To and Fro

Hey remember in the Geneva Bible when God asks the devil, "Where commeft thou?" and the devil says, "From copafsing the earth to and fro, and from walking in it"? You're probably wondering about my recent travels in the same way! Okay, you twisted my arm. But to understand my wandering properly we have to go way back to when my glasses fell off my head in the lobby of a swank New York City hotel some months ago. I lost a very nice silver pen in that same lobby! And Megan Abbott gave me a pen to replace it. Was the replacement a fancy silver pen? No! It was one Megan picked up in a hotel during her own travels. This pen was a gift from the heart! And cheap though it may have been, it was of an unusual and pleasing shade of blue, its body made of a sturdy, semi-opaque plastic, I believe. It advertised a company called Kimpton, which owns hotels and restaurants, apparently. So on my recent trip to Birmingham to do a reading, I thought I had left the pen Megan gave me behind in a bank! But when I came home it was just sitting there on the TV tray. While in my Birmingham hotel room, I distractedly watched the shoe factory show. Hey remember on GILMORE GIRLS when Luke had a daughter with another woman and that woman was angry when Lorelai (who was dating Luke at the time) hung out with the daughter and it caused problems in Lorelai's relationship? Well, now they are making Lauren Graham go through that plot line again on the shoe factory show, just like the other time they stole a plot from GILMORE GIRLS and marched Lorelai, I mean, Lauren Graham, through it. Lauren Graham is like some doomed soul, forced always to reenact the same torments! What a bummer. While I was watching the shoe factory show, Dr. Theresa was back in Oxford, having an elegant dinner with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls and T. Cooper, whom she had introduced on the Thacker Mountain radio program earlier in the evening. THEN! It was on to New Orleans, where I saw many of my fave former students from back when I used to teach: Abby, Elizabeth (wearing her mother's prom dress from 1968!), Burke, Rachel and SKIN MAG, Ryan, and Anya (wearing a wedding dress because IT WAS HER WEDDING DAY, a happy occasion I wouldn't have missed for the world). It was a lovely ceremony on the porch of an old house, the kind of house where I kept looking up at the attic windows expecting to see a gently approving ghost but I didn't. Burke gave me a book with this great first sentence: "Art has a way of undermining all aesthetic theories." Just like Jerry Lewis! I added the part about Jerry Lewis. On the drive back to Oxford, "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys came on the radio and I suddenly remembered going to see a feature-length documentary about the theremin back in Atlanta with Dr. Theresa - I think it was just called THEREMIN - and Brian Wilson was interviewed in it about the memorable theremin part in "Good Vibrations." You know how Brian Wilson thinks and talks. He's a genius! And he comes off very open and vulnerable and eccentric sometimes. And I think he said the theremin was scary and made him think of sex. Is that what he said? So, the director of THEREMIN was there for this screening (and as I recall, so was Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer!) and in the Q&A session afterward, some fool in the audience asked the director if it was "hard not to laugh" when interviewing Brian Wilson and the director shot back with shocked sincerity, "No, it's hard not to cry." And that came back to me so vividly while I was driving that I was completely absorbed in experiencing that memory and sort of forgot I was driving. Has that ever happened to you? Don't do that! It's not safe! Dr. Theresa snapped me out of it. And then I started thinking that Brian Wilson's genius might be profitably compared to Jerry Lewis's in its directness. When Kelly Hogan was just visiting us, she was trying to learn a Brian Wilson song for an upcoming performance. Hogan expounded thoughtfully on the lyrics "I wrote a number down but I lost it/ So I searched through my pocket book, I couldn't find it/ So I sat and concentrated on the number and/ Slowly it came to me so I dialed it/ And I let it ring a few times, there was no answer/ So I let it ring a little more, still no answer" and their relationship to the complex transparency of Brian Wilson (which is different than Jerry's complex transparency). Complex transparency! (It comes to me just now that the theremin documentary featured a clip of Jerry's encounter with a theremin in THE DELICATE DELINQUENT.)

