Why Indeed

I guess you've been wondering what McNeil has been doing during the pandemic. Mostly watching 60s movies. He writes of the set dressing, "I've seen what looks like an obelisk on almost every desk in almost every office. Why?" That's a great question, McNeil! The only evidence he provides is the single frame above ("behind Natalie Wood's head," he helpfully appends), but I trust him.

"Blog"trospective 18: The Anatomy of Melancholy

As promised, though I have "stopped 'blogging,'" I have returned to you just long enough to boast about finishing all 977 pages of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. That includes the first appendix, "The Conclusion of the Author to the Reader" (reworked by Burton for his introduction and left out of most subsequent editions), but not the second appendix, in which Burton's birthdate is deduced through astrological data. It only took me something like a year. I won't rehash my many excuses, no, I won't say how big and bulky the 1927 edition is and how I couldn't carry it on airplanes. I won't point out the good, long run I had of reading it before I was interrupted. But - before we get to the main body of this, the final "blog"trospective, I will tell you what I learned from THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY since the last time I saw you. 1. Compared to Blind Alfred Reed, Robert Burton is kind of progressive. He (Burton) gives us (as is his wont) several pages of quotations from ancient scholars enumerating what is supposedly wrong with women. But then he has to admit, "And that which I have said (to speak truth) no more concerns them than men, though women be more frequently named in this Tract; (to apologize once for all) I am neither partial against them, or therefore bitter... If any man take exception at my words, let him alter the name, read him for her, and 'tis all one in effect." 2. "Eating the egg of a night-owl causeth abstemiousness, according to Iarcha the Indian gymnosophist." Burton is speaking of sexual or romantic abstemiousness, though the idea that an owl's egg can cure alcoholism somehow made it to the United States, as reported previously on the "blog." Another of the "absurd remedies" for love mentioned by Burton is the wearing of "Characteristical Images," such as "the seal of a woman with disheveled hair." 3. "Gentle youths" are advised to "Let not the Doves outpass your murmurings... or oyster kissings," which would seem to imply that oysters are good kissers, as good at kissing as doves are at murmuring. I did very little research into the matter. We all know that oysters are supposed to be an aphrodisiac, so why shouldn't they be good kissers? I also recall that prostitutes were called "oysters" and "monkeys" in Burton's time, and though I doubt that's what is meant here, it does make me realize I took at least one of Burton's allusions to monkeys too literally. 4. After one victory, Caesar's soldiers sang a song that went, "Citizens, look to your wives, we bring you a bald adulterer." Gee, what a nice song. I learned of it in Burton's section on the sexual prowess of bald men (pictured). 5. Speaking of which, I learned the word "cornute," which, had I thought about it for a second, I would have known meant to put the horns on, or cuckold, but I didn't think at all, no, I just looked it up in my old dictionary. 6. Lots more owls in these final pages. At least half a dozen. In the passage urging young women not to marry old men, Burton tells how Sophocles, "a very old man, as cold as January, a bed-fellow of bones... doted yet upon Archippe a young Courtesan" and quotes an old poem: "Night-crows on tombs, owl sits on carcass dead,/ So lies a wench with Sophocles in bed." Ha ha, take that, Sophocles! 7. "As a dam of water stopped in one place breaks out into another, so doth superstition." This seems to anticipate Freud! Does it? I don't know. I think of Dr. Theresa's favorite phrase, "the return of the repressed." 8. He calls the goddess Venus "as common as a barber's chair." Was that a familiar insult at the time? Anyway, it's kind of snappy, if rude. 9. Burton says that people can be obsessive on one subject but otherwise fully functional: "they are like comets, round in all places but only where they blaze." A nice phrase! 10. Well, Burton has thought a lot about religious tolerance and I can't say he's for it. He does think burning people at the stake might be a little extreme, sometimes: "We have frequently such Prophets and dreamers amongst us, whom we persecute with fire... I think the most compendious cure for some of them at least, had been in Bedlam. But enough of this." 12. Yet at the same time he doesn't care for hellfire preachers, "nothing but gall and horror, and a mad noise, they make all their auditors desperate, many are wounded by this means, and they commonly that are most devout and precise." 13. "A Tuscan Sooth-sayer, as Paterculus tells the story, perceiving himself and Fulvius Flaccus his dear friend, now both carried to prison by Opimius, and in despair of pardon, seeing the young man weep, said, do as I do; and with that knockt out his brains against the door-cheek, as he was entering into Prison, and so desperately died." Well, that's a terrible story, sorry! But I can't help liking the phrase "knockt out his brains against the door-cheek." It's vivid! 14. Here's Burton's version of that Bible verse I like: "I am like a Pelican in the wilderness, an Owl because of thine indignation." Ha ha! No, I don't know why that's funny. 15. "... the more they search and read Scriptures, or divine Treatises, the more they puzzle themselves, as a bird in a net, the more they are intangled and precipitated into this preposterous gulf." I know how they feel! 16. I learned the word "Mormoluches," which seems to mean "hobgoblins." And now take my arm as we stroll through THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY as summarized previously on this "blog": against vainglory---aliens (two green children who fell from Heaven)---alkermes---Aquinas beats a talking brass man to pieces with a hammer (1927 footnote)---architectural talent of bees, the---Artemidorus the Grammarian loses his wits by the unexpected sight of a crocodile---bats and owls hover in melancholy darkness over a shady bower---Burton critical of, yet defiant about, his own work---company of young men and maids cursed to sing for a year without stopping---compares the profession of a physician unfavorably to that of a hangman---contains numerous owls---cucubuth---cultivating a taste for exquisite sauces is an impediment to happiness---Cupid and Death exchange arrows---delusion of live frogs in belly---dizzards---emperor who was bad at kissing, the---February a peak time for werewolves---fairies walk about in little coats---fairybabes of tombs and graves---fiery urine---glucupicron---invention of the ball---led (by a 1927 footnote to Burton) to Godwin's LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS---man gets gas from a concoction meant to increase his libido, a---man with a fear of peeing cured by being told the town is on fire, a---mice sleeping under the snow, as fat as butter---parable of a mule and an ass---people cured of various ailments by falling on their heads---pickitivant---Pied Piper story presented as fact, the---possible roots of "willy-nilly"---trees fall in love. In closing I ask you to recall the previous seventeen "blog"trospectives: 1. Tom Franklin. 2. Phil Oppenheim. 3. Movies. 4. The Moon. 5. Sandwiches. 6. The United States. 7. The Beach Boys. 8. Arnold Stang. 9. Books With Owls In Them. 10. Gelatin. 11. Monkeys Riding Dogs. 12. Kent Osborne Eating Chicken. 13. What Happened When Megan Abbott Lived In Oxford, Mississippi. 14. Graveyards. 15. Feeding a Possum. 16. The Twentieth Century. 17. Stuff I Left Out of the Book I Wrote About Cigarette Lighters. If you "click" on them all, and then "click" on every "link" within them, and every "link" within every "link," you will have discovered my own anatomy of my own melancholy. "The world shall end like a Comedy, and we shall meet at last in Heaven, and live in bliss together; or else in conclusion, fade away into nothing." Okay, so long, see you on McNeil's birthday.

