Names

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

Abalone Biscuit Stick

1. McNeil dreamed - shortly before I left for Burbank on a bureaucratic mission that would stun and bore you - that I was transformed into a toddler and Donald Trump hand-fed me a biscuit. I did not report the dream at the time because I was about to leave on my trip and it struck me as a dream of ill-omen, best blocked out of my mind until my safe return. 2. I know you want to know what book I read on the airplane. Well, you're going to be so glad you asked. See, I had this one Virginia Woolf novel all picked out. It was the right size for the airplane. The content, delightful though I am sure it would have turned out to be, was of secondary interest. You see, I like to print out my boarding passes and slip them between the back cover and last page of whatever book I am reading on the airplane, and I don't like it if the edges of the boarding passes stick out too much. My boarding passes are printed on letter-sized sheets of paper, which I fold over once, maintaining the creaseless integrity of the printed matter. I told you you'd be glad you asked! Let's move to a new numbered section as I explain why I print out my boarding passes rather than checking in via an app on my phone. 3. My phone is too old! It rejects the app! 4. Anyway, I'm going to quote an email from Jimmy Cajoleas now. I don't think Jimmy will mind. "[Have you] read Water Margin? I'm halfway through the Sidney Shapiro translation (he calls it Outlaws of the Marsh) and I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever read in my life." 5. That made me remember I have a copy of that very translation! When I go to bed at night, I often lie on my side facing a bookcase where, as I recline in that position, Outlaws of the Marsh finds itself in my eyeline. I bought it in 2007, I think, and never opened it. And just about every night I look at it from bed and think, "Will I ever read that? I certainly doubt it! It's in a cardboard box containing four volumes!" I bought it at Square Books because when we first moved to Oxford, we had some people over for dinner, and one of them was teaching it in a class, and I got so excited hearing about Outlaws of the Marsh that I ran out and bought it and didn't open it for almost 20 years. So, the night before my flight, I separated Volume 1 from its cardboard-bound brethren. Though it is part of a larger set, the first book is the size of an old-timey mass-market paperback, hardly sufficient for securing my boarding pass in the required fashion. This was a new experience for me. Just when I thought I had done it all in this old world. Walking around with most of my boarding pass sticking out! Like some kind of hippie! 6. My seatmate on the airplane saw my iPod. Unlike the last person who saw my iPod on an airplane, she was not impressed. She said, "My husband has one of those and it drives me crazy." She didn't say why. 7. On a more positive note, she announced that she was from the same town as the woman who wrote the book THE EGG AND I, and she knew the descendants of the book's characters. She couldn't remember the name of the female lead in the movie version and I blew her freaking mind by saying "Claudette Colbert." Anyway, she was saying that Ma and Pa Kettle (supporting characters in the movie) were real people and I speculated that later movies about Ma and Pa Kettle (are you still reading this?), such as MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, were probably not based on true stories, as they were about fanciful things like winning a trip to Hawaii in an advertising slogan contest. Anyway, I don't have time to explain Ma and Pa Kettle to you. I "posted" a publicity still of them above, and I'll let that do the work. The important thing is that despite my know-it-all attitude about Claudette Colbert there is no movie called MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, as I learned when I looked it up minutes ago. It's called MA AND PA KETTLE AT WAIKIKI. And they're just working on a pineapple farm in that one! They didn't win a contest, as I needlessly misinformed my seatmate. Further research (WHY?) led me to discover that Pa Kettle does compose a prize-winning jingle in MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN. And that is the story of how all the Ma and Pa Kettle movies I watched as a kid eventually got mixed up in my head. Most of all, I was shocked to learn that Ma and Pa Kettle were from this woman's hometown in the state of Washington! I don't know where I assumed they were from, but it wasn't there. Sadly, we must now move on from Ma and Pa Kettle. I know you're disappointed. 8. My Uber driver's wife makes a living singing the national anthem at sporting events! You'd think he would have an interesting story about how someone gets into that line of work, but he didn't. 9. I broke my glasses. 10. I saw Kate, who brought with her a treat from Hong Kong: abalone-and-oyster-sauce flavored "biscuit sticks" (the latter two words in English on the box). They were thin, crispy little sticks and I could eat them all day. Savory, with, as Kate remarked, a little of the sweetness of the abalone coming through. 11. She also brought something from a side-trip to Japan: a sake-flavored Kit Kat bar. We tried that, too, and it made us want to throw up. 12. I ran into Cole Sanchez, who remarked, of my shirt, "Do we have the same shirt?" (He was not wearing the shirt - let me be clear: he was wearing a shirt, just not that one - but yes, it did turn out he had the same shirt at home.) Now, you must know, in order to truly appreciate this story, that we consulted Cole while writing the sartorially concerned Adventure Time episode "Bespoken For," because he is a stylish man who knows everything about clothes. So hearing that Cole and I have the same shirt made it a big night for me. I was telling everyone who would listen, "Cole and I have the same shirt!" Cole went home and rethought his life. 13. At the departure gate for my trip home, I sat next to a Pepsi vending machine. A man came and stood in front of it and coughed down into my face a couple of times. He stood in front of the Pepsi machine for five minutes, examining the various Pepsi products on display. Then he walked away, never to be seen again. 14. Dolph Lundgren is on my flight! Yeah! He's speaking Swedish! In the middle of a Swedish phrase, I hear him say "tough guys" in English. I thought, "If anything bad happens on this flight, he'll save us!" Dolph Lundgren's drink of choice? Cranberry juice. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was doing some kind of seated shadow boxing. His feet were subtly and elegantly "dancing," as I believe it's called in the boxing ring, as he cast some punches toward the seat back in front of him. He put on his shades before shadow boxing. "I'm living in paradise!" I jotted in my jotting book. The very sweet flight attendant, Diana by name, turned out to be a Dolph Lundgren fanatic, and addressed him with such giddy enthusiasm as the plane began its descent, to which he responded in such a cheerful and gracious manner, that I felt emboldened to turn around and tell him that he had given me confidence and peace in case of emergency.

