Orange Vinyl Spider-Man Sequel

I finished reading THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES but no I didn’t. Because you get to the end of the first book and then you have to – by law! – read the next volume, which is called INTO THE MILLENNIUM, or, I suppose, THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES: INTO THE MILLENNIUM. Either way, it sounds like a Spider-Man sequel. I need to get over to Square Books and order it up! Meanwhile, the Million Dollar Book Club is working on THE RIGHT STUFF. And here’s what I noticed! Wally Schirra, one of the Mercury astronauts, is a real prankster. Like, he has a little box and tells people he caught a mongoose in it. Then when they try to reach in and pet it, well, it jumps at them like one of those snakes out of a peanut can. You know those snakes. Wally Schirra’s mongoose is some kind of furry sock on a spring. And that made me remember my short story collection MOVIE STARS, when a character goes to an auction and tries to buy a novelty mongoose in a box, operating on the same principle. I got out the catalog from the auction of Bob Hope's personal effects, which I actually attended, and confirmed that Bob’s mongoose box, as pictured in the aforementioned catalog, appears to professionally assembled, whereas Tom Wolfe sure made it sound as if the mongoose box was something Wally Schirra thought up and slapped together himself. I think that’s an accurate memory of my reading experience. But the book is downstairs by the bed and I don’t care enough to go get it. Then I started imagining whimsical fancies, such as, maybe Wally Schirra gave Bob his very own homemade mongoose box! Wouldn’t that be something? It doesn’t seem overwhelmingly plausible, really. Although I’m sure Bob Hope hung out with the Mercury astronauts at some point. Nor does it seem plausible, though, that Wally Schirra was manufacturing his own trick mongoose boxes when there were plenty of trick mongoose boxes, apparently, in the nation’s many novelty emporiums from coast to coast. Maybe Tom Wolfe got this one thing wrong! Unless! What if Wally Schirra saw a novelty mongoose box in a store and thought, "I could make this myself for half the price!"? I guess we'll never know. Speaking of stuff we'll never know, I noticed again that the Bob Hope auction catalog wasn’t too heavy on provenance, which reminded me that I wanted to check it, and not for the first time, to see if I could find a clue (I couldn’t) about what cartoonist made these clever Bob Hope caricatures I bought at the auction. When Quinn came to town, I was like, “Look, this guy made pictures of Bob Hope as if rendered by Goya… and, uh… [trying to think of some names of other artists]” And Quinn was like, “Are these supposed to look like Bob Hope?” And I was like… “!” Because of course! Why would Bob Hope have these hanging in his office if… and my voice, as well as my thoughts, trailed off as Quinn stood there with a doubtful look on her face. So let’s get back to THE RIGHT STUFF! As I texted Megan with photographic proof, I still have an orange vinyl 45 RPM record with recordings from the actual Mercury space flights. It came with my G.I. Joe space capsule, the interior of which glowed in the dark. I got scared and thought it was a ghost! Give me a break, I was three years old. (Speaking of Megan Abbott and Square Books [see above], I’ll be “in conversation” with Megan about her new book EL DORADO DRIVE on August 13. I wouldn’t mention it so early, but I just started reading it and on page 4 [of the galley, anyway] there’s a “bird crying in the night.” As a review of the owl-spotting portion of the “blog” will remind you, we have given much thought to the matter, and just because a bird cries in the night, that does not make the bird an owl. Maybe it’s just an upset bird. I’m not worried! There are plenty more pages to come that might have a definite owl in them.) But I really came here to report about THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, didn’t I? I think it’s going to end up being JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS length. And contrary to my advice (usually about Thomas Mann), which is, essentially, read the first 200-400 pages and then you’ll be hooked, I was really bopping along with TMWQ for, oh, let’s say 200 pages… then I hit a real dry spell until page 630 (though, miner-like, I uncovered, here and there, random chunks of boldly glittering sarcasm that made it worth the trouble). So you have to get over a very big hump in the middle. Can you handle a 400-page hump? (Remember, this is just the first volume I’m talking about.) But when I got to page 630 I think I said out loud, “Things are starting to happen!” On page 630. Then the book was over not many pages later. Well, it was and it wasn’t.

