The Chicken Soup Occurrence

Here is something I don't care about. But I've been sitting here thinking about it so I'm going to write it down. There I was, minding my own business, slicing up some leeks to go into a big pot of chicken soup, and in my headphones rang the voice of Barry McGovern, who reads the bulk of the audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE (Marcella Riordan had just finished pitching in with the famous "washerwomen" chapter at the time of the soup making in question), and Barry McGovern said to me, quoting James Joyce in FINNEGANS WAKE, the word "googling," lodged there in an otherwise indecipherable sentence. I double checked it with the physical text once the soup was simmering, and there it was, all right: "googling," right there in FINNEGANS WAKE. Big deal. As we know from previous "blog" adventures, Mark Twain used "googling" in 1884 (as I learned from Roy Blount Jr., or one of his books, though I do know him in person, don't you worry about that!) and Jack Kerouac used "google" in 1959 (after Joyce, of course), and though FINNEGANS WAKE was published in 1939, we know that James Joyce was working on it for 17 years, and still, with all that, he just can't beat Billy DeBeck, who created the comic strip character Barney Google in 1919. (It occurs to me that the oft-touted "invention" of the term "googol" by a nine-year-old in 1920 might not be such a gobsmacking tidbit after all. Maybe he just liked to read the funny papers! Take that, nine-year-old! DAMN! I see that wikipedia has beaten me to this speculation, which is fitting, given my apparent obsession with the prerogitives of chronology. Hoist with my own petard!) Oh! What the hell else? I know nothing about the game of cricket, or, really, about the insect the cricket, except for my possibly false knowledge that the latter makes music with its legs... please, entomology pedants, tell me where I'm wrong! I beg of you! Anyway, I vaguely recall that in the movie HOPE AND GLORY, a grandfather threatens his grandson with some sort of cricket move he calls a "googly." I looked it up just now, and the first googly was thrown, if that's the correct word, by Bernard Bosenquet in 1900 (the last year of the 19th century, I say, which is why the momentous event is not recorded in my famous history of the 20th), so he beats everybody except Mark Twain, assuming that Bosenquet named the googly as well as putting it into practice, and I just don't care enough to find out, which is funny, because I care enough to type all this, just barely.

Everybody's Talking

Last night Dr. Theresa and I were watching a TV show which, despite taking place in our up-to-date modern times, had a plot point about Alexander the Great's horse, then I got in bed and read a book by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis instead of an old comic book, and the narrator mentioned Alexander the Great's horse, then I decided it was no big deal because everybody is always talking about Alexander the Great's horse.