Literary Matters

It's time once again for "Literary Matters"! No one enjoys those. They're not enjoyable. 1. I covered this one on twitter yesterday, but it's sticking in my mind. I read in the New York Times about Jimmy Buffett "grinning and splashing Tabasco on a modified Cobb salad." The editorial machinery of the New York Times saw fit - for the sake of accuracy, one supposes - to make sure the reader did not receive the false impression that Jimmy Buffett was eating a completely traditional Cobb salad. BUT! They did not care to let that same reader know in what way the Cobb salad had been modified. That's really all I have to say about that, except that I can't stop thinking about it. 2. EVERYBODY has been telling me to read BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL. Why, Randy Yates stopped me on the corner outside his own restaurant just to ask whether I had read it. And he was only one of many to make that query. And I needed something to read after MEASURE FOR MEASURE. (Ha ha, don't worry, I haven't given up on THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY; I just read this in it: "Cupid and Death met both in an Inn, and being merrily disposed, they did exchange some arrows from either quiver; ever since young men die, and oftentimes old men dote"... but I need a new "carry-around" book.) BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL is done up at least partway in that poetic style that Chandler made permissible for crime stories (instead of bubbles in the bathwater there are "little zeroes of suds"), and I'm more than fine with that! Okay! But then I had to stop on page 12 when he referred to the "trashy tune and words" of a Hank Williams song. The idea of someone sitting around proclaiming something "trashy" has never set well with me. And I know I should not confuse the author with the narrator! But here's a guy working in a genre that has been (unfairly) called "trashy" and he is going to have his narrator refer to the towering melodic and lyric achievements of Hank Williams as "trashy"? He should be on Hank's side! The irony (?) is compounded by the fact that this is a slick nyrb paperback, which has "rehabilitated," I guess, his "pulpy" novel. 3. Have you ever noticed in those books how your tough-guy narrator always wants to tell you when he takes a hot shower and eats some steak and eggs? It's a tendency I noticed in Spillane a lot. Maybe it's realism! I always thought it would be interesting to write a detective novel where there's no crime to solve and the detective just tells you about all the eggs he eats and hot showers he takes. The narrator of BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL "had no more idea of falling in love with her than I had of making a meal of the big yellow cake of soap in the Victorian bathroom," curiously combining both tendencies. 4. So I put down BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL. I'm gonna come back to it! I just have to shake off that unnecessary sideswipe at Hank Williams, though it's really got its claws in me. But in the meantime I thought I'd see what some of these here Shakespeare experts had to say about MEASURE FOR MEASURE. Out of three scholarly tomes I opened, two fell open EXACTLY and AT ONCE to the part about MEASURE FOR MEASURE, as if guided by the ghostly hand of Shakespeare himself! 5. Okay, I told you I'd read some more of this novel. Just three pages later the narrator is complaining that descriptions of women's legs in books are "trash." I don't know whether he's obsessed with trash or I am. But he's used the term twice in three pages. And now he's washing down seconds of potato salad with ice cold beer. Don't get mad at me, kind recommenders! I'm going to give this guy more of a chance than he gave Hank Williams. 6. I WAS WRONG! It's more like Cain than Chandler, but that's not what I mean. See, he's using the Hank Williams song ("If You've Got the Money, Honey") in a much more complex way than I expected... as a kind of shifting leitmotif. "Before it had sounded frank and functional. Before it had sounded gay and uncomplicated. Now the tune had a nasty taste to it." So, see, he was going somewhere with that, and I'm the sap. 7. I'm "not 'blogging' anymore, but I thought a late addendum to an old "post" would be okay. I'll probably come back to brag when I finish THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY too. But in the meantime, from BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL, "She split some canned wieners and fried them with the eggs." See? I told you this kind of narrator always tells you when he eats eggs. 8. "... his hand busy as a tarantula in a fly cage." Gross! And I don't even know what a fly cage is. I assume it is a cage full of flies. And then you put a tarantula in it. But with its obvious debt to Chandler's "tarantula on a slice of angel food," the pendulum of influence swings back. I said I'm not "blogging" anymore but I keep sneakily adding to this list. Pitiful.

