Sizzling Celebrity Gossip

Fred Willard is going over to JoAnne Worley's house for dinner tonight. How do I know? Ruth Buzzi's twitter account! That's it for today's edition of "Sizzling Celebrity Gossip." Goodbye forever. No, wait, there's more. I like following Ruth Buzzi on twitter! She lives in Texas now and often "posts" pictures of her horses and cats. Sometimes her friends and neighbors come over, like Willie Nelson and Van Cliburn, who is still alive. She uses contemporary slang (like "swag" in its most current sense) then turns around and talks about old-timey things like telephone party lines. I love her! Say, did you know I wrote the musical score to a feature film that Fred Willard was in? It's true! That's a "blog" "fact" you can "clip and save"! (Pictured, Ruth Buzzi, Goldie Hawn, and Henry Gibson.)

Literary Matters

Time once again for "Literary Matters" - terrible, horrible literary matters. Nobody likes literary matters but they keep happening anyway. Today we have a quartet of literary matters. That's fancy talk for "four"! 1) George Singleton writes in - spurred by the recent sad news - to say that a few weeks ago - before the sad news! - he was on a panel and an audience member asked him to name his biggest influence. He said Henry Gibson. "And it's true," Singleton avows. "I started writing little poems after watching that genius on Laugh-In... Who needs Faulkner?" 2) I picked up a big old sackful of books at a Little Rock used bookstore called River City Books & Gifts. One thing was a first edition of THE NEPHEW by James Purdy. At the top of page 1, some helpful person has scrawled a message in pencil: "THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE." Another thing was THE LORE OF THE UNICORN by Odell Shepard, so expect even more unicorn lore than usual! The NBIL will be glad to hear that Chapter Two is all about the unicorn as it appears in the Bible. Mr. Shepard writes a lot of things like, "If we were concerned in this book with the unicorn itself rather than with unicorn lore there could be no excuse for having postponed for so long the question concerning the animal's actuality." 3) I believe this is a literary matter because it concerns the book that McNeil and I intend never to write. An article in yesterday's New York Times ponders "what Herbert Marcuse called 'repressive desublimation,' which reroutes unruly and rebellious instinctual energies into politically harmless sybaritic indulgence, escapist entertainment and spiritual delusion." And I was like, okay, but the title of our book ("Hipster Hegemony," which refers to the same phenomenon) is a lot catchier than "repressive desublimation," though that's not going to stop me from saying "repressive desublimation" ALL THE TIME! (Once again, credit for the term "hipster hegemony" goes to our friend DJ Gnosis.) 4) This is from a blurb (by Benjamin Kunkel) on the back of a Robert Walser novel: "When Walser met Lenin in Zurich during the war, all he had to say was 'So you, too, like fruitcake?'" First, I love a blurb with an anecdote in it. Second, it reminds me so much of the single remark that James Joyce passed with Marcel Proust. Goodbye from your dreaded "Literary Matters."

Henry Gibson In Heaven

(This picture makes me think of Henry Gibson in Heaven.)

Your Jerry Roundup

Time once again for Your Jerry Roundup. This is when the Jerry references begin to accumulate. First, the sad part of Your Jerry Roundup. Jerry is mentioned in the New York Times obituary of Henry Gibson as the man who gave Mr. Gibson his break in the movies. (E-mail from Mark Childress on the subject of Henry Gibson: "If, like me, you loved him as Haven Hamilton in 'Nashville,' then you will probably also not be able to forget him holding up his little flower on Laugh-In.") Now for the mysterious part of Your Jerry Roundup. A nice person on the twitter told me that the CIA had a hand in the editing of a Jerry Lewis movie! It's true, people! Here is the article, if you care to "click." The movie in question was the Martin & Lewis vehicle MONEY FROM HOME, and the scene removed by an "operative" who was "planted... inside Paramount Pictures" sounds truly awful, so maybe they're not so bad after all. You know I am a HUGE fan of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, right? I even OWN a copy of MONEY FROM HOME. But let me tell you, in this case I don't think the CIA went far enough. There were a few other scenes they might have trimmed while they were in there, that's all I'm saying. Not because of any political content... just as a favor.

Gibson

Henry Gibson died, reports the New York Times. I was always happy to see him on the screen. He was one of my favorite actors. He wasn't in enough movies. Henry Gibson was menacing, witty, pompous, or gentle, depending on the role. Underrated I think, but I hope not. Always something going on behind his eyes. Mainly, he was funny. Henry Gibson! For him, as for the mutant grasshopper, a new picture. Hey, I just "clicked" on the NYT obituary (by William Grimes) and it says what I said, except better: "In repose, his face had a sneakily bland expression that served him well. It could express pure innocence, bewilderment, fatuous self-delusion, a puckish sense of mischief or Machiavellian duplicity." Hey everybody, don't forget Henry Gibson!

Fate of the Lost Saucer

The "blog" has received what we can only describe as a piece of "fan mail," though this surely means a horrible mistake has been made somewhere down the line. The person who sent the letter, one James Sepsey, though unknown to us, seems very nice, and certainly his interests align with those of the "blog," as you will see in the following excerpt, which features a celebrity cameo from someone who, like Lily Tomlin, Goldie Hawn, Henry Gibson, and many other "blog" "faves," was a cast member of the TV show LAUGH-IN. And now, we give you, in his own words, "blog" "fan" James Sepsey: "You are probably wondering how your tribute to Warren Oates ('An Ode to Warren Oates'; Oxford American, issue 53), a Thomas McGuane novel, and a Julio Cortazar short-story collection have all led me to a long-lost treasure. I myself can’t believe it. But here’s briefly what happened. I was holding in my hand the other day the Criterion Collection edition of Two-Lane Blacktop, trying to justify its $39.99 price tag... Anyway, I then remembered how you had mentioned (in your ode) how Warren Oates had starred in 92 in the Shade, which reminded me how I had once bought that very novel. So I vowed right there to go home and finally read that novel... Well, as I’m looking for McGuane’s novel in my bookcase, I see a piece of paper sticking out of Julio Cortazar’s Blow-Up and Other Stories, which happens to be next to the McGuane novel, for whatever reason. The paper is sort of yellowed, with 'To James' in cursive along the top. I pull it out of the book, look at the signature, and lo and behold if it isn’t Ruth Buzzi’s autograph! From 2002! AWOL six years! I had the good fortune of speaking with Ruth Buzzi one day while I was working at [here Sepsey names a mammoth book chain; we delete it in honor of your local independent bookstore. This implies no judgment of Mr. Sepsey! We all have to make a living! I myself have stooped much lower! - ed.]. We talked for over an hour. And you might not know this but it was Jim Nabors who wanted to cease production of The Lost Saucer – not some [drug reference deleted - ed.] television executive. (Do you recall the show?) [Yes! - ed.] Well, Miss Buzzi told me, 'I said to Jim: "Jim, let’s do it for the kids. This is for the kids."' I nearly cried. Sadly she didn’t whack me with her purse or anything, but I did get to see and touch her credit card – which actually says Ruth Buzzi."