I Gave Up

I thought I should tell you I stopped reading that giant hardcover "omnibus" of comics I mentioned yesterday. Why? Why did I give it up, I mean, not why did I think I should tell you. I don't have an answer for that one. Maybe because I'm unemployed and don't have anything else to do? As to the former question, however, it's not because I had shamed myself by mentioning it. It's because this "omnibus" is no damn good! The comics are too goofy. Yes, yes, I know I have often boasted perversely of loving the uncool, goofy comic book characters (not to be confused with the Disney character Goofy) the best... your Captain Marvel (the version often called "Shazam" by dimwits, for reasons I could get into here if I felt like it), your Metal Men, your Plastic Man, and so forth. But this glossy pile of junk I was reading was goofy in the wrong way. The goofiness it poured forth seemed born of bitterness and irony. The bitterness and irony of persons who have placed themselves high above goofiness. That's 1989 for you! There's a reason I originally stopped reading comic books when the price went up to 30 cents. Well, the reason was it became too expensive. Thirty cents is a lot of money! But the point is that the goofiness I like, the goofiness of your Plastic Man, your Metal Men, your Captain Marvel, is sincere and joyful... an embracing mechanism, not a distancing one. Anyway, I'd put this volume in the big overflowing garbage box of books they have for urchins to pick through in the park, but it's too damn big.

Reading Stinks

The other day the thought occurred to me that I might have become eldery enough to start reading John le Carré. I asked around among some friends, and Ace boasted that he had started reading le Carré at the age of fifteen. Ace was already elderly at the time! That's my conclusion. Anyway, as you know, I have been reading ancient (as opposed to elderly) things, or about ancient things, for quite a while now, so when I picked up John le Carré from the bedside table last night and read (I paraphrase lazily), "The stock market was troubled in Zurich," or something like that, my immediate reaction was "Zzzzzz," because I had fallen fast asleep after two paragraphs. But it's not John le Carré's fault! Or maybe it is. I mean, on Halloween, I was finishing up Seneca's plays and reading stuff like "They say the spirits groan here in the dead of night, the grove resounds with the clattering of chains, and the ghosts howl... Old tombs break open, releasing hordes of wandering dead." You try going from that to the Zurich stock market.

Cat Money Update

I've already mentioned this to McNeil, Megan, Ace, Jimmy, and Bill, which is approximately four more people than read this "blog," so there is no need for this "post," except for my scrupulous honesty and shameless braggadocio. But anyway, the cat who picks lottery numbers successfully guessed three of them on last night's Match 5, bringing our total cat winnings so far to $34 + four free lottery tickets.

