McNeil Absolved of Blasphemy

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

Per Se

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

Didn't Mean to Be So Hilarious All the Time

Hey, remember when I said I was going to "go out on a limb" and call something a "viola da gamba"? You were probably chuckling wisely that I had spouted a real mouthful, like something right out of a Frasier script! Because, of course, as the OED tells us, "viola da gamba" means "literally, 'leg viol.'" Yes, I left the final "a" off on purpose, just like the makers of the OED. Hey, man, if you don't know what a viol is, I just feel sorry for you. Anyway, as I am sure you put together long before I did (just minutes ago), a leg is a "limb" of the body. Ha ha ha, wonderful. Mine is such a waggish wit. It hurts! This reminds me, in a roundabout fashion, of the time Kent asked if I wanted to see the stoop from SEX AND THE CITY and I replied with an astonishing swiftness worthy of Churchill, "That's no way to talk about Sarah Jessica Parker!" My witticism in that case, while demonstrably unfair to Ms. Parker, was based on the word "stupe," as I am sure you will recall will fondness, which I felt called for explanation at the time, thus ruining the joke, such as it was. The OED tells us that "stupe" goes back as far as 1722, and provides this example: "Leaving this Old Stupe, the Keeper conducted me to a Gentleman, who was not so far advanc'd in Years," proving that ageism, among other things, was alive and well in 1722! I think my wonderful twinkling humor has taught us a thing or two today. POSTSCRIPT: My records reveal that it was Tom Herpich, not Kent Osborne, who offered to show us the stoop from SEX AND THE CITY. And here I was just yesterday, getting on McNeil's case for misplacing a bellhop. We're still learning and growing as people! And it's all thanks to the miracle of jesting and humorousness which is such a balm in our trying times of nowadays we've been enjoying lately.

Two Knights and a Non-Knight

I am pretty far into THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA and there have been no owls, even though there are owls on the cover. But there are plenty of other things! Like, these two knights are talking and this one knight is like, "Alas, we all must die. Only the hour of our death is not certain." And the other knight is like, "Wait, who has told you all these pleasant novelties? It must be a mortal with an extraordinarily witty turn of conversation. Is he often invited out to supper?" And when I read that, I thought, "Hey! 'Is he often invited out to supper?' must be the 'He must be fun at parties' of the 18th century!" And then I thought, is that something people even say: "He must be fun at parties"? I think I've said it. I think, for example, when I went to see Dr. Theresa get an award - before she was a doctor! - and the speaker at the ceremony, for some reason, was a guy whose whole life was spent studying the sense of smell in lobsters... on that occasion, I do believe that as he went on for some time about the sense of smell in lobsters, I turned to our friend Chuck, who was seated next to me, and said, "He must be fun at parties." So I did a "google search" for the phrase "must be fun at parties" and turned up 145,000 matches, so I guess it is something that people say. More and more often, since my little medical hiccup, I wonder whether I know certain things or only think I know certain things. On the other hand, maybe I was never sure. As I type this long series of thoughts, I am in unbearable suspense about whether the "internet" will stop working, as it often does now, thanks to the good folks at AT&T, ties with whom I am assiduously working to sever forever as we speak. (As further evidence of my mental state, I just looked up "assiduous" to see if it means what I think it means, and it does, almost.) Oh! So a few pages later in THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, someone (not a knight) is playing a cithara, which took me straight back to the "blog's" big cither/citer/cithern/cittern/kithara/zither craze of 2010. (Citterns were poised to make a comeback in 2011, but it didn't take. Though I will say that as I continue to examine the "blog" for zombie "links," I am astonished to find that the "Frequently Asked Questions about the Renaissance Cittern" webpage not only survives, it was updated - ! - as recently as April 2023. I guess they found out something new about renaissance citterns.) Now, did I immediately assume that the cithara I read about in THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA was identical with a kithara? Good God, no! I learned my lesson back when I stupidly assumed that a cither and a cithern were the same thing ("click" on "link" after "link" for the incredible details). I'm so glad we had this talk. Postscript: Yes, as predicted above, the godawful AT&T "internet" ceased to work at a vital juncture in the composition of this delightsome bagatelle. (Continuing a theme: I second-guessed myself about the existence of "delightsome" as a word and did not find it in the dictionary that came with this laptop. When the "internet" began to work again, however briefly, I checked out the OED online, which cites numerous uses of the word - well, maybe "numerous" is going a bit too far - beginning in the 15th century and ending only a few years ago, in what seems to be an advertising brochure: "our Sheraton Lagos Hotel teams have come up with a line-up of delightsome and inspiring culinary options." Ugh! Now I see why my computer doesn't want me to use "delightsome.")

