellhop. We're still learning and growing as people! And it's all thanks to the miracle of jesting and humorousness which is such a balm in our trying times of nowadays we've been enjoying lately.

McNeil Month by Month

That's right, kids! It's hard to believe, but it's already McNeil's birthday again. Where do the years go? Since the beginning of time, we have celebrated McNeil's birthday by presenting a little review of his "blog" presence throughout the eons. After I permanently quit "blogging" in 2016, as you will recall, we had to occasionally resort to unverifiable emails by which to track McNeil's location month by month. Those entries are marked by asterisks for historians of the future. All right! With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, we are free to enjoy the many fruits of McNeil. 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 mother.* 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 prediction that recently 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.

Here Comes the Kicker

Yesterday, while Dr. Theresa was out doing some errands, I watched MADADAYO, Kurosawa's final movie, a surprisingly (and gratifyingly) lengthy portion of which was taken up with the protagonist looking for his lost cat. During that section, the shamisen was mentioned a few times, as something - and I hate to say this - made partly from cats, and the man and his wife and all his friends were hoping that no one had made a shamisen out of his cat. I confess that in my ignorance, I did not know what a shamisen was, nor, in my obstinance, did I look it up. Okay! The next thing you need to know is that Dr. Theresa routinely dismissed the show GILMORE GIRLS when it was on the air. "Too girly," she said on more than one occasion as I sat there watching it. But somehow or another, she recently got the idea to give it another try. Maybe she's mellowing out! So, when she got home, we watched an episode in which a kitten appeared. "Is something going to happen to the kitten?" Dr. Theresa asked (something happened to a cat several episodes earlier). "I don't think so!" I said, reminding her, however, that it has been many years since I watched the series, and I did not remember every detail. Or any detail. Or anything. So check this out! The kitten got lost! Just like the cat in MADADAYO. Please do not concern youself: the matter was swiftly and successfully resolved by the eponymous Gilmore Girls. Later, of course, Dr. Theresa and I retired for the evening. As we often do, we set the bedroom TV to Frasier, whose soothing tones have lulled us into a peaceful slumber on many a winter's night. He's a human white-noise machine! We half-listened to two episodes. In the first, Frasier's radio listeners called in to describe their lost cats, much to Frasier's displeasure! Ha ha, that's not what Frasier's radio show is about, or so Frasier seemed to muse as he fumed. But he grudgingly let them describe their lost cats. This, you will note, was the third bit of entertainment I had consumed in one day concerning lost cats. Okay. Get ready. Here comes the kicker! Now, in the next, entirely different episode of Frasier, having nothing to do with cats, he mentions, of all things (are you sitting down?), the shamisen! His less educated friends, much like myself, don't know what a shamisen is, so Frasier somewhat smugly explains that it is "a kind of Japanese guitar." I did not have to look up the shamisen. It came to me. And with that, the circle of the day was complete. Well, I did have to look it up, because I didn't entirely trust Frasier, and you, by doing your own research, may judge in what ways the shamisen resembles a guitar, and in what ways it does not. The preceding has been adapted freely from an email I sent to McNeil.

Merry Meat Christmas

Some time after midnight I was watching FRASIER on the Hallmark Channel and they played an ad for a TV movie called MARRY ME AT CHRISTMAS, which, when the title appeared on the screen, appeared to my weary eyes as MERRY MEAT CHRISTMAS.