The Toastmaster Who Wasn't There

Now, how was Ace to know of my disenchantment, or whatever it is, with the idea of the Oscars? So he casually mentioned that he thought Conan O'Brien did a good job. "Well, we'll see about that!" I thought with churlish... I don't have a good noun to finish that sentence. The adjective churlish stopped my brain! So I scurried around on the "internet" like a little rat and watched a couple of minutes of Conan O'Brien doing his monologue. In my foul mood, I couldn't concentrate on his razor-sharp wit or whatever everybody thinks it is. All I noticed was how he amateurishly clapped his hands together every 10 seconds. He didn't know he was doing it! Such was my interpretation. His body was out of his control! And so on. Such was the content of my bitter thoughts. So I used email, the old person's medium, to craft a sentence only a 200-year-old man could appreciate: "All I’m saying is you wouldn’t see Bob Hope clapping his hands together every 10 seconds like the toastmaster at the Kiwanis Club." Ace responded that the Kiwanis make excellent pancake breakfasts and have programs to help children in need. So I really felt like a jerk after that. After some thought, I realized what a few of my problems were, and I encapsulated them thusly: "Once I was in a play and someone videotaped it, and when I watched the videotape I was horrified to see that I was involuntarily and unconsciously clapping my hands together every 10 seconds for no discernible reason. Conan's only real crime was reminding me of my own many failures! Also, I picked the Kiwanis Club at random, assuming they were a generic men's fraternal organization such as Fred Flintstone used to belong to. I didn't know anything about them! I should have turned the merciless spotlight on myself, not on the innocent members of the Kiwanis Club! I don't even know if they have toastmasters!" It was like when the guy in MULHOLLAND DR. (above) said "There is no band." That is, there was no toastmaster. Or to paraphrase Stanley Kubrick, I have always been the toastmaster. It's like in ANGEL HEART when... never mind. I don't want to spoil ANGEL HEART for you. I know you've been meaning to get around to it. Similar to the plot of that one Dan Duryea movie of which I can't recall the title. Wait! BLACK ANGEL. Why do they all have angel in the title? Let's forget it. Please join us tomorrow, when we start over with a clean slate, beginning with McNeil's revelation of some startling theological insights. I'm unemployed. PS The toastmaster I'm imagining wouldn't clap his hands together every 10 seconds anyway. He'd be gripping the podium in white-knuckled terror.

No One Is Talking

Well, it was back in December when my enormously popular yet mysteriously obscure feature ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, on the "web" site Flaming Hydra, came to its gently burbling conclusion. I can't say that I was inundated with cards and letters asking me what might come next. In fact, the query was raised by no one, nor was the finale itself a source of rueful celebration. The subject of the column in question, of course, was my friend and neighbor Ace Atkins, in particular his work on the Pauly Shore film JURY DUTY. And something did come next! That something was, and is, KENT GOES TO CHELMSFORD, the thrilling story of how Kent Osborne got cast in the starmaking Brendan Fraser vehicle SCHOOL TIES, which I believe came out within a year of Pauly Shore's JURY DUTY. We're already on Episode 3 of KENT GOES TO CHELMSFORD! Which I only mention because Kent talks about eating chicken in Episode 3 and, as you know, I have kept a careful tally here on the "blog" of Kent's chicken-eating activities, insofar as they relate to me personally... it would not be within the scope of even our mightiest computer systems to maintain a record of every time Kent eats chicken, which he does with neither remorse nor surcease. He's probably eating a chicken right now! If one were to "click" on the proper "hyperlink" shortly to come, one would find that the chicken in Episode 3 of KENT GOES TO CHELMSFORD is Chicken Française... a spoiler in which I do not mind indulging as I thought you might like to know that Chicken Française is the same thing as Chicken French, to which I was introduced by James Whorton in Brockport, NY, a stone's throw from Chicken French's place of origin, Rochester. If I recall correctly, Jim told me that he had originally (and wrongly) assumed the name "Chicken French" had something to do with French's brand mustard, the French's Mustard company, it may shock and delight you to learn, having historical ties to Rochester! What a world. On that same trip, Jim fed me something called a "garbage plate," an incident fictionalized in a story of which I could not remember the title as I tossed and turned last night, contemplating "blogging" about it upon awakening, which, as you can see, I have done. Anyhow, the story about the garbage plate appeared in the Hingston & Olsen SHORT STORY ADVENT CALENDAR for 2019 and it was titled, as I just confirmed, "The Wild Man of Mississippi." Who cares? Nobody! Which was my original point. For example, I have also heard literally nothing about Frowny 'n' Smiley, my big hit characters who made their debut on Adult Swim around the same time that ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD came to its sputtering halt. I was told recently - without asking! - that Frowny 'n' Smiley are "in rotation," but the only true evidence I have for their existence is in the commercial breaks for the BEHIND THE ELEPHANT special that I recorded off the TV one morning some hours before sunrise. I have had no verification of a Frowny 'n' Smiley sighting from any independent source, and the chances are good everything is a delusion. Yes, everything.

