McNeil Absolved of Blasphemy

1. We drove down to visit my parents. We got a rental car with some of that sweet, sweet satellite radio we have learned to enjoy. So I turn it on and here comes "American Pie," Dr. Theresa's least favorite song. When he sang "Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry," Dr. Theresa said, "Drive it in! You can't drive it fast enough for me!" Ouch! Later, I was thinking, hey, shouldn't a levee be dry anyway? Isn't it supposed to keep the water out? I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my idle musing. So, anyway, changing the selection before Dr. Theresa could explode, I noticed that one of the preset stations specialized in bluegrass. "Did you set this to bluegrass?" I asked with obvious astonishment. Dr. Theresa's response, which was not exactly an answer, was something like, "What's wrong with bluegrass?" The answer is nothing. There is nothing wrong with bluegrass. But when I put it on the bluegrass channel, Dr. Theresa made me change it again because bluegrass, according to her, "sounds like they did a bunch of coke." An exact quotation! 2. My dad goes to a particular Waffle House every Saturday morning with a collection of his cronies. Dad said that someone who lives next door to this Waffle House keeps chickens, and the chickens wander over and hang out in the parking lot. People feed them. It's all part of the experience. I was of course reminded of the Original Frosty Mug, and the chickens that used to peck around your feet while you tried to drink a milkshake. I wondered glumly and aloud whether the Original Frosty Mug could possibly still be open for business seeing as how the interstate has been improved - quite a few years ago now - to bypass the town. Dad said there was a new chicken at the Waffle House. I asked him how he knew it was new. He said it had "different feathers and a different attitude." He described it as a "quick-acting, small chicken who didn't know the procedure." Quote! 3. While visiting down there on the Gulf Coast, I received an email from McNeil, indicating that he had received his copy of the Apocryphal Gospels. He waited so long for it that I was sure he would be disappointed, but such did not appear to be the case, as McNeil remarked gleefully that Young Jesus should have been sent to military school. I do not consider this blasphemy, given the apocryphal nature of the text. 4. As we began our departure from the Gulf Coast by way of the Dauphin Island Bridge, I was given to remark, "Pelicans are cool. You know, they got their big old mouths." QUOTE! I thought I could put that line in an upcoming unpublished novel. Speaking of my unpublished novels, I'll have something else to say about them below. 5. I accidentally left my hat at my parents' house! It was a nice hat I bought at a shop in Pasadena recommended by Adam Muto. I wore it to the racetrack with Pen! If I ever want my hat back, I guess I'll have to visit my parents again. 6. While down there, I received texts from Megan on the evening she attended Wallace Shawn's new play. She has a good story about all that, but I shan't share it here as it is hers alone. But I will tell you this! When I got home, I was reading the New York Times... and look, I skipped the New York Times a couple of days while traveling. Was it a relief? I think it was! But now I'm back to reading the New York Times and I see a review of Wallace Shawn's new play. And here, I'll quote a little bit from the review, which observes of one character, "given his ontological understanding of the Big Bang, all action is preordained." So! I have a character in one of my unpublished novels who thinks the same thing! And I was like, oh no, people will think I am trying to rip off Wallace Shawn in the unlikely event my unpublished novel is ever published! So I sent Megan an excerpt of my novel, to get her opinion about whether or not people in this highly improbable future I have imagined will think I'm trying to rip off Wallace Shawn. Here, I'll share a small portion of the chapter I sent Megan: "Everything was made of molecules! Every single thing that ever happened was because of a couple of molecules banging into one another, causing the creation of the universe itself, in Gram Rattan’s understanding. Everything that happened after that was just more and more molecules banging around. Even the thoughts in Gram Rattan’s head! ... Molecules obeying immutable laws! That first molecule hitting that second molecule, well, that was the only thing that had ever really 'happened' in Gram Rattan’s opinion. The rest was gravy." So anyway, Megan told me that in the Wallace Shawn play, the moment must have passed so subtly she barely noticed it. I paraphrase. Anyhow, we can all breathe a sigh of relief! 7. You know who plays the "Big Bang Guy," as I call him, in Wallace Shawn's play? John Early! He was in an episode of SUMMER CAMP ISLAND I worked on! And Wallace Shawn was on ADVENTURE TIME! I'm not 100% sure, but I think maybe he was on SUMMER CAMP ISLAND as well. Anyway, based on a profile I read of him in the New York Times, he would love it if you went up and shouted that fact in his face, especially if he happened to be standing in a "temple of art." According to the New York Times, if there is one thing Wallace Shawn can't get enough of, it is standing around in a "temple of art." 8. You know I don't care to lug a big fat book with me when I travel. So I left Witold Gombrowicz at home. Upon my return, I opened it up and the first thing I read was "God, allow me to vomit up the human body!" Ha ha. You had to be there. That's old Gomby for you. Funny, I was already thinking of him as "old Gomby" when Megan texted, referring to him as "Gommy." I bet he would love it! As much as Wallace Shawn would love to be told by strangers on the street that when he was on ADVENTURE TIME, his character farted.

