Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility

Oh, so you say you CAN handle the kind of stuff McNeil and I talk about? All right. I'll give you the straight skinny, and then you'll be sorry. So McNeil sends an email: "Reading The Apocryphon of John and it's blowing my mind. BOOOOOM. In a way it makes the vicissitudes (!!look at my big word there!!) of the OT God a little easier to understand. I said a little. And I'm talking bout the Monad, y'all...which is what people really should be worshipping, I guess." All right! So it looks like McNeil is starting a cult and trying to get me to worship "The Monad." So I'm like, hey, I think I have that book around here somewhere. But I look all around and I can't find it. BUT THEN! I remember an anthology called THE GNOSTIC BIBLE, which is on a shelf behind glass, and I have to move my blood pressure machine to get to it, and I can barely be bothered to make the effort. Finally, I drag my old carcass over there and take it down and I'm like, hey! And I email McNeil: "one of the sections is called The Secret Book of John, which seems to correspond to the book you're talking about. For example, it mentions 'The One,' which a footnote explains is 'The Monad.' And so on. So let's get busy, Apocryphon style!" And there was some other stuff McNeil brought up about A.I., but let's not get into that right now. We have enough problems! Oh yeah, and McNeil had given me an assignment, which was to study "the passage about halfway through, maybe, where man is created. There is a long long list of people who worked on the project - and how they felt about it afterward." I still haven't done that. Sorry! So McNeil follows up with "There should be a place we meet and discuss the Apocryphon - a place like Omaha or Des Moines - and in a pergola near a nature preserve or something so it seems spiritual and also inexpensive. We could wear hats like they do in Masters of Atlantis." And I shoot back my own suggestion: Yankton, South Dakota! McNeil goes "At that pizza place you're obsessed with - but only if they can provide us with a SCIF." And I don't know what the hell a SCIF is and McNeil has to explain it to me. But about this pizza place... see, for my 60th birthday, I thought McNeil and I could meet at a pizza place I knew about through one tweet, back when twitter existed. The way I remember it now, this place had a pizza with crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on it, which was named (the pizza was) after Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Because you know how much they loved crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on a pizza! I even looked up local forms of entertainment and I think I found several casinos in the area. Alas, that plan came to nothing. A lot of things came to nothing that year. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Hey! Speaking of religion, I see that the announcement is up at Square Books: I'll be "in conversation" with Tom Franklin about his new novel DEVILWOOD in February! So I can finally tell you... remember when I said I was reading a manuscript with owl balls in it but it doesn't mean what you think it means? Well, that book with the owl balls in it is DEVILWOOD, as can finally be revealed. Owl balls!

