"Blog"trospective 19: Adventure Time

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

The Certainty of the Jelly Factory

WARNING! Walt Disney murders an owl in this "post." I don't even want to type it up but I have my rules. Megan and I are reading this Walt Disney biography (WALT DISNEY: THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION by Neal Gabler) together and I was ahead of her because I just sit around the house now and she has to ride around on subways all day in New York City and you can't take a giant brick of a book on a subway! But anyway, one day she took it on the subway - to her eventual regret! - and got ahead of ME. And sent me an email that said, "I can't believe we haven't discussed the traumatic owl incident!" I had to confess I had no idea what she was talking about. But I read on, filled with trepidation. And finally I got to Walt's memory of killing an owl when he was a boy. He caught it and when it tried to get away he threw it on the ground and it died. I am sorry to tell you! If it makes you feel any better, he never forgot it, it haunted him, and he had terrible nightmares about it for the rest of his life. Try telling that to the owl who was just minding its own business being an owl. And then the owl floodgates! I mean, two pages later, someone describes the way Walt looked during a pitch (as we call it in the business): how he would "bend forward unconsciously and become like an old owl - hunched up, and his bill would clack a little bit." And in the NEXT PARAGRAPH we are treated to Walt's capacity for acting out a story. He would "suddenly transform himself uninhibitedly into Mickey or Donald or an owl or an old hunting dog." I thought, what, is this book going to be all owls all the time now? Have we unleashed something? But no, on the next page Walt is obsessed over a minuscule mistake in a shot where Mickey Mouse is staring at his own reflection in some Jell-O. So then I started thinking about all the time I've squandered contemplating and calculating how many books I read that have Jell-O in them. Jell-O seems to be a quintessential American literary metaphor! Kerouac! Mailer! Portis! Roth! Gidget! Mickey Mouse! But let me stop myself. Is this what has become of me? Even though I don't "blog" anymore, has "blogging" changed the way I read, keeping me on constant alert for Jell-O and owls at expense of true enlightenment? At least this gelatinous aside gives me an excuse to relate my favorite phrase in the book. Walt tells his father he wants to quit his humdrum duties at the jelly factory to become an artist. But his father "could not possibly see why Walt would sacrifice the certainty of the jelly factory for the uncertainty of art." When you put it that way! I don't know, the jelly factory sounds magical enough to me. During the occupation, just after World War I, Walt drives out to "the birthplace of Joan of Arc, where [he eats] fried chicken on the lawn in front of her shrine." I put that in just for Kent Osborne, who loves fried chicken so much, and also loves to eat at Walt Disney's favorite restaurant in Los Angeles. I think he would enjoy the image of Walt Disney eating fried chicken at the shrine of Joan of Arc.

[A long twitter discussion followed the original "posting," in which Craig Pittman directed a group of us to a 1938 interview with Disney in FAMILY CIRCLE magazine. Disney informs his interviewer, "In my terror, I stamped on the owl and killed it" - a horrific detail omitted by Gabler and one many of us strove not to believe - the description at the beginning of this "post" does its best to posit a kind of terrible accident - against the evidence of Disney's own testimony. Megan put it down, rather beautifully, to "Disney hyperbole and the hyperbole of guilt." Disney, on the other hand, calls it an "unhappy adventure." Seems like a mild way to put it. - ed.]

Bananas

Read a review in today's New York Times of a new production of KRAPP'S LAST TAPE. There was a lot of musing about the way Krapp eats a banana. And I was like, gee, I have been thinking about bananas a lot lately. There was this sentence in that Norman Mailer book about Lee Harvey Oswald: "As they cross the border into Texas, Oswald is eating a banana." Also: "That's all right, Oswald is told, take your time, you can finish your banana." And who can forget the menacing bananas of THE FORBIDDEN ROOM? What can all these bananas mean, what are the bananas trying to tell me?