A Good Supply of Benzedrine

Watching CRITIC'S CHOICE from the Freudian angle this time. Rip Torn tells Bob Hope he wants to "make a monkey" out of him. "Overthrow the father image," Bob Hope extrapolates. "Sort of!" says Rip Torn, with an expression just slightly less maniacal than the one he wears in MAIDSTONE. Rip Torn later confronts Bob Hope in the nude! (Rip is in the nude, not Bob.) I can't recall whether this is before or after Bob Hope is about to bite into a hot dog when his son says something precocious about sex. "Sex? What's sex?" says Bob Hope, returning his attention to his hot dog with palpable dismay. Speaking of the precocious son, his best pal's dad is a psychoanalyst, and they sit in a part of the pal's apartment where they can overhear the dad (Jim Backus) with his patients, a conceit "borrowed" by Hope fan Woody Allen in at least two movies (see also). We are done with Freud for now. But I found some support for Megan's idea, stated long ago, that Rip Torn is kind of a beatnik in this movie. He boasts of having "a good supply of Benzedrine" at one point, Benzedrine being the stimulant of choice for beatniks as you know. Dr. Theresa shows the James Garner/Doris Day movie THE THRILL OF IT ALL in some of her gender classes (and wrote about it in her dissertation). That's the one where James Garner, as an obstetrician, gets more credit than the mother for producing a baby, according to Dr. Theresa's analysis. "I want to be a doctor's wife!" cries Doris Day (who has briefly become a "career woman") as the climactic epiphany of the film, if I am recalling Dr. Theresa's description correctly. There's something similarly creepy about CRITIC'S CHOICE, in which Lucille Ball, as the wife of the theater critic played by Bob Hope, is repeatedly mocked for trying to write a play. But you know, watching it this time I am struck by how much more realistically the situation is handled than it was in the TV show PARENTHOOD (which I used to call "the shoe factory show" because it used to take place mostly in a shoe factory) when Lauren Graham's character wrote a theatrical masterpiece without even trying and in fact without even realizing it was a play. That was an actual plot on PARENTHOOD! Now, when Bob Hope sits on a park bench and mercilessly rips apart Lucille Ball's first draft, he's very mean, but the words he says sound like actual words a person might say when critiquing someone's fledgling attempt at a form and, back to Freud, the movie seems to recognize his sublimated insecurity and rage. Ha ha ha, God I bore myself.

The Hand

Kent is in town! We went to pick him up for dinner at his hotel, and he happened to be checking in at the same time as Jason Ritter, who used to play Lauren Graham's wimpy boyfriend on the shoe factory show, and with whom Kent had flown in from Los Angeles. Kent introduced me to Jason Ritter and I shook his hand and as I shook his hand I was thinking, "This is the hand that touched Lauren Graham." But I didn't say it! But I almost did. But I didn't. I told Dr. Theresa I was going to "blog" about it and she said, "That's who you want to be? The creepy guy?"

Blue Nail Polish

Hey I saw two different TV shows last night in which characters were wearing blue nail polish. That's not very interesting! But anytime I see two of anything I have to "blog" about it. One blue nail polish wearer was Ersatz Rory from the shoe factory show. I guess this might smack of repressive desublimation, I don't know, I'll have to think about it, no I won't, let's take a nap.