Effort

I don't mean to brag, but I was walking on the beach on Christmas Eve, listening to an audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE. I was listening to Chapter 10... wait! I must already interrupt this wonderful story that has you on the edge of your seat. It wasn't really Chapter 10. More to come on that in a moment. Anyway, I was listening to what I thought was Chapter 10, and, hey, do you remember the comical "French" accent I imposed on a character in my second book? Well, it sure sounded to me like James Joyce perpetrated the same offense, and in a remarkably similar style. So, suddenly, I was proud of myself instead of being so terribly ashamed. I decided that upon my return home, I would double check my physical copy of the book, which was given to me by a defrocked preacher when I worked in a bookstore in downtown Mobile, to see whether Joyce and I had indeed independently hit upon the same inaccurate and even potentially embarrassing method of presenting to the reader a comical "French" accent. And that is what I did, or tried to do. The first thing I noticed upon digging out the book was that there are no chapter headings. I have run into this problem before, notably when I was trying to teach BELOVED during my brief flirtation with doing that kind of thing. Authors! Please number your chapters. Don't be like James Joyce and Toni Morrison. Ha ha ha! What terrible advice. See also the travails of the Dune Book Club. As I leafed through FINNEGANS WAKE - and allow me to state, just to help you understand what I've been through, that the online index to FINNEGANS WAKE I found years ago is now nothing but a zombie "link"! - it seemed to me (as already hinted) that Joyce's chapters were longer than the "chapters" of the audiobook, which, though unabridged, had been broken into bite-sized chunks... bite-sized if you're a hippopotamus! But relatively bite-sized, making my search more of an effort, especially given the fact that I no longer care about anything. I did track it down, though: "you wish to ave some homelette... Your hegg he must break himself." Believe it or not, that's James Joyce, not me. From context, the speaker seems French, though there is some German sprinkled around the passage, too, just to drive me batty. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! On Christmas Day I was walking along the beach again and the audiobook said to me, "it being Yuletide"... and it was! Dr. Theresa could not walk on the beach with me because she had twisted her ankle. I would not be listening to an audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE were I pleasantly strolling hand-in-hand along a beach with Dr. Theresa. I am sure you will recall that the last time Dr. Theresa and I visited my parents, we saw a mink run across the road and a pig run across the road. This time, we saw nothing run across the road. While I was taking a bag of trash to a garbage chute, however, I saw a little bright pink lizard of a kind I have never seen before. I want to say it was a salamander, because I have always imagined salamanders - no doubt incorrectly - to be pink. I also saw this guy (above) on the day after Christmas. Oh! I forgot! So I also heard Joyce use "owl-wise," I thought, seeming to mean both "always" and "wise as an owl." And I checked! Like a hero! Just to satisfy myself. And neither my hearing nor my huffing and puffing brain had deceived me, though my brain had added a superfluous hyphen. I found "the eternals were owlwise on their side every time"... and let me state for the record that I do not believe James Joyce was referring to the Marvel superheroes The Eternals, created by Jack Kirby, though, of course, there are certain similarities (see also). I also thought (and still sort of think after consideration) that owlwise could have meant "as regards owls," as, for example, when somebody (is it Jack Lemmon?) in THE APARTMENT says, "That's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise."

Missing Gods

As you know, I used to say I had stopped "blogging" but now I have stopped saying I have stopped "blogging," for reasons I have listed repeatedly for no one. Anyway, there are so many interesting things happening every day that it is almost impossible not to "blog," don't you agree? For example, I know I bought a book at Square Books... let me check my private records... yes, yes, it seems that in May of this year - almost certainly on the same day I received a new belt that caused quite a stir - I bought a book that caught my eye, a book purporting to contain a complete list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt. This is not to be confused, of course, with my DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT DEITIES, a work of a broader scope. For a while, as I can recall by way of the images that dance so merrily inside my brain, the book I bought about the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt - "COMPLETE" the cover boasted! - sat on the low-slung marble-topped side table where I keep a few books for browsing as I loll about in my favorite chair like a dissolute dandy of yore. I eventually moved the book because it was taking up too much space. I think it interfered with the old cat when he tried to use the table as a means of access to my lap. BUT WHERE DID I PUT IT? The book, I mean, not my lap. That is what I have been trying to figure out for three or four days now. The good thing is that if I ever find the book, it will give me something else to "blog" about, thereby staving off (or helping me embrace?) the abyss. Now you get it!