Literary Matters

It's time once more for "Literary Matters"! They are almost always pointless and these are especially so. 1. You know how every time I read a book with an owl in it, I feel compelled to add it to my big long list of books with owls in them. And yet sometimes, through no fault of my own, I hear about a book with an owl in it that I haven't even read! Such is my curse. Today I read in the New York Times about a book (FOR A LITTLE WHILE by Rick Bass) with a character named Gray Owl (see also). The reviewer loved the name Gray Owl so much that he or she mentioned it six times. SIX TIMES! In a 13-paragraph book review. Do the math! Do it! Now, I could've told you that a book by Rick Bass would have an owl in it. But now I'll never get to find out for myself. 2. One time I was at Lyn's house for dinner and boy was I loudly explaining the art of writing to a quiet, polite man who good-humoredly bore the brunt of my intellect. When Lyn's husband Doug was walking me to the gate, he told me that my lucky pupil had been Rick Bass. 3. Reading this Norman Mailer book about Lee Harvey Oswald, I discover that Oswald once gave a lecture on communism at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. I used to loiter around that very campus, and I never knew. I don't know why I loitered there, either. I did not attend classes there! I seem to recall that one night, past midnight, a bunch of us boys and girls piled into a very small car and went to the campus of Spring Hill College and roamed around. I think we looked at a statue of St. Ignatius! Boy did we know how to have fun. And there was some talk of a ghostly priest, and I said with highly successful theatricality, "Who's that right OVER THERE?" and a young woman screamed and dumped an entire icy Coke in my lap. But none of us knew that Lee Harvey Oswald had come there to give a lecture on communism on July 27, 1963. Or if anyone did, nobody brought it up.

Margot Sings of the Aswang

Hey! Remember when I told you about aswangs in the works of Norman Mailer and Lynda Barry? Go on, "click" on it, it won't kill you. But an aswang will! I was watching THE FORBIDDEN ROOM last night and up popped a title card: "Margot sings of the aswang - the jungle vampire" - and, reader, that's just what she did, that title card wasn't messing around. There's Margot above, singing of the aswang, accompanied by hiccups and seizures, mystical or otherwise. Nor were we done with aswangs after Margot's descriptive song on the habits of aswangs. Just as one example, Margot is later menaced by what I think another title card calls "blackened banana figures." These are talking rotten bananas, or "ASWANG BANANA!" as a third title card shrieks. Doing the bare minimum amount of research on the semi-reliable websites most readily available to us, I see that the aswang does supposedly leave a "banana trunk" in its victim's place... "a banana trunk carved in the cadaver's likeness" elaborates another website, but who's to say which website has the most reliable aswang information? I'll tell you what that reminded me of, though: faerie lore! Like, when the fairies spirit away a human baby and replace it with a block of wood. I remember some scholarly interpretation I read somewhere, something about the block of wood being a psychological representation of the coffin... but I walked all around the house last night and I couldn't figure out which book I was thinking of, I opened a lot of books, it occurs to me I might have too many books of faerie lore.

Old Paperbacks

Met Bill Boyle and Ace for coffee last night. Afterward, Ace and I walked back to his office on the square. Ace had to pick up some things for a plane trip he's making today, and he mused aloud, glancing over his bookshelves, about what he should read on the plane. Maybe John D. MacDonald, he was thinking. I jokingly suggested I COULD GO ON SINGING, MacDonald's novelization of a Judy Garland movie. Ace has it! He has every single John D. MacDonald book, as you can confirm via this interview ("click" here) I did with him a while back. Ace picked up one and fretted over bringing a "vintage paperback" on an airplane, which reminded me that I had been considering just such a thing. (Ha ha ha! Are you still reading this? I don't care.) I need to figure out something to read on an airplane pretty soon. All the things I'm reading now are big, heavy, bulky monsters that no one would enjoy carrying through an airport in today's complicated times: THE BOOK OF MAGIC, OSWALD'S TALE, and I'm finally back into THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, come on! Get real! Get with it! So, someone... I think it was Kent Osborne... recently told me he (or she) was reading Vonnegut again. Was it Kent? [It wasn't. - ed.] I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember (see also). That - combined with the sighting of a colorful row of spines along a shelf at Square Books: slick new(ish) Vonnegut paperbacks - made me remember a neat little cardboard box I had requested and received for Christmas when I was about 13, a cardboard box of five mass-market Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks.

Here, I found a picture of one on the "internet." I have a deep feeling that this could be the most boring "post" I've ever written and yet I feel no compulsion whatsoever to stop. For example, here's something funny I remember about this cardboard box of Kurt Vonnegut books. It used to have WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE in it but I removed it and hid it somewhere in shame or fear and, with some effort, squeezed my older and somewhat fatter copy of Vonnegut's PLAYER PIANO into its place (to avoid uncomfortable questions, I suppose). Why? I have the vague notion that something offended or terrified me about WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE! Whereas I spent a lot of time casting the movie of PLAYER PIANO that I was going to make when I grew up. All I remember is that Peter Sellers was in it. Wait, I'm almost to the point. I remembered that although I've had this cardboard box for around 40 years (see also), there are two books in there I've never read! What a crummy way to treat such a nice Christmas gift. What an ingrate! So I thought I might read my 40-year-old paperback of THE SIRENS OF TITAN on my upcoming airplane ride. I like everything about this edition (above)! Look at the purple pulpy (purply?) cover! Look at this dude in the loincloth and the (I assume) sirens in question. I like the price of 1.95 on the cover! I like that the edges of the pages are green-blue. I'll show you:

Are the pages of current mass-market paperbacks still edged in blue or red or gold? Once again I'm reminded that I'm just not observant enough to be a "writer." So THE SIRENS OF TITAN looked pristine!