Darkroom Smooches with Lonesome Ray Barone

Last night I was walking down the hall past the bedroom and Dr. Theresa called out to ask what I was doing and I said "I am about to watch Lorelai Gilmore make out with Ray Barone" and Dr. Theresa made a helpless, involuntary noise like aaoooeeewwwhhheehhhwwww and I said "I didn't make it happen, it's not my fault!" Poor Ray is so lonely. (Look at this picture! He looks almost psychotically lonely! No wonder Lorelai is so blurry and concerned in the background.) He made an unwanted advance! He suddenly smooched her in the darkroom. Lorelai politely recoiled. It reminded me of what Mr. Ward once said about Lauren Graham's character on the shoe factory show. To quote my own "blog," which is my new thing, Mr. Ward said, "Every man she meets falls in love with her. A poor man loves her and a rich man loves her and a schoolteacher loves her." And now a down-in-the-dumps photographer who had stopped believing in love loves her! So there you go. Plus the schoolteacher still happens to love her, the schoolteacher of whom Elizabeth once observed in an email entitled "parenthood is blech": "Lorelai's little boyfriend looks like a young lady with a mustache (goatee) glued on. I think because of how wimpy he acts. Although of course I don't think ladies are wimpy."

The Hulk Comparison Ends

Mr. Ward writes to remind me that in between being a shoe inventor and a photographer's assistant, Lauren Graham was a brilliant playwright, which is where the Hulk comparison ends, I guess. I guess! I don't want to assume anything. Maybe the Hulk tosses off glittering little one-acts in his spare time. I imagine him in a tattered smoking jacket, holding an enormous ostrich quill.

Everybody Torments Raymond

Hey remember that TV show that used to be about Lauren Graham inventing shoes at the shoe factory? She is no longer inventing shoes! Now she is a photographer's assistant, which seems like a demotion, nothing against photographers' assistants! I can't explain her change in fortune, probably because I missed an episode, or maybe she is like the Hulk as he was portrayed on TV, the way he would go from town to town helping people in need, one week at a shoe factory, the next at a photographer's studio, for example. That (THE INCREDIBLE HULK, I mean) was my sister's favorite TV show before she could really talk. She would cry out in delight at the sound of the opening theme, "Huck! Huck!" I told you she couldn't really talk. Then she would sit there in a terrified trance when the Hulk appeared - a bewitchment from which nothing could stir or distract her! I guess she had mixed emotions! (She also pronounced "root beer" like this: "rt br." WERE WE GIVING HER ROOT BEER BEFORE SHE COULD TALK?) Anyway, Lauren Graham's gruff and sullen photographer boss is portrayed by Ray Romano. Lauren Graham sure does complain about him a lot. Maybe TOO much! Or so her (current) betrothed seemed to think as he sat there ineffectually eating ice cream and contemplating the complex series of facial expressions she exhibited, all unknowing! In this show, Ray Romano has a brooding, wounded quality. Like Heathcliff in WUTHERING HEIGHTS! So I think Lorelai Gilmore and Raymond from EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND are going to make out. I guess everybody really does love Raymond! Because he is so tormented! I have to say, though it is a gratuitous swipe, that Jerry Seinfeld could never pull this off. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, I guess! And if the dream of your life is to see Lorelai Gilmore make out with Raymond from EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, not that it should be, not by any means, it definitely should not be, unless it is, well, I guess your favorite day in the world will be here soon, you mark my words, it will. (See also.)

Ersatz Rory vs. The Zenorb

Elizabeth has been watching the shoe factory show (no longer about a shoe factory) so finally I have someone with whom to talk about it. We are upset by the budding romance between some creepy politician and ersatz Rory (pictured at the coffee shop where she used to work and they made her dress up like Bazooka Joe of bubble gum fame - with her mom, Lorelai Gilmore). "He's like a zenorb (made up word)," Elizabeth points out in reference to the creepy idealistic (?) politician. She's right! He is like a zenorb. And not to put disturbing imagery in your mind but he resembles a waxy, powdered corpse! SORRY. I decided to check "Google" to see whether anyone besides Elizabeth had made up the word zenorb by coincidence. There were plenty of matches for "zen orb" - I need to find out what a zen orb is! Sounds like a great gift idea - plus "Google" asked me "Did you mean zorb?" Ha ha ha! I love it when "Google" asks me things. No I did not mean zorb. ("Click" here for the real Rory building a house.)