Oedipus Merch Table

Well, Megan and I had been talking about OEDIPUS a lot because what else were we going to talk about? And then she went to see a big production of it in New York. And then she mailed me a souvenir t-shirt from it. And then I thought about the Oedipus merch table, and everyone lining up to get their Oedipus merch.

I Take It Back

Well, old Joaquim Maria de Assis really taught me a lesson. He has become one of my favorite writers, through the lens of his translators Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. So, you remember how I was passive-aggressively griping like a little sniveling coward about William Maxwell writing a jewel-like novella that is 20% (at least!) from a dog's point of view? So what do you think? Last night I'm reading de Assis's QUINCAS BORBA, and I hit page 43, and I say, wait! Is some of this from a dog's point of view? But! In the next paragraph, de Assis addresses his readers' concerns and says he knows what we're thinking, that, to paraphrase, nobody wants to read something from a dog's point of view. Then he makes his beautiful justification! "Yet the truth is that this eye" (the dog's eye, that is), "which from time to time opens and stares so expressively into space, seems to speak of something that shines deep within, hidden behind something else I cannot put a name to, something that, while it is intrinsically canine, is neither tail nor ears. Oh, the poverty of human language!" I love it. It almost made me ashamed. But 20% is a lot! I'll be surprised if de Assis spends over 1% of his efforts on the dog's point of view. Anyway, it reminded me that I was on a podcast a few weeks ago (it hasn't been released yet) and said a lot of indefinsible things that just kept spewing out of my mouth, including (and I think I'm quoting myself correctly) that "writing is one of the least dangerous professions." Now, what I meant, though I didn't express it clearly, is that you're most likely not going to hurt anybody with your writing, bearing in mind what I used to tell students, when I had them, which was, roughly, "Use all the adverbs you want! It's not going to kill anybody!" In other words, be bold, do wrong things on the page, who cares? Nobody! As for professional writers, I habitually listed crossing guards and short order cooks in a diner as people whose excellence at their jobs was of more immediate and pressing concern to the public. I considered this freeing and inspiring... though, as I now recall, when I was giving a guest lecture in a small classroom on that very point at SCAD, I noted that one student live-tweeted he had never been so filled with murderous rage in his life. Of course, I should have seen that my own advice would extend to a jewel-like novella 20% from a dog's point of view. In case you can't tell, jewel-like novellas make me throw up. Anyhow! The host of the podcast, I believe, understood me to be saying that the writer is never in danger, when I meant, conversely, that the victims of the writer (that is, the readers) were in no danger from the pitiful literary gestures of the writer, however dramatic. But to the host's point, we know that writers of various kinds have been endangered by their words throughout history and in current times, too! Most of us, however, stick to harmlessly exquisite novellas about dogs or... I don't know what other people write about. A thirty-year-old in New York City? Or some other godawful thing. And it's all fine! It's all fine!