And I opened it up and the first eight pages fell out. But I don't think that's going to stop me. Crack it open in the middle and you can see that most of the glue holding the book together has dissolved. I still feel okay.

Going Pretty Good

Well, Chris's new book is so jaw-dropping and fantastically compelling that I read it in one day. I almost never read a book in one day. I think I've read, for example, three more pages of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY since the last time I mentioned it (October 10, since you're probably keeping track), though I was going along pretty good with that one for a while. So I'm back to the Norman Mailer book about Lee Harvey Oswald sooner than I thought. It contains touching interviews with innocent people who knew him back in Minsk. At the time of the interviews they're going gray and soft and thinking about their youth. One of Oswald's Russian sweethearts loved Deanna Durbin movies. I don't know why that detail stands out. Marina Oswald was interviewed for the book. When she read it - as recounted in the Mailer bio I read - she said, "Tolstoy, he's not!" Ha ha! (Another review: after Marilyn Monroe read THE DEER PARK she said that Mailer was "too impressed by power.") Anyway, Megan sent me the "link" to the whole Warren Commission report, so that's probably healthy.

Good Owl Sound

Walked up to Square Books and bought Chris Offutt's acclaimed new memoir MY FATHER, THE PORNOGRAPHER. Thanks to Chris I will be setting aside this pretty interesting Norman Mailer book about Lee Harvey Oswald because I can't wait to start Chris's book. In fact, I already have. In fact, I'm on page 14. And in fact, there's an owl on page 14. "An owl moaned along the ridge." That's good! Good verb. In all the many books I've read with owls in them, I don't believe any author but Chris has displayed the good sense to have their owl "moan." It gives back all the eeriness of the owl's cry that has been leached out through our tired centuries of "hooting."

Finding a Skeleton

Yeah, I have Norman Mailer's nonfiction book about Lee Harvey Oswald but I'm not sure I want to be a man who reads three books about the Kennedy assassination in a row, and also perhaps I have read too much Norman Mailer lately. So I started reading HARVEST HOME by Thomas Tryon. And anyway, this guy finds a human skeleton in a hollow tree. But at the beginning of the next chapter he's like, "During the next several days I had little chance to dwell on my shocking discovery." You know why? Because of his "countless chores." That's right! Puttering around the house can really take your mind off finding a human skeleton in a hollow tree.

Jealous Robot Ray

Maybe I am on my "Kennedy kick" after all. I picked up LIBRA and started reading it. Almost right away we come to the CIA plotting to blow up Castro with "a sea shell that would explode when he went swimming." Now, this is part of that Norman Mailer novel I just read, too. And a tiny bit of "internet" research indicates it was a real plan right here in real life where we all live. But Mailer's narrator wants to train a manta ray to jealously guard the beauteous shell so it will seem more attractive and desirable to Castro. Mailer has him down as a big shell collector. And the "internet" tells me that the CIA did intend to "make the shell brightly colored and unusual looking so it would be sure to attract Castro’s attention." So Mailer's narrator schemes to train the jealous manta ray but finally decides a robot manta ray would work better. I assume the trained or robotic fish idea is all Mailer's... eh... I don't want to know.

Point

Hey I quickly gave up on THE DEER PARK! I don't think it was Mailer's fault. I think I was all Mailered out (see also). So I picked up a big old stack of comic books. That's where my brain went. I think I accidentally got some of those comic books that are supposed to show how superheroes can be "gritty" and "realistic" for the "in-the-know people of today." But anyway Power Girl was in charge of a superhero team, so there she was in her famously sexist costume, sitting in an office chair behind a desk with a computer and a phone and a framed photo of Superman on it, having, like, a business meeting, like she was an employee of Dunder Mifflin! That's how they made it "realistic." I tried describing this to Adam Muto yesterday and he nicely sat there expecting me to come to my point, but it turned out I didn't have one.