TV

The shoe factory show is back! But the shoe factory itself is completely gone. No one works at the shoe factory anymore. The guy who used to work at the shoe factory is starting a recording studio with his brother. That seems iffy. Why don't they open a bookstore while they're at it? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Because people hate books. Also, on last night's episode, Lauren Graham ordered coffee. And I was like, NO WAY! She used to order coffee on GILMORE GIRLS. I was filled with rage. "Where is Luke, the scruffy diner owner?" I screamed. [In a remarkable coincidence, the "blog's" most recent mention of Luke, the scruffy diner owner took place five years ago to this very day! - ed.] Stop tormenting me with memories of GILMORE GIRLS! In an exciting subplot, a kid got a rash. And I thought, "This show concerns exactly nothing I care about. Yet here I am watching it in the dark eating a peanut butter sandwich." Later, I saw by chance a few minutes of Jay Leno, a person I do not care to watch on television. At the end, apparently, of his opening monologue, he made some unseemly, leering comments about Lauren Graham, who was to be a forthcoming guest on his televised program of conversation. His comments included, "I like brunettes. My wife is a brunette." Then he said the words "little black dress" and his mouth twisted itself into a weird, untrammeled grimace that turned out to be one of the creepiest and most unsettling things ever presented on television. I switched over to David Letterman, who fought with Jack Hanna, the "animal expert." They are the two oldest and crabbiest men on television, and as such give me great, unending cheer. Mr. Hanna brought out some possums. He claimed that a possum had been caught in the revolving door of his New York City hotel that day. He told Mr. Letterman that there are more than 200 kinds of marsupials in Australia. Mr. Letterman asked Mr. Hanna why the marsupials of Australia are so numerous and varied. Mr. Hanna replied, "It's cold down there and they sit in the pouch! I DON'T KNOW!" He was very irritated. Then he tried desperately to get a colorful bird to eat out of his hand.

Sexy Crying Parents vs. The Weather Machine

There was a storm on Tuesday so the NBC affiliate in Memphis canceled the season finale of SEXY CRYING PARENTS (formerly the shoe factory show) so they could show off their weather machines, which they must have paid a lot of money for because they drag them out and coo over them all the time to the point of incoherence. If the actions of the NBC affiliate saved a life, that is great and I am all for it - even if it happened DESPITE the confused, overlapping bellowing of the weathermen and the insanely blinking psychedelic lights of the weather machines. There is something sick and unseemly about the way the weathermen on that channel fawn over and caress their weather machines for hours and hours at a time without shutting up or saying anything helpful. They have one weather machine with a name like "FUTURETRON" - I mean, it is almost that. Were you to hear the real thing, which I can't recall, you would know I am not trying to be funny. The FUTURETRON tells us what the weather MIGHT be like an hour in the future. Sometimes the weathermen get on each other's nerves and bicker, especially when there is an old weatherman and a younger upstart weatherman, as was the case a few months ago. The young weatherman kept trying to panic everybody and the old weatherman kept telling him to calm down, the worst was over and everything was fine. But the younger weatherman - who, by the way, was just a nattering, disembodied voice coming from nowhere, like a nightmare of the old weatherman's to which we were mysteriously privy - insisted that something horrible could happen at any moment with no warning! It was very stressful and the old weatherman was really fed up. Come to think of it, I haven't seen him since. The other local channels somehow manage to get out the weather bulletins in ways less lurid and bizarre. SEXY CRYING PARENTS was moved to 1:35 on Thursday morning so I dvr'd it, which meant I was able to fast forward through all the parts where people were "dealing with their emotions," which was the whole show. I forgot to tell you there is one parent who doesn't cry (pictured). He is cool and wears a hat and the tears don't fall out of his eyes, they always just tremble and quiver wetly there on the verge, plus he pokes out his lip. For the first time in weeks we had some brief scenes at the shoe factory. The groovy young boss's office has a picture of a skull with devil horns drawn directly on the wall! That is some crazy shoe factory all right.