Abalone Biscuit Stick

1. McNeil dreamed - shortly before I left for Burbank on a bureaucratic mission that would stun and bore you - that I was transformed into a toddler and Donald Trump hand-fed me a biscuit. I did not report the dream at the time because I was about to leave on my trip and it struck me as a dream of ill-omen, best blocked out of my mind until my safe return. 2. I know you want to know what book I read on the airplane. Well, you're going to be so glad you asked. See, I had this one Virginia Woolf novel all picked out. It was the right size for the airplane. The content, delightful though I am sure it would have turned out to be, was of secondary interest. You see, I like to print out my boarding passes and slip them between the back cover and last page of whatever book I am reading on the airplane, and I don't like it if the edges of the boarding passes stick out too much. My boarding passes are printed on letter-sized sheets of paper, which I fold over once, maintaining the creaseless integrity of the printed matter. I told you you'd be glad you asked! Let's move to a new numbered section as I explain why I print out my boarding passes rather than checking in via an app on my phone. 3. My phone is too old! It rejects the app! 4. Anyway, I'm going to quote an email from Jimmy Cajoleas now. I don't think Jimmy will mind. "[Have you] read Water Margin? I'm halfway through the Sidney Shapiro translation (he calls it Outlaws of the Marsh) and I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever read in my life." 5. That made me remember I have a copy of that very translation! When I go to bed at night, I often lie on my side facing a bookcase where, as I recline in that position, Outlaws of the Marsh finds itself in my eyeline. I bought it in 2007, I think, and never opened it. And just about every night I look at it from bed and think, "Will I ever read that? I certainly doubt it! It's in a cardboard box containing four volumes!" I bought it at Square Books because when we first moved to Oxford, we had some people over for dinner, and one of them was teaching it in a class, and I got so excited hearing about Outlaws of the Marsh that I ran out and bought it and didn't open it for almost 20 years. So, the night before my flight, I separated Volume 1 from its cardboard-bound brethren. Though it is part of a larger set, the first book is the size of an old-timey mass-market paperback, hardly sufficient for securing my boarding pass in the required fashion. This was a new experience for me. Just when I thought I had done it all in this old world. Walking around with most of my boarding pass sticking out! Like some kind of hippie! 6. My seatmate on the airplane saw my iPod. Unlike the last person who saw my iPod on an airplane, she was not impressed. She said, "My husband has one of those and it drives me crazy." She didn't say why. 7. On a more positive note, she announced that she was from the same town as the woman who wrote the book THE EGG AND I, and she knew the descendants of the book's characters. She couldn't remember the name of the female lead in the movie version and I blew her freaking mind by saying "Claudette Colbert." Anyway, she was saying that Ma and Pa Kettle (supporting characters in the movie) were real people and I speculated that later movies about Ma and Pa Kettle (are you still reading this?), such as MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, were probably not based on true stories, as they were about fanciful things like winning a trip to Hawaii in an advertising slogan contest. Anyway, I don't have time to explain Ma and Pa Kettle to you. I "posted" a publicity still of them above, and I'll let that do the work. The important thing is that despite my know-it-all attitude about Claudette Colbert there is no movie called MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, as I learned when I looked it up minutes ago. It's called MA AND PA KETTLE AT WAIKIKI. And they're just working on a pineapple farm in that one! They didn't win a contest, as I needlessly misinformed my seatmate. Further research (WHY?) led me to discover that Pa Kettle does compose a prize-winning jingle in MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN. And that is the story of how all the Ma and Pa Kettle movies I watched as a kid eventually got mixed up in my head. Most of all, I was shocked to learn that Ma and Pa Kettle were from this woman's hometown in the state of Washington! I don't know where I assumed they were from, but it wasn't there. Sadly, we must now move on from Ma and Pa Kettle. I know you're disappointed. 8. My Uber driver's wife makes a living singing the national anthem at sporting events! You'd think he would have an interesting story about how someone gets into that line of work, but he didn't. 9. I broke my glasses. 10. I saw Kate, who brought with her a treat from Hong Kong: abalone-and-oyster-sauce flavored "biscuit sticks" (the latter two words in English on the box). They were thin, crispy little sticks and I could eat them all day. Savory, with, as Kate remarked, a little of the sweetness of the abalone coming through. 11. She also brought something from a side-trip to Japan: a sake-flavored Kit Kat bar. We tried that, too, and it made us want to throw up. 12. I ran into Cole Sanchez, who remarked, of my shirt, "Do we have the same shirt?" (He was not wearing the shirt - let me be clear: he was wearing a shirt, just not that one - but yes, it did turn out he had the same shirt at home.) Now, you must know, in order to truly appreciate this story, that we consulted Cole while writing the sartorially concerned Adventure Time episode "Bespoken For," because he is a stylish man who knows everything about clothes. So hearing that Cole and I have the same shirt made it a big night for me. I was telling everyone who would listen, "Cole and I have the same shirt!" Cole went home and rethought his life. 13. At the departure gate for my trip home, I sat next to a Pepsi vending machine. A man came and stood in front of it and coughed down into my face a couple of times. He stood in front of the Pepsi machine for five minutes, examining the various Pepsi products on display. Then he walked away, never to be seen again. 14. Dolph Lundgren is on my flight! Yeah! He's speaking Swedish! In the middle of a Swedish phrase, I hear him say "tough guys" in English. I thought, "If anything bad happens on this flight, he'll save us!" Dolph Lundgren's drink of choice? Cranberry juice. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was doing some kind of seated shadow boxing. His feet were subtly and elegantly "dancing," as I believe it's called in the boxing ring, as he cast some punches toward the seat back in front of him. He put on his shades before shadow boxing. "I'm living in paradise!" I jotted in my jotting book. The very sweet flight attendant, Diana by name, turned out to be a Dolph Lundgren fanatic, and addressed him with such giddy enthusiasm as the plane began its descent, to which he responded in such a cheerful and gracious manner, that I felt emboldened to turn around and tell him that he had given me confidence and peace in case of emergency.

High-Profile Fans

Here's something that blew my mind and maybe it will blow yours. But I doubt it! Your mind can't be blown, can it? You've seen it all! Your mind has crusted over with blow-proof grit. Anyway! I was watching BONJOUR TRISTESSE yesterday, and I texted Megan something about it - Megan Abbott, that is, as her surname will become significant in the following tale. So, the movie is over and I'm responding to a text from Megan about something else... Andre Gregory, if you must know. Yes, yes, Andre Gregory is the sort of subject we text about, that's how we are. Not that it matters! Because I had recorded BONJOUR TRISTESSE from a showing on TCM. So after the movie, host Ben Mankiewicz gets on there to remind me what I just saw, in case I forgot. And this time, he says how BONJOUR TRISTESSE was not a big critical hit upon its release but now it has... and here I will quote... "high-profile fans such as The New Yorker's Richard Brody, writer Megan Abbott, and actor Amy Poehler." Wait! Back up! Did you notice that middle one? I was texting Megan at the same time Ben Mankiewicz yelled her name from my TV. Maybe he wasn't yelling.