The Meatballs of Yesterday

To my recollection, four things happened yesterday. 1. I got a text from Laraine Newman! She told me that the New York Times (or a newsletter thereof, to be precise) had some nice things to say about MYSTERY CUDDLERS, the pilot I co-created with Pendleton Ward. They say it has a "bright, appealing oddness," if that's the sort of thing you enjoy. 2. A package arrived from my brother! It contained a giant cookie jar in the shape of an owl. The owl is wearing a straw boater and a bow tie, of course. And the hat cleverly serves as the lid of the cookie jar. Thanks, Will! I stare at this cookie jar a lot! I would put a photo of it here, but I feel my masterful description could not be improved upon. Oh, you know what? Screw it! Pardon my rough he-man language of the dirty streets! 3. A cat sneezed all over me. If you have a cat, one day it will sneeze all over you, a fact taken from real life that we worked into episode one of season one of ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE. I felt the need to change my shirt, which bore tangible evidence of the cat sneeze. So I broke in a shirt that Ace Atkins brought me as a souvenir of his recent trip to New York City. It says "Daddy's Little Meatball" on it. Ace didn't know this, but I once read a New York Times article about such a shirt, which I recall because I put it into one of my many unpublished novels (and subsequently deleted - the detail, not the novel, though I should probably delete the novel). 4. After I "blogged" about Julian Barnes yesterday, I thought of my childhood friend Henry Barnes (no relation, I assume), who dove into the bayou to retrieve a softball once. That was his excuse, anyway. Boy, did Sister Lois chew him out about that! It was 7th grade, the year I went to Catholic school, because Mom had a job there. The school was right there on the bayou. What was Henry supposed to do? NOT dive into the bayou, which was right there? My brother attended the same school and became an altar boy, even though we were Southern Baptists. How did that happen? That has to be against the rules. I hope the Pope doesn't read this! How many masses did my little brother invalidate with his non-Catholic subterfuge? I hate to say it, but there may be any number of souls sitting around in Purgatory to this day, all thanks to my brother. But the point is, Henry grew up to be the mayor of Bayou La Batre, which I believe he still is! I'll have to ask Mom. I haven't seen him in about half a century (see also).

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.

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 Li'l Bogie Bits

It's Dr. Theresa's birthday! And you know what that means, of course: it's time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," the regular "blog" feature where McNeil reads a 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart and gives us the scoop straight from his brain into our eager eye holes. Those who enjoyed the story of how Bogart gave a bellhop a nickel tip will be excited to learn that he tips a masseur in this one. But I've already said too much! Here, I'm just going to cut and paste the email I got from McNeil and my job is done. "THE BIG SLEEP was completed in January 1945. In late January 1945, Bacall was scheduled to be in NY for a publicity tour for the opening of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. Because the divorce between Bogie and Mayo had not quite been finalized, the studio didn’t want Bogie anywhere near Bacall. That didn’t happen. Bogie took the Super Chief to NY before her and waited on Bacall to get there (as soon as I typed Super Chief a train flew by the window of the doctor’s office I happen to be sitting in). He checked into the Gotham Hotel. The studio found out and sent a man named Stevens from their NY office to be with him 24/7 – to watch him and 'give him whatever he wants.' One night Bogie was particularly stressed and he and Stevens went to '21', where Bogie had a sandwich and a couple of drinks. Back at the hotel Bogie had a few more drinks. He still felt tense and told Stevens he wanted a massage. Warners had a masseur on the payroll so Stevens rang him up. Twenty minutes later Bogart was getting his massage – along with a couple more drinks he had ordered from room service. When the massage was over, Bogie took, as Stevens recounts, 'The fastest shower I have ever seen a man take. Less than forty-five seconds. No soap, nothing.' Bogie grabbed a towel and finished another drink and wondered where the hell that guy was with his massage. When Stevens told him he had just had the massage, Bogie became irate and demanded he come back and give him a real massage. The masseur lived in Brooklyn, but got on the subway with his table and came back and gave Bogie an hour-long massage. In the meantime, he and Stevens had ordered a steak dinner, which Bogie did not touch, choosing instead to drink more. After the massage Bogie demanded Stevens make a reservation at El Morocco, then Bogie demanded he change the reservation to the Stork Club, then he changed his mind and had Stevens make a reservation at Toots Shor’s. Five minutes later, Bogie took a nap. Sometime around ten pm (it’s only 10!!!) Bogie wakes up and needs another massage…Stevens called the masseur again, in Brooklyn, and told him to take a cab this time and Warners would pay for it. The guy came from Brooklyn for a third time and gave Bogie a brutal massage, which Bogie cursed and drank through. When it was done, Bogie was finally happy, and gave the masseur a $60 tip." You know what? That's the end of McNeil's email, but I decided to come back after all. I wanted to say that I thought I would certainly have a "blog" "hyperlink" to provide about the Super Chief, as I recalled with 88% guaranteed mental accuracy that Vic, the hero of the Doomed Book Club classic THE HUCKSTERS, had a romantic encounter or two on the very same Super Chief. But after combing the "blog" to the fullest extent of my superhuman abilities, I uncovered no evidence that I am not just living in a beautiful dream.