The Rose/Wexler Ratio

I just finished reading JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. What, you thought I wouldn't crow and bellow about it in a boastful manner? Just think back on how I strutted around after THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. And there are 1.5 Anatomies in 1 Joseph, or as we call it around here, "The Rose/Wexler Ratio." (The studious and scholarly may "click" here for more information about the origins of that useful term. You non-"clicking" bastards!) My first thought, of course, is that JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS ends exactly like WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, an allusion that Kent Osborne will get if he ever stumbles across this "post." The rest of you will have to read all 1492 pages of JOSEPH and then watch the Sandra Bullock vehicle in question before enlightenment may occur. Next I'll say that it is almost impossible to believe that one person could be responsible for two such towering works of imagination as the novel under consideration and THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. I'll put it mildly, as I am not exactly allowed, living in the unnamed town where I do, to express the secret thought rattling in my brain, but... let's just say Thomas Mann gives William Faulkner a run for his money. I've already said too much. All my blabbing about Thomas Mann during the course of this journey, as I guess I'm calling it - sorry! -, has had unintended consequences. For example, Tom Franklin dug out his old, presumably yellowed, copy of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, read a few pages, and said (I think this is an exact quotation), "Jack likes THIS?" I'm glad it happened! And I'll tell you why. It allows me to reiterate a couple of interesting points. 1. You can't just dig out your old paperback! You have to spring for the John E. Woods translations (assuming you are reading either book in English). 2. You have to give THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 100 pages of grace. Just trust it for 100 pages! Do I have to remind you of what Keats said? I'd insist that you "click" here to find out, but who are we kidding? How I hate you! End of interesting points. For the moment! Bill Boyle told me that Annie Baker, a playwright we both admire, in turn admires Thomas Mann, particularly in the Woods translations, I believe. An inside source, drawing from the private content of an encounter at a party, revealed to me that a certain famous author (we'll call them "Famous Author") personally confided in my source that they (Famous Author) enjoyed every Thomas Mann novel EXCEPT for JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS!!! One may only assume that Famous Author did not heed my variation on point #2 above, which is that the latter novel requires anywhere from 200-400 warm-up pages before really kicking in. Let me also state that Famous Author famously and authorially ragged on the state of Mississippi (where I dwell) as containing not even one single inhabitant capable of reading a book. Before I left social media like a true hero of our age, I responded indignantly to Famous Author's assertion, having perused an old comic book starring the giant, dimwitted duck Baby Huey on the very day of Famous Author's proclamation. Though my brave social media statement regarding Baby Huey has been lost in the bog of dead and dying tweets, as they were formerly called, it gives me no small pleasure to know that as an illiterate Mississippian with drool rolling down my face, I was yet capable of gleaning more than Famous Author from the inestimable trove of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. In a final incident worthy of consideration, Mary Miller informed me with some excitement that Lee Durkee was reading and enjoying THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. I was so thrilled to have someone with whom to talk about it! So I hopped on my phone like a happy teen and texted Lee at once, whereupon he issued, just as swiftly, a strongly worded denial. It turns out that Mary was confusing Lee with... me. I was the one who had told her about THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. With this charming anecdote I lay the entire matter to rest, just like the Biblical patriach Jacob at the end of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. Spoiler alert!

Pelicans Are Not Owls

Undoubtedly you recall with a complex admixture of emotions the uncanny raccoon coincidence I personally shared with the narrator of a book I was reading in the waiting room of a doctor. Well, hold onto your hat(s)! We happened to be driving across the bridge to Dauphin Island the other day, a bridge I had not crossed in at least 45 years - though, when we reached a certain part of it, I recalled a recurring nightmare the bridge had given me in my youth... and that night, after we had crossed the bridge in the "present day," I had the terrible dream again! For the first time in many decades. But that is not what I meant to tell you. Don't trouble yourself about my tortured mind! What I meant to say is that as we crossed the bridge I took note of several pelicans, marveling at how weird they were, and remarking upon said weirdness to my beloved helpmeet, and then! Then, when we got where we were going, I opened up the book I had last cracked in the doctor's office and immediately came to this sentence: "Li looked at pelicans on the pier and remembered how weird they were, with their handbag-like beaks." Now I should name the book, because I have quoted a sentence. It's LEAVE SOCIETY by Tao Lin. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking two things. One of them is "Does Jack Pendarvis, chiefly known for his interest in the owls of literature, realize that pelicans are not owls?" Well, now I do! Thanks! The other question you have is whether or not I considered that taking my book clearly designated for medical emergencies, and deciding willy-nilly that it could serve double duty as the book I take along when I am visiting my parents, might bring down an avalanche of bad luck to crush my body and soul. Once again, now I have. Too late! In a possibly related matter, Dad told us that Dauphin Island was originally called Massacre Island by the French explorers who landed there, because they found a big pile of mysterious bones. My brother confirmed as much on his phone. He didn't trust our father, I guess! Dr. Theresa and I described a weird animal we had seen doing an eerie, serpentine lope across the road in Coden, Alabama, and Dad told us we had seen a mink. Following my brother's bad example, I looked up a mink on my phone and confirmed its minkiness. Later, at a separate gathering, after we had told our mink story afresh, my brother-in-law and I had a discussion about the plural of mink, and HE looked up the answer on HIS phone! What a weekend. I said I had never seen a mink before and Dr. Theresa boasted that she had seen plenty of mink (an acceptable plural) being cruelly mistreated in the film GORKY PARK. (Note that Dr. Theresa, with her tender heart, ceased her viewing at that juncture.) I said it didn't count, that I meant seeing mink in person. Everybody ran out of the room as we got in a big screaming match about it, ha ha, not really! I just wanted to make sure you were still riveted by the tale, because a very important part is coming up. A few days after the mink, Dr. Theresa and I saw a pig run across the road just about 2 miles away from my parents' house! Now, this was an adorable little brown farm pig, not a hairy, scary wild pig with giant-ass teeth for goring and chomping. Reading back over the "post," I changed "giant" to "giant-ass" for extra emphasis. To anyone I have offended with my cavalier use of dirty language, I apologize. A bittersweet coda indeed: I looked it up on the "internet" in the course of "researching" this "post," and am now debating whether or not to tell Dr. Theresa that the animal in GORKY PARK is a sable.