And the Silently Silent Silence

Our electricity went out on January 24 and it's still not back! I don't think it's ever coming back. That's why I am daringly "blogging" without electricity. How? Magic, I guess. Anyway, remember last time we got snowed in? We all thought it was such a lark, a real hoot, such a giggly good damn time, as Ace went out with his 4-wheel drive and brought us back 100 chicken thighs and a single onion. This time it wasn't so funny! It wasn't so damn funny this time, was it? WAS IT! (Also, my use of the past tense is misleading.) For example, Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house). I would tell you about the time Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house), but I've already told Ace and Angela and Bill and Jimmy and Megan and McNeil and my mom and Adam and Hanna and Kate and Steve and Quinn about the time Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house), and I probably told some other people I am forgetting to mention, considering how we haven't had electricity since January 24 and I am going insane. As I jokingly (not jokingly! As Rob Schneider, so renowned for his eloquence, once put it, I was "kidding on the square") told McNeil, at least not having power gave me time to finish reading the Apocryphal Gospels. Now, McNeil had purchased that book by mail on the basis of the single story I repeated from it about young Jesus killing one of his schoolteachers, but I had to inform him that, aside from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which the latter story occurs, the only other "good one" was the Questions of Bartholomew. Bartholomew timidly stomps his foot on the devil's neck, for example! But in general I was afraid I had caused McNeil to waste his money due to my vivid descriptions of interesting things! After I sent the email, I did read another really good line, just one line, set off on its own, like a line of poetry - "and the silently silent silence" - in the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians. It hit me as Joycean! Later still, I did find the Gospel of Truth, as it was called, to be full of the kinds of mind-blowing theological wackiness that McNeil and I used to speculate about in high school as we walked around in the giant sewer pipes with our friend J. P. near the Ossie's barbecue in Mobile, Alabama. But I don't know if that one will strike McNeil the same way. Look, I've done what I can. Ossie's is where I first became acquainted with and existentially scarred by the motif of a pig wearing a chef's hat. We have to thank Ace and Angela for a lot of things during this ongoing experience, including the time they helped us not blow up (unrelated to the aforementioned house fire). Thanks to Tom and Beth Ann for the hot coffee and hot shower when we neeeded it most... so far. The list goes on. Perhaps some would prefer to remain anonymous. Most importantly, Angela gave me a head lamp that allowed me to read the Apocryphal Gospels in the dark!

The Last of the Old Comic Books

You know the story. How Tom Franklin brought me a stack of old comic books in the hospital, and even more stacks of even more old comic books when I got home. And how I began to purchase old comic books for my very own self until I amassed quite a pile. How I found it so soothing to read myself to sleep with old comic books... then... something changed in our interesting modern times, or perhaps something cracked in my warped little soul, and I found that I was permanently out of the mood to read old comic books. I've been slowly finishing the few remaining old comic books in my possession. There are two left. One of them, coincidentally, is about Deathlok, the first superhero I ever mentioned on this "blog"... in the "blog's" very first "post"! That exclamation point was forced rather than felt. I just don't care anymore. Anyway, in the old comic book I was grudgingly reading last night out of a sense of duty, there was a guy named Jack O'Lantern, but get this. He was wearing, like, a purple sack on his head. What does that have to do with jack-o'-lanterns? I don't know and now I never will, having given up old comic books forever. But that's not the point. The point is that Jack O'Lantern goes "GOOD WORK, OWL WOMAN." And then you see this character who I guess is Owl Woman standing over there. I don't know who she is, either. She didn't look too much like an owl from the little I saw of her. Now I'm going to ask you to open your mind to some groovy concepts. So, as you will recall, when I really read comic books, back when I was a kid... that is, when I went and bought what were then NEW comic books from Schambeau's grocery store or Red's Drugs in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, I would have thought of this Jack O'Lantern (with a purple sack on his head!) thing as being a weird, amazing COMIC BOOK FROM THE FUTURE! Because it came out in 1988, when I hadn't seen a comic book in at least 12 years. Yes, I stupidly thought those days were behind me. So it's an "old comic book" now but in another way it was... oh, hell, who cares? You get it. I would say I have wasted enough of your time but we both know I haven't wasted nearly enough of it.

Le Bits de Boyer

Don't worry, your mind isn't freaking out on you! We're preempting "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" for some bits about ginchy French heartthrob Charles Boyer. Our tale begins with some of McNeil's li'l bogie bits. He was telling me how after the Boyer/Bacall movie CONFIDENTIAL AGENT turned out to be a dud, they went back and... well, let's see. I need to consult McNeil's email. They "had Hawks/Bogart/Bacall and a few others get together and film several new scenes to punch up The Big Sleep even more to give Bacall more 'ooompf.'" McNeil goes on to explain that "ooompf" is his own paraphrasing of whatever they were giving Bacall more of, not that she needed it. So he was telling me this and I was like, WHAT! I just recorded CONFIDENTIAL AGENT from a TCM showing, because Dr. Theresa and I had enjoyed Charles Boyer so much in a recent viewing of CLUNY BROWN, which I had also recorded off of TCM. And then McNeil came back at me saying THAT was weird because he had recently conducted a small, informal poll about the handsomeness of Charles Boyer. I don't wish to venture into McNeil's private life, but suffice to say, in McNeil's words, "a man has to know where he stands!!!" (Triple exclamation points are McNeil's.) One will no doubt be reminded of the time that Dr. Theresa blew my mind by saying that she might well prefer the charms of Fredric March over those of Gary Cooper. That was eight years ago and I still don't believe it. I think about it every night as I toss and turn in bed!