River Rowdies

I don't suppose any of us will forget where we were on July 27, 2012, the day I lost dozens of "twitter followers" by live-tweeting KING RALPH. It was a massacre! Looking back, I can't blame them. How many times since then have I my own self become heavy-hearted at the excessive tweeting rate of some well-meaning wag or another? And that is why I have decided to help everybody out by putting my live-tweeting of STRIKING DISTANCE into the following handy virtual live-tweeting format, rather than clogging up everyone's "timeline" with it. I promise you all the excruciating boredom of the live-tweet experience with half the mess. Before we begin, it occurs to me that not only did Donald Barthelme invent the TV recap, he simultaneously invented the live-tweet. With preliminaries concluded, come with me as I list the things I see in STRIKING DISTANCE. A police car races toward the camera. Lightning strikes! Words say STRIKING DISTANCE!... Boots sloshing in the rain. Dr. Theresa just walked in and saw me furrowing my brow watching STRIKING DISTANCE and said, "Your seriousness is humorous."... Bruce Willis is disgraced... Bruce's dad is Frasier's dad from FRASIER! He's a cop, JUST LIKE IN FRASIER! Frasier's dad says a very Frasier's dad-like thing about Bruce's "mother's side of the family."... All his former cop friends think Bruce Willis is a "rat."... Bruce drives all crazy, like he's in a cop movie!... Frasier's dad is blasé about all the near collisions, making idle chit chat during the near-death experiences. This really IS like a FRASIER episode! Eight minutes in and we have our first action-movie fireball!... I have a feeling Frasier's dad is about to bite it. ... Ten minutes in: SECOND FIREBALL. ... Dr. Theresa says I should comment on the bad guy's driving gloves, which I totally meant to do... Cars hopping in the air like rabbits! Frasier's dad is still alive for the moment... Uh-oh. I take it back. Here's the reliable Dennis Farina as Uncle Nick? Uncle Rick? He's a cop too. ... They "caught the killer" and Bruce deduces in literally half a second they got the wrong man, just by looking at him... but the other cops don't want Bruce to rock the boat. Not even Uncle Nick or Rick! Uncle Rick/Nick's kid is jumping off a bridge! It's Bruce Willis's own cousin he ratted on! Well, there goes Cousin Jimmy. And here comes the rain. Like God himself is crying for Cousin Jimmy!... TWO YEARS LATER... It sure feels like it ha ha! ... Bruce Willis has a cat. A rat with a cat! Get it? ... Alka Seltzer... microwaving a hot towel... that's Bruce's version of breakfast! ... Now he's a boat cop. All the boat cops are standing around in their short pants. Short pants cops! ... I think Bruce Willis just dumped his crabby boss in the river as a prank. He'll never get anywhere with an attitude like that!... Bruce's name is Tom Hardy! Like the depressing novelist!... Everywhere Bruce Willis goes, other cops try to beat him up... Bruce: sensitive, weepy. The thinking man's cop!... Tom Sizemore, another cop cousin... Bruce Willis lives on a houseboat. Hey! Tom Sizemore talks about THE SIMPSONS! Tom Sizemore's brother AND mother jumped in the river. Stay away from the river, everybody. Do they want to make me suspect that Tom Sizemore is the killer? Because it's working. But it's too easy. He says ominous things like "I... I gotta meet a girl." And just when he comes back to town the killings start again. Too easy... Bruce Willis's new boat cop partner is SARAH JESSICA PARKER! She's introduced to him as a "qualified diver." I wonder if that will come into play! [It doesn't. Chekhov would be ashamed. - ed.]... Rowdies in a speedboat!... Oh, I see. Bruce Willis bends the rules and SJP is "by the book." ME: "What's that guy wearing, a neckerchief?" DR. THERESA (sounding sad about my decline): "It's a tattoo, sweetie."... Bruce Willis knocked somebody down a hole. "Down the hole!" shouted Dr. Theresa... Bruce Willis just shot three or four guys, I lost count. SJP helped him by yelling. Now he has grudging respect for her! You can see it in his eyes... I think I'll have some rye. I might miss something... Thinking, those guys Bruce shot were probably pirates, technically!... "There's an old Italian saying: 'Don't scald your tongue on another man's soup.'" Wise words, Dennis Farina. "Hey, Hardy, we're out of our patrol zone," warns by-the-book Sarah Jessica Parker. You really think Bruce Willis cares?... SJP and Bruce are dramatically acting at each other!... Aw, suddenly SJP spies Bruce behaving tenderly when he doesn't know she's looking! Maybe there's something to this gruff boat cop after all... They're really piling on the Tom Sizemore circumstantial evidence. I ain't buying it! No matter how unnervingly he giggles. Dennis Farina just had this line of dialogue: "Go up there. Go up there. GO UP THERE! Go up there."... This movie has a lot of blue language!... Andre Braugher! He's as young as a baby!... Tom Sizemore sure talks about the river a lot... SJP invites Bruce to the Policeman's Ball, which seems like a great place for him to be beaten to a pulp, which he is. Angry cops conveniently tear off his shirt, exposing him sexily. Tom Sizemore drinks heavily while a fireworks display goes off over his head. This one cop who hates Bruce the most is the guy who played the studio head in THE PLAYER.