Speaking of Fox Mulder

I wanted to “post” this earlier, but the AT&T “internet” stopped working over and over. Anyway, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. I got one of those junk headlines that you get on your phone, something like “The Queen’s Favorite Sandwich That She Ate Every Day Since She Was Five – And It’s So Basic!” So I took a screen grab of it and sent it to Ace. That’s all we do all day every day, grab stupid things that appear on our phones and text them to each other. Then I texted the same screen grab, with its accompanying photo of Queen Elizabeth II, to Sara, along with my own humorous commentary: “The answer? A foot-long chili dog.” Sara’s reply was something like (a close paraphrase here): “OMG, really???” So I sadly had to reply that no, Queen Elizabeth II did not, as far as I know, eat a foot-long chili dog every day for 90 years. As Sara expressed it in a subsequent text, her tragedy – ha ha! she didn’t say tragedy – is that she “wants to believe.” Just like Fox Mulder from the X-Files! I added that part. Speaking of Fox Mulder, I was reading another old comic book about The Atom, and he was fighting these tiny guys who lived in a cave and rode around on the backs of bats. The editor interrupted the story to announce that tiny people of a proper size for riding small flying rodents into battle most likely really existed at some point! He insisted, in the capital letters typical of old comic books: “THE ELVES, THE BROWNIES, THE LEPRECHAUNS, THE FAIRIES, ALL MAY BE FANCIFUL RECOLLECTIONS OF A RACE OF TINY HUMANS! CHARLES FORT WRITES OF THEM.” Naturally, I was interested to run across this use of Charles Fort's captivating ramblings as evidence. I always thought Charles Fort would be a big deal on the “blog,” though he has never ended up in even 10 “posts” so far, after all the “blog’s” horrible countless years of thankless and unwanted existence. You remember Charles Fort, of whom it was once recorded on a book flap that he "collected and published reliable accounts of colored rains, living things falling to earth, unknown objects in space and in the oceans, people who have mysteriously appeared and disappeared." Charles Fort, to whom Tom Wolfe casually alluded: "Cassady began fibrillating the vocal cords, going faster and faster until by dawn if he had gone any faster, he would have vibrated off, as old Charles Fort said, and gone instantly into the positive absolute. It was a nice weird party." Charles Fort, whose glowing owls inspired the owls in my own second book. Charles Fort! That’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to say Charles Fort. Oh! In conclusion – and you will have to pardon me in advance for blue language on a level such as never, in my memory, has been attempted on the “blog” before – I watched THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY again, and as I was looking it up afterward in Fujiwara’s excellent monograph, I ran across Jerry Lewis’s defense of the puppet sequence from THE ERRAND BOY, which, having grown wise over the years, I now welcome with arms open wide. In fact, I’m ashamed of some of my earlier “posts” in which I seemingly apologize for Jerry. Back in those days, I just wanted everybody to like me! Now I don’t care anymore. So, Fujiwara interviews Jerry, who says of the part of the movie in which he, Jerry, cavorts tenderly with (if I recall correctly) a flirtatious, languorous ostrich puppet and enjoys maudlin interactions with a little finger-puppet clown… Jerry, who says of himself, actually, “We call that a director with steel balls.” And I was like, you know what? He’s right!

Outlaw Pants

As you know, I tell you every time I read a book with an owl in it for secret reasons that no one except we (as I believe is gramatically correct) will ever understand. As you also know, Tom Franklin brought me a bunch of old comic books when I was in the hospital, and in one of them, the masked cowboy known as Vigilante met up with some real rascals (spoiler alert! they were reformed and had been framed!) known colloquially as "owlhoots." I don't suppose any of us will ever forget that. But what you DIDN'T know was that after I got home from the hospital, Tom brought over a fresh stack of old comic books! I was lying in bed reading one of the new batch last night and this character the Two-Gun Kid shoots Jesse James's pants off him! He does it in order to embarrass Jesse James in front of a bunch of schoolchildren. It's an odd choice, but hey, he's the Two-Gun Kid. He uses his two guns to shoot off Jesse James's pants, what's the big deal? Here, let me give you a direct quotation from the Two-Gun Kid himself: "LOOK, YOUNGSTERS! THE OWLHOOT WHO HOLDS UP STAGES IS HAVING TROUBLE HOLDING UP HIS JEANS! AND NOW, JESSE... DANCE!" What may we conclude? Let us consider: Vigilante is a DC character, while the Two-Gun Kid was created by Marvel. Therefore, though these mighty giants of comics publishing were adversarial in every other way, the term "owlhoot" was universal enough to bridge the immense gap between them. Can't we all learn a lesson from that in these trying times? Sidenote: I was going to title this "post" "I Shot Jesse James...'s Pants," an allusion to the Samuel Fuller film I SHOT JESSE JAMES, but no one would have understood or, had they understood, cared.