You Remember Him

Really enjoying the innocence of this old comic book I'm reading about Superman, you remember him. It's an issue of ACTION COMICS from 1965, in which Superman practices "super-ventriloquism" - his word, not mine! - a power I don't recall from the considerable time I spent researching all his mind-blowing superpowers in 2010. And then two guys on a tandem bicycle try to rob a bank. Ha ha! You can't make this stuff up.

Wonderland of Weeds

I guess it was two months ago I was sitting around the house wondering what the hell a weed is, exactly. Then I remembered (two months ago) that I have a whole book about weeds. I could see it across the room from me at the very moment I asked the question out loud to Dr. Theresa: "What is a weed, anyway?" I think she had mentioned something about pulling weeds. Then I said, "Never mind! I have a whole book about weeds! I'll see if that book will tell me what a weed is." So anyway, I thought about it for two months and this morning I finally made the effort to pull that book off the shelf - WEEDS OF THE SOUTH by Charles T. Bryson and Michael S. DeFelice, with photographs by Arlyn W. Evans - and I opened to the introduction, and I'll be damned if it didn't say "Any plant can be a weed in one situation and unobtrusive or even desirable in another." WHAT! Are you trying to blow my mind, Charles T. Bryson and Michael S. DeFelice? Because mission accomplished! Are you telling me some dude could look at a full-grown pumpkin and say "Yep, that's a weed," and you'd be cool with it? Okay! I believe you. I flipped through a couple of pages, and the "toxic properties" of each weed, if any, are listed, and damned if I didn't come across two weeds in a row that can cause depression! And then I thought about Arlyn W. Evans, lovingly photographing each weed and breathing in its toxic properties.

My Slowly Growing Appendix

Hey, you remember how I wrote a book about cigarette lighters then immediately stopped caring about cigarette lighters, but once in a while I see something that really should have gone into my book about cigarette lighters so I add it to a very slowly growing appendix. Well, last night Dr. Theresa and I watched STARGATE, and when an alien kid grows mesmerized by Kurt Russell's cigarette lighter, it speaks to a trope I introduced on page 46, if you want to grab your copy of my cigarette lighter book and pencil it in, because I knew this trope existed, but I didn't provide any examples, because I really couldn't think of any, so I wrote about things that were sort of like it (accurately noting, as does become apparent in STARGATE, "It's always a short leap to the more ominous flare of gunpowder") and now, thanks to watching STARGATE last night, I have an example of the rather gross trope where the white man comes to a "remote" place and blows everybody's mind with his cigarette lighter, goodbye.

Owlish Scrap-Iron Heir

Now Megan and I are reading Oleg Cassini's autobiography, and like nearly every other book I ever read it has an owl in it. Sometimes the owls aren't real owls. You know what? They're never real owls when you think about it. I don't want to get too deep. They're just words on a page, man. "Bobby was an owlish looking fellow, heir to a large scrap-iron business."

Mmph

Here's a pic I "grabbed" off the computer screen during today's ADVENTURE TIME meeting. As you can see, Kent Osborne is wielding a light saber. He was counting the minutes until the end of the meeting so he could get on his bicycle and pedal all the way to Hollywood from Burbank to see the new STAR WARS movie. I know Ace Atkins has already seen it. I think he went to Memphis for the occasion. And that reminded me of a fun interview I did with Ace ("click" here to read it) all the way back in June of 2014, when Ace said, "I'm super excited about the new STAR WARS movie" and I replied, "Mmph. Wha... I don’t even..." and, somewhat more coherently, "I was excited when I saw the FIRST Star Wars movie. I was in the theater and the first shot of that giant ship going over just blew my poor young mind." And Ace said, "I think J.J. Abrams is going to do an excellent job. He did everything right. First of all, he hired Lawrence Kasdan to write the screenplay." And I repeated, "Mmph." In short, I was 14 when the first STAR WARS came out, and it thrilled me immeasurably, but by the time of the second one I felt I was "too old" for it. But I still have nothing against it! I fondly recall the franchise. I don't want to be like the dozens of people on my twitter feed who seem really proud of themselves for not caring about STAR WARS. Why do I follow so many people on twitter who are so very excited to measure exactly how much they are not caring about STAR WARS? And who cares what you don't care about? And if you don't care about it, why are you tweeting about it so much? That seems like caring. (Also pictured, Ashly Burch and Adam Muto.)