So Long, You Ancient Pelican

McNeil came to town for the Third Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. The Second Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival took place in 2010. So you can imagine our eagerness to get the latest installment of the festival up and running. We got out a statue of John Wayne that Megan Abbott sent me for my birthday and put him on the TV tray to watch over us. It was pretty late and McNeil was barely off the plane himself when we watched the John Wayne airplane drama THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY. About 30 minutes in, we noted that John Wayne hadn't really done anything. An hour in, John Wayne - still not having done much of anything - announced his intention to take a nap! I forgot to tell you about the scene where a grown man gives a long speech about John Wayne's character, all the while licking an ice cream cone for reasons that remained unclear to us. I mean, I know why someone might enjoy an ice cream cone, but it was a peculiar decision dramatically. McNeil and I argued over whether or not it was the director William Wellman's idea. McNeil said no way, but I said if Wellman didn't like it he would have walked over and knocked the ice cream cone out of the guy's hand. I suppose it was just to give the actor something to do with his hands, some "business," while he delivered his monologue, a variation on the old "acting with your pipe" trick. I joked that next time we saw him he'd be eating a candy apple. That reminded McNeil that he had just seen candy apples for sale at the airport. "Eight dollars!" McNeil reported indignantly. Eight dollars for a candy apple. What a world. John Wayne didn't get to take that nap because the plane he was copiloting got into some trouble and he had to go back and explain things to the passengers. He made a really long speech about airplane emergency procedures - no, not a speech, really. It was like a brochure. "He's not acting, he's talking!" McNeil said. But he said it with admiration. It was true that John Wayne efficiently and clearly outlined what to do when your airplane is probably about to land in the ocean. It wasn't until OVER TWO HOURS INTO THE MOVIE (it was a long movie) that John Wayne finally slapped around Robert Stack. Action! At the end of the movie John Wayne walks away and some guy says, "So long, you ancient pelican." We talked about what that might have meant for a while and then we stopped. Next up: the Dean Martin sex comedy WHO'S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED?, in which Carol Burnett does some strongly implied proto-twerking, though she is shot from the waist up like Elvis to shield the audience from lewdness. Going on to THE BIG MOUTH, we realized that an unfortunate theme of our selections was "offensive Asian stereotyping," an element shared by all three movies we had watched so far (though the deadpan genius Jack Soo managed to decimate some of it in WHO'S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED?). McNeil's visit was to be a short one! We had to keep cramming movies in! The next one was MILLION DOLLAR LEGS, starring Jack Oakie and W.C. Fields. It had Ben Turpin in it! One subplot was child star Dickie Moore shooting people in the butt with arrows. You know what else it had in it? A guy who put on a goat suit and ran really fast (pictured). As you can see from the frame above, at times this goofy slapstick figure resembled a nightmare apparition from an Ingmar Bergman film. BACHELOR IN PARADISE capped things off. Some easygoing back-and-forth between Bob Hope and Lana Turner in a bar got us thinking about a key difference between Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis: Bob, as producer, tended to pick leading ladies who could really challenge him, like Lana Turner, Eva Marie Saint, Lucille Ball, Virginia Mayo, Katharine Hepburn, and so on. Jerry, as director, seemed to favor inexperienced ingenues that (maybe he was thinking) he could "mold." Obviously, there are exceptions, most notably Stella Stevens doing her best to break that mold in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and Jerry's longtime friend Janet Leigh in THREE ON A COUCH, though, come to think of it, he does stack the rest of that cast with ingenues. (Going back to before he was a director, he meets his truest equal in Shirley MacLaine in ARTISTS AND MODELS.) But I have to reluctantly agree with the Shawn Levy book when it says that THE BIG MOUTH's Susan Bay "reads her lines as if they were random strings of words." McNeil chalked it up to Bob's unsurpassed "security" as a performer (he's so secure it's almost sociopathic) and Jerry's "insecurity." We furthermore agreed that Bob's security and Jerry's insecurity are the qualities that make them such fascinating artists. Jerry's weirdly amorphous "problem," the nature of which he keeps failing to communicate to the other characters in THE BIG MOUTH, writes Chris Fujiwara, is "posed in the most general - indeed, universal - terms... a formality, a MacGuffin." McNeil says it's sexual. I leave you with this clip from MILLION DOLLAR LEGS, featuring the delightful Lyda Roberti, in which she proclaims, "I'm just a woman made of gelatin/ I have a torso like a tambourine":