Doom and So On

I was chatting with Megan this morning through the medium of email about a Mark Rothko book I picked up at Square Books the other day. Its subject is the paintings he did on paper rather than canvas, and it features many vivid color-plate reproductions. Rothko is quoted in the introductory essay, of course, often saying the kind of stuff that Megan and I are partial to, as I am sure you will recall ("click" here) from the time we got all in a tizzy over something Bellini said about opera. I'll give you a couple of examples! 1. "I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on." 2. "If a thing is worth doing once, it is worth doing over and over again." End of examples. Moving on to other artistic matters, a lot of these old comic books that Tom Franklin brought over are horror comics, a genre I read a little bit of as a kid, but not too much, after a story in either HOUSE OF MYSTERY or HOUSE OF SECRETS (I think) about a guy who turned out to have goat legs shook me up pretty bad. Which brings up something I've noticed... these old comic books, and not just the horror ones, either, really do have an awful lot of the devil in them, just like the Sunday school teachers used to say! I was wrong to scoff! But I'm sure you've guessed what I'm getting at. So, I was reading this one THE WITCHING HOUR last night, and there's a story in it about "coffin inspectors," which I didn't know was a job. You can learn a lot from the old comic books that Tom Franklin gives you! The coffin inspectors are marching along in the first panel, singing a song that goes like this (and, once again, I quote): "OOHOOHHOOO OH, HO! OH, HO! WHEN THE MOON IS GIBBOUS AND THE OWL CRIES FOUL... THEN WE'LL DIG AND SHARE THE WEALTH OF THOSE WHO NO LONGER DRINK... THE RED, RED WINE... OF LIIIIIIIIIFE!!!" I can't say that's much of a song, but it does have an owl in it. Yes, there are eight I's in LIIIIIIIIFE, I counted them several times in the interest of accuracy. Oh, and I get it now, they're graverobbers. Why, there's no such thing as a coffin inspector after all! In my defense, Ace and Angela came over last night for a special screening of Dr. Theresa's favorite TV show, QUINCY, M. E., and afterward, tuckered out from all the Quincy enjoyment, I did no more than glance at the first panel (after reading a previous story in the same issue, which I had trouble following, about the devil attacking a Swiss town - it ended as abruptly as SIMON OF THE DESERT! [which also featured the devil]) just enough to notice the owl before succumbing to slumber with a Quincy-like smile on my cherubic face. In conclusion, I don't mean to brag, but TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED does have more owls in it, just as I predicted. If the numbers hold up, there should be an owl every 4.5 pages. One more thing. Goat legs (see above) make me think of a line that Dr. Theresa and I are always quoting to one another. It comes from one of those "true stories of the paranormal" shows. They were interviewing a couple of guys from Texas, I think, who saw a creature in the woods with "the head of a goat and the body of a jacked-up man." That's it. We say it a lot. Try it out at home! "The head of a goat and the body of a jacked-up man."

My Dear, Suspicious Friends

Not to brag, but I did successfully predict the hottest new trend of 2024: Rachel and the teraphim! Marilynne Robinson covers it in her new book READING GENESIS. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I picked up that book just because I knew Rachel and the teraphim would be in it. Oh, my dear, suspicious friends. Nothing could be further from the truth. I guess a few things could be further from the truth. After all, I know about the contents of Genesis from my many mornings in Sunday school. And the story of Jacob, which includes Rachel and the teraphim, also contains my favorite Bible character (as this important document ["click" here] from fifteen years ago will confirm), Esau. I was a bit put off by the very rough treatment given to Esau by Thomas Mann. Marilynne Robinson goes easier on him in the end, though she does call him a "boor," ha ha! I seem to be forgetting the task at hand, which is to show you why you're all wrong about me, all the time. See, I happened to find READING GENESIS at Square Books, and I remembered seeing something nice in the New York Times about it, and I've always meant to get into Marilynne Robinson somehow or another, and that's all there is to it. Though I did text Megan that I thought it was going to be a good companion piece to JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS. Yes, that's the kind of thing we text about! Sometimes! And I was right. I dip into READING GENESIS for just five minutes at a time, and that just twice a day, right before I take my blood pressure. I probably read somewhere on the "internet" that you should relax for five minutes before taking your blood pressure. And what could be more relaxing than the Old Testament? Even though I am going through READING GENESIS at such a modest rate, I'm getting near the point where it's going to present spoilers to me as I continue with JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, which I am reading at a much faster clip. I mean to say that Robinson covers in a paragraph what it takes Mann tens of thousands of words to get across. You would think I would be immune to spoilers, given my supposed familiarity with the narrative, but lots of times Mann will tell of an outlandish incident and I'll think, "Well! No way that's in the Bible!" and then I'll look, and there it is in the Bible. Oh! Remember how I said that I loved THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, but it took me about 100 pages before I really got into it? The same goes for JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, except it takes 200-400 pages to get going.

The Official Record

Well, McNeil has combed through his journals and I find myself compelled to issue a clarification on earlier "blog" matters. As I am sure you will recall with crystal-clear accuracy, and without even needing to "click" on this "link," McNeil claimed that I had boasted to him that I had met Phyllis Diller. I denied it, as I never met Phyllis Diller. McNeil said that in that case I had been lying to him, and vowed to scour his archives for proof. I scoffed at such an attempt. And yet, in a way, I was wrong. And yet, in another way, I was right. In McNeil's journal entry of November 6, 1998, he writes, "Talked to Jack this afternoon and learned that he is going to meet Phyllis Diller next week." First, please note that the meeting is to take place in the future, as far as November 6, 1998 is concerned. And it really was supposed to happen, though I had forgotten about it until McNeil's recent communication. My friend Ward McCarthy and I were making a thing called "The Movie Lounge," and we had asked Phyllis Diller to comment on the Chuck Norris film INVASION USA, in which she sort of appears in a particular capacity ("click" here for more details. I know you won't!). At the remove of all these years, it is easy for me to imagine why she or her representatives abruptly pulled out of the scheduled appearance. Let me say, however, that although I once told McNeil that I was "going to meet" Phyllis Diller, as was supposed to be the case, I never told him that I had "met" Phyllis Diller - an event, I reiterate, that sadly did not occur after all. I cannot recall whom we got to talk about INVASION USA in Ms. Diller's stead. That is a question for Movie Lounge host Kent Osborne. In the sort of coincidence that McNeil and I both enjoy - and I hope it will bring him succor as this incident draws to its belated close - Ace Atkins and I had a talk about INVASION USA on our most recent walk around the neighborhood, which my diary reminds me took place on Monday, February 26 of this year.