"Blog"trospective 17: Cigarette Lighter Appendix

My previous "blog"trospective, which covered the 20th century, wore me out. But last night I was watching an old episode of THE SIMPSONS, a flashback to the birth of Bart, and Bart's first act on the earth was to set fire to Homer's necktie with a lighter. And that's when I knew I needed, at long last, to manufacture a new "blog"trospective, a storehouse for everything I would have put somewhere in my cigarette lighter book if only it weren't too late to add anything to my cigarette lighter book. Here is that short but growing list: amazing, but who cares---ancient death ray of Archimedes---Aniston, Jennifer; burns a leprechaun's nose with a car cigarette lighter---Aykroyd, Dan; lights a whole pack of smokes with a blowtorch---Brown, Larry; spends four pages on the lighting of a cigarette---Chevalier, Maurice; fails to light a cigarette lighter---cigarettes and monocles in the early work of Lubitsch---Columbo borrows a lighter; a comically long flame shoots out---COUPLE OF COMEDIANS, A (novel by Don Carpenter)---Cummings, Robert; sets off a sprinkler system by holding a match under it---Dahl, Arlene; burns John Payne's hand with a lighter---Disney, Walt; makes a grown man cry and throw away his new lighter---Eastwood, Clint; mangles his cigarette in his lighter, a la Jerry Lewis---Eastwood, Clint; needs a light---Felix from THE ODD COUPLE mangles a cigarette---Fitzgerald, Barry; uses a small, unidentified cigarette-making (?) machine---Fitzhugh, Louise; lights Janet Gaynor's cigarette---five-foot-tall cigarette lighter---flint and steel of circumstances---Ghost Rider himself sets off a sprinkler system the way a lighter often does in popular entertainment---"Gotta Light" Guy from TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, The---Grant, U. S.; witnesses tobacco smuggling, corn husk cigarettes---guy gets lost inside his own cigarette lighter, a---guy shoots the ends off two cigarettes with a single bullet, a---heating Pop Tarts one bite at a time---Hope, Bob; cracks wise about lighters---Lewis, Jerry; can't find his lighter---lighter as clue---lighting a cigar with a burning house---lighting of cigarette as an accommodation to power---Mailer, Norman; narrator of overcome by the solemnity of a cigarette lighter---man scares panther with cigarette lighter---Martin, Dean; tosses his gold cigarette lighter out the window---musical cigarette lighter in FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY---newborn Bart Simpson sets fire to his father's necktie with a lighter (see above)---Northam, Jeremy; lighter of won't work at crucial moment---Novak, Kim; requests a light by means of Jack Lemmon's already-lit cigarette---O'Brien, Edmond; flirts using cigarette lighter---Powell, William; offered numerous lights simultaneously---Pryor, Richard; yells "Flick my Bic!" (was that the advertising slogan for the Bic pen or the Bic lighter? In any case, see "link" for rationale)---Quaid, Dennis; uses lighter to set off fire alarm---Russell, Kurt; blows an alien's mind with his lighter---STAR WARS robot gives a "thumbs up" with its built-in lighter---Stritch, Elaine; fills a cigarette lighter with secret booze---structurally significant lighter---Tati, Jacques; tosses lighter out of car window---undetermined pun based on the name of fire historian Stephen J. Pyne---use of lighter as spy communication---use of lighter to impress cavemen---Wallach, Eli; uses an imaginary cigarette lighter---what not to do with a lighter on the deck of a warship---woman asks for a cigarette; men come skittering from every direction, a---woman dressed as a cigarette lighter frolics behind Miley Cyrus, a. I'm forgetting something.

Their Urine Is Subtile and Fiery

When I couldn't sleep last night I got out of bed and said to myself, "I'm not gonna watch TV this time! I'm gonna read a book like a big boy!" So I sat on the couch and AUTOMATICALLY TURNED ON THE TV BY FORCE OF HABIT. But I stuck to my guns and turned it off again immediately, laughing at my foolish foolishness. BUT HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED. In the time it took to perform that action, TCM sprang to life. I could see from the satellite-company banner at the top of the screen that the movie was called THAT HAGEN GIRL. And the only image I saw from the movie, the only sound I heard, was a scowling old matron in close-up saying, "Have you seen that Hagen girl?" So that was an odd coincidence. That's all I've seen of THAT HAGEN GIRL. In fact, I choose to believe that that is the entirety of THAT HAGEN GIRL. It's like I made a little movie with my mind. Then I picked up THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY from the side table and read, "they are bold and impudent, and of a more harebrain disposition... they sleep little, their urine is subtile and fiery." It was already getting a little personal. And then the next page had some demonic possession so I was like, "Yikes!" I put down the book and turned on the TV. SPEAKING OF MIND GAMES: Don't forget to come to Square Books later today to see me mercilessly grill Ace Atkins about his brand new book THE REDEEMERS. There's a poster and everything (below). I noticed that Ace cc'd Greg Evigan about this event on twitter, ha ha! I think Mr. Evigan will find himself confused and even insulted, as the poster depicts Burt Reynolds in the incongruous company of Clyde from EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, whereas Mr. Evigan was arguably the poor man's Burt Reynolds (actually the poor man's Jerry Reed) and his chimp friend "The Bear" was the poor man's Clyde. It occurs to me that I should put a photo from The End of All Music record store at the top of this "post," featuring Megan Abbott, Bill Boyle and myself, with Ace holding a bottle of whiskey in silver paper from Megan and a Jerry Reed LP from Bill. I gave him nothing. We'll probably drink that bottle of whiskey while we talk tonight. No we won't! We're PROFESSIONALS. We'll drink it beforehand. Ha ha, not really, am I blowing your mind again with my mind games? It's Four Roses, despite what the poster says.