Beakers of Colorful Liquids

Hi! Dr. Theresa and Ace and I watched POINT BLANK last night. Early in Lee Marvin's tour of vengeance he visits the apartment of his wife, and it's all silver and gray and white and reminded me of Jerry Lewis, especially the monochromatic "Spider Woman" sequence in THE LADIES MAN, this frame of which I've shown you before:

Lee Marvin smashes all his wife's perfumes and potions in the bathroom sink like so:

and you think of the floor in the transformation scene from Lewis's THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, with its smashed beakers of colorful liquids.

There was at least one scene that would have benefited had Jerry Lewis starred in the movie instead of Lee Marvin. See, Lee Marvin walks into a kitchen to discover that Angie Dickinson has mischievously turned on all the sleek modern appliances: a dangerously smoking toaster, a mixer, a blender, etc. Boy, Jerry could have gone wild with that! Lee Marvin just walks around turning stuff off. It's like what McNeil said about how much better 2001 would have been had Jerry played an astronaut with a pesky ant in his moon boot. Oh yeah! I almost forgot that Lewis's favorite sidekick Kathleen Freeman is in POINT BLANK, weirdly just hanging around in a single scene with nothing to do. Is her otherwise inexplicable presence a hint, a clue? I doubt it! But I choose to believe it. As Tertullian said, "Certum est, quia impossibile."

Owls, Monkeys and Oysters

I must say I was not surprised at all to run across owls on page 100 of THE VULGAR TONGUE: GREEN'S HISTORY OF SLANG. In the 17th century, women who worked in a brothel were called, among other things, "owls, monkeys and oysters." On another subject entirely - ENTIRELY! - I received a copy of ADVENTURE TIME: THE ART OF OOO from its publisher. I flipped it open and happened to find this quotation from Pen: "One day I walked into Adam's office and saw some doodles on his desk; one of them was of these two overlapping ovals that he had made into eyes, and the body around it was a screaming fat owl with stars in its wings..." This is the origin of the Cosmic Owl, the inspiration for which is revealed later in Pen's comments to come from the way "the light hits one of the urinals" in a men's room at Cartoon Network: "it bounces off and casts this mystical face on the wall in front of you - just starin' at ya." But here's the thing! The other day I caught the last part of the movie 2001 on TCM and I saw the Cosmic Owl! It's in the part where the astronaut is going to crazy land, you know. Here's the frame (above). I'm telling you, it's the Cosmic Owl.