I Don't Want to Be Here

Let's get this over with. So, Dr. Theresa and I were watching the horror movie THE FUNHOUSE as part of our yearly Halloween thing we do. I noticed that a cigarette lighter was used as a clue in an interesting way, which really pissed me off. That's right, I use coarse language now, and I use it freely. I knew that the vital cigarette lighter clue meant that I would have to laboriously append a new entry to my index of things I (sort of) regret leaving out of my cigarette lighter book, which no one cares about, except maybe Ace Atkins, who texted yesterday to inquire whether he might borrow a gruesome detail from it in the service of his new work. But let us travel back in time, to our viewing of THE FUNHOUSE, and how my shriveled heart gave a hint of shuddering back to life as I thought about my entire section on matchbooks as clues. So interesting, I smugly mused, to see a cigarette lighter used in a matchbook way here in this film THE FUNHOUSE. I could tell everyone a thing or two about how unusual that is. Then I remembered, hey! The epigraph of the book is about a cigarette lighter as a clue, big deal, Godard even says (in the epigraph) how damn famous it is, that billions of people will remember it. (It's the cigarette lighter from STRANGERS ON A TRAIN... a false, planted clue, which would be an interesting distinction if I cared about anything anymore. You could say, for one thing, that in both cases [THE FUNHOUSE and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN], the lighter benefits the villain, whereas the matchbook is usually valuable to the detective or "good guy"... how I hate myself!) What's so special about this damn cigarette lighter from THE FUNHOUSE? Well, it appeared to be a white Bic, which, as Megan Abbott pointed out to me during the research phase of my book, is thought by some to be bad luck, which superstition ended up in the book, and I guess this lighter would have made a good addition to that section, as it (as hinted parenthetically above) alerts the murderous monster to the presence of the hapless teens, but then again, maybe the lighter was pale yellow. This was weeks ago. Days ago? It was the 19th. I'm so tired of looking things up.

Bettie Page Monkey Christmas

Christmas dinner at Larry's tonight. Monkeys riding on dogs came up! Lee Durkee had seen them (monkeys riding dogs) during the half-time show of a Cincinnati Bengals game, I think. (PS Do you live in Cincinnati? I'm giving a reading there in the new year! I wanted to stay at the hotel where Kelly Hogan and Bill Taft and I stayed together in 1992, and I played piano in the bar all night, but that hotel doesn't exist anymore. So I guess it is okay to mention that Bill peed off the balcony.) Melissa Ginsburg perked up at the mention of monkeys riding dogs! So I mentioned my serious misgivings about monkeys riding dogs. Chris Offutt, to soothe my mind, said that maybe monkeys were the photographers of monkeys riding dogs, and I said "Then those were Bettie Page monkeys, being exploited by monkey photographers." So Chris looked on his phone and found this photo of Bettie Page with a chimp (not a monkey, mind you!). Then we ate dinner and somebody made a big deal about how Robert Johnson couldn't possibly have sold his soul to the devil and I was like, what, Robert Johnson TOTALLY sold his soul to the devil! So that was dinner. Yeah, I was a jerk all night, I kept taking the other side of everything, like a jerk.

Miracle Helium of Love

Kent and Adam and Pen sent me these balloons for my birthday. That was July 8, like six weeks ago, and they're still floating! They sent me a dozen red roses too. Those guys! The roses died. Flowers die! Flowers must fade and die, the poets tell us. Yet the balloons just keep going. "Tight seals," mused Adam, ever the pragmatist. "Did you tape them to the wall?" asked a suspicious Pen during a recent writers' meeting, during which, as always, the balloons were visible behind me thanks to the miracle of skype. No such chicanery! All natural, this floating. These balloons are the wonder of the age. But I don't know, maybe it is no big deal, maybe our modern balloons are built by cold, pedantic experts to float forever, maybe all of you have some balloons that have been floating in your house for six weeks, maybe six years, maybe you are laughing at me, that's right, go on, laugh at the old fool with his misty eyeballs and feeble dreams. Full disclosure: one of them stopped floating almost immediately (see photo below). Still tethered to its luckier brothers as a reminder that glory is fleeting!

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.)