Your Life Will Change

You HAVE to come to the Powerhouse Theatre in Oxford tomorrow (tonight? THURSDAY!) to have a life-changing experience. Once again, that's TOMORROW NIGHT (Thursday the 19th) at the Powerhouse Theatre. Did you hear me? I GUARANTEE it will change your life! I know firsthand. The people performing there LITERALLY changed my life, as you can see in this old "link" ("click" it, you lazy fool! It's much better than this). Dr. Theresa and I had dinner tonight with Bill Taft and Caroline Young and Will Fratesi (drummer for Cat Power; you super cool dummies have heard of that!). Tomorrow they'll be performing at the Powerhouse, as I said. You may recall Bill from the day we had a tornado and he blew all my students' minds anyway, more than a tornado. COME LET HIM BLOW YOUR MIND MORE THAN A TORNADO. Tonight we found out that Bill's daughter is at Yale and writing for the school paper there! WHAT! I thought she was a baby! (See also.) Tonight Caroline and I recalled when we were eating Chinese food in Washington, D.C., the night Bill's daughter was born, and taking bets on what her name would be. I said "Lily" and Caroline said "Veronica." I was closer. "You had more letters," Caroline admitted tonight. Caroline (as you will see if you "click" on that interview, you goober) has had perhaps the greatest influence of any human on my life... she introduced me to Dr. Theresa for example! Bill and Caroline were in our wedding. Patti Smith and Bill once played together! WHAT, are you better than Patti Smith? I kind of thought not! COME ON OUT. Will and I were talking about when he used to deliver pizza to Dr. Theresa and me. Those were good times! I think he was even playing with Cat Power then. Musicians have to hold down many jobs! Being a musician is hard! Will would come over bearing a pizza we had ordered and then we'd all sit down and watch THE SIMPSONS together. Here's the point: COME TO THE POWERHOUSE THURSDAY AT SEVEN. The hard-to-find and truly life-changing documentary BENJAMIN SMOKE will be playing then too! Once I rode illegally in the back of a furniture truck with Benjamin and we peed in a coffee can and he coerced me into stealing a shirt. I DON'T STEAL! Come see the movie and maybe you'll "get it." And there is free food THURSDAY NIGHT - made by the geniuses at Oxford Canteen! - and free vodka. I guess you'd have to be an idiot of the highest order to stay home. If your life doesn't change I WILL GIVE YOUR MONEY BACK even though IT IS ALL ABSOLUTELY FREE.