Gonna Prove to You That Love Is Groovy

Man, I couldn't sleep at all last night! Was it because I watched a scary ghost movie yesterday afternoon? Well, that's really none of your beeswax. And anyway, I also had a huge iced tea at Taylor Grocery, so shut up. So anyway I got up in the dead of night and turned on the TV and there was cynical city slicker Sarah Jessica Parker forced into wholesome country living by contrived circumstances, learning a little something about life by milking a cow. Ugh! I watched the whole thing, of course. At the end, Hugh Grant is saved from an assassin by Mary Steenburgen, Sam Elliott and Wilford Brimley. Wow! So I was sitting there thinking, "Wow." I thought, "Wow, everybody's schedule worked out perfectly to make that happen." Then I looked out the window and saw a fox in our front yard! (See also.) It was cleverly negotiating a white paper bag - one of several dropped nightly after the bars close by young, starry-eyed drunkards whose well-to-do mommies and daddies have sent them off to college without enough God-given sense to use a trash can - to retrieve the leftover chicken-on-a-stick nestled within. Have I told you about chicken-on-a-stick here before? It's a disgusting "local delicacy." I once wrote a whole long article about my complex love-hate relationship with chicken-on-a-stick and even discussed it in an intellectual "panel" format, to the delight of none. But that need not concern you! All you need to think about right now is the fox I saw last night, trotting happily down the sidewalk with his hard-won chicken-on-a-stick in his mouth. So really I should thank the li'l drunkards, who unknowingly arranged such an unexpected treat for my weary eyes and mind! Then it was 3 AM and WAY... WAY OUT was coming on! I can't tell you how many hours I spent on the "internet" this morning looking for stills of Connie Stevens's apartment in WAY... WAY OUT. I found nothing truly suitable, despite all my expert "googling." Above you can see Jerry Lewis and Connie Stevens on her couch, in front of what I first took to be a mural of some kind: please note the strange bubbling texture of the purplish material... at least we are afforded a good look at that. But, you know, I think it is supposed to be a window. In a wider shot, a huge orange-red moon is visible, and at the end of the scene, Connie Stevens, who is an astronaut, shouts to the moon, "Well, what do you know? I'm coming!" or something like that, indicating to me (along with a nearby telescope) that it is supposed to be a window, some kind of futuristic window (the movie, from 1966, takes place in "the future"), and she is addressing the actual moon. In another "screen grab," which you will find at the end of this "post," you can see more of the crazy couch and pillows and yellow-and-orange striped carpet and other furnishings - dig that lamp! - of the type McNeil loves so well, but the image is blurry and faded, and not in the good way, so you're missing the odd vibrancy of the scene. I had more to say about WAY... WAY OUT, lots more (the title of this "post," for example, comes from the theme song to WAY... WAY OUT, about which I planned to wax rhapsodic; would it interest you to know that only moments ago Dr. Theresa, driven past the breaking point, finally said, "Okay, you're going to have to start humming something else now"?), so much more, and it seemed like a great idea, like something about how Dennis Weaver's turn in WAY... WAY OUT is a gloss on his twitching, weeping, writhing weirdo from TOUCH OF EVIL, but who cares? Honestly.

News Roundup

Here's a headline I saw in the New York Times today: "Squashed Eyeballs Are a Danger for Astronauts." Now called me old-fashioned but gosh darn it I say that squashed eyeballs are a danger for everybody! I sent Ben Greenman that headline because he likes headlines, and to no one's surprise he had already read an article on the subject some time back, which included the information, says Mr. Greenman, that "prolonged space time also distends your brain. YOUR BRAIN!" So watch out. On the plus side, the article indicates that getting your eyes squashed in space may cure certain cases of nearsightedness. No kidding! Read it. And consult your physician to see if getting your eyes squashed in space is right for you! Side effects may include distended brain and dying in outer space. Ruth Buzzi retweeted an item from a Buffalo, NY, news service, which I found charming for its laconic prioritizing: "It's 73 degrees in Buffalo which set a new record high temperature for this date. Also, a gorilla escaped from the zoo earlier." Finally, this week's LAFA SHOPPER contains a column called "Thoughts On Wind" in which the columnist lists her thoughts on wind.

Phil Has a Real Job

Here is a picture of Phil holding up his copy of THE JAZZ SINGER starring Jerry Lewis. As you can see from the cover, Jerry appears to be a sad clown in this one (as usual), not a jazz singer. I wonder what's going on with that! Maybe you can be both! Like a volunteer fireman who is also an astronaut! In fact, "click" here for some evidence on the subject. Well, soon I will find out; my copy has also arrived. But I have forsworn "blogging" about it until Phil gets a chance to watch it, which may be a long time from now, because Phil has a real job, unlike the rest of us.