Victory Through Insomnia

So the Million Dollar Book Club chose J Dilla as our current subject - specifically, DILLA TIME by Dan Charnas. Hey! Before I go on with the really exciting part of whether or not this book has an owl in it (it does), I want to tell you about buying it. So... whenever I'm in Los Angeles I like to stop by a bookstore (usually Skylight) and if I find some nice things, I have them shipped to me so I won't have to carry them on an airplane. You can't get content like this anywhere else, folks! Anyway, I hadn't had time to visit a bookstore, but on my last night in town I was set to have dinner with Ashly Burch and Mort Burke way out in Culver City. And I was like, "Hey, if I get there early, are there any bookstores close to the restaurant?" And Ashly recommended a place called Village Well Books. So, I got there early, and I had a long time to poke around, and the longer I poke around, the more books I buy. On this occasion, one of those books was DILLA TIME. And, as usual, I had the books shipped to me. But guess what? They never showed up! And here's the part of the story where I really have to thank the good people at Village Well Books. They completely replaced my order for free! Even though the fault lay with the USPS, as I mention reluctantly, because most of the time they're on the ball, out there carrying stuff around so we don't have to. But what was I talking about? Oh yes. It will come as no great shock to you that J Dilla is described as a "night owl." Wait! I thought of something else! So, Mort and Ashly and I go to this sushi place and Ashly says, "I've never been here before." And I say, "It seems familiar." And Mort says, yes, we've all been there before, together... when it was a DIFFERENT sushi place where Ashly had never been before! A different sushi place in the same location. And both times, to be clear, Ashly said "I've never been here before." And in a way, she was right. Wow, this is amazing stuff. Oh. So the reason you will not be shocked that J Dilla is described as a "night owl" is because a lot of the people we read about in the Million Dollar Book Club are described as "night owls." So many, in fact, that I am beginning to think that if you want to be the kind of successful figure who gets a book written about you, you need to stop sleeping right now.

Frivolity When the Earth Is Swallowed Up

This is where I tell you about my trip to Burbank. 1. On the flight out, my seatmate had a sweet dog companion seemingly smuggled under his hoodie. I don't know about dogs. I believe this one was a boxer. But I just don't know. I can't swear to it in a court of law! The dog had one blue eye and one brown eye. It would arise from the neck hole of the hoodie and look at me with a nice expression. Sometimes, due to the angle of its owner, it looked like a human with a dog's head! When the guy got up to go to the restroom, he stuffed the dog into a duffel bag. The dog was fine. 2. Layover at the Salt Lake City airport! This story just gets better and better, doesn't it? So, a booming voice on the public address system repeatedly gave out the first, middle, and last name of a guy who had walked out on his check at an airport restaurant. It was an old-school public shaming... Cotton Mather style! I realize that by mentioning Cotton Mather, I may have confused you geographically. I don't know enough about Brigham Young to know whether he would have made an appropriate replacement in my already shaky allusion. 3. Okay, on the next airplane, a guy across the aisle was scrolling through pictures on his phone and narrating to his friend: "This is a salad bar... that's another salad bar..." Ha ha, anyway, I thought that was funny. They were looking at photos of salad bars! It's a crazy world! 4. BURBANK! Kent was in town, too, and we were both staying in the same hotel. As we rode back to the hotel from Dan Tana's, Kent spied a DeLorean pulling into traffic behind us. He was pretty stoked, I don't mind telling you! He kept saying, "It's a DeLorean! Look, it's a DeLorean! It's right behind us. The DeLorean is right behind us!" But I don't know why, I never turned around to look at the DeLorean. It was just like when Kent begged me to watch Mark McGwire break a home run record and I coldly refused. We'll never know what's wrong with me. 5. On one menu, I briefly misread "scallion" as "sea lion." 6. Kate Tsang and I spent a good part of one afternoon just wandering around in the impossibly vast Warner Brothers prop department. People were working, loading props on carts to be taken to various sets. We just stayed out of their way. No one hassled us. In fact, one man cheerfully asked if we needed anything. We said we were just looking. Then we ended up in some odd corners, such as a section containing many kinds of animals who had been subjected to taxidermy. I have never enjoyed the thought of taxidermy. But here's Kate. She notices that some of the animals are falling apart. She dates them for me to the time "when Theodore Roosevelt was shooting animals" because they were stuffed with straw... a discontinued practice, Kate gave me to understand. I was standing there thinking, like, "Wow, Kate sure knows a lot about taxidermy!" Which reminds me of something: 7. I ran into Steve Wolfhard completely unexpectedly! Somehow we got to talking about the movie THE SEA HAWK and I mentioned how much I enjoyed the monkey's performance in that film. Steve said the monkey made him sad. I got it! I feel the same way about taxidermy. I said, "Were you thinking about the monkey's home life?" And Steve said... I think I have this right... "I was thinking, 'That could have been me!'" Trying to show Steve that I was on his side about being sad concerning monkeys, I said I didn't like it when monkeys were made to ride dogs. Steve said, "Maybe the monkey likes it. Maybe he likes going fast." 8. Oh! Before I get back to the prop department, I should say that when I arrived at the gate into Warner Brothers, I was greeted by a young, groovy guard, not an irascible old guard of the type the movies have trained me to expect. So, when Kate and I entered the parking garage over near the prop department, an irascible old guard really didn't want to let us in. At last, he asked us for identification, and that's when I discovered MY DRIVER'S LICENSE WAS MISSING! I bet you didn't know you were in for thrills like this. Anyhow, it turned out the groovy young guard forgot to include it when he handed me back everything I had taken out of my pockets for him. And I didn't notice! So I'm not blaming the hipsters of today for falling down on the job! BUT! If that hardboiled old-school guard hadn't been so stereotypically irascible, I might never have been allowed to leave Burbank! I might be sitting in a small room at the Burbank airport right now! So, thank you, hateful old guard. 9. Well, I can't really describe how satisfying it was to wander around the prop department with Kate. I don't know - though I suspect there's a Warholian element - why it is so wonderful to look at, just for example, a wall full of rotary phones arranged by color, or a shelf of hundreds of miniature Statues of Liberty, or boxes and boxes of beauty products from the 40s and 50s, or the long row of toilets, of which (the toilets) I sent a photo to just one person: Ace Atkins. Kate and I stayed in the prop department so long that they were closing up. We didn't know it. We just kept trying to get out and finding nothing but locked doors. We could have been trapped forever! Who was going to help us? Not the irascible guard! He would probably think we were getting what we deserved. Then we found a different kind of door: a door that was not locked. 10. Kate and I walked a few short steps from the Warner Brothers lot to the Smoke House, where we dined with one Adam Muto. Now that I can't eat steak anymore because of wanting to stay alive, I was excited to order the chicken pot pie. You know the one! The one that Pen and I saw once! The one as big around as a manhole cover! But friends, I am here to inform you they have taken it off the menu. The server told me that one time... just one time... they had put it back on the menu for a special occasion. But that time is gone forever. We live in new times now. He was very nice, and couldn't have known he was breaking my heart. 11. Reading Seneca's NATURAL QUESTIONS while taking my blood pressure in my hotel room, I laughed when he observed, "Frivolity when the earth is swallowed up shows a lack of serious-mindedness." He was angry at Ovid for beautifully describing an apocalyptic flood but then adding the image of wolves and sheep and lions swimming around in it. "Come on, Ovid! Get real! As if!" Such seemed to be the contents of Seneca's objections. 12. Quinn took me to a place that featured on its menu something called a "Good Ass Salad." Such language! Is that how you get your kicks? Forcing someone's great-grandmother to say the words "good ass salad"? This great-grandmother I'm imagining can't silently point at the item on the menu with her quaking, palsied finger! Thoughts along these lines led me to confess to Quinn that I have been saying "ass" on the "blog" a lot lately. Quinn said, "Oh, Jack, Bart Simpson could say 'ass' in the 90s." She might not have said "Oh, Jack." 13. It was raining the morning I left for home. Kate had said just a day or two before, "It never rains here." But there it was, falling from the sky, the tears of the gods as I like to call it. At a stoplight on the way to the airport, I saw a driver sticking his hand out the window, eager to discover for himself what this thing they call a raindrop must feel like. His beaming grin indicated that he was pleased with the result!