A Boiled Owl

And now I would like to say a few feverishly anticipated words about THE IRON PETTICOAT. Aw, it wasn't so bad! Or maybe that's the whiskey talking. Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn started drinking whiskey early in the movie and I am highly suggestible. First Robert Osborne came on and introduced it. He said that nobody has seen this movie in 40 years, because when the rights reverted to Bob Hope, he locked it up tight. I guess Bob was ashamed of it! Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay, but Bob decided to have his gag writers punch it up Bob Hope style, which made Ben Hecht furious. There was lots of trouble. But I must say that anything I laughed at in the movie bore the distinct mark of having been added by Bob Hope's gag writers. The movie starts with a score that indicates we are about to watch the curtain rise on a turbulent opera. It's heavy! Like Wagner trying to evoke a stormy seascape or something. Katharine Hepburn's Russian accent is somewhere between German and Dracula, with some French thrown in and something else... Spanish? She rolls her r's really expansively. But the minute Bob comes onscreen the energy and pep are palpable. He just breezes in and starts tossing off one-liners, walking in that supremely graceful way of his. He's so relaxed that during a scene with his commanding officer he just swivels back and forth on a chair casually, like a little kid, like he's thinking of something else. I was proud to notice an actual Russian (I think), a guy I recognized - decades younger here! - from Woody Allen's own Russian epic, LOVE AND DEATH. He plays a martial arts expert in THE IRON PETTICOAT. This Russian (I guess) and Bob have a funny fight scene, during which Bob unforgivably breaks character to make a Bing Crosby joke. So that's another Woody Allen/Bob Hope connection, which we collect here. The politics of the film is standard Cold War stuff, except that a porcine anti-communist senator from Alabama is portrayed as a dumb boob. Very early in the movie, Katharine Hepburn is said to be "as sore as a boiled owl," an expression I have heard before, maybe in other old movies, but I still don't get it, not really, a boiled owl, sore, why? What's that? In conclusion, what's the big deal? Who cares? Who cares about anything? Goodbye forever.

Frasier, Briefly

Welcome once again to "Frasier, Briefly." Last night Frasier's dad kept beating him at chess and it made Frasier crazy! And I was like, "Oh, Frasier. It's no big deal. Why can't you just be happy?" This has been "Frasier, Briefly."

Lugubrious Volleyball Accompaniment

Hogan's description of the TV movie SOMEONE I TOUCHED sent me racing to the streaming video. "Forget the others I've touched, others I've touched," advises Cloris Leachman, singing the theme song to SOMEONE I TOUCHED, which involves the phrase "someone I touched" A LOT. Foreground shots seem to indicate that the theme song to SOMEONE I TOUCHED is coming out of a transistor radio during a volleyball game at the beach! Pretty lugubrious accompaniment to a volleyball game, I would say. "Yes, everything dies..." sings Cloris Leachman lugubriously. What a downer! There's a long pause before she adds, "but this feeling gentle and warm." Whew! What a relief. For a second I thought that everything dies. "You'll always be someone I touched," Cloris Leachman reassures us at the end of the song. Then, just as Hogan said, a man with a moustache comes up to Glynnis O'Connor (pictured) and tells her she has syphilis. She shrugs it off: "That's no big deal these days is it?" And the guy replies, "No, no big deal." I don't want to tell you how to start your 1975 TV movie about syphilis, but that is a terrible way to start it! We know we have like an hour and a half to go, so we want it to be a big deal!

Let's Get Annotated!