Shoe Factory Show No Longer About Shoe Factory

I am sorry to report that the shoe factory show has not been about a shoe factory for the past four weeks. Not even a brief peek at the shoe factory. Now it is only about people crying all the time in every scene. So much crying! You probably don't believe me because I can't find any pictures on the "internet" of people crying on the show. Lauren Graham isn't crying in this shot, but she doesn't look too happy either, does she? And trust me, she will probably be crying in a minute, and so will everybody else on the show. Mostly they cry for regular reasons, like how everything is crashing down around them. But one thing is for sure: they are always crying about something. Occasionally, very occasionally, they will cry because they are happy, like when Lauren Graham suddenly discovers she is a playwright and she didn't even know she had it in her! She wrote a whole, absolutely perfect first act of a play without even realizing it was a play! Then somebody told her and she started to cry. I can understand that! I love it when I write something perfect without even knowing what it is, or better yet, when a bestselling novel dictates itself to me in a dream. It makes me feel emotional. Finally, let me say - because I sound so sarcastic all the time - that now that I have been watching full episodes rather than just catching bits and pieces I actually enjoy the shoe factory show, which in reality is called PARENTHOOD, but I think they should rename it SEXY CRYING PARENTS because as the shoe factory plot has fallen by the wayside (and truly I don't miss it because it started being about the wacky new shoe factory owner who confounds all the oldsters with his hip and youthful ways) and the crying has markedly increased, the parental characters, both male and female, have begun to wear noticeably sexier clothing. They just wear sexy clothes and cry and cry! I'm not sure what's up with that.

Big Doings at the Shoe Factory

Watching the shoe factory show. Here are some lines of dialogue from tonight's episode: "He's got it all figured out." - "Got what figured out?" - "Shoes."

Exactly

I know what's going on at that old shoe factory! It's like that comic book no one remembers but me, about O.G. Whiz, a little fat kid who takes over a toy company and looks exactly like a guy Mr. Ward and I used to work with.

Trouble at the Old Shoe Factory

Saw a little of that show PARENTHOOD again. I am not interested in the subject of parenthood, but luckily PARENTHOOD is not about parenthood. It is about a shoe factory. People keep telling me it is not about a shoe factory, but every time I see part of it, it is about a shoe factory. Tonight a new owner took over the shoe factory! He was a youngster with a skateboard and he said he wanted to make the shoes "radical." That's really what he said! Twice! And all the old people at the shoe factory were like, "Whoa."

Ideas For Shoes

By the way, I spoke to Mr. Ward today. I think we mostly talked about Beetle Bailey for some reason. But you know how Mr. Ward always tries to convince me that the broadcast network television show PARENTHOOD is NOT about the ups and downs of life in a shoe factory, despite the fact that every time I accidentally see two seconds of it, it is always about the ups and downs of life in a shoe factory? Today I hit him with some hard facts: last night I caught a few seconds of PARENTHOOD and here is the EXACT line of dialogue that occurred as it flashed onto my TV screen: "The shoe business is hell, Sarah." With that, I clicked my clicker and it went away! Then later I happened to see a few more minutes of the show and Lauren Graham was in the back of a limousine with one of the Baldwin brothers, and he showed her his sketchbook, which contained his IDEAS FOR SHOES, including a golf shoe with retractable spikes. And then they started making out! So stop trying to tell me that the show is not about shoes. "All the interesting parts happen in the shoe factory," Mr. Ward admitted. Finally! (Hey, the characters in Beetle Bailey used to play golf a lot, so I thought I would cleverly combine two of the subjects of this "post" in my illustration. Instead, I found this "web" site that is nothing but comic book covers about golf. "Internet," you are crazy!)