Nestled Together

I'm rusty at the old jotting game. As you know, it used to be that when I went on a trip, I jotted everything for you in one of my dear old jotting books. Everybody was simply crazy about that! But then I stopped "blogging," and the last time I went to Los Angeles, why, I hardly even mentioned it. But since then, I quit social media, and as a result, I no longer have anything to do aside from the ocassional jot. Bearing that in mind, I shall now attempt to make you one of those lists that I used to make that everyone adored so much. 1. I asked a question at the front desk of the hotel and the desk clerk said he knew my voice! He said, "Are you Root Beer Guy?" I screamed back in his face, "YES!" That has never happened to me before (being recognized as Root Beer Guy, I mean; I have screamed enthusiastically into many faces), and, I dare say, never will again. (Full disclosure: on a later date, I overheard him telling a coworker "Did you know that guy is the King of Root Beer?" So maybe he didn't have the solid grasp on my character that I thought.) 2. I don't usually use conditioner on my hair. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say I never do. BUT! I figured, what the hell, this hotel conditioner is free. I'm going to put it on my hair! What's the worst than can happen? I also cleaned out my wallet. 3. Rode around with Richard, the chillest Uber driver in the world. If you're ever in California and need a ride, ask for Richard! 4. Remember the drugstore where I famously bought my expensive brush? And, let me double check, did I buy an expensive comb there? Once again, I scream, "YES!" Anyway, that drugstore is gone now! It's just not there. How could they have gone out of business? They must have been raking in a fortune on brushes and combs alone! All kidding aside, I miss you, fancy drugstore. Go with God! 5. I had steak Sinatra two nights in a row, once at Dan Tana's and once at The Smoke House. (I think I have erroneously called it "The Smokehouse" a few times in the past, but their official signage separates the smoke from the house.) I may have formerly insisted that Dan Tana's steak Sinatra is superior to the steak Sinatra at The Smoke House. On this ocassion, however, I must advance the opposite claim! The old Smoke House waiter stood and mixed the spaghetti in with the steak and peppers right at the table, but not with showy theatricality, no, just in the background, in a workmanlike fashion, getting the job done without undue fuss, which, of course, did not add to or subtract from the toothsome nature of the dish in question... OR DID IT? The result, in any case, was delectable. 5. I had stars in my eyes whilst consuming my steak Sinatra that night, for across the table from me sat Jesse Moynihan and his brother! Now, I have never met Jesse's brother before, and, as I have often boasted (most recently a few seconds ago), I quit social media. The only thing I miss about social media is "Pickle Minute," a thing that Jesse and his brother and some of their friends do on Instagram. I'm a big "Pickle Minute" fan! And there, at The Smoke House, I felt I was in a live episode of "Pickle Minute," as Jesse's brother took a photo of me pointing at a fried pickle. For, yes, having spotted fried pickles on the menu, how could two of the hosts of "Pickle Minute" resist placing that order? They could not. 6. Also at dinner, a guy named Joe I met at a party in 2012 and haven't seen or talked to since, but I remembered him, because you meet so few people you can talk about Anthony Braxton with! 7. Had a meeting scheduled at the Bob's Big Boy restaurant where David Lynch used to go every day. It turned out that Bob's Big Boy was too crowded to host the meeting, to my deep chagrin, as I thought it a wonderful coincidence that Lynchian muse Laura Dern was at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, whence I had come, at the very same time! 8. After the meeting, I walked around the neighborhood with a person who had been in the meeting with me. We wandered about, talking about the meeting, and what it meant, and sharing our regrets about the salad place across the street from Bob's Big Boy, where we had ended up. Finally, in our circular perambulations, we saw Bob's Big Boy looming before us. "Should we?" said the person. To which I again screamed, "YES!" By now, its lunchtime rush concluded, Bob's Big Boy was quite accommodating. The person ordered a slice of strawberry pie, because the Bob's Big Boy menu stated that the strawberries were "nestled together." When the pie came out, this person observed joyfully, "They ARE nestled together!" The person went on to declare the strawberry pie at Bob's Big Boy "maybe my favorite piece of pie." 9. I brought some Henry James to read on the airplane. I always found him tough going in the past. Anyway, this time, his characters were making lots of wisecracks and I was getting into it. 10. Well, I have left out many of the nice people I saw on the trip, and interesting events, but my jotting is not what it used to be. Special mention must be made of Hanna K Nystrom, who was flying in from Sweden just as I was about to fly back to Mississippi. She thoughtfully made time for breakfast in the brief Sweden-Mississippi overlap we enjoyed. We talked about how cold and gray it was. (Los Angeles was chilly and gray for the whole of my stay, once again lending some weight to the Lorenz Hart lyric.) Hanna said it was colder than Sweden!

Looking

Look, I don't "blog" anymore unless it's really important, and I just saw a Dairy Queen commercial I needed to tell you about. I'm the first to say I don't know a darn thing about Dairy Queen, except for what I wrote in Chapter 84 ("click" here) of my acclaimed alphabetized serialzed novel SOUR BLUEBERRIES, but, that being said, in this Dairy Queen commercial, the announcer brags of a "tasty-looking burger" served at nationwide Dairy Queen establishments. Tasty LOOKING. He seemingly can't bring himself to say it tastes good! And he's the announcer in the commercial, reading from a script that has been prepared for him especially for the occasion!