Certain Musty Old Letters

You know whenever I go on a little plane trip I like to jot down some things about it to tell you when I get back and then you don't read it and I don't really care. Sometimes I get lazy and don't jot until the trip is practically half over. But this time I STARTED JOTTING BEFORE THE TRIP EVEN BEGAN. I was sitting on the couch, waiting for time to go to the airport, and the Fox Movie Channel was on and I took out my special jotting notebook and start jotting down some things about this scene in this Doris Day movie that was on. Doris Day wore a backless, sparkling orange dress. A fat German guy was swatting grapes into the air for some reason. One grape fell into the butt section of Doris Day's dress and she inadvertently started a "dance craze" by trying to shake the grape out of her butt. I was thinking about how smutty everything used to be. I couldn't think of what to read on the airplane. I was really hoping for ANCIENT EVENINGS, but Bill Boyle isn't back from his trip home yet, and anyway he writes me that he has lost the tattered old copy of ANCIENT EVENINGS he had when he was a teenager, and which he had planned to bequeath to me. So I impulsively grabbed THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL - this despite my reservations about VILLETTE as good airplane material, and VILLETTE was by Charlotte Brontë; THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL is by Anne, the Brontë nobody likes! Ha ha, just kidding, Anne Brontë. But one of the first things I read at the airport was this: "It is a soaking, rainy day, the family are absent on a visit, I am alone in my library, and have been looking over certain musty old letters and papers, and musing on past times... having withdrawn my well-roasted feet from the hobs, wheeled round to the table, and indicted the above lines to my crusty old friend..." Well, that is just the kind of thing I want to read on an airplane. Something about the hobs really got to me, and I don't even know what hobs are! My mellow mood was abetted by gin, my go-to remedy for fear of flying. I eavesdropped on a woman who was ordering crab cakes at the "Sun Studios" themed bar at the airport (!) and the book made me think of how Kelly Hogan and I used to write letters all the time, back when people wrote letters all the time, and how Hogan recently told me she keeps mine in a waterlogged suitcase in her once-flooded garage and sometimes she takes them out. Oh no, I said, don't remind yourself needlessly of the inanities of that callow twerp, and Hogan clarified: "I don't read them - I smell them." An intoxicating brew of moldy sentiments! I was met at the airport by some grad students from the University of Cincinnati, where I was set to speak. I should thank them all, and especially the ones who drove me around while I was there and tended to my every need, and who, in fact, were responsible for my invitation: Luke, Steph, Justine, and Woody - and there were so many more, all nice. Luke and Woody were waiting by baggage claim with a huge poster with my name on it - decorated as well with several startling portraits of me, drawn by Luke's undergrads. They had been reading my short stories in Luke's class and he asked them to draw what they thought I looked like. One had given me a neck tattoo! Another, according to Luke (I haven't yet had a chance to examine the poster in detail, though Luke says he is mailing it to me) wrote her phone number on the poster, and "Call me" - ha ha ha! Woody and Luke drove me into the city, remarking cheerfully as we went over a bridge, "Obama cited this as a dangerous bridge that needs work." I shouted repeatedly to Woody and Luke that I wanted to go "somewhere fancy" for dinner. They said they'd take me to "the fancy hot dog place." Maybe they were kidding, but it WAS a fancy hot dog place, though not pretentious like some other fancy hot dog places I have heard about. It was called Mayday, very welcoming and comfortable, with excellent beer, friendly service and a pleasant, dark atmosphere. My hot dog contained lamb sausage made with cherries! So you will have to admit that was fancy. Somehow people already knew when I walked in the door of the fancy hot dog place about my work with ADVENTURE TIME. Someone wanted me to sign an apron for the kitchen. "My favorite is Lady Rainicorn," she said. She kind of went "Ah!" when I started drawing something at the bottom of my inscription, but it was just a stupid heart with an arrow through it. I'm the only person associated with ADVENTURE TIME who can't draw, reliably disappointing all I meet. It's understandable and even delightful to me that the students at "literary events" now are more interested in ADVENTURE TIME than in my books, which are but dubiously in print - in fact, I have a lawyer working right now to discover who is getting that tiny kickback on the rare occasion when a copy is sold. It's not me! I stayed in a nice bed and breakfast near the campus. My vivid and relentless dreams that first night took place - as if I were awake - in the actual room where I was sleeping, and were populated by humorous, cherubic ghosts or pixies who wanted to remind me whenever I became too relaxed that THEY were in charge. The room and bed were very comfortable, let me stress. But I was tormented all night by mirthful pixies - a first for me - and was tired for the reading. I didn't really want to read from any of my old, dead books, so I read from my cat book that no one wants to publish. As I was preparing my selections - the introduction, part of Chapter One, and the conclusion - I realized that most of the book has been published in bits and pieces, as I've cut it up and used it in lots of different stories and articles and the like. I'm sorry, sort of, that it's never going to appear whole, as "my cat book," though I see in retrospect it is perhaps unwise to write a 10-chapter novel in which nothing happens until the last half of Chapter Eight - a little wholesome advice I was able to impart to the young writers who attended the reading! In the Q&A and in her poetry, my fellow reader Marisa Crawford made some good points in favor of the use of pop culture in literature. One of her poems had Joan Crawford in it (and another made telling use of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART FIVE!) so I was glad that by coincidence I was reading the Joan Crawford section of my "cat book." After the reading, a bar. I sat with two other grown men - the head of the English department and the poetry editor of the Cincinnati Review - and we all talked about our kitties. I noticed that the openly sentimental discussion halted when Chris Bachelder came back to the table! Or maybe I imagined that. Did he exude the air of a man who would not tolerate such weakness? He was friendly and funny. But the cat talk did cease with his approach. Mr. Bachelder is a writer whose fiction I have always enjoyed and admired. I was meeting him for the first time, and we had fun trashing various McSweeney's editors. Ha ha! Not trashing. Affectionately ruminating upon their individual styles and methods. The conclusion of my cat book was published in McSweeney's, and I mentioned how the editor had made me change "solar plexus" to "abdomen." The poet at the table (Don Bogen) kindly took up for "solar plexus." Then we talked about why I had cravenly reverted to "abdomen" during the reading that day even though I had brought an old manuscript with "solar plexus" typed on the page. The strange tyranny of the absent editor! The next morning at the bed and breakfast I sat there reading this in THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL: "I thought it but reasonable to make some slight exertion to render my company agreeable." And I thought, yes, THAT is the kind of sentence I want to write all the time, and no other, editors can go to hell. And then Anne Brontë introduced some complicated plot business about trying to fetch a ball of cotton that had rolled under a table without disturbing a cat. WHY CAN'T ALL WRITING BE THAT? But that was the next day. The night before, as the students were about to leave the bar, I had the sudden urge to inquire, "Where do you go to sing karaoke in Cincinnati?" Luke knew. So a group of us walked some blocks to a gritty, narrow, cash-only joint called, with refreshing lack of irony, Junker's Tavern. Here is a picture of some of us getting ready to go to Junker's Tavern. That's Justine and Luke.

I'm in the middle, doing my thing where I think it's hilarious to look surly in a photo, but it never is. It was a good evening, though I got tired and made Steph and Luke leave before they could do "Mambo #5." Back at the bed and breakfast, the ghosts returned only once in a dream, as parody ghosts with greenish faces and CARNIVAL OF SOULS style dark rings under their eyes, but dressed in colorful rags, shouting, "God bless us, every one!" with Cockney accents and well-meaning but gruesome smiles.

On the plane back, the narrator of THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL was saying, "I was by no means a fop - of that I am fully convinced" and I was like, "Right, pal, keep telling yourself that!"

Ouch!

FOR REAL WARNING! The following "blog" "post" contains excruciating violence! In my big book about Hinduism I read a legend about this guy who got impaled on a stake. An angry king jabs this guy onto a stake, but then the king is like, "Sorry! I changed my mind." But the guy can't pull out the stake. He's really jabbed good! So he decides to make the best of the stake he has poking out of him, "thinking it might be useful for carrying things like flower baskets." Talk about a positive mental attitude! "And so he went about with the stake still inside him, in his neck, ribs, and entrails, and people used to call him 'Tip-of-the-Stake' Mandavya." Some nickname! I bet he kind of got sick of people calling him that, but then again, I don't know, this guy seems pretty cool about everything. And then about 20 pages later I read a couple of different stories about some dude shooting seven arrows into a dog's mouth. Not cool! Though nobody in the stories seems to think it's a big deal, nobody but the dog. Well, I take that back, people find the marksmanship notable but nobody gives a dang about the dog. And now all I can think about is Phineas Gage, the real-life historical figure who got an iron bar through his head and was all, "Whatevs." I first heard about Mr. Gage from my friend Bill from Hubcap City, who wanted to write a rock opera about him as I recall, or maybe a normal opera. Of course, Phineas Gage was not really all, "Whatevs." I think he became sort of a jerk. Yes, I just looked it up on the University of Akron "web" site, which says that Gage became "fitful, irreverent, and grossly profane, showing little deference for his fellows. He was also impatient and obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, unable to settle on any of the plans he devised for future action. His friends said he was 'No longer Gage.'" Yeah, but I mean, come on! Give him a break. A THREE-FOOT, THIRTEEN-POUND IRON BAR WENT THROUGH HIS HEAD. You'd be capricious too. (PS In one of those stories a guy cuts off his own thumb and we didn't even get to that.)

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to "McNeil's Movie Korner," the only place on the "internet" to read about movies you don't care anything about. NEWS FLASH! I emailed McNeil after his recent visit to say we should watch CANCEL MY RESERVATION - Bob Hope's final role as a leading man - next time we get together. McNeil replied: "I don't think I've seen it since it was on the NBC movie of the week way back in the 70s. I can still see Bob holding up a jungle-print bra (a la Mrs. Robinson). I think he's climbing out of a cave? And then it burns? Am I dreaming? Am I having an astral projection?" Friends, I went ahead and watched CANCEL MY RESERVATION, and I can tell you that McNeil was only partially dreaming. Eva Marie Saint and Bob Hope are trapped in a cave, and Bob uses Eva Marie Saint's animal-print bra to fashion a makeshift bow, which he uses to shoot a makeshift flaming arrow out of a hole, attracting the attention of Keenan Wynn and Ralph Bellamy, who are flying over in a helicopter... but WHY, you ask, did I watch CANCEL MY RESERVATION without McNeil? Because McNeil went on: "Maybe it's best to save it up until just before I die, that way I have something to look forward to... like, 'Oh boy, I can't wait til I'm almost dead so I can watch CANCEL MY RESERVATION.' A movie which is appropriate for 'deathbed viewing,' and probably not only because of the title. Is deathbed one word? Why did I put that phrase in quotes? I can't believe I'm still typing..." (A sentiment I have often expressed on the "blog" - a sensation, in fact, that I am experiencing RIGHT NOW. And yet there is no end in sight.) NEWS FLASH! The opening credits of CANCEL MY RESERVATION include "With Anne Archer as Crazy." That's right! Anne Archer's character's name is "Crazy." She's a free-spirited young woman of today! (And only a year later Clint Eastwood directed a movie about a free-spirited young woman named... BREEZY.) As "Crazy" explains her name to Eva Marie Saint, "I pinned it on myself. Until we come together inside, we're all a little crazy." Wise words, "Crazy"! I believe Eva Marie Saint even remarks as much, as she and "Crazy" have some real talk about "women's lib" over coffee and toast. A lot of the movie is played really straight... the talks about "women's lib" and relationships, the murder plot... I noticed in the credits that CANCEL MY RESERVATION is based on a novel by Louis L'Amour - which probably doesn't deserve one of these (!) but there it is anyway. In one of my many books by Bob Hope, I read, "I had planned to produce it with another actor as star, but the deal didn't go through. Then Tom Sarnoff of NBC said, 'Why don't you do BROKEN GUN yourself?' Why not? The script was rewritten, and we shot most of the picture in Carefree, Arizona." That (the rewrite) explains a lot. As straight as it's played, you can feel the anxious presence of Bob Hope's gag writers like invisible creatures from another world, occasionally breaking through the membrane of existence Lovecraft style. In one distasteful instance, Bob obviously took the fellas aside and said, "Hey, there should be a gag where I try to give this kid mouth-to-mouth" (talking about Anne Archer) and they gritted their teeth and buckled down and put it in there, though it's absolutely unnecessary, which made me think of of what McNeil said about Hope's love interest in EIGHT ON THE LAM, and the general information about Hope's "love life" that has been funneled to me over the years by Megan Abbott. Another intrusion into the "reality" of CANCEL MY RESERVATION occurs when Bob imagines being hung in front of a jeering mob that includes Bing Crosby, Johnny Carson, John Wayne and Flip Wilson in cameo appearances. Immediately I thought of two other Hope movies that revolve around Hope being executed or nearly executed: by electric chair in MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE and guillotine in CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT. And there must be more. Is there a scholarly paper to written about Bob Hope's recurring nightmare of public execution? No. Though it occurs to me this may be another motif that Woody Allen picked up from Hope... God help me, I just keep typing, don't I? CANCEL MY RESERVATION is one of those late films of which Dave Kehr remarked, "There’s none of the fearful, anti-hippie humor that had come to dominate his television specials; instead, he seems to be doing his best to keep up, adapting the point of view of a concerned, confused but not wholly unsympathetic parent." From the same article: "Funny they are not, but these last efforts are unexpectedly moving. Hope does his unflappably professional best to pick his way through a cultural landscape that had irreversibly shifted beneath his feet." And that's the word I kept thinking, too, as I watched Hope work here: "professional." NEWS FLASH! McNeil watched GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN on TCM yesterday. He reports: "The director of GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN does the same thing Jerry Lewis does in THE LADIES MAN! Gidget tells a woman on a plane a story that happened only 12 minutes earlier in the movie, and the director replays the scene for the audience to relive (with Gidget providing v/o) - just in case we forgot." I recall that Kent Osborne and I once watched the beginning of THE LADIES MAN together, and the odd editorial choice described by McNeil marked a point of no return for Kent. Here's how Chris Fujiwara puts it in his great Jerry monograph: "Lewis unfolds redundancy for its own sake, as redundancy... The repetition discloses nothing new but only confirms the obsessive nature of Herbert's relation to the scene (and, in a wider sense, the obsessional character that all narrative possesses for Lewis)." Okay! (See also. "See also"? Ha ha ha! Pendarvis, you're a riot! I know nobody's reading this. See also.)