Life In a Shoe Factory

Turns out Mr. Ward watches the televised television program PARENTHOOD, and he has cleared up a few things for me. For example, it is not about life in a shoe factory, despite what my few glimpses have strongly suggested. Lauren Graham, according to Mr. Ward, plays "an underachiever, and every man she meets falls in love with her. A poor man loves her and a rich man loves her and a schoolteacher loves her." I asked Mr. Ward how she could be considered an underachiever when, according to a scene I saw, she invented a shoe. "Well, she had an idea for a shoe," Mr. Ward clarified. Then he added, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice, "She doesn't believe in herself." He said that her character talks compulsively and a scene will often end with her stream of words still trailing off. "Actually, her speech pattern is a lot like Hank Kimball's on GREEN ACRES," Mr. Ward concluded.

Old Brainy

After my comments yesterday, I decided it was clearly MY DUTY to flip back and forth between simultaneous episodes of the broadcast television network programs THE GOOD WIFE and PARENTHOOD and present you with my findings. When I first flipped to PARENTHOOD, Lauren Graham was walking around in what appeared to be a warehouse full of shoeboxes, I SWEAR, suggesting ONCE AGAIN that despite its title, PARENTHOOD is about the shoe industry. I could not help but notice, meanwhile, that THE GOOD WIFE employed TWO actors from GILMORE GIRLS, as if to slap PARENTHOOD in the face (Lauren Graham portrayed one of the eponymous "Gilmore Girls")! Logan, the slick and unworthy boyfriend of Rory on GILMORE GIRLS, portrays a slick, unworthy lawyer on THE GOOD WIFE. Lauren Graham's own TV FATHER, Mr. Gilmore, played an attorney on last night's episode as well! This feels like a particularly low blow, breaking up the family AND sourly commenting on the very title of the rival show. Or maybe Edward Hermann just needed a job. Hey, remember when Doyle from GILMORE GIRLS went to work for the MAD MEN and the universe began to fold in on itself? Now the process is practically complete! It turns out that Peggy's cool Greenwich Village friend from MAD MEN (pictured, left) is just an insecure high school kid in the warped Bizarro world of PARENTHOOD. And they are BOTH actually David Mamet's daughter in really real real life for real! That's it, brain! These are the things you need to work on. Pack 'em in tight, brainy! You're going to need this stuff one day.

Lauren Graham Shoe Expo

These two shows THE GOOD WIFE and PARENTHOOD come on at the same time. Which one to watch? How about neither? That sounds like the best idea of all! But I did see two minutes of PARENTHOOD last week and can confirm my earlier suspicion: it is all about Lauren Graham and a shoe she invented. Why else would it be that every two minutes of that show I happen to catch is about Lauren Graham and her adventures in the footwear business? Last week's two minutes took place at a big shoe expo, and of course Lauren Graham was there - probably demonstrating the shoe she invented - and these two guys were there and Lauren Graham's eyes darted subtly back and forth, expressing this thought: "Here I am at the shoe expo and these two gentlemen are rivals for my affection!" I had no context and she said it all with her eyes. That's acting! Still: neither. I am not going to illustrate this "post" because there are no pictures on the "internet" of Lauren Graham inventing a shoe, but I swear I am not making that up. Or maybe I will find a picture of the little elves that helped the cobbler, you know those guys.

None of Your Business

Last week or maybe it was two weeks ago I accidentally saw part of that show PARENTHOOD, which stars Lauren Graham and tries to make you think it is the GILMORE GIRLS, but that is a trick because it is not! But the part of the show I saw seemed to be about Lauren Graham inventing a new kind of shoe. I'm not making that up! Well, that would be all right! Is it about Lauren Graham inventing a new kind of shoe? Because I would totally watch a show about Lauren Graham inventing a shoe. It was hard to tell whether that was a large enough part of the plot to make me happy. It came on again last night, but it was up against an all new episode of THE GOOD WIFE. Was the good wife still good? What does it mean to be good? What is goodness? Is it okay to be a bad wife? What does that mean? Where does the husband come in? These are some of the questions THE GOOD WIFE promised to answer. Which show to watch? I don't know! Which one did I watch? One? Both? Neither? Did I change my mind in the middle? Why do you care? Are you crazy? Leave me alone! Don't worry about it. It is none of your business! None of this is any of your business!