A Man of Song

McNeil was telling me about a journal he has kept for decades and I begged to read it but he said no. Finally, he let me see a sliver from 2003, when I telephoned to inform him about a Bob Hope LP I had purchased. Even though Bob was wearing an ascot on the cover, according to McNeil's journal, I had absolutely no memory of the conversation or the recording. McNeil jostled my memory, and kept jostling it, until the record came dimly back into what I laughingly call my mind. I promised to look for it! For, you see, back in 2003, I had read McNeil the liner notes over the phone, and he wanted to hear them again, now, in our present day. Here's the problem! When we moved into this house, I just threw stuff all over the place. The records are not in any order. Anyway, I finally tracked it down, and I guess the portentousness had amused me, a lot of stuff like, "jokes and comedy are not the whole of Bob Hope. It must also be added that he is a man of song." But! That's not why I called you here today. While McNeil was going through an old box, he found a pack of his grandfather's cigarettes. "Half the smokes are still there!" McNeil boasted. I was most impressed by the brand name... Spud Imperial. I've never heard such a bewitching combination of words. I noticed the word "SAFETY" on the side of the pack (though I seem to have cut it off above), and a little rooting around on the "internet" led me to some magazine ads for Spud Imperial. "They're not a remedy," one warned, in case that was what you thought! I don't "blog" anymore, but when I saw the brand name Spud Imperial, I knew at once that an exception had to be made.

Why, God? A Great Misfortune

A guy on twitter was rightly boasting, in a bittersweet way, that he had finished THE PICKWICK PAPERS, and as proof of a sort, he photographed the last page, and it was in this way that I learned, through no fault of my own, that the last paragraph of THE PICKWICK PAPERS has an owl in it. Now I have to put it on my list of books with owls in them, which I mysteriously maintain, and I didn't even have the pleasure of reading it, though I do have a copy of it around here somewhere.

Dramatic Moment

At a dramatic moment in her autobiography, June Havoc describes herself as being "owl-eyed and frightened." If you know me at all, which you don't, you know why I am compelled to tell you this (see previous "hyperlink"). But it's not much, is it? So as long as I am here, it has been too long since I was upset by a TV commercial. I've seen one recently in which Charlie the Tuna, the mascot of Starkist brand tuna products, boasts of having branched out into the chicken business. He announces a chicken product which has, quote, "the look and texture" of his tuna. Often have I pondered, listening to Charlie the Tuna's pitch, how it is a selling point.

Two of Everything

I was watching JULIUS CAESAR but then I went to bed. I turned off the TV just after Casca said, in a line to which I guess I had never paid heed before, that "if Caesar had stabbed their mothers" his supporters would still love him. It reminded me of the time Donald Trump boasted he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and his supporters wouldn't care. Maybe that's why I turned off the TV. Later, I couldn't sleep. I became restless and got up and watched more Julius Caesar. I am sorry to say that when I first started watching, I simultaneously checked my twitter feed and then my email. So, I had receieved an email from Jimmy, who coincidentally mentioned James Mason... while James Mason was on my TV screen! Also, Elizabeth Ito had tweeted about seeing a barn owl standing by the highway in the broad daylight, and wondering what it meant, which tweet I read AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT that Casca was wondering aloud what it meant that an owl was sitting in the marketplace in the broad daylight! Two James Masons! Two daylight owls of portent! With that, I put away my phone. I was like, "Okay, you've got my attention, Shakespeare!"