Sweet Thoughts of Hawkman

Been reading in some of these old comic books about Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and one thing I notice is how much they like birds. These comics are slightly before my comic-reading time, I think... the Hawkman I remember wasn't as into birds, in my recollection. But Hawkman and Hawkgirl, in the older comics, they are really into chilling with birds, just hanging out with birds and shooting the breeze. Because they can talk bird language! Hawgirl says, "SUMMON OUR BIRD-FRIENDS TO SHARE OUR FUN, DEAR!" And Hawkman goes, "GOOD IDEA! WHEET WHEEEEET" - a couple of panels later he is talking about his "FEATHERED FRIENDS." They sure do love birds. It's nice. Like I say, by the time I knew about Hawkman, he was all business. He wasn't kicking back with some bird buddies anymore. It's sad. In the same story, Hawkman marvels over the very idea of sandwiches, and expresses his astonishment that the advanced minds of his home planet Thanagar never came up with something as awesome as sandwiches. Truly this is the best version of Hawkman. Lover of birds, appreciator of sandwiches! Also, Hawkman and Hawkgirl can't keep their hands off each other!

A Whisper in the Night

"I heard something like a hoarse whisper behind me while walking the dog the other night, and when I turned around...THIS..." So goes McNeil's caption for the above photo. Now, if this "post" were more artfully presented, I would have moved McNeil's photo of the owl down below the text alluding to it, so that the owl might work as an astonishing revelation, worthy of the drama of McNeil's caption. The fact remains, however, that though I no longer claim to have "stopped 'blogging,'" I am still very, awfully lazy. Just to let you know, in a possibly related matter, I continue to read old comic books every night in bed as a perhaps superstitious ritual tied to my recuperation. I've been reading a few issues of one with the poorly punctuated - not to mention misleading - title KID COLT OUTLAW. Mostly, this "outlaw" seems to go around helping cops, based on the little I've seen of him in action. Can't say I care much for Kid Colt. He's no El Diablo! In fact, as I was texting to Tom Franklin a while back, though DC had the milquetoast reputation and Marvel was theoretically what the cool kids enjoyed in the 1970s, the DC western comic books feel meaner and grittier than the Marvel ones. Yes, yes, I'm as shocked as you are. Let's all calm down. The main takeaway is that one Kid Colt character blurts out, "Well, I'll be a double-dyed hoot-owl!" Why anyone would dye a hoot-owl once, much less twice, is a mystery I intend to leave unexplored. In conclusion, between typing this sentence and the one before it, I happened to find a typo on page 1,256 of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS: "world" where "word" is clearly meant. Ironically (?), a fitting typo for a translation of Mann. (See also.)