Midnight Ink

Why did I pick up another Norman Mailer novel just after finishing a 1,200-page Norman Mailer novel? I have no idea. I thought I was going on a "Kennedy kick," but I guess my "Kennedy kick" has been delayed. Somehow I'm reading THE DEER PARK. And it has Jell-O in it. I guess this is the seventh book I have read with Jell-O in it since I have been keeping score. Jell-O! An American metaphor. I suppose it would be a good academic study to ponder which authors spell Jell-O the way the makers of Jell-O intended (Adrienne Barbeau, for example), and which get all loosey, goosey, artsy and fartsy with it (Kerouac, Mailer). Mailer writes of "colored lights changing the water into a lake of tomato aspic, lime jello, pale consommé, and midnight ink." And so it seems to me that Mailer is the third of our authors to find lime Jell-O especially "fruitful" - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! We have good times, don't we?

She Uncurls Her Long, Hollow Tongue

What do Lynda Barry and Norman Mailer have in common? The aswang, that's what! Or as Norman Mailer spells it (I think) the asuang. I say "I think" because I am on page 1,017 and I can't remember where he mentions it. Four hundred pages ago? Could be! And somehow I forgot to tell you. The aswang or asuang is a vampiric creature of the Philippines and Mailer describes it in more or less traditional vampiric terms. Lynda Barry's description (in the voice of her grandmother) is much more exciting! "If you see a strange dog and it is watching you very hard and the back legs is more longer than the front legs and the tongue is sticking out - that is the aswang in the daytime! But at night she is a very beautiful woman who can cut herself in half and then she hides the bottom half. Then, look out! She can fly! The aswang crawls across the ceiling while you sleep and positions herself right over your bed. She uncurls her long, hollow tongue downward to your neck. It has a needle tip so sharp you can't feel it." That's from Barry's ONE HUNDRED DEMONS. You know how people just throw stuff in our yard, right? I blame it on drunken college students but I think all the drunken college students are home with their drunken families. (See also.) But someone threw an entire book about the Philippines in our yard this week! I haven't checked to see if the aswang is in it. The book was all rain soaked when I found it and it's probably still drying out on the porch. It's intact except that I guess the rain dissolved the glue on the paperback spine, so the cover is loose. Hmm, part of Lynda Barry's description (the creature cutting itself in half and the top half flying away) reminds me of a story from the book KWAIDAN about a creature called the Rokuro-Kubi. Its head detaches from its body and flies around: "He caught sight of the heads, - all five of them, - flitting about, and chatting as they flitted... 'Ah, that traveling priest who came to-night! - how fat all his body is! - When we have eaten him our bellies will be well filled...'" The difference is that while the aswang (according to Lynda Barry's grandmother) hides its own body, YOU have the find the Rokuro-Kubi's body and hide it: "its eyes opened monstrously; its hair stood up bristling; and its teeth gnashed... weeping tears of rage it exclaimed: 'Since my body has been moved, to rejoin it is not possible! Then I must die!'" I don't know, maybe that's true for the aswang, too; maybe that's why she hides her body. You'll have to ask an aswang next time you meet one. I'm not an aswang mindreader! All I know is that I have to finish this Norman Mailer book somehow, because the Doomed Book Club is all set to read Burt Reynolds's autobiography for the New Year. Huh, well, here's a Rokuro-Kubi with its head flying around, although most "internet" images show it stretching out its neck really long like Plastic Man!

The Owl Hoots at Midnight

I forgot to tell you - no I didn't, I just didn't feel like it, until now. I still don't feel like it. But I'm gonna tell you. Look! I'm only legally obligated to mention one owl per book I read. If the book has another owl in it, I can keep it to myself if I feel like it. So I don't really want to tell you that the spy lingo in this Norman Mailer novel includes the hilarious code phrase "The owl hoots at midnight." (See also.) Actually, it's fake spy lingo that the spies are using to fool other spies into thinking it's real spy lingo... but that still counts as spy lingo by my reckoning. I've been sitting on this for days now. See why I didn't want to tell you? It's so difficult to explain and the resultant satisfaction for any of us is negligible.

Christmas

Christmas. Listening to a Johnny Rivers LP. Dr. Theresa making figgy pudding. A gigantic spider descends swiftly on a thread from the ceiling, straight down for the uncovered sugar bowl, providing Christmas drama. Report from Los Angeles, where my parents are visiting my brother and the grandkids: Mom says that Dad saw Larry King in a bagel shop and hugged him on Christmas morning. "I was overcome," Dad explained. I switched the record to an old compilation called "Jingle Bell Jazz" that always got on my nerves. Who can explain my complex behavior? It has rained all day. The yard is flooded. Sixty-three degrees fahrenheit. Yesterday afternoon the thawing goose was still frozen in the middle and I was unable to extract the giblets. Now some jazz flute dude is going to town on "We Three Kings." Reading Norman Mailer for Christmas. Just got out of a flashback that lasted almost 800 pages, and I can remember little of what is going on in the novel's "present." (By ominous coincidence I come to a passage about Allen Dulles falling fatally ill on Christmas Eve.) While in the shower, I recall that I dreamed about M. Emmett Walsh. He threatened someone with a pistol, then ate it and said, "It's no secret this gun was made of chocolate." Figgy pudding has come out of the oven and looks and smells spectacular. I fear that my goose could never measure up! Christmas tweeting with Hogan. She says Christmas spiders are good luck. I play an LP she gave me a long time ago, Paul Williams's "Here Comes Inspiration." His version of "Rainy Days and Mondays" (a song he wrote) sounds especially appropriate today. I see a cocktail fork that I bought from Bob Hope's estate among the drying dishes. Dr. Theresa says she used it to test the consistency of the figgy pudding. Am I upset? Far from it! Wassail is simmering. Megan Abbott suggested wassail. She was somewhat upset that I found a wassail recipe with bourbon in it. "Surely Bob Cratchit didn't have bourbon?" she objected. We switched from LPs to Bing Crosby on iPod, because it's hard to flip over records while you're cooking a goose. Chris Offutt and Melissa Ginsburg came over. Chris soon tired of Bing. He asked me to play some Frank Sinatra. Chris stood with his head respectfully bowed for several minutes, listening to Frank do a live version of "I Could Have Danced All Night." Then he compared the rhyme scheme of "Come Fly With Me" to Bob Dylan, which got us listening to Bob Dylan. Chris dramatically acted out Dylan's entire song "Isis," thrillingly grabbing me by the shoulders during some verses. He also carved the goose (as seen above).

Another Twist

In case you thought I was kidding about Norman Mailer hating the Twist, here we find the narrator's father associating it with the death of his dear friend Dashiell Hammett (!): "The radio was playing this dreadful new song, 'Let's Do the Twist,' just as I opened the paper to receive such news."

People Alone in a Room

I don't suppose any of you will ever forget late 2013, when I read in that Norman Mailer biography that Norman Mailer thought the Twist was "evil." Well, some of that leaked into his CIA novel, I tell you. Now, you should never, ever confuse the narrator with the author, but I'm reading this part where the narrator is at a party on the eve of Kennedy's election and everyone is doing the Twist: "I thought it was strange in the extreme that the dancers did not hold each other but stood apart and rotated their hips like people alone in a room leering into a mirror." Ha ha, Norman Mailer really hated the Twist! (See also, the time Lyndon Johnson was doing the Twist and fell on somebody.)

Literary Matters

Welcome once again to "Literary Matters." Oh, they're fine. 1. Norman Mailer's narrator is still in Uruguay! He was just "overcome at the solemnity of a cigarette lighter brought to a tip of tobacco." He compares it to a religious gesticulation. I'm not exactly sorry I finished writing my cigarette lighter book a while back and so can't include that line, but I do know just where it would have been squeezed in, so I am going to put it on my very slowly growing list of things I'm sorry it was too late to put in my cigarette lighter book. 2. I noticed the adverb "meltingly" in the New York Times today. I thought, that's a funny old adverb. And it seems to me that I see it in the New York Times all the time. So I searched their archives. (See also.) They've used it under 800 times since 1851, I guess, so that's not a whole lot. I was wrong. In decades past, the New York Times liked to call things "meltingly feminine" - mostly clothes, but also typewriters. "Like the new cars, typewriters are now two-toned. The new Royal FP's have gone meltingly feminine - in a silver gray combined with colors like pink, blue, green and a creamy beige." 3. Lee Durkee has alerted me to the existence of a book called THE MESSENGERS: OWLS, SYNCHRONICITY AND THE UFO ABDUCTEE. Although I have never read it and I suppose I never will, I feel pretty safe in putting THE MESSENGERS: OWLS, SYNCHRONICITY AND THE UFO ABDUCTEE on my big, long list of books with owls in them.

I Guess We'll Never Know

This is the second Norman Mailer book I've read with Bob Hope in it. Is Norman Mailer the novelist who mentions Bob Hope most often? I guess we'll never know.

Sherman Oatmeal, This Good Fellow

Have arrived at the supposedly unreadable "Uruguay section" of this Norman Mailer CIA novel. I am reading it because to do otherwise hardly seems sporting AND you know how every book has an owl in it, right? That's my theory. So I was thinking, "I can't skip the Uruguay section. It might be the section with an owl in it!" And I swear to you, just as I was thinking such a thing, I came to this, early in the Uruguay section of this Norman Mailer CIA novel: "Sherman Oatmeal, my private name for this good fellow, is another owl-eyed Ph.D. from Oklahoma." So not only does it have an owl in it, it has oatmeal in it.