Every year, as you well know, the "blog" advent calendar brings fun and enlightenment to young and old alike. The fuel it runs on is surprise, so it would ruin the "blog" advent calendar to explain anything about it until it is complete in its glory and has been enjoyed by one and all in the spirit of anticipation, wonder, and universal good cheer. But sometimes there are one or two items that might be enhanced with footnotes after the fact, and such is the case once again this year. Here are this year's "blog" advent calendar annotations, helpfully numbered according to their original placement on this year's "blog" advent calendar: 10. So Mary Worth was stalked in her eponymous comic strip and they made a coffee mug representing her encounter with her stalker. Okay! I found this one the night before I "posted" it, and here is the weird thing: when I found it, the mug cost $13.99. But THE VERY NEXT MORNING, when I "posted" it, the price had mysteriously gone up to $14.99! AND THAT'S NOT ALL! After I "posted" it, when I visited other "web" sites with advertising sidebars, OFTEN the Mary Worth stalker mug would be featured, probably thanks to "cookies" or some other innocent sounding, horrible "internet" thing I don't understand. Mary Worth's stalker was stalking me around the "internet"! In one case, the mug was advertised for the price of $19.99! I have no idea what this means, except that computers are spying on us, but we knew that. 11. This man has lots of ideas, including one I thought was mine! In my novel AWESOME, the title character - a giant who invents things - wants to construct a highway with grooves like LP grooves in it, and to have cars fitted with special tires that would play the music embedded in the highway, the way a phonograph needle plays a record. I thought I made it up! But I was shocked and sort of depressed to discover that this guy had already thought of it. He writes: "Carve computer-generated ripples in the surface of a main highway, and when vehicles pass over the surface, mysterious voices whisper, and distant music plays... Little sub-threshold voices which say 'Buy popcorn.'" His version requires no special tires. BUT GET THIS! He suffered a letdown too, because he in turn discovered that ROADS LIKE THIS ALREADY EXIST IN REAL LIFE! So I guess we are both suckers for thinking we are so great and everything. 21. You don't know who Charley Weaver is. Why should you? He was a folksy character created by the actor Clifford Arquette (grandfather to Patricia and Rosanna Arquette). Arquette (in character as Charley Weaver) was on HOLLYWOOD SQUARES with Paul Lynde. I want to say he sat on the bottom row, at the end, but I can't swear to it. The little automated Charley Weaver toy is great. In addition to making and drinking its little cocktail, and its nose turning red through special lighting effects, Mr. Ward says that smoke originally came out of its ears. Puzzling, though: the Charley Weaver persona did not involve Foster Brooks-like drunkenness as far as I can recall... certainly Charley Weaver would have never imbibed anything requiring the use of a cocktail shaker - more like a Mason jar. So the toy is weird in that regard. Let me also say that there is one of these behind the counter at the Ajax Diner, inert, and often have I stared at it and wondered about its function - a coin bank? - as I drank sweet tea and ate pot roast and butter beans at the bar. Now I know! 22. I didn't realize until my brother-in-law David sent me the video that the Lambton worm was such a big deal. I knew the song from the Ken Russell movie LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, but if I thought about it at all, I stupidly and incuriously figured it was a fake folk song they made up to suit the needs of the plot. But man, there are so many versions on youtube! One guy sings it with his shirt off and possibly his pants off for all I know. The brother-in-law visited for Christmas. He walked into Square Books on Christmas Eve and by fate walked straight to a book about dragons containing a chapter on the Lambton worm. Have you ever noticed that whenever you start thinking about the Lambton worm he turns up everywhere? So I guess the Lambton worm is very popular and I never knew it. (I started this "post" last night but then I got too tired to explain who Charley Weaver was. It seemed soul crushing. Life is hard!) Pictured, Charley Weaver and LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM. See if you can figure out which is which!

Literary Matters

Time for everyone's least favorite thing in the world: "Literary Matters"! Usually I start off by warning you about how many horrible literary matters you will be forced to endure this time. But today's literary matters are all smashed up into one lump, which is either a good thing or a bad thing. To begin with, yes, you are right, it has been a long time since I have read any of CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS by Diarmaid MacCulloch. And I'm right at the Reformation, which is a big deal with lots of action! So I have no excuse. But I am "teaching" again, and for that purpose rereading the Toni Morrison novel BELOVED (which has some owls in it, once again proving my theory that all great books have owls in them), which requires a certain seriousness of attention. Who is to say that when I am able to read at pure leisure again Mr. MacCulloch will hold sufficient temptation? It would not be his fault were I to abandon him! For you see, there is the prospect of a tantalizing new book club. I can't say much until membership is nailed down - there is an apparent holdout! - and the club gives me permission to speak more. But I can give you some clues which you will never use to solve the puzzle because you don't care and even if you did care, the puzzle is too hard. All I can say is that the book is out of print, and according to its flap it is the true life story of a man who "knew plenty of mugs and could talk their language. At 25 he was... one of the few entertainers who could make Al Capone laugh. Yet Machine Gun Jack McGurn nearly succeeded in having him killed. He lost his voice... Gradually his confidence returned, his voice became audible again, and... he reached his peak as the gay, gregarious vagabond his audiences have loved ever since." That's what the 1955 book flap says! And I accidentally opened to a photograph of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a kind of photograph I do not enjoy, but I believe you can see how the communal pleasures of this sort of book club might lure me away from my lonely pursuit of CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS.

Of Course She Does

You know how we're always talking about those bicycles with the great big wheel in front and the tiny little wheel in back? It turns out Verdell OWNS one! Of course she does. Except the great big wheel is tinier than usual and the tiny wheel is really, really tiny. Look! Here she is riding it around like it's no big deal in a fancy white dress and hat.