Famous Tootsie Pop

Given recent events, I have different books going at the same time now, and given those same recent events, one of the categories is "books I read in a doctor's waiting room." It's not the same as either book in the other two categories, if you are making a chart. There can never be an overlap. Each of the three (so far) books needs to be of a different size, and to have different qualities. The one I read while taking my blood pressure, for example, requires a sturdy spine, like me, so it can lie flat on a table, like me. I don't lie flat on a table. But we all lie flat on a table one day. That's not the point. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. So I was sitting there reading this one novel in the waiting room when, by a big coincidence, the narrator mentioned the problem for which I was about to see the doctor! Not only that, he cited a probable cause for the problem. And this cause was something in the proximity of which I had recently loitered! Now, this is the kind of coincidence that McNeil and I talk about all the time, all giddy from delight. So when I saw the doctor, I said, "Hey, could this thing be caused by this other thing?" And he said "No." So that was a bust. And the coincidence wasn't so great after all. So why are we here? I don't know. It does give me the liberty to mention that Megan and I have been discussing the devil a pretty good bit lately, and then she asked me a question about the Tarot (an entirely separate discussion, although there is, of course, a card with the devil on it. But that's not what we were talking about for a change). Anyhow, I looked up what Jesse Moynihan has to say about another card, the one under discussion, and I was like, "Huh! Okay!" Then I opened JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS to the passage I had been reading... and the devil, in that passage, talks about the VERY SAME IDEAS I had just been reading in Jesse's pamphlet! I'm not saying Jesse is the devil. Far from it! So that was another coincidence. This great tale of life as it is lived in our lively times isn't over yet. Because I had TWO doctor appointments today! I had enough time in between them to stop by Square Books. I was happy to see that Richard Howorth was not just trying to protect my fragile feelings when he said that my books aren't 100% out of print... just 99.999999%! I added that part. They had a big old fresh stack of MOVIE STARS, my troubling masterpiece of short fiction. Lauren Graham raves: "Funny, poetic, vivid, unique. Jack Pendarvis has crafted a collection of gems." I'm not lying! It's on the cover! Go see for yourself. Pick up a few copies for the family. While supplies last! I signed the whole batch, and wrote secret messages in a couple of them. It's like Willy Wonka all over again! Ran into Tom Franklin, who was walking down from the second floor of the bookstore with a young woman to whom he introduced me as "Via Bleidner, Kim Kardashian just bought her book for Netflix." Oh! On the way out of the store, I saw a big poster for the novel I said I couldn't tell you about yet. But I can now, because there's a big poster right there at the front door of Square Books. It's DON'T LET THE DEVIL RIDE (the devil again!), the latest from Ace Atkins! The owl I have been sitting on since January 22, 2023, is... I can now reveal... the owl in the famous Tootsie Pop commercial. Well, I haven't seen the published book yet, just the manuscript, but Ace says he "thinks" the owl is still in there. And I guess you think the story is over. WRONG! Because as I waited for the second doctor, once again reading my "waiting room book" in a different waiting room... well, first I should tell you that I saw a raccoon using a walkway last night. A walkway that a person would use. Like, a narrow sidewalk of sorts. So, anyway, I'm reading this novel again and the narrator is astonished to see "a raccoon using a sidewalk." All right, that's the end.

Narrative Implications

The doctor is making me exercise, so I made myself a little exercise playlist to which I can march around like a big strong he-man. One of the selections on my playlist is "Hollywood Swinging" by Kool & the Gang. Never before have I paid such attention to the lyrics as I have while my body marches around, leaving my mind a total blank, except for the song lyrics imprinting themselves on my smooth, round brain. Imagine my astonishment when I heard Kool & the Gang singing (I may be paraphrasing a little, but I don't think so) "I remember not too long ago, I went to the theater and saw a Kool & the Gang show." I was immediately reminded of the narrative implications of the song "Truck Driving Man" ("click" here for vital details), as well as the reality-bending musical choices in the films EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, G. I. BLUES, and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN (once again, please "click" here for deeper insights).

A Tiny Owl

Yesterday, Julia texted to ask if I had read FAIR PLAY by Tove Jansson, which Julia said reminded her of SWEET BANANAS. I had read no Tove Jansson at all, though she often came up in ADVENTURE TIME meetings. Here's the thing! Yes, here's the kind of astonishing coincidence you pay me the big bucks to notice. I had just plucked a book by Tove Jansson off the shelf the day before! It was one recommended by both Jimmy and Bill, I'm pretty sure: THE SUMMER BOOK. I read a few pages after receiving Julia's text, and came straight away to "a tiny owl. It was sitting on a branch, silhouetted against the evening sky. No one had ever seen an owl on the island before." It upsets me to think that some of you may not remember how every book I read has an owl in it. In non-owl matters, I was tempted to "blog" yesterday, when McNeil told me about some comic books he had found, detailing the exploits of a group of soldiers called "The Losers." He wondered whether the comics were from the 1940s, then mentioned the cover price of 20 cents, which set my old brain a-chiming! Twenty cents is what I paid for a comic book in the early 70s, I helpfully informed McNeil. I remembered when the price began to have a seemingly cheerful sunburst around it, along with the ominous (if you thought about it) slogan, "STILL ONLY TWENTY CENTS!" (see above). Soon enough, comic books would cost you a cool quarter apiece! Two bits! In the parlance of our goodly ancestors. It was well before comics went up to 30 cents that I eased myself from the coarse habit of haunting the spinning rack at Schambeau's grocery store or Red's Drugs, two now-defunct institutions of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. So I must have stopped reading comics by late 1976, if the internet is to be believed. Yes, I am proud to say I never stooped to buying a 30-cent comic book. This is the kind of stuff I almost "blogged" about yesterday. According to McNeil, one of "The Losers" (I want to say his name was Johnny Cloud - yes! There it is, printed on the cover) purposely destroyed his plane after every mission! It seems wasteful, and maybe I don't have the facts right. I was never into the war comics. As I think we can all agree, I was such a special little man.