Can't think of his name. But boy does he hate Bruce Willis. ... SJP pours Bruce's booze down the sink. She doesn't even know him! That's presumptuous. She hasn't even seen him drunk. I don't even think he's BEEN drunk in this movie (?), though the angriest cop calls him a "lush" once. ... Bruce Willis's cat watches as Bruce and SJP express themselves with an intimacy that is usually reserved for the conjugal bower. The cat seems bored. But POV suggests a creepy killer is probably watching too! ... Ha ha, now SJP and Bruce are chasing a car, but they're in a boat! This doesn't seem practical. THIRD FIREBALL. One hour, seven minutes in. ... It is suddenly revealed that Sarah Jessica Parker's character has a daughter... NAMED SARAH. ... Bruce just had the hoary old line, "I don't know how high up this goes." Dennis Farina: "He's been under surveillance for three weeks." Guy from The Player: "CLOSE surveillance?" Ha ha ha, I don't know why that exchange made me laugh so hard. I guess it was the way the guy said "CLOSE surveillance?" But it's clear that SJP has been spying on Bruce! NOW who's the rat? "Thank you very much, detective, you may step down," says Andre Braugher in that super sarcastic way that only Andre Braugher can deliver! He's not thanking the detective at all! Bruce Willis's cat is hungry. "Go catch a rat," says Bruce Willis to his cat. Ironic!... Somebody's "dead in the water." Literally! I can't tell who it is, even though Bruce is saying "NOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!" But then again I thought that pirate's tattoo was a neckerchief. ... Bruce Willis thinks Tom Sizemore is the killer. I guess he's not so smart after all. Well! The killer is Cousin Jimmy! He ain't dead! I think Cousin Jimmy is the guy who was in MURPHY BROWN. The killer is the dude from MURPHY BROWN! I think. A guy from MURPHY BROWN killed a guy from FRASIER! What's the world coming to? "Are you too proud to drink with a dead man?" - Cousin Jimmy. I'm going to start saying that at bars. That guy's hair! The guy from MURPHY BROWN. He seriously looks worse than Donald Trump. Plus he's a psychotic murderer. Oh, wait! Dennis Farina killed Frasier's dad. So never mind. Ha ha, SJP just stuck out her foot and tripped the guy from MURPHY BROWN. Boat chase! Foot chase! We're back on the bridge. "You'll never beat me!" screams the guy from MURPHY BROWN at Bruce Willis. So I wonder who's going to win! Underwater fight! Lots of bubbles when you're fighting underwater. ... The angriest cop admits he was wrong. Bruce Willis punches him. SJP runs up. They smooch. Flowers on a grave. We see SJP's alleged daughter for the first time. They're all at the cemetery together like a regular family. THE END.