Leszek Kolakowski and Unicorn Paraphernalia

I was just reading in the New York Times that the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski has died. Believe it or not, I was reading something by him just the other day, a book called METAPHYSICAL HORROR, and it made me think of the "blog" - not just because of the title! Kolakowski wrote: "For well over a hundred years, a large part of academic philosophy has been devoted to the business of explaining that philosophy is either impossible or useless or both." (Just what the "blog" tries to do about "blogging," I thought solipsistically.) Kolakowski went on: "Thus philosophy demonstrates that it can happily survive its own death: it keeps itself busy trying to prove that it has indeed died." He goes on to use Hegel, Hume, and Laurel and Hardy as examples, the latter pair of which endeared him to me at that moment. In an odd, not entirely direct way, this brings home how unfair I am to Larry King. So, I "knowingly" use my Twitter account to wink at the reader about how silly it all is. Big deal. In the end, there is absolutely no difference between my "smart" cracks about pudding and Larry King's "simple" statement about which kind of licorice he likes. And while I am at it, a grown man who "ironically" pretends to "like unicorns" ends up with exactly as much unicorn paraphernalia as a twelve-year-old girl who really does love unicorns - and probably enjoys it just as much. Think about it! It's what Leszek Kolakowski would want.

Nice Bob

I "posted" a long piece about Bob Hope at 3 AM. Then I read it and thought "Nobody cares!" and took it down in a maudlin storm of self-pity. But my maudlin storms of self-pity have never stopped me from "blogging" before. In fact, they have encouraged me and exacerbated my "blogging" compulsions! And then, I don't know what I dreamed last night, but I woke up saying, "What's the big deal about photosynthesis?" In any case, I didn't want to waste this nice picture of Bob.

Cheetophobia

Last night on his show, Stephen Colbert revealed that he is just as baffled by recent Cheetos commercials as I am. Why aren't we best friends, Stephen Colbert? Call me! For now I will comfort myself with this picture of me sitting next to Elvis Costello at dinner and pretending it is no big deal (belated photo credit to Joe York).

Elbows Costello

Don't freak out! Yes, that's my musical idol Elvis Costello and me, apparently just hanging out. I would like you to believe on the evidence of this picture that it is no big deal and happens all the time and I didn't feel faint and giddy. You will note that our table manners are appalling in the exact same way, which is vastly satisfying somehow. I can say no more because Theresa finds such self-aggrandizement and exploitation tacky. And she's right! But if you have a "blog," this is the kind of stuff that goes on it. The "blog" demands much! The "blog" consumes and destroys! "Blogs" are tacky! Get with the times! Print is dead! etc. I also have a picture from the same night (last night) in which Theresa looks like a ghost. She's semi-transparent for some reason! It's really cool but you'll never see it because that's how Theresa rolls.

Tales of Oxford

Greetings from Oxford. Here is what is going on around Oxford. Two "Blog" Buddies from Oxford have just been nominated for James Beard Awards. These awards are a big deal! Congratulations to "Blog" Buddies John Currence and John T. Edge. On to groundhog news. It turns out that a groundhog in your neighbor's backyard is no big deal in Oxford and Theresa and I were wrong to get excited and have fun watching the groundhog. Theresa's teaching assistant has a groundhog in his backyard. One of my writing students has a groundhog in her backyard, and her dog gets into little dust-ups with it. This is just like when the wild turkeys were nothing special and the deer were nothing special and nothing was special. But we still cling to the idea that our groundhog is special and an especially lovable and gigantic one. And yes, it made an appearance today in case you were concerned. Goodbye from Oxford! (Pictured, Currence's tattoo. One in our series of people's arms.)

Oh, Jerry

I suppose that honor - or "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" as it is sometimes called - requires me to tell you that Jerry Lewis is in the New York Times today. I always make such a big deal when it happens! But today it is not for a happy reason. He used a hurtful word! This is not the first time it has been my sad obligation to call your attention to the "dark side" of Jerry Lewis. But I hope it will be the last! Come on, Jerry, shape up and get with it. Be nice! They love you at the New York Times! Give them something pleasant to report about.