McNeil's Li'l Sausage Bits

Welcome once more to "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," where McNeil reads a 700-page Humphrey Bogart bio and I pass the savings on to you! As you may recall, we were on the fence about whether the casting of Dooley Wilson in CASABLANCA was a legitimate bogie bit. As McNeil put it, Wilson "was not their first or even second choice, but....that's how sausage is made. I'm not sure that's how sausage is made." Which reminds me of a whimsical quotation from a whimsical narrator in my beloved bestseller (it's neither beloved nor a bestseller) MOVIE STARS: "There is a reason no one wants to know 'how the sausage is made.' How the sausage is made is terrible." And here you may note the most significant difference between my "blog" writing and my "real" writing: on the "blog," that second sentence would have ended in an exclamation point. And, honestly, in most of my "real" writing too. I wonder why I didn't do it! But we are getting far away from McNeil's li'l bits. McNeil says that Lena Horne was considered for the role of Sam! He also contends, rather boldly, that CASABLANCA would have been "twice as good" if Lena Horne had played the role. And I do say that such an observation indeed qualifies as a bogie bit. Another bogie bit is of a sad nature, as it depicts Mayo Methot, in a drunken rage, getting herself wedged tightly behind a sofa somehow. But let's get back to sausage. By a weird coincidence, I was listening to an opera when I received the first bogie bit alluded to above. That's not the coincidence. So, in a while, I was like, "What the hell is this opera about? I don't speak whatever language this is!" And I looked up the plot on the "internet," and this guy in the opera gets in trouble for eating a sausage on the moon! I guess you think I am making that up. But I will tell you the name of the opera - THE EXCURSIONS OF MR. BROUCEK - so you can look it up for your damn self. So I was like, "Sausage!" And, believe it or not, it was, by another coincidence, the second opera I had listened to THAT WEEK about somebody going to the moon. (The other one was Il mondo della luna by Baldassare Galuppi... and I can almost swear that Haydn wrote an opera with a similar title and subject matter, but now I am just showing off my knowledge of moon operas.) This is getting long, but I have more to tell. I just hope the lousy AT&T "internet" doesn't stop working before I'm done. We're getting something better installed on Monday! Leslie came over to watch INLAND EMPIRE the other night and we couldn't finish because the AT&T "internet" crapped out. So we turned off the lights and put on these plastic toy rings that have colored lights shooting out of them and Dr. Theresa requested Kraftwerk, so we danced around to that for a while, and then switched to a playlist by Kate Tsang. But the main point is that... you know all those books I am reading all the time in various circumstances? Now I've had to add a book that I put next to my laptop in my home office for whenever the "internet" goes kerplunk and I'm just sitting there with a stupid look on my face and nothing to distract me from the terrible abyss. There are books littered all over the place around here, it's a sad mess. Oh! So... one of the most recent books I had downstairs, on the side table near my favorite chair, was DAISY MILLER by Henry James, which somehow I had never read before. And in it, a character quotes from MANFRED, the poetic drama by Lord Byron, and I liked the quotation, so I dug out the old SELECTED POEMS of Byron and started reading MANFRED. And I hadn't made it too far, just to lines 196 and 197 of the first scene of the first act, and what did I see but "When the falling stars are shooting,/And the answer'd owls are hooting"? And you know what that means. Well, as long as I'm here, I'll mention a message I received yesterday from DJ Gnosis, who said he had gotten a news alert about his own old "blog," and when he checked it out, he saw that a "web" site called - I think - casino.org had discovered a 2008 "post" of mine, and a contemporaneous "post" by DJ Gnosis commenting on it, about the time I "posted" the first-ever photographic evidence on the "internet" of the existence of the Foster Brooks robot that used to live in Las Vegas until it was dismantled and sold for scrap metal, as we all must be eventually. Quoted in the article? Foster Brooks's own daughter! I would "link" to the article, but, being in the midst of a nightmarish effort to scrub old zombie "links" from the "blog," I am no longer much inclined to "link" to outside sources. Nothing against casino.org! Anyway, this on the heels of my 45-year-old letter inspiring McNeil to watch HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK. Given enough time and patience, such meaningless things can happen.