Birds of Subterranean Habit

Both Dr. Theresa and Bill Boyle love the novel MY ANTONIA, but neither has been able to persuade me to read it until Bill happened to mention the other night that there is "good owl stuff" in it. All right! But the problem is that Megan Abbott and I are on a strict diet of "movie people" biographies and autobiographies. We have read several in a row! Including some I have not told you about because there are no owls in them. We just finished Howard Hughes - very depressing - and on Monday we're set to take up Angela Carter. Wait! I know what you are thinking. Angela Carter is not a "movie person." But our reasoning, if I recall it correctly, is that they made a movie based on her works - THE COMPANY OF WOLVES - so we're going to let her slide by on that account. And I peeked at the first paragraph of the bio and it all starts with Little Red Riding Hood, which ties right in, so I think we're good. So in the meantime I have a couple of days to read MY ANTONIA and I was like, "Please, God, let me hurry up and get to the owls." And there they were! Our narrator and his pal Antonia "watch the brown earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests underground with the [prairie] dogs." I was like, my word! What manner of owls are these? And as I sat and pondered it, I realized they were none other than the selfsame burrowing owls I heard about at Off Square Books one time, when the author bragged and boasted of stalking them with a shirtless George Plimpton. Go to bookstores, you'll learn something! "We felt sorry for the owls," says Cather's narrator. That's because rattlesnakes slither around and eat their eggs! Easy pickings! And "we used to wonder a great deal about these birds of subterranean habit." And "It was always mournful to see them come flying home at sunset and disappear under the earth."

Literary Matters

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

Julian the Apostate Emperor's Big Kissing Speech

My traveling threw up another roadblock up for my ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY reading. But now I'm dawdling over its pages again. Can't seem to make it out of the love section. Now I'm reading about what a typical guy does when he's in love, according to Burton: "to turn up his Mushatos, and curl his head, prune his pickitivant [or peaked beard]... he may be scoffed at otherwise, as Julian that Apostate Emperor was for wearing a long hirsute goatish beard, fit to make ropes with." Of course, I am only telling you this for the sake of "pickitivant." It's like when I was so taken with Burton's insistence that life is but a glucupicron (I may be paraphrasing slightly). Hmm, I can't find that anywhere on the "blog." I must have only jabbered about glucupicron on twitter. And repeatedly, I feel sure. I'm sure I overdid it. I'm sure I rubbed it in. Ah, yes, yes, I see I had the temerity to explain life being nothing but a glucupicron to Neko Case:

@NekoCase "a bitter sweet passion, honey and gall mixt together" says Robert Burton in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY

— Jack Pendarvis (@JackPendarvis) August 17, 2015

And I think I tried to convince everyone for a while that GLUCUPICRON would be a good ADVENTURE TIME episode title. I don't think my heart was in it, I mostly liked pretending it was a good idea, but I grew perversely insistent for a short while. Now to set the scene! MR. MOM was on briefly while I read THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY last night, just the section where Michael Keaton goes to the grocery store and can't figure out how to buy ham. I don't mean to brag but I think would have been able to buy ham the first time I ever even saw a grocery store. As an infant, given a little prodding, I could have bought some ham. You know, put a couple of dollars in my sticky fat little fist and encourage me to try to say "ham," or to flap my arms in that general direction. I could have gotten some ham. It's a big, big crisis for Michael Keaton, though, buying ham. It breaks him! How to buy ham? Insurmountable! I can't remember for sure, but I think Bob Hope is overwhelmed by the bounty of the modern grocery store in BACHELOR IN PARADISE, but I bet he could have bought some ham - and with a cool, collected demeanor, too. Nonchalantly! Even stunned by capitalism at its shiniest, Bob Hope could have suavely negotiated the purchase of some ham. And of course Joe Namath had no trouble with ham in HIS movie grocery store. Joe Namath knows who's boss! And it's not the ham. I recall that McNeil and I saw MR. MOM in the theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, when it came out, and no doubt we considered it a masterpiece of realism at the time, though we had both been capable of buying ham with little trouble for many years by that point. As you will recall, we prided ourselves on tucking in our t-shirts at the time. Burton goes on to relate how "Julian that Apostate Emperor" had to make a political speech apologizing for the unfashionable style of his beard. Julian opened with a self-deprecating joke about how he hated to kiss anybody anyway! ("I do not exert myself much, said he, in the giving and taking of kisses.") Because the people - the twitter mob of their time! - were saying that the emperor's kind of beard was inconvenient for kissing and made him look like an unkissable dummy. See, politics were always crazy, ha ha, what times. Truly Julian that Apostate Emperor was the Donald Trump of his day; I can't back that up.

The Scourge of Kings

In this book about the Middle Ages I found out about Bohemond, "the belligerent Norman and the scourge of kings." His gravestone says that "he could be called neither a man nor a god." Pretty braggy, even for a gravestone!