What I Have Learned

What I have learned from STUNTMAN!, the autobiography of Hal Needham (our current Doomed Book Club selection), is that when a stuntman wants to play a joke on another stuntman, he shoots his friend with an arrow, for example. "[I] let out a scream of pain," Needham reports of one such merry prank. This reminds me of the time in another Doomed Book Club selection when comedian Joe E. Lewis joshed with a heckler by throwing scalding liquid in his face. Good times!

Literary Matters

Oh no! It is time once again for "Literary Matters," just what everybody hates. With good reason! But these particular literary matters are pretty nice for a change and there are just two of them so shut up. 1) A wonderful time at Off Square Books yesterday: master of the short story Jim Shepard - who both in visage and temperament somewhat resembles the great Groucho Marx - read from his new book YOU THINK THAT'S BAD. (He was a handsome man, Groucho was. Just yesterday on TCM I saw a snippet of an interview with Maureen O'Sullivan [pictured] in which she said "I could have been in love with him." But she also said something weird, which was that she told him, "I don't like funny men" and made him stop telling jokes when he was around her.) Jim Shepard was reading from his short story "Minotaur" (which contained a reference to sad clown Emmett Kelly!) and we were all bobbing our heads and nodding and chuckling with pleasure when suddenly - BOOM! - there was a revelation that socked us in the gut and the whole audience sort of went "oof." The audience made a noise! I think this is a sign of a good reading. Most readings are terrible, as we know. But if you literally get the wind knocked out of you, that's a good one. I heard something similar happen - a gasp - a few years ago when my friend Pia Z. Erhardt read her short story "The Man." We were "on tour" together and the gasp occurred each time she read it! 2) I took PARROTS OF THE WORLD off of my recommendation shelf at Square Books and replaced it with CROW PLANET, the volume from which I extract much of this "blog's" crow information. Nothing against PARROTS OF THE WORLD! They are very colorful! But I believe my decision was the right one. When I left the store yesterday, I saw Michael Bible leafing through CROW PLANET with what appeared to be great interest. The shelf does its job! Oh! Somebody put a bunch of books ON TOP of my recommendation shelf but I DO NOT ENDORSE THOSE! Michael kindly drew some arrows pointing downward on my recommendation sign to help alert you to that fact. I cannot speak for the books above the sign!

A Taste of Jerks

I saw this commercial where this guy takes his car or his truck or whatever it is out to the woods because it is one of those cars or trucks you can drive in the woods. Then he goes to sleep on the ground in the woods but a cricket starts chirping. SO HE SHOOTS AND KILLS THE CRICKET WITH A BOW AND ARROW! It's supposed to be amusing. BUT HE DECIDED TO DRIVE OUT TO THE WOODS AND SLEEP ON THE GROUND! Is that the cricket's fault? Crickets stay up at night and make noise in the woods, man. If you don't want to hear a cricket, don't drive your special car or truck out in the woods in the middle of the night and go to sleep on the ground where THE CRICKETS ARE JUST DOING THEIR THING. It's like I was saying before, commercials are about nothing but jerks now... jerks we are supposed to love! Jerks whose taste we are supposed to emulate! The taste of jerks!

As It Were

"Unicorns in the Bible?" asks the NBIL. "It's true!" he answers himself. "Depending on which version you're reading," he qualifies. "I stumbled across Numbers 24:8 last night: 'God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.' On top of that, this prophecy is being spoken by a sorcerer! Wait, there's more! Here's an online concordance and here are all the translations." Thanks, NBIL! This is probably almost everything anyone will ever need to know about the fabulous unicorns of the Bible!