My Proudest Moment

Don't worry, I have lots of "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" on deck and ready for takeoff... two of them, or maybe 2.5 (I'm not sure that "Dooley Wilson was a drummer, and did not play the piano" counts as a bogie bit). But something else has happened. McNeil was moving the contents of some decaying cardboard boxes in his attic to a plastic storage bin when he came across not only a movie script we tried to write together (not the one mentioned previously in "Jennifer Lawrence Admires a Conch" ["click" here]) on stationery from my dad's auto parts store, but a letter from 45 years ago in which I recommended the film HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK. McNeil watched (and enjoyed) it for the first time last night, thanks to my 45-year-old rec! It just goes to show you that dreams can be real. Never give up!

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

Welcome to the newest recurring "blog" feature since... I don't know when. Since before the TV blew up and I quit "blogging" because I was so dispirited by the blowing up of the TV set? That's right, you're just in time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits"! Was McNeilileaks our last recurring feature? It was very topical whenever that was... you know, the leaks era of history. When we'd cram "leaks" together with some word to make some other word. Most recurring "blog" features justly wither on the vine, like "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis" and the unlamented "Today's Weather." But we here at the "blog" believe that "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" has a dandy future indeed. In part, that's because McNeil, "inspired," I guess we'll call it, by the Million Dollar Book Club, is reading a 700-page celebrity bio of his own choosing. Because I am all tied up with all the various books to which I have committed myself, some of which I haven't even told you about, and find myself unable to join him in the endeavor (in fact, the bio is one I never read, and finally sold to Off Square Books during a long period of unemployment) McNeil has promised to pass along juicy morsels about the life of Humphrey Bogart as he absorbs them into his mighty brain. And he has given me permission to pass them on to you! Before we get started, I should say that I'm nervous about starting a recurring feature right now. It could be a lot of typing for nothing! Let me explain. The other day, a big old water pipe exploded - much like the TV of yore - under our house (the TV was not under our house) and some guys from the water company came by and dug up our yard. One of them took his shovel and severed a cable "linking" us to the "internet," much like the plow cuts the worm in William Blake's famous aphorism. Anyway, this same guy with the wayward shovel "fixed" the problem, but now the "internet" quits working at random times and AT&T, the worst company in the world, makes it nearly impossible to ask a human to come out to the house and look at what's going on. They just don't care! So all these carefully chosen words may vanish as I type them into the abyss. All right! That being said, we're already three bogie bits behind. Let's get started! BOGIE BIT 1: McNeil summarizes Bogart in his prep school days: "perennially bored, few friends, never cracked a book, oddly naive and vulnerable." BOGIE BIT 2: "During the depression, Bogart and his then wife had to move to some shabby apartment along the East River. One of their neighbors was a comedy writer who used to place his meal in a bag, shake it up, and then dump it out on a plate before eating it. No reason given why." As you may well imagine, the latter detail provided some grist for the usual hilarious email antics of McNeil and myself, as I fancifully pictured the comedy writer placing bread, ham, and cheese in the bag and shaking it up and presto, out comes a ham sandwich! Oh, what fun. McNeil replied that he was imagining mashed potatoes and gravy in a bag. Then he remarked, memorably, "Everything was a salad to this guy." I think that's a direct McNeil quotation, though I admit I am not double-checking. BOGIE BIT 3: Young Bogart used to sit in an arcade and play chess against all comers for a dollar a game! I might be forgetting something, but I believe those are all your bogie bits for the moment. Goodbye for now from all of us at "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits."