All Bets Are Off

Lee Durkee heard about McNeil's trouble with the misprinted book, and McNeil's feelings of being all alone in the matter, so Lee wrote me with a message of encouragement to pass along to McNeil, a little story of something that happened to Lee, which I quote for you now: "I once, on a flight to Sri Lanka, was reading a book by Tobias Wolff, IN THE PHARAOH'S ARMY, and midway through the memoir due to a publishing error the book switched into a novel by a different author and kinda blew my mind. I thought Wolff had gone all experimental on me. Later I noticed it was a slightly different typeset. I left the book at a hostel where perhaps it is still bewildering people. It was really odd. I kept reading and reading trying to figure out how Wolff was gonna wrap this all together." Last night I saw Lee at a party, and he told me that what further confounded him was how the change happened between the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. I forwarded the email on to McNeil, who responded: "Well, obviously, what happened to Lee isn't at all the fault of the publisher, but rather a result of longitudinal chicanery by that longitudinal laugh riot of the universe - the globe. You see, in order to get to Sri Lanka, you have to cross the 'International Date Line,' which of course means 'all bets are off!' I forget who said that. Once you cross that imaginary (not so imaginary in my book!) line, ships often sink, standardized language melts away, gold flies out of your teeth, and typeface often changes type. I wouldn't be surprised if my Jerry Lewis book had been shipped from Hong Kong. It's a nice touch the way Lee left the novel in a hostel. Now someone we know needs to accidentally buy it used online and the circle will be complete." Cutting-and-pasting these messages for "blog" "publication," I note that both Lee and McNeil adhere to the elegant and traditional practice of following each period they type with two spaces. Classy! I gave up on that years ago. Think of all the energy I've saved. BUT AT WHAT PRICE? (I removed their "extra" spaces so that the "post" would "adhere" to "blog" "standards." Think of all the work I did to reduce the quality here. Is that "ironic"?) Hey, I'm just going to keep typing. "All bets are off!" as McNeil once observed. Nobody reads these long "posts," or the short ones either, but perversely that's what keeps me typing. Like, yesterday I wrote a long "post" containing the words and phrases "Joycean technique" and "Faulkner" and "palimpsest" and "portent" and "unspoken emotion" but then I deleted it. WHY? For all practical purposes, a deleted "post" is the same as a "posted" "post." It was about this sentence in Adrienne Barbeau's autobiography: "We were married four months later, on New Years Day 1979, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, by a one-armed judge who years earlier had lost his hand in the mixer at the bakery where we'd gotten our wedding cake." I'm way past that now. The marriage is over. Adrienne Barbeau has just met a man who has "the ability to alter bacteria with his hands." She says of him, "I wonder who gave him the huge pearl ring he's wearing. I wonder why the nails on his pinkie fingers are so long." In other book news, I was lurching around Square Books yesterday and found myself strangely drawn to a paperback of JUNKY by William S. Burroughs. I found myself wondering why I've never read it. I read the first couple of pages and thought they were pretty good. So I bought it. It was only afterward, going through the introduction as I sat at the counter at Ajax, that I put it together: Old Bull Lee from ON THE ROAD is Burroughs, as I well knew. What I didn't know is that this edition of JUNKY has, as an appendix, a whole deleted chapter about William Reich, fave theorist of Adrienne Barbeau and Norman Mailer! Who cares? Randy, the owner of Ajax, saw me eating a hamburger and asked, "Why aren't you eating a Pendarvis sandwich? I can't remember the right name." I reminded him that he was thinking of "The Osborne Sandwich." Don't worry! I still think it's going to catch on. Books! As you know, I always like to have a little pocket-sized book to carry around in my little pocket-sized pocket as I promenade about the town like Blazes Boylan. And the other day when I was at Off Square Books I found just such an item, filled with poems using the great old spelling I love: "YEE dainty Nimphs that in this blessed Brooke/ Doo bath your brest;/ Forsake your watry Bowers, and hether looke/ At my request." There are a lot of "hey ho's," so that even the most dire subject matter takes on a jaunty hue: "But whether in painfull love I pine,/ hey hoe pinching pain:/ Or thrive in wealth, she shall be mine,/ but if thou can her obtaine./ And if for gracelesse greefe I dye/ hey hoe gracelesse greefe:/ Witnesse, she slew me with her eye,/ let thy folly be the preefe." He's talking to his sheep. All the narrators in this book are talking to sheep. Pretty early in that poem, the narrator sees "the bouncing Bellybone/ hey hoe Bonny-bell:/ Tripping over the Dale alone,/ shee can trip it very well." Bellybone! I have no idea. Bonnibel (sp?) is Princess Bubblegum's first name, FYI.

A Package of Candy For You, Miss

I just saw a short on TCM called "Harry Reser and His Eskimos," forgive me for using that outdated and offensive word, but that was the title. So there were these guys dressed up like "eskimos," playing a bland little piece of music. Some of them looked happy to be all dressed up in their fur coats and hoods and some looked uncomfortable and even hostile. Like, there were two violinists sitting side by side, on blocks of ice, I suppose, and one was grinning in a goodnatured way - leering in ecstasy, really - while his companion was clearly thinking, "My parents died from working four jobs to send me to the Oberlin Conservatory!" One handsome man stood up and blew his trumpet and he was like, "I don't care what I am wearing, I look super handsome," you could read his thoughts, and they were accurate. So they're kind of going along, doodle deedle deedle, and the iceman comes out with a big block of ice in his tongs, which must have been a terrific gag at the time, and he tries to sell some ice to a woman in an igloo, but she is like, "No ice today." So the iceman moves along. Like a situation in Beckett! You can imagine this poor iceman going through his eternally fruitless motions. Because there is so much ice where he is! He IS modern man, bereft of purpose. So the band keeps tootling along in a boring fashion and another guy saunters up to the igloo and says "A package of candy for you, miss." And the woman in the igloo is delighted! It is a big box labeled very clearly "GUM DROPS." So the lady in the igloo eats some gumdrops while the band honks and squeaks along. And suddenly there are some guys playing poker at a table near the igloo...? And they start throwing their own supply of gumdrops (!?) at the igloo with apparently malicious intent, though the gumdrops end up forming a valentine heart. The woman comes out of the igloo and looks at the gumdrops and puts her hands on her hips like "Oh, you!" Then she throws some ice cubes at these card-playing degenerates in fur coats, and mind you that the band, in front of which all this is happening, is just tootling along all tra la la. In the illustration accompanying this "post," you may see the young hooligans recoiling from the well-deserved onslaught. So suddenly everybody starts singing a song about how they'd like "a cool mint julep on a summery day," which seems counterintuitive, or maybe "ironic." Then these three frightening monstrous icicles appear, looking like THIS IS SPINAL TAP props, and ballerinas come out of them and start dancing on their toes - ballerina style! - but tap-dancing sounds issue incongruously from their toes. Then a champagne cork pops and a huge bottle that looks more like a beer bottle descends from above and there is a guy straddling it, just wailing like crazy on his banjo. Like, finally some action. This guy is a maniac. "Straddling" is the wrong word but it added some piquancy, did it not? So we suddenly pull out to reveal that we are NOT in the land of ice and snow! We're in a nightclub! And all the nightclub patrons start throwing ice cubes. The band stands up and yells in unison "HOLD THAT TIGER!" though I could swear that's not the song they're playing. Then we pull back through the front doors of the club to reveal, unless I am nuts, that the nightclub itself IS in the land of ice and snow after all, blowing my mind. I think I've covered everything. Dr. Theresa walked in and had to laugh at the look on my face, a look of... undue concern?