Witch Wigglers

FIRST OF ALL. Jake did NOT mention Jerry Lewis on ADVENTURE TIME tonight, but "alternative comics" icon Gilbert Hernandez had him doing just that in the original version of the outline that eventually became the episode "Mama Said." I was disappointed that Jerry didn't make the final board! And now, BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE WRITERS ROOM: We got stuck around Act Three, I mean, sitting there with serious looks on our faces saying things like, "What does the giant mushroom WANT?" And it was slowing work to something less than a crawl. As a way of getting ourselves over the hump, we started typing in some bellowing dialogue, all caps, just as a placeholder, to give ourselves permission to see how the rest of the story played out, and the mushroom was saying "Things a Mushroom Might Say" (as they would have put it on the $10,000 Pyramid): like, "I HAVE LOTS OF VITAMIN B!" Well, Kent and I saw that this was really cracking Pen up, so we just starting piling on more to make him laugh, and Pen got into it and pretty soon we were looking up mushrooms on the "internet" and typing big, bellowing statements about them in all caps. And it was making us laugh even harder because we imagined trying to convince Kelsey Grammer to do the richly bellowing mushroom voice (as far as I know, that was never seriously considered, and I have no idea who ended up doing such a fine job). Long story short, we never did figure out what the mushroom wanted. But that little exercise loosened us up and freed us to finish the story. That's either a valuable writing lesson or a cautionary tale. So the "placeholders" became the thing itself. So when someone listened to a mix of the episode and said, "That dialogue made me think of Michael Kupperman," I reacted with surprise and horror! Because as a writer you never want to accidentally step on the other guy's territory - especially so in this case, because I am Michael's friend AND biggest fan. I realized they were talking about Snake 'n' Bacon, a couple of Michael's characters. Bacon is a strip of bacon who can only speak in bacon facts. So you can see the connection, which escaped us at the time. So promise me something! Help me pay proper tribute to Michael by buying one of his books today. His books literally make me cry with laughter, as I have mentioned here many times before. If you enjoy crying, please do as I say. Oh yeah! One more thing I just realized as I was watching: I got to use my trusty copy of OZARK MAGIC AND FOLKLORE by Vance Randolph to research dowsing rods for this episode. A lot of that didn't make the final cut either, but it was still fun to research: another good (?) writing tip... research is fun even if you don't use all of it! "These characters are called water witches or witch wigglers, and the forked switches they carry are called witch sticks," writes Vance Randolph.

Kingdom of the Grackles

I keep hinting around about some project like it's some big secret, but it's not a secret and it's not a secret project, it's just a project, I guess it's a project. Hey! Remember when I went to an auction of Bob Hope's personal effects and then I wrote an essay about Bob Hope's ice buckets, and ice buckets in general, for THE ATLANTIC, and this was before the "Ice Bucket Challenge" became popular (remember the "Ice Bucket Challenge"?) so now my article is totally obsolete? Well, that essay series is related to a series of books that Bloomsbury is putting out and they asked me if I could think of an object I wanted to write about - another object - and I scratched my head and said "Cigarette lighters?" And looking back, I think I only said that because I had a lot of leftover notes about Bob Hope's cigarette lighters. But anyway, now I am writing a book about cigarette lighters and that is my so-called "secret project." So I flew to Oklahoma City to view a large private collection of cigarette lighters. (The lighters are actually in nearby Guthrie.) But I'm not going to tell you about that or it would spoil the book! Ha ha, you're not going to read that book, are you? TELL ME THE TRUTH! But here, let me look at my famous little notebook of famous jottings I always famously jot when I travel and see how many jottings are useless for the book and thus safe for me to share. Well! As always the question was what to read on the airplane. I looked around the shelves here at home and I just wasn't feeling anything. So I went to Square Books and leafed through Martin Short's autobiography again. I would never buy Martin Short's autobiography! I don't know why! Sorry, Martin Short! I like Martin Short. And I'd sit in a bookstore and read his autobiography for free - no better than a thief! - but I just can't make myself buy it. On the cover of his autobiography his head forms the "O" in "SHORT." But! His mouth is wide open, so maybe his mouth is the "O" in "SHORT." Or maybe his head is the solid part of the "O" and his mouth is the emptiness in the middle of the "O." I read some stuff about how he met Danny Thomas and Danny Thomas always carried a pistol in a holster on his hip! And then I put Martin Short's autobiography back in its proper place and went upstairs and started looking for a small paperback suitable for airplane reading. As I described some of my likings to the booksellers Kate and Kaitlyn, Kate exclaimed, "Do you like vampires?" Now, there is no way that Kate could have known I am currently working on a Marceline story for ADVENTURE TIME - a meeting about which story was to take place later that very afternoon! - so vampires and all their peculiar habits had been particularly on my mind.