Hot Dog Island

I really should have finished reading the Huya and Tuya section of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS before I filed my report yesterday. On the next page, Tuya refers to herself as a "she-owl"! She also calls herself "your little mouse... your green frog... your coney." She has more cute nicknames for Huya, too: "my little bat... A crafty corncrake... dearest toad... my penguin... my mole..." I had to look up coney, I'm sorry. I know you think less of me now. In this case, it's a rabbit. The OED tells me it can also refer to a hot dog, a meaning going back at least to 1902. When you think about it, Coney Island is Hot Dog Island! Endearingly, one of the citations in the OED is a newspaper article from 1959: "Jim enjoys eating coneys and fried chicken." I don't know who Jim is, but it was big news in 1959!

Unconscionable

I hate to tell you, but the book I'm reading now has an owl in it. The book is all about the making of MIDNIGHT COWBOY. A NYC boutique called The Owl and the Pussycat is given the scantest possible attention as part of a long list of boutique names. That's how the owls are these days. They just sneak into the books through the back door. The owls aren't even trying anymore. It's unconscionable.

I Watched the Hot Dog Being Built

I read a sentence I liked (see above) and emailed about it seperately to three friends: Megan, Sarah, and McNeil. Therefore I feel I have already written about it extensively and, as I no longer "blog" anymore, it hardly seems worth the effort to create "new content." As a result, I have chosen to cut-and-paste one of the emails below, the one I wrote to Sarah, to be precise, as it seemed to contain the most thrilling moments representing the richness of human experience. Here, then, is the email I composed to Sarah: "So, remember how, just six days ago, in the Sherman Oaks area, I told you an intriguing story of how Pen advised me 'Don't look!' when his dog pooped, but then we (you and I) looked out the window of your car and saw a large dog plainly pooping in our direction? You really made me laugh by comparing the experience to the movie SERENDIPITY. Ha ha ha! I'm still laughing. Anyway, so my friend Megan and I are in a book club of two where we read biographies and autobiographies of show biz types. Right now, we're on June Havoc, who performed in vaudeville as 'Dainty June.' You may remember her as a character in the biographical musical GYPSY, which was based on her family. None of this matters. Nor does it matter that her autobiography has a great first sentence: 'I watched the hot dog being built.' What matters is that the original (?) owner of the book was a Dane Blackburn, who dwelt at 211 E. 62nd Street in NYC. If found, he wished his book to be returned to him there [as indicated on the flyleaf]. Now here's the kicker! I looked at the address on Google Maps and they helpfully provide the name of the nearest restaurant. SERENDIPITY! Which is about something scribbled in the front of a book, right? The movie, I mean. And I think it's also named after that restaurant? You know, I've never seen the whole thing. I have attached photographic evidence for your examination." This concludes the email to Sarah. As an amazing postscript, to which Megan, Sarah, and McNeil have all been alerted, Eleanor Roosevelt lived at 211 E. 62nd Street from 1953-1958, as evidenced by this real estate video ("click" here). The book, however, came out in 1959, so my copy most likely did not pass through Mrs. Roosevelt's hands. In conclusion, though I brought my jotting book to Los Angeles, I will not be sharing my jottings on this occasion. That being said, I did have hot dogs with Elizabeth Ito, my brother, and Lee Durkee at a place out in Eagle Rock, which bears mentioning given the subject of Havoc's opening remarks.