Reading Comprehension

No owls so far in THE CELESTIAL HUNTER by Robert Calasso. Here's one part, though: "Strolling among blackberries, sunflowers, mulberries is already strolling among stories. And, when night falls, the stories continue, among bats and overhanging rocks." So I was like, "Oh boy! Here come the owls!" Because as we have seen, bats in literature are often accompanied by owls. But there were no owls forthcoming. In the same chapter, however, there was a lot of talk about Ovid. I thought, "You know, I'm getting old. I need to read Ovid. I need to read a complete version of the METAMORPHOSES. I have some selections scattered around but I need to read the whole thing, because I am an old man." So I ordered a complete translation with copious notes appended from Square Books. When I got my hands on it, I was like, oh, yeah, there are surely going to be some owls in this. I skipped around among the pages, my eyes peeled for owls, and it took almost no time to find one, with astonishing results! Now, I skimmed over it, but I seemed to be reading about somebody or another giving a box to these kids and saying, "Don't look in this box!" You know how that always goes. So two of the kids (if they were kids) didn't look in the box, but the third one did, and saw a human baby and a snake hanging out in the box. Don't worry! The baby and the snake were doing great! (I think.) So, a raven sees all of this going down, and he flies off to tattle to a goddess about it, but the goddess gets angry for reasons I did not bother to contemplate. She puts the whammy on the raven and turns him (this may not be an exact quotation) "lower than an owl." Well! To me, this implies that an owl is a bird of low rank, if it is such an insult to be turned "lower than an owl" (again, not an exact quotation). Where does Ovid (or the deities upon whom he is reporting) get the idea that an owl is some kind of half-assed bird? Pardon my salty language! We've seen this kind of thing before.

Ghosts Are Dancing In Space

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

Cold Leftovers

Well, hello. I thought you'd like to hear about this astonishing coincidence. I was eating some cold leftovers in front of the TV. That's not the coincidence! As I ate, I watched some of a Doris Day movie I had recorded for the purpose. At the conclusion of my repast, I turned off the movie, at which point the regular TV came on automatically. It was tuned to TCM, which happened to be playing a Tom Waits concert film. At the very moment of the program's sudden commencement I caught Tom Waits himself mid-sentence, expressing, through stage patter, his wish to purchase a novelty cigarette lighter "as big as an encyclopedia." If you are my friend, you will appreciate the nature of the coincidence. If I am being honest, however, there is at best a 50-50 chance I would have included Tom Waits's hypothetical "cigarette lighter as big as an encyclopedia" in my book about cigarette lighters, so I have decided not to add it to the official appendix at this time.