(That's not a spoiler, is it? You know Marceline the Vampire Queen is a character on the show, right? Besides, Adam Muto himself recently tweeted these drawings of Marceline from the thing we've been working on - sketches by Hanna K.) So Kate and Kaitlyn tried to get me to buy a book called THE QUICK by Lauren Owen. "I'm a hundred pages in and there are no vampires yet," said Kaitlyn. I replied that that was fine. I reminded Kaitlyn of a book I had recommended to her, THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters, and how you had to wait a long time for the ghost, and Kaitlyn said, "There ARE NO GHOSTS in THE LITTLE STRANGER!" (This is an argument I've had before with other people.) So Kaitlyn and I argued about that in a friendly fashion while Kate thrust the vampire book into my hand. A big clunky hardback! Too big and heavy to carry through airports with my fragile arms. But I opened it up to page one just to be nice and the first sentence is this: "There were owls in the nursery when James was a boy." AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! So I said, "Sold!" And I left Square Books fully convinced that I would grit my teeth and lug this monster of a novel (523 pages, that's not so terrible) onto all the airplanes. BUT! I stopped by Ace Atkins's office and he had a nice, light paperback copy of LABRAVA by Elmore Leonard on his desk because he had been wanting me to read it. Ah, that's more like it. Sorry, Kaitlyn and Kate! But you almost had me. The vampires will be here for me when I get back. Ace urged me to stay at the Skirvin in Oklahoma City (he was there a lot when he was researching his Machine Gun Kelly book). Ace said the Skirvin was famous for being haunted and he sent me a New York Times article (!) about how professional basketball players who stay at the Skirvin get most especially haunted (!!). But I had already made reservations somewhere else. Ace also told me about a good steak place, but I had already - on Wright Thompson's recommendation - made reservations at Junior's, which Wright described in a tweet as an "old school 80s oil money cocaine rich dark red leather whiskey and T-bone joint."

And yes, that was a recommendation! So I guess my unintended message to Ace was "Screw your thoughtful suggestions!" Though I did bring that book he loaned me. I looked up the Oklahoma City weather on the "internet" and asked Dr. Theresa if she thought I should bring my overcoat. I wanted her to say no! We had an overcoat debate. Then it was time for my ADVENTURE TIME meeting. Kent popped up on my computer screen and started agreeing with Dr. Theresa! They were ganging up on me. But I didn't want to drag my bulky overcoat through the airport. Finally, Pen joined the meeting. "How many degrees should it be before I wear an overcoat?" I asked him. "Overcoats are fun, so I say any degrees," Pen replied. I explained that I prefer to travel light. One carry-on messenger bag, one book, and the clothes on my back! That's it! Pen suggested turning the overcoat into a hobo bindle and putting all my stuff in it. I said, "Yes, that's what they like to see at airports." When Pen found out I would ALSO be wearing my blue smoking jacket (under the OVERcoat) he had second thoughts and came around to my side! "I've seen Pen walking around with no jacket when it's FREEZING!" Kent objected, hinting that Pen was no judge of when to wear an overcoat. Now let's get to the jottings you've been craving. I'm skipping some good stuff because I'm tired. Too bad for you. 1. Went to Junior's on my first night in town, just as Wright had suggested. The cab driver, Cecil, took me past a strange building. I couldn't get a really good look - it was a pale, imposing lump in the dark - but I was intrigued enough to ask him what it was. Cecil said it was the "Gold Dome," a vestige of the glory days of Route 66. Cecil also mentioned the "Milk Bottle Building," but I didn't see that and don't know what it is.

I was reminded of the only other time I've been through Oklahoma City. It must have been 1988 or so. I got fired from my job and my friend Tony and I decided to drive across the country, often sticking to the old Route 66. When we drove through Oklahoma City it was literally covered in a white fog, the whole city. We didn't see a single thing. I later turned that incident into a short story for the fine Oklahoma literary magazine THIS LAND. We pulled up at Junior's. It appeared to be an office building! I walked into a sterile corridor with many doors and wasn't even sure I had the right place: it looked like the door to a dentist office waiting room. But as soon as I opened it up I was in Narnia! I literally walked into a different world. (I may as well mention here that Junior's was the second Oklahoma City restaurant I had walked into with "NO WEAPONS" etched in frosted glass at the entrance.) 2. That publicity picture earlier in this "post" can't do Junior's justice. I felt like I was in VERTIGO, TWIN PEAKS, THE SHINING and a Megan Abbott novel,

all in the best way, and I ate a princely meal that James Garner would have eaten in THE WHEELER DEALERS. 3. My table! They put me at a weird table, which felt like the best table in the house to me. It was a two-top nudged right up against a plate glass window, and on the other side of that window, inches from my left, was the blackness, flecked with gold and red, of a dark bar, with people wearing bolo ties and fur stoles and laughing and SMOKING! It was like a membrane through which I could see another time, and because it was soundproofed it really had the effect of a dream, a thin membrane providing a tempting glimpse of a whole other existence I could almost reach out and touch. 4. After dinner I had to go through that looking glass. It smelled like smoke! I never wanted to leave. 5. I spilled rye all over Ace's copy of LABRAVA. 6. I met three nice women who were out for a night on the town together. One was a realtor, one was an aspiring poet and one was drinking expensive cabernet and studying from an enormous textbook entitled HUMAN ANATOMY at the end of the bar! 7. The next day I went out to Guthrie to visit my contact with the lighter collection. I hired a driver named David to take me. He was born in Ethiopia. He said he works at the Skirvin a lot and Ace will be pleased to hear that he brought up the ghosts. Many of David's passengers have told him about being haunted at the Skirvin. David thinks it's a bunch of baloney. He doesn't believe in ghosts. He is a believer in science and evidence. He had a lot of very interesting psychological theories to explain why and how people fool themselves into thinking they see ghosts at the Skirvin. David's a big reader so we talked about books a lot and he told me interesting stories of his mother and father back in Ethiopia. 8. I can't tell you anything about the lighters because I'm saving it for my book. But I just stared at one of my notes ("Frankenstein nose" is all it said) for several minutes in total panic, thinking, "Oh my God! My notes are useless! I can't write this book!" But then I realized it was "Frankenstein noise." One of the lighters made a noise like the machines that brought Frankenstein's monster to life in the old movie. That's what that note meant. And that's all you're getting out of me! 9. My friends Sarah Marine and her husband Bayard Godsave live in a small town an hour away from Oklahoma City and they were nice enough to come all that way to meet me for dinner. As I stood outside the hotel waiting for them I saw a large group of young women approaching from a nearby park. Their leader was wearing a tiara and a satiny black sash! But they turned the corner before they got to me and I could not read the sash. It was not a parade of any kind, just an informal gathering or stroll with a tiara and sash. 10. Like Dr. Theresa and myself, Sarah Marine and Bayard are early diners. So early, in fact, that the restaurant wasn't open when we got there. We had some minutes to wait. Sarah Marine suddenly realized that we were very close to the memorial for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. So we walked over there and it was a very moving and deeply solemn place to be. I heard a solitary bird make a an eerie and prehistoric but, I thought, weirdly beautiful sound. 11. Sarah Marine pointed out the bird in its tree and told me it was a grackle. 12. Boy, let me tell you, Sarah Marine is down on grackles. "They don't fly, they run," she said disdainfully. "But that one is in a tree," I said. Sarah Marine said, "I'm talking about the REAL grackles, the parking lot grackles." She said no two grackles look alike, they're all ragged and mangy in different ways, missing different feathers, slovenly, and she seemed to resent the grackle in the tree as a poser, I guess, a pretentious grackle that thought he was too damn good to represent his squalid kind. And yet I detected no affection for the punk grackles she apparently considered more authentic. She talked about a grackle standing on a corner gnawing on a chicken bone. She saw this same grackle eating discarded chicken wings in an ugly way in the same spot on two separate occasions!

Bayard kind of tried to take up for the grackles a little bit, but had to admit that they stand around chewing on cigarette butts. Bayard and Sarah Marine quoted an ornithologist who hates grackles. An ornithologist! (More on this later.) I could not help but recall the poor cormorant, and that book I have about how everybody hates cormorants. 13. Bayard, on grackles: "Our friend says they look like gasoline." Sarah Marine: "They're shimmery." Bayard: "They're the color of gasoline in a puddle." I must say all of this sounded kind of exotic and tantalizing to me, but Sarah Marine would have none of my sympathetic grackle talk. Sarah Marine: "They sound like something broken." Bayard: "A broken toy." Sarah Marine: "A broken toy of nightmares." I remarked that I kind of liked the way that one grackle sounded. "You haven't heard them when they start grinding," said Sarah Marine. 14. It's a cliché, but the walk back to the restaurant in the gathering darkness took on a Hitchcockian feeling as grackles gathered all around us - I guess I should call them a "flock" but they seemed more like a swarm or a horde - numberless grackles! - and they did make an uncanny racket, and it may have been terrible, but it struck me as unearthly, and for that reason kind of thrilling. INTERESTING SIDE NOTE! Just before I hit the button to publish this "post" I received an email from Sarah Marine: "I'd been thinking that as we stood at the edge of the glimmering reflecting pool at the Oklahoma City Federal Building Memorial, I may have been unfair to the grackle in my musings. Then, I pulled Fifty Common Birds of Oklahoma by the ornithologist George Miksch Sutton off the bookshelf & again feel mostly disgust and pity for the Common Grackle. I've attached a section from the entry on the Common Grackle. Sorry, not sorry, grackles!"

15. At dinner, Sarah Marine told me there's a statue of James Garner in Norman, Oklahoma, and the waitress said, "It's all covered in flowers now," referring to Mr. Garner's fairly recent passing. 16. The restaurant music (before it shifted to "Tears For Fears" mode a bit later in the evening) consisted of popular tunes with a "surf guitar" twist. The theme from GOLDFINGER was one. I mentioned that it was Dr. Theresa's go-to karaoke number. Bayard asked whether I had ever seen the FRASIER episode when Frasier and Niles sing "Goldfinger." I had to say no! Bayard said that the old piano player in the episode can only play "Goldfinger." With Martin's encouragement, Frasier and Niles sing along - reluctantly at first, but with growing enthusiasm. That sounded like a good one! I was sorry not to recall it. I mentioned an episode of FRASIER that had recently disturbed and troubled me and Sarah Marine said, "I have a problem with an entire era of FRASIER." We discussed it. "Why did they give Daphne bangs?" is one thing that Sarah Marine asked plaintively. 17. Sarah Marine said their hometown consisted of "a grain elevator and an intersection." Bayard added, "We have a liquor store that sells Samurai swords." 18. The bottled water in my hotel room had a Bible verse printed next to the expiration date! Not the whole verse, just a citation: "John 5:15." I made a note to myself to look it up in my Geneva Bible when I got home and see what it's all about. "The man departed, and told the Jewes that it was Jesus, which had made him whole." Hmm. Gee. That's what it said on my bottled water! 19. David drove me to the airport the next day and proved himself once again a delightfully wide-ranging conversationalist. He had much of interest to say on the subjects of Christopher Hitchens, Agatha Christie, Karl Marx, Field Marshal Rommel, asceticism, tribalism, and democracy. He was proud that Ethiopia (which he called "the second oldest Christian country in the world," and gave me some history on that) had never been colonized. He told about having to kill goats and oxen as a young man and how his people hardly ever eat a female animal - they eat the rooster, for example, instead of the chicken. "Meat is for rich people," he said. He described being a poor child and - as a kind of entertainment - watching strangers eat meat. "That was our window shopping," he said. 20. I forgot to tell you about the earthquakes! I wasn't in one. But when I was looking at the lighter collection, the collector showed me where several of his lighters had fallen and some had been damaged, and he said, "That's what happens with the earthquakes. We had five earthquakes last week." I think that's what he said. It was something like that. I haven't transcribed the recordings yet. But he is 82, and I thought maybe it was just a strange hyperbolic thing that an 82-year-old man might say. On the drive back to the city, I asked David whether Oklahoma City has a lot of earthquakes and he said, "We had 4,000 earthquakes last year." WHAT! I haven't looked up anything to corroborate that, but Megan sent me an article from THE ATLANTIC detailing a large number of earthquakes in Oklahoma. I didn't see a number so mind-boggling as 4,000 (I haven't looked into it very carefully) but the article did mention a single recent weekend in which Oklahoma had SEVEN EARTHQUAKES! Seven earthquakes in one weekend, I said! David says that the oil men try to tell everybody it's just nature at work, but David knows it's the fracking. 21. Announcement at the Oklahoma airport: "Will the passenger who left the big bag of money at the eastern checkpoint please come get it." 22. "He told Cundo, watching him pick at his cole slaw, he ate like a ******** owl." - LABRAVA