Bill's on a Roll

William Boyle - known around here as Bill - has a new book coming out in November. It's called SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT, and I'm reading it right now. It's great! I am sure you will all recall with fondness the Owl's Head Wastewater Treatment Plant from Bill's first novel GRAVESEND. I am happy to say that SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT features Owl's Head Park, meaning that it, too, goes straight onto my list of books with owls in them. Furthermore, SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT contains a detailed allusion to Jerry Lewis, giving it all the ingredients of a perfect novel. I truly thought Bill's previous book, CITY OF MARGINS, was his absolute masterpiece, but SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT seems primed to equal or surpass it. Bill's on a roll!

Two of Everything

I was watching JULIUS CAESAR but then I went to bed. I turned off the TV just after Casca said, in a line to which I guess I had never paid heed before, that "if Caesar had stabbed their mothers" his supporters would still love him. It reminded me of the time Donald Trump boasted he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and his supporters wouldn't care. Maybe that's why I turned off the TV. Later, I couldn't sleep. I became restless and got up and watched more Julius Caesar. I am sorry to say that when I first started watching, I simultaneously checked my twitter feed and then my email. So, I had receieved an email from Jimmy, who coincidentally mentioned James Mason... while James Mason was on my TV screen! Also, Elizabeth Ito had tweeted about seeing a barn owl standing by the highway in the broad daylight, and wondering what it meant, which tweet I read AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT that Casca was wondering aloud what it meant that an owl was sitting in the marketplace in the broad daylight! Two James Masons! Two daylight owls of portent! With that, I put away my phone. I was like, "Okay, you've got my attention, Shakespeare!"

Ghosts Are Dancing In Space

"Eugenia smiled, her eyes sparkling, as if a small butterfly with golden wings and diamond eyes were flying around inside her head..." That's my kind of writing! It's from POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS, by Machado de Assis, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. I have no other place to note it, so I note it here. As long as I'm here, I could tell you about a little email exchange that McNeil and I had recently. I told McNeil about BLESSED EVENT, a movie from 1932, which, I noticed while watching it recently, contains a passing allusion to television. A character ponders whether Dick Powell's sex appeal will translate to television, and another character makes a joke, which I paraphrase here: "Sex over the televison? It'll never catch on!" And I was filled with astonishment, as I often am, for no good reason. I was astonished, specifically, that the audience for BLESSED EVENT in 1932 would have been expected to know what television was. Well, right away, McNeil found a wikipedia page for a 1932 televison series called THE TELEVISION GHOST, which was just a guy dressed as a ghost for 15 minutes a week, telling you a story about how he got murdered. It seems to be legit, and of course I trust McNeil, but I could find scant secondary sources supporting its existence. When I checked the New York Times archives for "Television Ghost," I found that the august institution never saw fit to report on it. The combo of words did bring up articles with interesting headlines from the appropriate time period: WIZARD SCIENCE IS ANNIHILATING SPACE (that one had the subhead "Airplane, Televisor, and Radiophone are Signs of Wonders Yet to Come") and HOW TO EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE? SCIENCE IN A QUANDARY and RADIO IMAGES AND 'GHOSTS' ARE DANCING IN SPACE. When I looked up the broadcaster of THE TELEVISION GHOST (the station W2XAB) I did find reviews for some of their contemporaneous programming, such as when Mayor Jimmy Walker (pictured, above) literally (I think) lifted a curtain from the "sensitive photoelectric cells, or radio 'eyes,'" to reveal George Gershwin playing the piano, among other entertainments. Anyway, then McNeil sent me an article about a machine they have over there in China that heats itself up to ten times hotter than the sun. What could go wrong? The next day or so, McNeil and I ended up in a lenghty, discursive disagreement (?) about Bogart and Bacall's house keys, and what hidden meaning we could draw from a photo we saw of them. When asked whether it was our most pointless discussion to date, McNeil announced his intention to "crunch the numbers" on that.

He Said Captain

I don't "blog" anymore but sometimes I have something in my head and nowhere else to put it. For example, I finally watched THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, which I put off for a long time, because who wants to watch a movie about unpleasant people? And last night or the night before, I thought, well, haven't I watched lots of movies about unpleasant people? And also, maybe isn't everyone unpleasant now? And at one point Leonardo DiCaprio tells his sales team he is giving them "the tools to be Captain Ahab." And someone on the sales team says, "Captain who?" What Leonardo DiCaprio means is that he is going to help his sales team target "whales," by which, in turn, he means potential customers with a lot of money. Now! I have a column on the website POPULA, in which I read MOBY-DICK and talk about each chapter into a digital recorder, transcribing the dubious results in weekly installments. And certainly, under ordinary circumstances, "Leo's" riff on Captain Ahab would have gone into one of my "columns," as I do generously call them. But, having completed my reading of the novel on July 4th, and subsequently turning in my final dispatches, I knew that this passing allusion to MOBY-DICK in popular culture would remain forever unremarked upon, at least by me, unlike the time Elvis picked up his mic stand and brandished it like a harpoon during his famous 1968 comeback special, and said, "Captain Ahab!" I saw it with my own eyes when I was staying at that Elvis-themed hotel one time, and I do believe the sighting made it into a yet-to-appear edition of the so-called column about which I continue to yammer. "Captain who?" reminds me of the song Dr. Theresa and I used to sing quite a bit early in our courtship for reasons that fade from memory as time goes on: "He said captain/ I said what/ he said captain/ I said what/ He said captain/ I said whatcha want?" I know the title of that song is "Wot," not "What," but I can't bring myself to type it that way lyrically, though I seemingly harbor no similar misgivings about "whatcha." Anyway, when you think about it, it is funny to give someone the tools to be Captain Ahab.

Farewell, Noble Instrument

As you know, I don't "blog" anymore, but something has happened. Do you remember when a waiter at '21' gave me a pen to keep? Of course you do. Otherwise, you would have a heart of stone. I am sad to tell you that the pen - which, as I calculate, was given to me on the evening of June 1, 2015 - has just run out of ink. Still, here was an instrument of admirable, nay, miraculous stamina. Who knows how long the employees of '21' had used it before one of them passed it along to me? How I will miss it. I jotted something with it almost every day. I was jotting something for a secret job I can't tell you about when it inked its last. Faithful to the end!

Notable Uptick In Owl Eyes

Did you know that Hume Cronyn grew up fabulously wealthy? And that he had a brother named Verse who was hit in the head by a cricket ball to less than salubrious effect? Well, you would if you were reading his memoir! But why would you? You wouldn't! Not unless you were joining Megan Abbott and me in our endless parade of show-biz celebrity tell-alls. I've skipped telling you about at least two of the books in the series because they did not have owls in them and now you'll go to your lonesome grave without knowing. But more importantly, young Hume Cronyn moves from Canada to New York City to make it as an actor, and though he has great big bundles of cash to throw around on orchids, he repeatedly lectures his less solvent roommate on the advantages of thrift. "He'd listen to me owl-eyed and impervious," Hume Cronyn reports. It occurs to me that three of the books I have read since September have owl eyes in them - and not even literal owl eyes at that! - instead of whole owls. It's a hot trend to look out for in 2018: owl eyes.

The Flaring Eyes of Mice-Killing Owls

As you know, I don't "blog" anymore except in the extremely specific circumstance that Megan Abbott and I read a celebrity biography that has an owl in it somewhere. I can't say I'm a fan of the writing in this Stanley Kubrick bio. "At cocktail parties and sit-ins the air was filled with discussions" is a typical fragment. Maybe it doesn't rub you the wrong way! Nor can I explain what irritated me about this attempt to convey Kubrick's thrill-a-minute New York boyhood: "Comic books were ten cents, and a bakery featured chocolate eclairs and freshly baked rolls." I mean I could explain it but would you care? Okay then! But by the time I got to "the flaring eyes of mice-killing owls on the cedar trees" I just couldn't tell if that was good or bad. You win, author! You broke me.