Plaintive Hot Dog Reflection

As you know, Megan Abbott and I are in the habit of reading celebrity bios together. Right now we are reading the most astonishingly inept biography yet, I think - the writing and editing (and even the proofreading) so dismal that I shan't name it, though I have to relate that its subject is Mickey Rooney. Like, we have to send paragraphs back and forth to each other for analysis. What do they mean? How did they end up in the book? Was it a production mistake? Something breaks through occasionally... like the weary, plaintive quotation of an interview subject who invested in Mickey's hot dog restaurant: "They sold square hot dogs in a bun. Square hot dogs. I think that says it all." But! There is one loopy paragraph that, while still not good, rises out of the book, leaps off the page, because its tone becomes so unlike any of the other clunky, jumbled passages which make up the rest. The authors are describing an agent of Mickey's later years whose bedroom was filled with raccoons, both living and stuffed. The entire paragraph is worth quoting, if only to demonstrate that I'm not kidding about the writing, but sadly I have only enough energy to type up the end of it: "But it was the raccoons, the raccoons! Those eyes, red in the soft light, were unwavering; they would stare at you as she fed them. You would never forget them." You will have to take my word for it that nothing else in the text matches the urgency of "the raccoons, the raccoons!" and the desperate slip into the second person. For two seconds the writing verges into the expressively personal. Somebody is really haunted by those raccoons.

Waiting For Stuffy

I can't speak for Lee Durkee, but I don't think he entirely approves of my idea to watch all of GREEN ACRES chronologically from the beginning, especially when there are so many prime nuggets to be had by skipping bravely around, the way Julio Cortazar would want us to do. Evidence from a recent communique indicates that Lee has been experimenting with just that method on his own. Lee reveals, "there is a magic realism scarecrow named Stuffy whom Eb interacts with and who at one point leaves his post in the field to go get Eb a hamburger (spoiler: he forgets the ketchup!)." Meanwhile, my lonely search for the exact moment that GREEN ACRES becomes GREEN ACRES continues. Or will it occur so slowly that I can't see it happening, like the opening of a crocus? Or I don't know, is it easy to see a crocus opening? Never mind. I feel bad for Bill Boyle, a GREEN ACRES neophyte whom I forced to watch some early episodes. "I didn't know this was what GREEN ACRES was like," Bill said, as ever a good sport. Well, it's not what GREEN ACRES is like! Bill compared it to THE MONEY PIT and the Chevy Chase vehicle FUNNY FARM. Fair enough! But mortifying to my honor when I had falsely promised the second coming of VIRIDIANA. Bill may never come back to the house again. Once Dr. Theresa and I started watching DEADWOOD, I was able to note the close kinship between the dissembling, painfully transparent, nosy, avaricious, irritating, and oratorically inclined Mr. Haney and his direct descendent (ancestor?) E. B. Farnum. Continuing a line of thought, I guess, the first season of GREEN ACRES is like THE WIRE. It takes Oliver at least nine episodes to decide what he's going to plant in his field. (See also.) Then they spend two or three episodes explaining how the generator works. Doesn't that sound like THE WIRE to you? Very patient, procedural and detailed, with long arcs. But not the GREEN ACRES I remember. In episode 10, Lisa does leave a note for a chicken, to which the chicken seems to respond, but I'm still not convinced we have reached a true level of GREEN ACRES. [Episode 14 establishes beyond doubt that Lisa can communicate with chickens. - ed.] In episode 12, Eb reads a note from Lisa aloud and Lisa's voice inexplicably comes out of him. So I'm tempted to believe we're almost there! I'll let you know when we arrive. Let me remark on a deficiency of this GREEN ACRES box set. It is not formatted for our rectangular television sets we all enjoy today thanks to marvelous advances in science and technology. Rather than seeing our TV pals in their proper aspect ratio, they are made to fill the screen unnaturally, to their aesthetic detriment, a fear addressed by an especially prescient protagonist created by yours truly for my delightful and universally beloved short story collection MOVIE STARS:

In conclusion, I should note that Arnold the pig turns on a TV set in episode 15, which astonishes Oliver, but not me, not sufficiently, being no more than any reasonably intelligent, non-surreal, everyday pig could do.