The Pulley

It seems vital to the interests of the "blog" to report that in today's New York Times (in which I have a book review) the fellows from Spinal Tap are revealed to have a "favorite inside joke" at the expense of Larry King's Twitter account. Michael McKean (pictured) is credited with a particularly fine and hilarious imitation: "If there's a better invention than the pulley, I haven't heard of it." We mention this for two reasons: 1) The "blog" would like to establish itself as a pioneer in the field, having first drawn your attention to Larry King's Twitter account on May 4th. 2) It makes us think once again about how even the best approximations of certain kinds of oddball writing fail to match the weird power of the real thing. I can write tweeterings about pudding all I want, but Larry King will always have me beat in the non sequitur department, because he is like the Zen dude who's not shooting at the target to win a sack of gold, you know that dude. Go back and read your Chuang Tzu. Larry King is a living work of art! A famous line from THIS IS SPINAL TAP puts it best: "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."

Jerry, the Source of All

KUNG FU PANDA is poised to do big "box office" this weekend, as we hear from one of the directors of that film, Mark Osborne himself (pictured). "We couldn't have done it without your mention," he jokes. Spurred by the recent "post" in which I mentioned both KUNG FU PANDA and Jerry Lewis, Mark goes on: "Did I ever tell you that the example I used to explain the tone of Kung Fu Panda to the crew was 'What if Akira Kurosawa shot a Jerry Lewis movie?' No doubt inspired by your love of Jerry!" This is very nice of Mark to say, given our struggles over Mr. Lewis in the past, each coming to peace with Jerry in his own way. It also bolsters my argument, often put forth on the "blog," that Jerry is the source of everything we hold dear as human people, despite his somewhat bleak worldview. And though Kurosawa is Japanese and the Kung Fu Panda is Chinese, I did think of Kurosawa - thereby showcasing my perceptiveness! - when I read in Darghis's KUNG FU PANDA review about "a volley of arrows that falls down like red rain and a delicate swirl of pink petals" ... particularly of Kurosawa's films DREAMS and RAN. (Believe it or not, I just deleted a long paragraph in which I compared Toshiro Mifune's character in SEVEN SAMURAI to both Bob Hope [his braggart's bluster] and Jerry Lewis [physical comedy veering into rage]. And I made a good case, too!)

"Blog"trospective 1: Tom Franklin

For reasons that have already been discussed, today we are introducing an exciting new feature to the "blog." We call it "blog"trospectives. Say hello to our first subject, Tom Franklin. This is where you go on the "blog" to learn everything that the "blog" has to say about Tom Franklin! And as other "blog"trospectives are introduced, in the eighty or so years we expect to keep on "blogging," we will "link" each "blog"trospective to the one that came before it, creating a mighty library of learning to rival the one in ancient Alexandria. Without further ado, then - Franklin, Tom: Abbott, Megan, and Phillips, Scott, reading CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER (novel by); accordion played at home of; ADVENTURE TIME plot hinges on favorite TV show of; allegedly curls his hair for a trip to Faulkner's grave; almost titles or subtitles a book THE ALABAMIAD; anniversary of his eating a roasted pig; appearance on a panel with; appears in ill-fated "blog"dex; appears on Anthony Bourdain's television program; appears on TREME; as host; as object of contemplation; as source of encouragement and solace; as test subject for "blog"trospectives; asks about WHERE'S HUDDLES; at Faulkner's grave; at my birthday party; at opening of Turnrow Book Co; attends a party at Jimmy Buffett's mother's house; attends a wedding; auspices of; award-winning poet; becomes a New York Times best seller; behind on his viewing of LOST; brings comic books to my sickbed; brings even more comic books; brings OMAC comic books to lunch; brings over comic books about Zatanna, the Flash, and Swamp Thing; Brontë, Anne, reminds me of; buys me comic books; changes his mind about in what order I should read a couple of Stephen King books; chicken in yard of; claims I have "left gatherings to 'blog'"; coffee and shower, both hot, provided by; considers driving several hours to meet Susan Minot, but then doesn't; consternation of; coughs up a gnat---CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER (novel); crows constantly discussed at dinner with; daughter of; daughter of plays the game I mistakenly think is called "Mumbly-Peg"---Demon, The; discussed at lunch with; depressed about Captain Marvel; DEVILWOOD (novel by) has owl balls in it; digs out an old paperback, with disappointing results; discusses spelling; does Styx at karaoke; doesn't like to see woman's head get swatted off by a grizzly bear; doubts the continued existence of "blogs"; drinks at TGI Friday's on Christmas Eve---drinks from an ornate silver goblet; drinks from the goblet of a murderer; drive to Arkansas with; dual protagonists and; eats a roasted pig; Edgar nominee, 2011; enjoys the movie WHIFFS; explains that a giant who changes size isn't really a giant; extra in DEADWOOD, an; faces his fears; eyes of; "fave" FRASIER episode of; favorite movie is DUMB & DUMBER; fear of Barbara Eden; fear of Barbara Eden not laughable; first met at Olive Garden; forced to dress up as a duke; forgets what's in his books; gets a great review in the Washington Post; gives the gift of horror comics; glasses of shield him from "devil eyes" effect; gothic short story of, featuring Buck Owens; "Grit" (short story by); hanging out with at City Grocery Bar; has a cool mailbox; has a fan in "Comic Book Villain"; hates wasps; hiccuping through lunch with; I watch his favorite FRASIER episode; indirectly provides important answers; influence of Charles Portis on punctuation; inspires the excessive purchase of old comic books; interviewed by Boswell Book Company of Milwaukee; interviewer of contacts "blog"; introduces Lewis Nordan; introduces me to Fly Man; introduces me to Via Bleidner; introduces William Gay novel; is a golden goose of sorts; keen eye for natural phenomena; killing time before a drink with; knocking one back with; Kubert, Joe; Franklin announces the death of; LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER and; laugh shared with; likes "blog"; likes same movie as history professor's son; Lippfrankmanlinfest and; lives in Brazil; long lunch with; looks like an old wizard in a book club; loves soup; lunch with; lunch with, and consequences of, foreseen; makes a regular thing of shaving my head; McNeil claims to have as many adventures as; mentioned in interview; moderation of; "Nap Time" (short story); niceness of; "Noir at the Bar" reading subject of plugging; not done with New York Times best seller list; old Daredevil comic book of; on Alabama ghosts; on Black Canary and Green Arrow; on Blues Brothers; on marital relationship of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl; on relationship between Plastic Man and a sexy nuclear scientist; para-glides off mountain; photo of Dr. Theresa by; picture of reading in eerie lamplight; pictured amidst gaggle of writers; praised by Nick Hornby; proof that we shucked oysters; proof that we've met; prose of; publicist of; reading PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT while waiting for; reads from Faulkner's niece's memoir; recipient of Mike Douglas Prize; recognizes Paul Giamatti; recommends AN ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITERS' HOMES IN NEW ENGLAND by Brock Clarke; recommends DOCTOR SLEEP; reminisces about canned pear; represents one of the 50 ways to love Jerry Lewis; sees Jerry Lewis on Brasilian television; sees monkeys; sees spiders like brooches; shaves my head; shirtless; shown a business card with a dragon on it; "Shubuta" (short story by); shucking oysters with; SIDESWIPE (Willeford novel) given to as present; Smonk as novel title and middle name; SMONK (novel) has own MySpace page; speaks of moors, bogs and fens; starts me on the road to shame and ruin; takes me to a movie; telling Tom about the Magic Calculator; texting Tom about Superman; texting with about the finer points of cowboy comic books; THAT'S MY BOY and; thinks movies might be better than writing; thinks of Jerry Lewis in Brasil; varieties of ladybug and; watching BARRY LYNDON with; went to see a movie about e-mail with; wins gold dagger; wins LA Times Book Prize; witnesses the undoing of eyeglass repairs; writes one of the two good things on the "internet".