Oh Boy

Speaking of newspapers, in his new book ALPHABETTER JUICE, Roy Blount Jr. has an interesting section on headlines. One of his favorites is "Coconut-Carrying Octopus Found." He calls it "alluring," and he is right. But I saw an AP headline the other day that I found alluring in an opposite way: "Ga. Police: Upset Councilman Spills Food at Diner." It was alluring because it was so boring! By sheer coincidence, as I compose this very "post" I see via his twitter account that Ben Greenman is currently concerned with a "non-story" (AP again!) bearing the headline "Spacewalking Astronaut Gets Something In Eye." Greenman's favorite part seems to be "The spacewalkers noted that the problem with tears in space is that 'they don't fall off of your eye... they kind of stay there.'" But I think MY favorite part is what the astronaut says when he gets something in his eye: "'Oh boy,' Feustel moaned." PS: Blount quotes a scholarly journal as saying that the octopus building a little house out of coconut shells is "the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal." But is that really tool use? Are we to believe then that every bird who makes a nest is "using tools"? I don't think so! I consider it an insult to the mighty crow who with patience and ingenuity fashions a hooked instrument to dig bugs out of a tree. THAT is real tool use, my friends. Let's not throw around "tool use" so casually. PPS: Last night at dinner with Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly I started to talk about crows. "Don't get me started about crows!" I actually exclaimed. And, "Have I mentioned this before?" Everyone replied, "Yes." Said Beth Ann, "And you sent me links about it." So I have become this guy who constantly rambles about crows at social gatherings of every kind, and follows up with helpful e-mails. PPPS: Since I began writing this very long "post," and you really don't want to know how long it takes me, it's too sad, the AP has changed their headline to the disappointingly more specific "Spacewalking Astronaut Gets Stinging Soap In Eye." PPPPS: They also edited out my favorite line, "'Oh boy,' Feustel moaned." That makes me mad! Did NASA contact them and say it reflected badly on the space program? I call it censorship! It really used to be there. It came right after the line (which is still there, for now) "'Sorry, buddy,' Fincke said."

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to the comforting environs of "McNeil's Movie Korner." Hi! Do you live in St. Louis and have a time machine? Then you may want to attend this thing McNeil found from earlier this year. It's an event at a place called "The Way Out Club" (!) and they showed Super 8 movies. You see, when McNeil and I were lads, you could check out Super 8 movies from the library - versions (severely abridged) of theatrical releases, which you could go home and project onto your wall from your little home projector. Barry B. remembers this, too. In fact, Barry B. and I both recall watching a Ben Turpin movie with a big pie fight in it. We tracked it down and aired it on our kids' show (the Rudy and GoGo World Famous Cartoon Show) once. As I am sure you know, Ben Turpin (pictured) was a comedian who was famous because there was something wrong with his eyes. That's what we used to call entertainment before your iPhones and gadgets and so on. I recall that in one part of the movie, Ben Turpin (or someone) was sitting with a collapsable top hat on his lap, and he would cause the collapsed hat to spring into its natural shape, using the popping-out crown as a method for launching pies into the faces of his enemies. Wow! Silent Ben Turpin movies. No wonder our kids' show was canceled - for too much awesomeness, that is! Now my childhood was not all fancy la-di-da like McNeil's, so I don't recall these Super 8 movies having sound. But look! The Way Out Club showed a fifteen-minute version of ANIMAL HOUSE, as well as McNeilian favorites such as THE RELUCTANT ASTRONAUT and one of the Matt Helm features starring Dean Martin. What horrible childhoods we had.

Flying Saucers Everywhere

You thought I was kidding about the UFOs, didn't you? First check this previous incontrovertible evidence. Now dig this! They even pop up in my book club book. For some reason that I can't quite wrap my head around, Joe E. Lewis writes his biographer a long letter that is entirely composed of one-liners. "The newspapers are still making a fuss about Communists and flying saucers," he writes. Then he makes some wisecracks about Communists and flying saucers. You know, stuff like, "If you want to see flying saucers, just pinch a waitress." That's his letter to his biographer! Here, by way of contrast, is how his biographer writes: "The biographer is a hunter, and the spoor led me to Las Vegas." And: "The gardens were peaceful and sweet-scented in the moonlight." Also: "Within him the coil of fear unwound." Anyway, I finished the book. So, did I go back to CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS and pick up where I left off at page 623? Ha ha ha! You're hilarious. No, before retiring, I read the first chapter of I OWE RUSSIA $1200 by Bob Hope. Then, when I turned the page to Chapter Two, there was an illustration of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in SPACESUITS! Coincidence? Well, yes. In today's New York Times, there is a sad and touching article about the son of crooner Billy Eckstine. He (the son) has become a street person whose "life's calling," he says, is "photographing alien spacecraft above Manhattan." I don't mean to make light of his predicament in any way. But I was already writing this "post," so I thought I ought to mention it. (The illustration is what popped up when I did a "Google Image Search" for "bing crosby bob hope astronauts." Who am I to argue?)

Psychic Smoothie

I woke up at 2:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep so I got up and turned on the TV. Can you guess what I saw? No, not the Ninja Blender, but that was a good guess! I saw an infomercial for another blender, the one endorsed by Montel Williams and first brought to our attention by the NBIL. A woman said, "A regular blender can't chop through lettuce and apples!" A man said, "I could put a brick in here!" But he didn't. That would have been neat. Then the announcer said something like, "Coming up, Sylvia Browne makes psychic predictions and reveals her favorite smoothie!" And I was like, "Huh. That name is familiar to me." I think Sylvia Browne had a bunch of books on that list over at the behemoth, the one on which a customer placed my book YOUR BODY IS CHANGING as one of her favorite works about "spirituality and health." The one thing behemoths are known for is razor-sharp accuracy! Then I changed the channel and watched a great deal of CAPRICORN ONE. An astronaut on the run! From shadowy forces! He hides in a cave and eats a snake! Elliott Gould portrays a wisecracking reporter who just stumbled on the biggest story of his life! Karen Black is another wisecracking reporter. A guy who played a wisecracking reporter on the TV show LOU GRANT does not play a wisecracking reporter. He plays a low-level NASA employee who gets in over his head! Sam Waterston is another astronaut - a wisecracking one! He even makes wisecracks in the face of deadly danger. Also starring O.J. Simpson. When I was 15, I considered CAPRICORN ONE the highest of all artistic achievements.

Fun Brain Fun

Part of me is sorry that people may find the "blog's" new policy of random, recycled illustrations upsetting and confusing. But another part of me doesn't care very much about anything. And why should it? Random illustrations can make your brain do exciting things! I believe your brain will try to connect the random pictures with the texts to which they are attached, producing stimulating brain thoughts from your brain. That's where the fun comes in! For example, is Herman Melville casting a sternly disapproving look at the idea of a man tickling astronauts? Or is he just sorry he didn't put it in BILLY BUDD? Is a barbershop quartet about to sing some of that "punk rock" all the children are talking about? Is George Lazenby going to shoot a garden slug with a real slug... from a gun? I hope not! But isn't it fun to pretend? I guess so. Sometimes. Other times it is better to be serious and think about what you have done with your life. Look, I've made my choice. But that doesn't mean it's too late for you.

Tickle Confirmation

Well, I almost had it. I believe this ("click" here) is the same syndicated story to which I just referred (though only the first few paragraphs appeared in the Arkansas paper). The actual quotation seems to be, "he plans to tickle the professional astronauts while they're sleeping." But here, let's let him speak for himself: "I'm a person with a pretty high spirit, who's there to crack jokes and make jokes to those guys, and while they're sleeping, you know, I'll be tickling them."

Please Don't Do That Thing You Want to Do

The paper delivered to my hotel door this morning was the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and on the front page was a tiny item about the founder (owner? I left the paper in the hotel) of Cirque du Soleil, who has bought a ticket to fly into outer space on a Russian spaceship. And he said in the little item that he plans to (and I believe this is an exact quotation, though I can't find the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette recreated on the "internet") "tickle the astronauts while they sleep." I can imagine all sorts of things going wrong with this idea.

What Is A Good Commercial?

My sister came over and we had a heated disagreement about the nature of Nutter Butter brand cookies. She was proven correct by the "internet"! A preliminary trip to youtube for answers provided none, but in the course of our search we did stumble across the unrelated ad presented below, which I recalled vividly from my youth. It seems that I am always complaining about commercials I don't understand - commercials advertising Jay Leno, Cheetos, a search engine, and so on - and only rarely, as in the case of the commercial for the handy money clip or a hardware store in Ohatchee, do I provide any POSITIVE example of the art. Well, the following one from my childhood was the greatest and most effective commercial ever, and if you don't understand why because you never wanted to be an astronaut, I guess we have nothing to talk about.

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to "McNeil's Movie Korner." McNeil has a recommendation: THE RELUCTANT ASTRONAUT starring Don Knotts. Here's McNeil: "Much better than I thought it would be. I was actually nervous when DK fell out of the capsule door with ONLY 5 SECONDS LEFT BEFORE LAUNCH!!!!" (The caps and four exclamation points are McNeil's.) I would ask McNeil if there is a monkey in the movie, because I feel sure there is, but McNeil has lately expressed the opinion that there are "too many monkeys" on the "blog" lately. So I doubt I would get a straight answer! PS Last night I was at the City Grocery Bar when I was approached by a graduate student who advanced her theory that McNeil is "made up." You may recall that in the past Phil Oppeheim and Dr. "M." briefly entertained similar suspicions (likewise, McNeil thought Dr. "M." was made up). To me, this represents a sloppy reading indeed of the "blog." May I point out a few obvious hints to the contrary? 1) McNeil takes pictures of things, such as the apple tree in his yard, his shirt, houses he visits, and a weird cloud. 2) McNeil has a daughter who reads Harry Potter. 3) McNeil has his short stories published in various magazines. 4) Phil once loaned McNeil a movie, and was required to mail it to North Carolina, where McNeil lives. 5) McNeil doesn't like the way I answer the telephone. 6) McNeil teaches at a college in the aforementioned state of North Carolina. 7) McNeil's wife is an expert on German art. 8) McNeil takes medicine. 9) McNeil has a foolproof system for winning at craps. 10) We disagree about the proper number of monkeys to put on a "blog." These are the facts of an actual person's life! I am not a good enough writer to make McNeil up. PPS There is something terribly wrong with the "blog's" search feature today (it refuses to admit I have ever referred to Richard Belzer, for example), so it took me forever to "post" this. Like, my coffee got cold. (The search feature doesn't admit I ever "blogged" about my coffee getting cold!) I know you will do me the favor of "clicking" on every single "link" to show me how much you care.

FYI

I ran across a good one today in the periodicals room: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL HYPNOSIS. I tried to read an article called "Effects of Vestibular and Neck Proprioceptive Stimulation on Posture as a Function of Hypnotizability." Here's what I gathered, or sort of gathered, or may not have gathered: 1) People who can be hypnotized easily are called "highs;" people who cannot be hypnotized with such ease are called "lows." 2) It is easier to hypnotize a subject who is standing up than one who is sitting down, or it may be the other way around. The other way around seems to make more sense. Anyway, I read that paragraph five times and I can't tell you. 3) "Highs" allow their bodies to sway more freely while under hypnosis. 4) "Highs" might adapt to microgravity more easily, making them better candidates than "lows" for the astronautical profession. OKAY! There was also a great appendix at the back of the magazine, laying out a "Hypnotic Induction" translated from the French, which I now quote in part (the ellipses are original to the text): "The floating hand ... on its own ... perfectly still ... With your permission, imagine that I am covering it with a glove ... a glove that anesthetizes and that I pull on ... over the fingers ... the palm of the hand ... cool and comfortable ..." I woke up three hours later, having missed my class. Ha ha! Not really! But wouldn't that have been something? Wheeeeeee! What fun we're having now.