The Bolger Assertion

Hey, the other day, the ninth episode of ACE GOES HOLLYWOOD "dropped," as you kids like to say. You say it all the time! I can just hear you now, saying it. How I hate you! Where was I? You remember ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. It's where, on the "web" site FLAMING HYDRA, I converse with Ace Atkins about his time working on the Pauly Shore film JURY DUTY. But today I was thinking not about the latest episode, but episode 6, in which Ace mentions Sammy Davis Jr. and I demand that he explain to the reader, if any, who Sammy Davis Jr. is. Ace doesn't think it's necessary. That's when I say, quote, "I told you, I work with kids that never heard of CHEERS! Which is fine. Why should they? You know what? It’s time for me to die anyway." To which Ace wisely replies, "Well, we gotta finish this first." You'll see the connection soon enough. Connection to what? Leave me alone! So, I've been reading a book about ancient Greece, but I'm not going to name it, because I'm enjoying it, but it's going to seem like I'm being peevish and critical when I say things like it seems to be written for people who have never read a book before. Like the author will interject - and this will be a paraphrase, but I wouldn't call it an exaggeration - "The ancient Greeks didn't have online banking like you and me!" Okay. Maybe she's being welcoming and chummy, and what's wrong with that? I'm the real monster here. We all know that. But late in the book she starts a sentence this way, and this is an exact quotation: "As Ray Bolger sang..." WHAT! It has the feeling, again, of being an attempt to draw in the reader cozily, conversationally, but WHAT! Not even I would start a sentence "As Ray Bolger sang..." and I've seen a lot of Ray Bolger movies. More than you have! I've seen more Ray Bolger movies than Ray Bolger ever did! And look. She's not even talking about THE WIZARD OF OZ. She's talking about something called "The Churkendoose." The Churkendoose! And here's where you smugly inform me that you know everything about the Churkendoose, and everybody knows about it, and you've thought about the Churkendoose every day of your life for as long as you can remember, and I'm the last person on earth who doesn't know about the Churkendoose. It's like the time I was so excited to see wild turkeys (of which the Churkendoose is a close relation!) and everybody got together to pee on my happiness. I'm just saying the hip kids of today aren't Ray Bolger experts. Or maybe they are! But I think maybe you're pushing them away! Hey! Remember the time I read a long, serious book about Hinduism and the author almost immediately quoted Garrison Keillor? Anyway, the Churkendoose came out as a book in 1946, and Ray Bolger croaked his way through the musical adaptation in 1947. Or, as A.I. so helpfully informed me (without me asking!), it was "first published in 2003."

A True Story of Real Life

The other day I had to, in the words of Kool Moe Dee, "go see the doctor," but, let me emphasize, not for the reasons put forth in that work. Anyway, having recently finished off a couple of smaller books, all the books I took up subsequently are gigantic monsters, impossible to sit with in a waiting room without making an unseemly spectacle of one's self. So I plucked a manageable book from my big pile of books to pluck, and it happened to be RUN MAN RUN by Chester Himes, which I found at Skylight Books on my most recent visit to Los Angeles, California. So I started reading it while I waited to see the doctor and then, to use a well-worn phrase, I "couldn't put it down." So, last night, just near the end, there came a "replica of an owl's head" where I least expected it... on the butt of a gun! That's the end of my story.

Pioneers of Not Caring

By now you know the time-worn old story - nay, legend! - of how Ace Atkins drove up one fine day to Memphis, Tennessee, and I rode along with my handy digital recorder and interviewed him about the time he went to Hollywood to work on a Pauly Shore movie. Well, sir, I promised not to bother you about it very much, and I do think I have lived up to my word. But! Just the other day, right here on the old "blog," I was lamenting our relative lack of monkeys as of late. And that is why I feel obliged to tell you that baby chimpanzees figure prominently in the latest installment of ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD on the "web" site FLAMING HYDRA. Sure, I've told you about MY baby chimpanzee encounter before ("click" here - you won't! Ugh! Why are you so awful? Have you ever asked yourself?) but did you know about ACE'S encounter with a baby chimpanzee? I'll wager you did not. Who are you? And why do I hate you so much? In conclusion, I know that chimpanzees are not monkeys, and I don't care. I'm famous now for not caring about anything - it's my brand! - but not caring that chimpanzees are not monkeys is something I was doing years ago. I cut my not-caring teeth on the difference between monkeys and chimpanzees! I also don't care that I said "in conclusion" but now I'm going to talk about something else. I also don't care that I'm writing, not "talking." Anyway, speaking of Hollywood, USA, a (formerly) secret project I've been working on got written up in VARIETY. I just wanted to make a correction. Kent and I are referred to in the article as "game masters," when everyone on the show, including ourselves, calls us "gamekeepers," a humbler and more fitting title. Do I seem to care about this one thing? I don't care if I do!

Famous Cats of Mississippi

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

Nine Years in the Making

Hey look everybody, I haven't bothered you too much about ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, the exciting multi-part interview I did with Ace Atkins about his work on the Pauly Shore magnum opus JURY DUTY, have I? Tell me the truth! But! Back in 2016, I did tease you with a few details of the time Ace was Abe Vigoda's hand double during that production. Well, I'm happy (?) to announce that Episode 4 of ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD is now available ("click" here), and I was finally able to dig up even more details of the "Abe Vigoda incident," a phrase I just now decided to put quotation marks around. If you think about it, a mere shift from B to C, already so close together in the alphabet, turns Abe into Ace. Think about it! You can find every episode of ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD as it becomes available on my convenient "linktree" thingamabob.

Per Se

So anyway you know I quit social media because I never stop yammering about it. Quitting social media means that a lot of times I don't know what anyone is doing, not that it's any of my beeswax. Like, I text Megan something about Kafka's diaries, and she texts back that she's behind on her reading because she and Bill and Jimmy are at the movie theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested, watching BLOOD SIMPLE. (To be clear, they're watching BLOOD SIMPLE in the current day, it wasn't on the bill when Oswald was arrested, as it came out many years later.) And I am like, mentally, "!!!" Because I didn't see that coming, "that" being Megan and Bill and Jimmy watching BLOOD SIMPLE in the theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Oddly, I was thinking about Lee Harvey Oswald yesterday, before getting that text, because I searched the "blog" to see if I had ever before mentioned Harvey comics, which, to my astonishment, I had not. I kept turning up allusions to Oswald as I searched. I've mentioned several Harvey comics characters here, but not, apparently, the Harvey comics brand per se, before yesterday. Isn't that something? And that reminded me of the time I went to the Dreamworks offices - they own the Harvey characters, or did at the time - and pitched my idea for a show, a show that both embraced and mocked the concept of the "gritty reboot." It had all your favorite Harvey characters, and all your least favorites, every Harvey character I could think of, even such misbegotten creatures as Baby Huey and Sad Sack! Except each and every one of them had been aged up into their 20s (of course, Sad Sack was a soldier and looked fairly haggard; I may have aged him down!) and they were all brooding and sulking and hot and tormented. The hook, which I still think is pretty good, was that Casper starts out the show as a regular guy, but midway through the first season, he's murdered! And that's how he becomes the friendly ghost. Who was I telling about this recently? It must have been Quinn. And I was saying that Richie Rich is in a coma, that's the big reveal at the end of Season 1. Everyone thinks he's running the town as a notorious recluse, but his evil butler Cadbury (not evil in the Harvey comics!) is keeping him incapacitated and... oh, who cares? But Quinn was like, "His spirit could be roaming around like in the movie JUST LIKE HEAVEN!" (I paraphrase. Also, that's a big spoiler for JUST LIKE HEAVEN, sorry. I really am sorry, because it works better if you don't know.) And I was like (responding to Quinn's idea), "No way! That doesn't correspond with my artistic vision!" But now that I've thought of it some more, it's fine. It's a good idea, Quinn! But I guess we wouldn't find out until Season 2. None of it matters, because the meeting was all "Ha ha ha! Wonderful idea! We'll talk soon! You're going to be a big man in this town! You're going to be running this dump one day! We love you! Let's get married! Hooray! Hooray!" and then... nothing. (Hey, that was only eight years ago, maybe they're still thinking about it.) Well, we're getting off the subject, which is that I googled it and found out that Bill and Jimmy and Megan were in Dallas for a festival put on by the Southwest Review. So when I "clicked" on the "web" site of that fine publication, I found an awesome interview that Mary Miller did with hero Lynda Barry! (You can read it, and you should, by "clicking" here.) I didn't know Mary Miller loved Lynda Barry so much! Or it's equally possible that I knew and forgot. But you know what? None of this is why I thought I was obliged to "blog" today. See, I accidentally read a New York Times op-ed that had one of those awful, cloying titles that usually warns me to skip it. But I read it for some reason, and it reminded me that THE GREAT GATSBY has a character in it to whom our narrator Nick refers at one point as "Owl Eyes." So THE GREAT GATSBY has an owl in it. I was like, "So what? My 'blog' readers will never know if I just fail to mention it." But my conscience overwhelmed me! And I knew that even though I read THE GREAT GATSBY many, many, many, many, many years ago, long before I cared (and eventually stopped caring) that every book has an owl in it, I was bound by honor to tell you that THE GREAT GATSBY has an owl in it. My life is a prison I've built for myself!

Art

When Quinn visited, we spent some hours in a coffee shop doodling aimlessly as I breathed in the Covid germs that would soon lay low my household. Anyway, whilst in the midst of doodling in the tragic manner thusly described, I produced this great work of art (above) - art! it thrives in times of adversity (Dr. Theresa and Lee Durkee and I debated this point while eating sushi the other night; Dr. Theresa and Lee were on the side of art, while I held a contrary view regarding its usefulness)! -, which, as you can see (go back and find the subject of this sentence if you can), Quinn wisely framed upon her return to Los Angeles for the edification (the art was) of her cat Gino. It represents Casper and his cousin (?) Spooky, who, if memory serves, and it probably doesn't, was branded by Harvey comics (the latter was) as "the tuff li'l ghost," but I'm not going to look it up because I don't care about looking things up anymore, or about anything else either. Except! Speaking of my lucrative new career in the visual arts, remember how I told you about an art show I'm going to be in and then I listed all the other people who have previously appeared on the "blog" who will also be in the art show, but I wasn't sure I had caught them all? Well, the other day I looked again, and Ako Castuera is right at the top of the list! How could I have missed her? How could have I missed her when she was right there at the top of the list where she belongs?

Domes

Last night, Dr. Theresa and I watched FORBIDDEN PLANET - her idea, not that it matters. And now she wants to watch PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES! I ventured that that one would pair well with ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, which I kept suggesting during the Halloween season, but she never quite came around on it. Looks like the winds of change are shifting, though! Just like Bob Dylan said. Sort of. But that's not why I'm here! I just wanted to say that, having been thoroughly conditioned by McNeil's obsession with decorative obelisks in movies, I could not help but note that Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) has a groovy space obelisk in his funky alien living room. You can see it in the image above, which I captured from our TV screen. The obelisk in question sits roughly at his left elbow (his left, your right!). As I cleverly remarked to Dr. Theresa, the exterior of his home resembles Devo's headquarters on Sunset Blvd. As proof, I took out my phone and showed her a photo of the latter building, because that's what we do now as a people, we see things that look like other things and then we take out our phones and find pictures to show people who maybe care and maybe don't. AND! Although you can't tell it from the image above, Dr. Morbius seems to share an interior decorator with Jerry Lewis. Oh! The appearance of Robby the Robot here reminds me of a chapter of SOUR BLUEBERRIES, the novel I deleted from the "internet" when I guess I was "going through some things." A "fictional character" (me?) brings up FORBIDDEN PLANET and another character says "It's boring. I hate it." Then he says that Robby the Robot is no B-9 from LOST IN SPACE. I, I mean, "Chet" naively asks if they aren't exactly the same, at which point, to quote the novel, "'No. Their domes are completely different,' said Jay. He started drawing their domes so Chet could compare B-9’s acceptable dome to Robby the Robot’s dome worthy only of hate." You know what, "Jay"? Last night I really enjoyed watching Robby's robot brains kind of whirling around in his head like he was the Glass Cat from the Oz series of novels. Oh, wait, that reminds me, I also wanted to tell Oz fan Laura Lippman (no monkey fan) that FORBIDDEN PLANET has a monkey in it!

The Last Patty Melt

I see that word has gotten out about MYSTERY CUDDLERS, a pilot created and written by Pen - that's Pendleton Ward! - and me for Adult Swim. They're going to be airing it in the wee small hours of the 19th, as Frank Sinatra would have said, probably, had he been informed of the matter. As I know from reading a biography of Dean Martin, he (Frank's friend Dean) was up at that hour, watching cowboy movies. Dino couldn't sleep! I would be afraid I had just alienated the potential audience if I didn't know for sure that the people who read this "blog" don't exist. So it's going to be on at 3 AM ET, according to the Adult Swim schedule, or 4 AM, according to other places on the "internet," so you'd best cover your bets. Just like Dean Martin would do, I'm assuming, though I'm not even sure what "cover your bets" means. But here I am sitting on all the most important parts! MYSTERY CUDDLERS has an amazing cast we were lucky to get, including Pam Grier and Randall Park as the eponymous cuddlers. Elsewhere in the cast, Maria Bamford! Michael Winslow of POLICE ACADEMY fame! (We wrote a part especially for him. Then we were like, "What if he can't do it???" but he could.) Brian Posehn! "Weird Al" Yankovic! A little kid named Maverick! That's his real name! I consider Maverick my personal discovery. And the boarders! I didn't discover them. They have already been discovered. Another crew of your dreams! Charmaine Verhagen! Graham Falk! Evan Borja! And Pen himself. Yes, yes, now it can be revealed, it was Pen with whom I went to Bob's Big Boy in May of 2023, after a meeting kicking it all off. There I consumed perhaps my final patty melt, given recent... events. It was good! Oh yeah, and the music is by Joe Wong! To the show, not to the patty melt. Though if Joe wanted to, he could write a good tone poem evoking a patty melt. Looking over my ancient emails I see that interest in MYSTERY CUDDLERS was proclaimed by the network in July 2022, and you know what? From what I've noticed about this business - ha ha! I have noticed almost nothing about this business - this all seems like really fast work (I was just in Los Angeles a few weeks ago for the final sound mix!) and I'm really happy you'll get to see it soon. Everybody who worked on it is great and nice and easy to work with and I hope you will scrutinize the credits frame by frame and appreciate everyone you find there and I'm very sorry that I'm far too lazy to type a complete list here. Wait! Maybe I meant "hedge your bets." POSTSCRIPT! It's definitely 4 AM Eastern/3 AM Central. You see, Adult Swim's "web" site was sneakily, if efficiently, pitying me as a pathetic inhabitant of the Central Time Zone, and automatically updating my "browsing" experience to reflect my location... which I guess it is tracking, and no doubt handing over to the proper authortities.

Butter Knife

Attention! My friend Sarah will appear in this "post." I happened to notice yesterday - Sarah would never mention it herself; she's too nice! - that I've been dropping the h from her name for how long? Months? Longer? I have decided to investigate no further. But I did want to record my shame here for all to see. Now we may move to happier matters. It's back! The precious little jotting book has been removed from its mothball-filled cedar chest. Now that I have stopped pretending to stop "blogging," I am allowed to take said jotting book with me to Los Angeles, California, and, upon my return, to transcribe my jotted experiences into the form of little numbered jottings. 1. Ace Atkins printed out my boarding passes for me! He said he had left them in his mailbox, and I was concerned, having noticed on our many walks around the neighborhood as we exchange wise thoughts, that the door had fallen off of Ace's mailbox. What if my boarding passes were to blow away in a gentle breeze? I discovered, however, upon my arrival, that Ace has a BRAND NEW MAILBOX! This is the biggest thing to happen in the neighborhood for years. And it reminded me that Dr. Theresa and I had driven past Tom Franklin's house not that long before, and I had admired their sleek, modernistic mailbox. I couldn't decide whether it was new or if I had simply never noticed it before. One day, I vowed, I'll get to the bottom of this! But such thoughts would have to wait, for I was on my way! To wherever I was going. 2. My chosen reading material for the airplane: NIGHTWOOD by Djuna Barnes. My friend Eugene recommended it. He's been dead for 26 years, but I finally got around to it! 3. The new jotting book has an interesting flap on it that it is not within my writerly powers to describe correctly. It also has a built-in ribbon bookmark, burnt orange in color. 4. So, we stayed at the Peabody in Memphis the night before my trip, because the plane left so damn early. Pardon my language! Anyway, I knew I would be rising before the Peabody started serving breakfast, so I ordered a pot of coffee the night before, thinking to down it cold in the morning. Guess what? When I poured a cup, 10 hours after having received it, the coffee was STILL WARM! Here's to the magic coffee pots of the Peabody Hotel. 5. I admit to eating half a Biscoff, my favorite airplane cookie, to help with my fear of flying... the first cookie or sweet of any kind in which I've indulged since the fun little medical incident I enjoyed in March. The king of cookies! The mighty Biscoff. 6. Should I boast that my old iPod is still working hard and well to provide my inflight entertainment? I seem to be listening to a version of "I Love How You Love Me" featuring bagpipes. I jotted as much during the flight. Only when the plane landed did a guy sitting behind me and across the aisle lean forward to ask if he had seen with his own eyes an actual iPod. I was proud to extol its existence, longevity, usefulness, and capacity. He was happy to hear it. 6. I found a Burbank hotel in which my accommodations included a full kitchen - you see, ever since my little medical hiccup, in which part of my human mind was zapped (despite my decision not to investigate further, I did investigate further, and, as I feared, I started dropping the h in Sarah around that point), it is much better if I cook for myself. But the full kitchen did not include any knives of a sufficent sharpness for the necessities of ordinary meal prep. Friends, that is how I ended up cutting up shallots with a butter knife! Let me tell you, it is no easy thing, attacking a shallot with a butter knife, even though a shallot presents itself as a small and tender thing. But don't we all? (See also.) 7. Stopped by the front desk in the morning to see where to get coffee. The "night auditor," as he called himself, was still on duty, a jovial man named Randy. When he asked if I had received my 10% off coupon to the restaurant, and I replied that I had not, he exclaimed, "What the devil!" which I found charming. The way he said "I'm Randy!" was reminiscent, without any of the unsettling atmospherics, of the way Steve Buscemi says "I'm Chet!" in BARTON FINK. 8. When I went to get coffee and asked about a kitchen knife, the server explained that they don't allow sharp things in the rooms. Hmm! She, like Randy, was very nice, and said they would cook anything I wanted, off the menu, to my specifications, so I wouldn't have to stand there brutally murdering a shallot with a butter knife like a chump. Her name was Lourdes, which I found to be a cool name, especially as I was sitting there reading a discussion of miracles in NIGHTWOOD. 9. Not until I returned to the room did I notice for the first time that it was decorated with a large photograph of Jayne Mansfield carrying Bob Hope down some steps (see above)! My powers of observation! They have never been great. 10. Saw a crow in a palm tree but failed to get a decent pic. 11. Elizabeth Ito brought me an illicit steak knife! Which I smuggled into the room, wrapped in a dishcloth (the steak knife was, not I). Elizabeth and I wound up in a photo booth. 12. In NIGHTWOOD: "He'll look as distressed as an owl tied up in a muffler." There! Unlike smiling or drunken owls, this is the type of owl comparison I can understand! Although I cannot approve of the owl treatment described.

13. I met Quinn's cat. He looked like a tiny human person! 14. Met Ashly Burch in Beverly Hills, where I was given a fork with a dramatically bent prong with which to eat my egg whites. No, it wasn't some sort of fancy Beverly Hills utensil for eating rarefied egg whites, it was just a peculiarly, even obscenely destroyed fork (see evidence below) and the egg place just didn't give a damn, presumably. I defiantly swallowed my eggs with the aid of the monstrous fork! You know, and this is true, the last time I ate with Ashly Burch, in January of 2022, as I sat on a wooden bench waiting for my "ride share" to arrive to take me to a fine sushi dinner, I glanced over and saw a fork lying there on the arm of the bench! I took a photo of it at the time, and no doubt shared it on "social media," but I see that it is no longer in my phone, so you'll just have to take my word for it, as I have quit "social media" to the acclaim of millions. What I am saying is that every time I eat with Ashly Burch, there is something weird about a fork. About the bent fork, I made a Uri Geller joke, prefacing it, or softening the blow, by saying, "Now, if I were Dennis Miller, I might say..." and also adding the caveat that Ashly Burch would have no idea what I was talking about when I presently mentioned Uri Geller, which turned out to be true, but she laughed anyway, because she is so nice. Later, I described the incident to Joe Wong, who said I had not really imitated Dennis Miller, because there were not enough allusions to obscure celebrities in my remark. So I gamely tried again, saying, "Looks like Uri Geller and the Amazing Kreskin had a brunch date, cha cha," which Joe kindly deemed passable, though I had added but one allusion. Or maybe "brunch" is an allusion of some kind to something or another. 15. That night, Kate was giving me a ride and I said, "I remember these seat covers!" She has these sheepskin (?) seat covers in her car. Kate laughed and said, "They're old!" She told me I was sitting on the same seat cover where Stan Lee had once parked his bony ass, though she didn't use such crude language, and neither would I, so I don't know what happened just now. Anyhow, it reminded me of the time ("click" here) that Kelly Hogan once touched William Faulkner's buttocks through the very fabric of time itself. I felt the power of Stan Lee's butt! 16. They have spectacular grocery-store brand frozen mango in California. Look, frozen fruits are part of my medically induced breakfast ritual now, okay? So Sarah with an h took me to the grocery store and I was walking around pouting and crying and knocking over huge pyramids of canned goods, as I believe happens in THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY and maybe BACHELOR IN PARADISE???? I am exaggerating my reaction to Sarah's favorite grocery store, but I really was going around saying, yeah, so what? We have these same eggs in Mississippi! And so on. But now I publicly admit that grocery-store brand frozen mango in California is plucked at the peak of flavor and texture. The stuff I'm getting here at home just doesn't measure up! 17. Going home, my inflight screen prominently announced BATMAN RETURNS as an entertainment choice and I felt it was a sign, because I had just been praising that film to Ashly AND Kate AND Adam on my exciting trip. Man, I was ready to watch it. It really struck me as the perfect airplane movie. But the screen was broken! The flight attendant, a very nice person named Davi, showed me that the kids' entertainment selection was working, anyway. "Wallace and Gromit are funny," she assured me, which might be true, I guess, but who cares? Wallace and Gromit can go to hell! I'll tell you what she did, though. I couldn't get my phone to connect to the wifi, so she entered her own password to give me special flight-attendant access to whatever the hell I was doing. I ended up watching Chaplin's A WOMAN OF PARIS, because my headphones didn't fit my phone, and a silent feature seemed to be a good option. 18. I had purposely arranged a 4-hour layover in Atlanta for reasons best left unexplored. 19. As the plane descended, the guy next to me asked if we were landing in Atlanta, which I thought was a funny question from a person on an airplane, but I said yes. 20. As I was leaving Cat Cora's airport restaurant, where the service was excellent - thank you, Ana and Winsome! (That's right, Winsome, another cool name... to Sarah, yes, Ana had but the one n in her name, I checked) - a guy stopped me and said he was a missionary. He said he could sense with his missionary powers (though he didn't put it that way) that I had had some health issues recently and he wanted to pray for me. He might have said "over" me. I said, "You can pray for me later, but I have a plane to catch now." He said it would take 10 seconds. I said all right. Wait! I should mention he was wearing a shirt that said "Fudgie Wudgie" on it. I asked him what "Fudgie Wudgie" meant. He said he was a chocolatier as well as a missionary. I said okay. He prayed over me as advertised. Then he said, "I can see the Holy Spirit all over you." I said thanks.