A Movie With a Book In It With an Owl In It

So I was watching DOCUMENTEUR by Agnes Varda and the mother and son start talking about a book they read about an owl who makes tea out of his own tears, and he has a list of sad things he thinks about to make himself cry enough to make a pot of tea. Despite some halfhearted "googling" I have not determined whether this is a real book or an invention of Agnes Varda, so I regret to inform you that I cannot at this time put it on my big long list of books with owls in them... however, I can say that - while being charming in its own right - this owl crying into his teapot business puts me in mind of one of the least pleasant subplots of the Thomas Harris novel HANNIBAL, which I bought at the Atlanta airport and read on an airplane back in 1999, yet to this day I remain astonished by the number of typos I recall. Never, to my recollection, have I run across a professionally published novel containing so many typos. You know I like everything! Yet somehow that book made me feel so bad - some flaw within myself, no doubt! - that I purposely left it behind in a San Francisco hotel room, an act for which I still feel remorse, what a horrible surprise for somebody. (I left some Bukowski novel - was it POST OFFICE? - in a New Orleans hotel room for similar reasons but I guess I don't feel so evil about that.) As long as you are here I should tell you that Ace Atkins and I finally went back to Costco yesterday. I saw "a fourteen-pound tub of violet decorative cake icing," as I put it on twitter. Although! In reality I saw several fourteen-pound tubs of cake icing, some orange, some green, some pink. I don't know why "violet" struck me so particularly. I did wonder - as I remarked to Ace on the way back - why there is only one color per tub. That seems like a rip-off! I think they should go in there and arrange it in three stripes, like Neapolitan ice cream. Though no doubt you get a good price on a fourteen-pound tub of cake icing, so who am I to argue?

The Original Skeeky Kid

Megan Abbott and I have been reading lots of books about movie people together. We read some books about Orson Welles, then we read about Walt Disney, then Bunuel's autobiography (first recommended to me by Bill Taft), which, to my astonishment, did not have an owl in it, though there were rats and spiders and one or two bats and hair growing out of cracked-open tombs. And those were just his childhood memories! As you know, I don't "blog" anymore unless I read a book with an owl in it, and that brings us to MY SIDE by Ruth Gordon, which Megan and I are reading now, in which a certain Miss Jerome is described as a "five-foot, brown-haired, brown-eyed, parchment-skinned ninety-pound replica of a hoot owl." And that's Ruth Gordon just getting warmed up! I'll tell you one mysterious word she likes to employ: "skeeky." Even Megan, who loves to do research (remember when she found out all about "friendship clubs"?), had trouble tracking down examples. I looked in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG, VOL. 3, P-Z, and found only "skeek," with examples drawn from the early twenty-first century, which seems to be directly opposed to the way Ruth Gordon uses "skeeky." Skeekiness, in Ruth Gordon's usage, is a condition to be desired. The only helpful example Megan could find comes from a magazine short story from 1915: "he spilled a line of bunk about her being the only and original skeeky kid." This fits nicely within the time period that Ruth Gordon is writing about when she uses "skeeky." So! Now that I've got you here and I read a book with an owl in it, I can tell you about an unrelated matter that has been on my mind. I watched the Welles version of THE TRIAL, and it pretty much ended with - SPOILER! - Anthony Perkins alone on a desolate shore with a lit bundle of dynamite. And that reminded me of PIERROT LE FOU, which also ended with its isolated protagonist standing in a lonely spot with a lit bundle of dynamite. And then BANG! Is this a genre? I think I need to find a third example before I can say it's a genre. Oh! While I was watching THE TRIAL, Megan happened to tweet - not knowing that I was watching THE TRIAL - that it was Jeanne Moreau's birthday. And then there she was in THE TRIAL! Jeanne Moreau, I mean. And there I was not knowing it was her birthday. And just about the first line she has in THE TRIAL is, "If you're stuck for something to say, try happy birthday." Isn't that a weird coincidence? Well, I thought it was a weird coincidence. Okay, I'll see you next time I read a book with an owl in it!

Sorry You're Welcome and Good Morning

"Knew this would interest and depress you. Sorry you're welcome and good morning," writes Lee Durkee, enclosing a "link" to an article about monkeys riding dogs. I should "link" to the whole thing because I'm going to quote it: "Lepard has been married four times. It’s always been the monkeys and the dogs first." But that doesn't mean you have to "click" on it. The very idea depresses me so much that I don't even feel like checking to see whether this is the same monkey-and-dog impresario depicted by Anya Groner and Elizabeth Kaiser some years ago, though the mention of "neon green tassels" makes me suspect he is. On a related note, I neglected to "link" to that "boring interview" (McNeil's words!) yesterday. And as boring as it may be, it has inspired some lively email exchanges. McNeil likes this part: "Sheldon was a very good actor. He had to choke me in a scene. And he really choked me!" McNeil humorously hints that the interviewer was considering a similar tactic by this point. I like the part where Marvin Kaplan, the interviewee, recalls being stunned, vexed, astonished and amazed to discover that a man might prefer cats over dogs. He has never heard of such a thing!

A Late Complaint

I don't know why I keep watching FRIENDS reruns late at night. I can't say they hold up too well. I was astonished at a joke last night, when the FRIENDS are watching THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW on a big TV. Rose Marie appears on the screen and they all recoil in horror. That was the joke. Here are these pretty people scared of Rose Marie because she is not, in their opinion, as pretty as them, but here, also, portraying these pretty people, are a bunch of actors whose jobs might not exist without Rose Marie (and writing the joke was a joke writer whose job was immortalized by her). Well, I thought it was disrespectful on every level. I guess it is a little late to complain.

Corn

"When I think of sour corn, I think of Dean Martin." What a cryptic sentence! Well, there's a paragraph that explains it but I like it better by itself. That's from yesterday's menu at the Southern Foodways Symposium, an indescribable annual summit concerned with global politics, economics, history, art, activism, race, space, place, family, gender, science, agriculture, industry, philosophy, and so many other subjects, and I know I'm leaving out food, but as one of the organization's oral historians described her mission yesterday, "It's about the people, not the food." That being said, superstar chef Sean Brock and his mother made us a 20-course lunch. A 20-course lunch! That will really make you take a nap. Sean Brock and his mother made this 20-course lunch for more than 400 people (as seen above). He said the most people his mom had cooked for until yesterday was about ten. Earlier that morning I gave an unnecessarily blistering talk about the TV chef and humorist Justin Wilson, a relatively harmless entertainer who is long dead. I put on some sunglasses and just went full "insult comic" mode. I'm not even sure why! The talk as given wildly diverged from what I had so carefully researched and printed out. Maybe I was possessed! Actually, Gustavo Arellano spoke right before me and he was ON FIRE and I was like, "Uh-oh, I'm gonna have to DO something to follow that." And nature took its course.

As you can see, I wielded my Emmy as a comedy prop and the whole thing went very well despite my inexplicable viciousness, which I believe worried JoAnn Clevenger, the astonishing doyenne of New Orleans's iconic Upperline restaurant (at the Symposium to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award), who stood up in the Q&A section to nobly defend Mr. Wilson, a frequent customer of hers. I saw her later in the evening and she told me some complicated things from Justin Wilson's personal life. "I always like the underdog," she said. We had a nice talk about it. I also saw Sean Brock and he said the 20-course lunch was "the most important meal" he had ever made and "the meal I was born to make." He was referring to its transcendent emotional content for one thing. All I could think with extreme gratitude was, "We got to eat the meal Sean Brock was born to make!" I also told him that his mother's statement - "When I think of sour corn, I think of Dean Martin" - could be the first sentence of a novel. It's my favorite sentence right now.

I guess the other thing I need to tell you is that John Currence got dressed up in a shrimp costume and was positioned above a dunk tank filled with grits. He told me he studied Gary Busey in the movie CARNY (pictured) to perfect his aggressive dunk-tank patter. "Were those really grits in there?" I asked Blair Hobbs about the dunk tank. "It looked like brown water," said Blair, which for whatever reason sounded like the worst thing to get dunked into. I honestly doubt that the Southern Foodways Symposium, with its deeply concerned soul,

would waste grits, or anything else that could help someone. For example, another lunch, this one made for us by Mashama Bailey (pictured here with Joe York, whose pinpoint accuracy as a pitcher dropped shrimp-Currence in the tank; "Your Emmy won't save you now!" yelled Joe as I walked into the danger zone between him and his target), was ingenuously based on ingredients that usually get thrown away: Chef Bailey's salad was made with the stems of the collard.

I Regret to Inform You

... that though they should be rightfully included, I will not have room for the following labels on my next "post":