"Blog"dex (Sept 27-Oct 24, 2006)

While the "blog" staff regroups to bring you a better, more dignified and decorous "blog," we leave you with a full "blog" index - or "'blog'dex," as we call it in "blogging" circles, with which you may amuse yourself in the meantime. #: 13 Mile Oyster Company * A: A Cappella Books - 1, 2 * Kobo Abe * Jamie Allen * Linda Anderson * anonymous friend(s) - 1, 2 * Aquaman * Archie comics - 1, 2, 3 * The Awesome Glass Bricks of Mystery B: "Barry B." * Beetle Bailey * Samuel Beckett * Aimee Bender * Billy's Boots * Tom Bissell - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 * Black Canary * C: Captain Marvel * Changing Hands Book Store * Mark Childress - 1, 2, 3 * clogging - 1, 2 * Conan the Barbarian - 1, 2 * Cyclops (superhero) - 1, 2 * Cyclops (mythical beast) - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 D: Deathlok - 1, 2 * Leslie Delassus * Charles Dickens * donuts - 1, 2, 3, 4 * Dream Girl - 1, 2 * E: Clint Eastwood * John T. Edge * Pia Z. Ehrhardt - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 F: Fellini * Freddy Fender * F. Scott Fitzgerald * Dave Foley* Tom Franklin - 1, 2, 3 * The Fun Factory * Nick Fury * G: G.I. Joe * William Gay * Gilmore Girls - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 * Godard * Green Acres 1, 2 * Green Arrow H: Ray Harryhausen - 1, 2 * Jason Headley 1, 2 * Hee Haw * hobbits * Eli Horowitz 1, 2 * Hupcap City I: Invisible Girl * Eugene Ionesco - 1, 2 * Iron Fist J: Dean Jones * James Joyce * Tom Junod K: Jamie Kornegay - 1, 2, 3 * Kelly Kornegay - 1, 2 * Jack Kirby L: The Lee Brothers * Legion of Superheroes - 1, 2, 3 * Dennis Lehane * Janet Leigh * Lemuria * Jerry Lewis - 1, 2, 3, 4 * Little Dot M: MacAdam/Cage Publishing - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 * MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" - 1, 2 * Matt Madden * Veronica Mars * Dean Martin * Jeff McNeil - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 7, 8, 9, 10 * Mekons * The Metal Men * Mr. Fantastic * Mike Mitchell * Alvy Moore * Lorrie Moore * THE MYSTERIOUS SECRET OF THE VALUABLE TREASURE - 1, 2 N: Nightcrawler * O: Jimmy Olsen * Phil Oppenheim - 1, 2, 3, 4 * Kent Osborne - 1, 2, 3 P: paragraph breaks, problem with * Peanuts (comic strip) - 1, 2 * The Phantom Hitchhiker * Salvador Plascencia * Popeye, * Proust R: Richie Rich - 1, 2, 3 * Don Rickles * Rome - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 * Roy of the Rovers * Jim Ruland * Salman Rushdie S: Sad Sack * George Saunders - 1, 2, 3 * Shazam (see Captain Marvel) * Silver Surfer * sister, my - 1, 2 * soccer - 1, 2, 3, 4 * Southern Foodways Symposium 1, 2, 3, 4 * Spider-Man - 1, 2 * Square Books * Wesley Stace * Theresa Starkey - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 * Brenda Starr * Amanda Stern - 1, 2, 3 * "String Bean" * Superman - 1, 2 * T: Tiger and Scorcher * Dick Tracy * Turnrow Book Company - 1, 2, 3 W: Eugene Walter - 1, 2 * Ashley Warlick - 1, 2 * West Indies salad * James Whorton, Jr. - 1, 2 * Wonder Woman * Mary Worth Y: Caroline Young - 1, 2, 3 * YOUR BODY IS CHANGING - 1, 2 Z: Karen Spears Zacharias