The Thing McNeil Hates

Welcome once again to "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," your online "hot spot" for all the action! If that action involves McNeil reading a 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart. Here, I'm just going to cut-and-paste McNeil's recent email, as I am extremely lazy: "I'm finally getting back to this Bogart book, and it does the thing I hate - which is mention someone who was a 'longtime friend,' but who has not been mentioned before. This is page 427! If you can devote page after page to the bellhop of some NY hotel, I think a longtime friend would have come up by now. What else has been left out? Who knows. I give up on the world and its false promises." (I believe the bellhop in question was employed by a Los Angeles hotel, I emerge from my coma to editorialize.)

McNeil's Shimmering Li'l Bogie Bits

The new month I promised you is already upon us, and that means it's time for an exciting new installment of "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," this one cut-and-pasted directly from an email that McNeil sent me! "Bogie moves out of the house he shares with Mayo and checks into room 207 of the Beverly Hills Hotel - a small room just off the lobby. He orders ice, a glass, a bottle of beer, and hands the bellhop (Ken Leffers) a nickel tip." End of bogie bit. But! I do have a couple of questions, and when McNeil answers them, I'll let you know. 1. What year was this? And how much, then, would a nickel be in today's money? I guess that counts as a two-part question. And here is my second question. 2. How long was Humphrey Bogart married to Mayo Methot? Because we can't be very far into the bogie bits, can we? To put it another way, how far along is McNeil in the 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart from which he gleans his precious, shimmering bits?

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits: No. 8 in a Continuing Series

Welcome back to "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," the only place on God's whole wide "internet" for all the latest, littlest bogie bits! McNeil recently read about Humphrey Bogart being stabbed in the back by his wife, which reminded him of the time - as reported by this very "blog"! - that John Wayne pulled an apple corer out of Bogart's - or "Bogie's" - back. Now, is the incident mentioned by McNeil the same one previously remarked upon? Well, there are similarities and discrepancies. The weapon in question, for example, is a knife in McNeil's telling, not the more anecdotally colorful apple corer put forth by Scott Eyman in his Wayne biography. Furthermore, to quote McNeil's paraphrase of the Bogie bio he is reading, the wound was "patched up by a doctor who would do such things on the QT for $500," not extracted by a movie cowboy in a bar! I got my John Wayne book off the shelf and cross-referenced a few things. First, yes, in "both" cases (or the single case, as it may be), it was Bogart's wife Mayo Methot who did the stabbin'. (This reminds me of the only good advice I ever gave a student, back when I was teaching. She announced that she was hitchhiking across the country with a kitchen knife for protection, and I said, "You need a stabbin' knife." Now you understand why I'm not teaching anymore. I suggested something with a serrated edge, as I recall. To be clear, if such a thing is possible now, this was after she had insisted that nothing I could say would dissuade her from her plan.) The Wayne bio contains compelling details, such as the name of the restaurant into which Bogart wandered with something sticking out of his back (Eugene's, which was on the Sunset Strip), and the name of the maitre d' (Al Murphy) who didn't want to let Bogart in because he owed the place $600. In perhaps the most telling detail of all, after Wayne removes the apple corer (putting "his foot on Bogart's back for leverage"), he takes Bogart "to the hospital to get stitched up." Now, this could be where the biographies converge. The book McNeil is reading even includes the name of the family friend (Mary Baker) who recommended the shady doctor. Both versions seem so plausible! I suppose we may conclude that they are describing the same event, unless Mayo Methot stabbed Humphrey Bogart on two separate occasions, once with an apple corer and once with a plain old knife. Now, is this unlikely? Or is it likely that if your beloved sweetheart stabs you in the back once with one thing, she might stab you on another occasion with some other kind of thing? I have no statistics on that. In the end, maybe if you choose to believe it was an apple corer or a knife tells a lot about what kind of person you are. Like one of those "personality quizzes"! One thing is for sure: there's always plenty to ponder when you get stabbed figuratively in the brain with another episode of "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits"!

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.