Of Beards and Dolphins

So when the satellite died we lost all our dvr'd movies. Am I sad? I don't know. I guess that depends on whether you think anything matters. Probably not. I lost SOME KIND OF A NUT, which had repressive desublimation written all over it. It's about Dick van Dyke REFUSING TO SHAVE HIS BEARD! It starts from a bee's point of view, sloppily... I mean, it's sometimes the bee's point of view, sometimes almost the bee's point of view, sometimes not at all the bee's point of view, but you get the distinct and troubling impression that the director THINKS he's in the bee's point of view. That's as far as I got. And now Dick van Dyke and his controversial beard are gone! Gone forever! I wanted to watch THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN, to see if it matched up with my childhood memories. I recall being in a hotel, the first hotel I ever encountered that was running recent theatrical releases on a special channel, and they just showed THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN over and over. MOVIE CHANNELS WERE A MIND-BLOWING NOVELTY, Y'ALL. Now they're just dirt to us. As I recall, I didn't want to go outside, wherever we were on vacation. I just wanted to sit in the room and watch THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN as many times as possible, and I think I did. It's a talking dolphin movie from screenwriter Buck Henry and director Mike Nichols, that's right, the team behind THE GRADUATE, natch! Of course, I didn't know that at the time. I just knew my eyes were secretly welling up with tears when the dolphin, whose name, I think, was "Pha," said to George C. Scott: "Pha LOVE Pa!" The dolphin called George C. Scott "Pa" because George C. Scott had taught him to talk! So George C. Scott was the dolphin's father figure! I guess! Well, anyway, it's erased, zapped, along with 60 other movies. And I never got around to it. And really, who cares? Ward McCarthy also has fond memories of THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN and mentioned he might try showing it to his kids. I had to remind him that - spoiler alert! - something horrible happens to the dolphins at the end, I am almost certain. As Dr. Theresa would say, and often does, "That's the 1970s for ya!"

Light Money Rats

Hey I am about to write a really long "post," a "post" so long that it will require many, many labels at the bottom, too many labels, yes, I am preparing to zoom past the "blog's" maximum labeling capacity, so I would like to apologize to the following labels that I am pretty sure are not going to be squeezed in at the end of the next "post":

I Wonder Why

The doorbell rang! The doorbell never rings. It was Ace Atkins, dropping off a late birthday present for me - the biography CLAUDIA: THE STORY OF COLONEL HARLAND SANDERS' WIFE PLUS SOME OF HER PERSONAL RECIPES by Edward G. Klemm, Jr., or as he is called on the title page, "Edward G. Klemm, Jr., Author, I WONDER WHY" (caps his). He is wearing a cowboy hat in his author photo and appears to be studying a pamphlet! There is a mysterious object in his buttonhole. Dr. Theresa got out her magnifying glass and thought it might be a piece of jewelry shaped like a chicken leg. I thought it was a skull. Could it be a flower bud? For a second I imagined he was reading CLAUDIA: THE STORY OF COLONEL HARLAND SANDERS' WIFE PLUS SOME OF HER PERSONAL RECIPES in his author photo, and that would have blown my mind like the cake with a picture of a cake on it I told you about that time. The title of Mr. Klemm's other book, I WONDER WHY, makes me think of the character in MASTERS OF ATLANTIS who wrote the books HERE COMES GRAMPS! and SO THIS IS OMAHA! (Exclamation points Charles Portis's.) Also in the gift bag: a most hideous figurine of a toad dressed as late-period Elvis. "It looks like it's made of melted candy," observed Dr. Theresa. To which I replied, "I don't know where to put it." "In a grave," suggested Dr. Theresa.

We Weren't the Boss

Hey, yeah, well, Mr. Ward and I were once charged with making a WHO'S THE BOSS promo for TBS but soon we realized there was nothing to say about WHO'S THE BOSS. So we "remixed" some footage from the show and the whole promo turned out to be video "sampling" and "scratching" - you know, like Tony Danza wouldn't just shout "Mona!" He'd go, "Mo-mo-mo-m-m-m-m-Mona!" in an exciting rhythmic way as he jerked back and forth through the magic of editing. So we turned in our promo and a roomful of dour executives contemplated it dourly before telling us we had committed the greatest atrocity in the history of humankind. The promo never aired, due to how mind-blowing it was. It might have hurt people! Well, friends, I want to tell you that I just saw a 30 ROCK promo on Comedy Central THAT UTILIZES OUR EXACT TECHNIQUE! I am not saying that our WHO'S THE BOSS promo was any good. I am just saying that we were UNRECOGNIZED GENIUSES, almost decades ahead of our time. ALMOST DECADES! How can I truly explain our astonishing innovations to you? Well, they were something like this: