Artist's Statement

Hey! Tomorrow is the big gallery show opening in Alhambra, California, so check it out! I think I forgot to mention it's ADVENTURE TIME and FIONNA AND CAKE themed, featuring works by more than 50 artists associated with those shows. My piece is called “100 Adventure Time Characters from Memory, Made with Covid.” I call it that because of all the Covid I had when I drew it with magic markers in a sketch pad that Dr. Theresa bought to cheer me up. Now, I was afraid maybe I had shortchanged the lucky buyer, if any, because, despite the ambitious title I had prematurely scrawled on the paper, I didn’t count the characters as I was drawing them, and then, after I had drawn them, I found them impossible to count. Until! Some weeks later, I struck upon the notion of identifying them all by name. Somehow, and I know how, but I’m too tired to tell you, a list of names was a much easier thing for me to count. So I’m happy to reveal that I overachieved, at least quantitatively: there are 106 Adventure Time characters in my drawing. A couple of them were driving me nuts because I couldn’t figure out, once I had recovered from my feverish agitation and actually examined what I had drawn for the first time, who the hell they were supposed to be. I worried maybe I had made some of them up in a delirium. But I thought about it all night and decided that one was a Gumball Guardian (I had forgotten they have noses) and one was the King of Ooo (I had forgotten a couple of his identifying marks, plus I had him in Princess Bubblegum’s crown, which, in my defense, he did wear for a while). Adam said I should sponsor a contest and see if anyone could guess them all. But who was a guy who was good at guessing? Oedipus? Well, he was until he wasn’t. Anyway, not even Oedipus at the height of his guessing powers could have figured some of my drawings out (Pen, for example, thought Chips and Ice Cream were Hot Dog Knights), so I’m going to tell you who I drew, in (once you see the "art") not a really helpful order: Cinnamon Bun, Hunson Abadeer, The Bear Who Liked Finn, Starchy, Tree Trunks’s Alien Husband, Little Dude, One of the Villagers from “The Visitor,” Shoko, Mr. Cupcake, Billy, Abracadaniel, Party Pat, The Comet, The Squirrel from “Up a Tree,” The Cosmic Owl, Bartram, Gridface Princess, Martin, Ice King, Y5, Banana Guard, Patience St. Pym, Flame King, The White Lion Who Became the Vampire King, Abraham Lincoln, Jermaine, Chips, Ice Cream, Lemongrab, Lady Rainicorn, Gumball Guardian, Shelby and his little brother Kent, Big Destiny, Marshmallow Kid, Blank-Eyed Girl, Peppermint Butler, Breezy, Scorcher, Simon, Original Gunter, Ice Thing, Ricardio, Mannish Man, Wildberry Princess, The Squirrel Who Hates Jake, Glob, Grod, Grob (we can assume that Gob is behind them, but I can’t in good conscience count that) Fionna, Mr. Pig, Shermy, Huntress Wizard, Snail, Sleeping Old Man (Prismo’s Physical Form), Tiffany, Princess Cookie, Finn, Joshua, Choose Goose, Toast Princess, Cherry Cream Soda, Flambeau, The Empress, Slime Princess, The Crabbit, Farmworld Finn, Betty, Toronto, Wooby Woo, Dream Warrior, Lumpy Space Princess, Lumpy Space Prince, Tree Trunks, Uncle Gumbald, An Ant, Crunchy, Glass Boy, Magic Man, Leaf Man, Banana Man, King of Ooo, TV, Wyatt, Bubble, BMO, Skeleton (from the Ble offices? Or maybe that’s a guy from the Deadworlds), Jake, Gunter (classic penguin version), Embryo Princess, Rattleballs, Mr. Fox, The Music Hole, Lemonhope, Prismo, Hot Dog Princess, Dream Bird Woman, Owl from “Up a Tree,” Loafy, James Baxter the Horse, Gingerbread Muto, Minerva, Bufo, Morty Rogers, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum. In retrospect, perhaps my biggest mistake was thinking until very recently (today!) that The Empress had one eye in the middle of her forehead like a Cyclops (though I knew better at one point). I could lie and tell you I was trying to draw Blaine from “Wizard City,” but I would only be hurting myself.

Per Se

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

Humor

They all said McNeil was crazy! Well, me. I said it. I said McNeil was crazy when he claimed that every 1960s movie features a desk with an obelisk on it. But today I watched ONE MORE TIME, which is a 1960s movie for all practical purposes, and, as you can see from this photo I took of the television screen, it had a desk with an obelisk on it. Now, there is no Jerry Lewis scholar I trust and admire more than Chris Fujiwara, but upon the conclusion of this repeat viewing, I must say that I have come to take exception to his description of ONE MORE TIME as "lacking in humor." For example, there is an old butler who is very slow, and as the old butler slowly totters across the room with a silver platter, Sammy Davis Jr.'s moustache and sideburns turn gray, and he (Sammy Davis Jr., transformed by his interminable wait) mutters to himself in a feeble, distracted manner indicating great age. Later, in an unrelated incident, he sneezes all the icing off a cake! A second sneeze issues forth with such force that an entire roomful of people is toppled to the floor.

Drunken Owl Butler

Laura Lippman recommended JUNIOR MISS by Sally Benson, a slim collection of understated, warm short stories about a girl and her family. So last night I read the one in which our protagonist, Judy Graves, appears in an all-girl junior-high production of THE TEMPEST as Stephano, a character described in the program notes as "a drunken butler." So... "She reeled onto the stage, a bottle in her hand. Her smooth, dark-brown hair was covered with a straw-colored wig, the tip of her nose was painted a bright red. Her clothes were awry and she looked as tight as an owl." We come again, then, to the notion that owls are drunk or appear to be drunk, catalogued here for your convenience.

Too Garrulous

Pardon my coarse language, but here is a footnote that just made me say, "What the hell!" out loud. It's in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. It's not one of Burton's own footnotes, which are clearly marked in the text, but one by his 1927 editors, explaining an allusion that Burton makes to "Albertus' brasen head." I'll just quote the whole thing: "'It is related of Albertus that he made an entire man of brass, putting together its limbs under various constellations, and occupying no less than thirty years in its formation. This man would answer all sorts of questions, and was even employed as a domestic. But at length it is said to have become so garrulous that Thomas Aquinas, a pupil of Albertus, finding himself disturbed perpetually by its uncontrollable loquacity, caught up a hammer and beat it to pieces.' - William Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers." You know, I had a vague feeling I had "blogged" about this unfortunate robot butler before, but no, that was just a "golden talking head that murmured secret advice" to a pope.

Street Jeers

Remember when buildings used to be shaped like things? I was out in California for ADVENTURE TIME work and Verdell suggested several places for dinner, including somewhere "shaped like a barrel." I needed to hear no more! So we went to the barrel. Verdell said, and I believe I'm paraphrasing okay, that there used to be lots of buildings shaped like funny things in Hollywood, and this barrel is one of the last ones - maybe the last one - still standing. So now it has been taken over and reopened by some enterprising youths or something. Standing outside the barrel, as you can maybe see from the photo Verdell took, was a bearded guy in suspenders, whose sole job was to tell entering customers that the kitchen was closed because it was a "soft opening." But the kitchen was not completely closed! They gave us four deviled eggs in a cast-iron skillet. I have to say I was offended on some philosophical level! Why would deviled eggs be associated with a cast-iron skillet? Perverse! Jay - a new character in our story! - speculated that the bacon crumbled on top of the deviled eggs was the link to the cast-iron skillet. Not good enough! So for actual dinner, Verdell and Jay and I went to the reliable Tam O'Shanter, where we ordered MORE DEVILED EGGS. Hey! I did all that part from memory. Now I must consult my famed book of famed jottings. 1. Before dinner I was down in the hotel lobby and I heard a guy telling his life story at the hotel bar (he almost had a love scene with Bo Derek once) and he turned out to be the guy who plays Squidward. AND he was reading a storyboard based on one of my SpongeBob scripts! Right there at the bar. That was a coincidence! 2. The next day I went to Skylight Books to meet Kent. There was supposed to be an ADVENTURE TIME writers meeting but we had all forgotten that it was President's Day and the office was closed. So I bought some stuff at Skylight while I was waiting for Kent and had it shipped to myself. I can't remember the title of this one book I got, but it was written in 1959 and collected and analyzed the rhymes, jokes, songs and stories that schoolchildren make up and circulate among themselves (I think that's right) and anyway I opened to a section called "Street Jeers" and for some reason I thought, "'Street Jeers'! Megan Abbott would love this book!" 3. Kent and I ate in a French restaurant next door to Skylight. We decided it would be real cute if we went to see 50 SHADES OF GREY, which was playing in the movie theater on the other side of Skylight Books. "It would be 'blog-ready,'" I proclaimed of the potential experience! And in truth there's a lot I could say about 50 SHADES OF GREY, but I just don't feel like it right now, sorry. 4. At the end of 50 SHADES OF GREY, when it cut to black, Kent turned to me and said, "Wanna go get some chicken wings?" Ha ha ha ha! Classic Osborne. We walked a block or two to a place called "Ye Olde Rustic Inn" on the sign, but which I believe Kent referred to colloquially as "The Rustic." It was 3 in the afternoon and pitch-dark inside and everybody in the joint was already sloshed out of their minds. Kent said they had the best chicken wings in Los Angeles and told me about a Christmas Eve he spent there eating chicken wings. Michael Jackson came on the jukebox and Kent and I discussed how sad we had been when Michael Jackson died. 5. We were walking everywhere, well, Kent was pushing his bike.

So as we were walking down Sunset Boulevard we came upon a big bus-stop poster of 50 SHADES OF GREY and Kent wanted to take my picture in front of it. He was disappointed that there was a glare on the slogan "CURIOUS?"... 6. The next day I went to work and had lunch with ADVENTURE TIME coworkers Tom Herpich and Adam Muto and Jesse Moynihan and of course Kent. Jesse said he liked my outfit! He didn't use the word "outfit." Also, we discussed society. Tom had some thoughts about the future of transportation. 7. Back to work! This time with some actors from ADVENTURE TIME: Hynden "Princess Bubblegum" Walch (who was telling Jeremy "Finn" Shada about the meaning of Lent) and Steve Little. You'll probably recognize him from EASTBOUND AND DOWN. Look, here's his picture. He does the voice of Peppermint Butler. You know just the other day I was at Square Books and a young woman who works there (her name is Miracle!) was telling me how Peppermint Butler is her favorite character... AND last time I saw Jimmy he was saying that he identified with Peppermint Butler.

Is there something going on in the zeitgeist with Peppermint Butler? Probably not. 8. Marceline came in. By which I mean Olivia Olson, who plays Marceline. Of all these folks, she was the one I'd never met. Kent forgot to introduce me! So she just breezed into the booth thinking I was probably some old weirdo who was hanging around. 9. A break in the recording session! I walked out and beheld a strange sight. Now, the recording studio is on the first floor of the building, but the windows are high up, and I saw a row of people standing on chairs and other objects in order to peek out the window. Pendleton Ward took this photo of the phenomenon:

There was a big police standoff happening! "Every cop in Burbank is out there," as Kent said. There were SWAT vans and helicopters and everything, massed against some poor soul who had stolen a car, I think. This went on for some hours. 10. But work must continue! Back to the recording booth. Marceline had some more lines. Standing there waiting, Elizabeth Ito (a director on ADVENTURE TIME) mentioned Kent's tweets about 50 SHADES OF GREY, and as I was answering her I realized, oh good, this is my introduction to Marceline, because it was just Elizabeth and Marceline and me hanging out, and Marceline was intently listening as the old weirdo stranger who was standing around earlier talked at great length about 50 SHADES OF GREY. "Uh, I'm Jack," I said, after describing 50 SHADES OF GREY to Marceline for a while. 11. After all the work was done for the day I wanted to go back to the hotel but the standoff was still happening. I couldn't find Kent. I called his cell. "I'm on the roof!" he said. Cole Sanchez offered to take me out the back way and get me an Uber. While we waited for the Uber, Cole told me about a special backpack he carries his dog around in! 12. I went on a terrifying Uber ride with an extremely old man - who knows? maybe he was a terrible driver when he was young, too. But he swerved all over the road and generally behaved like a maniac. And the first thing he asked me was, "How do we get to Burbank?" to which I replied, "Uh, we're in Burbank." It was all downhill from there. 13. Sitting at the bar at Musso & Frank, waiting for some more people show up. I saw a bottle of Plymouth gin, which I've never had, but it's in all the Travis McGee books, so I thought I'd have a Plymouth gin gibson in honor of my pal Ace's hero Travis McGee. Pen showed up and had one too! He told me about the outcome of the police standoff: "They shot him with a beanbag and his pants fell down," said Pen. But when I showed him that I had jotted his sentence in my little jotting book, he added, "Not in that order." 14. While I was having dinner at Musso & Frank, Dr. Theresa was back in Mississippi having dinner with independent producer and actor Maggie Renzi. Maggie Renzi told Dr. Theresa about the movie she and John Sayles want to make next - which I would never reveal, in case it's a secret -

BUT LISTEN TO THIS! In an email on Feb. 3, my brother said he had an idea for a movie: "it's amazing... sad... triumphant... interesting" he wrote about this idea. AND IT'S EXACTLY THE SAME IDEA THAT MAGGIE RENZI TOLD DR. THERESA THE OTHER NIGHT. (Here's a photo of Maggie Renzi speaking to Dr. Theresa's Gender Studies class just hours ago!)

15. Speaking of my brother, he was among the party at Musso & Frank and revealed a fascinating piece of information I can't tell you... YET. 16. Pen took me to his house after dinner and strapped a thing on my head (pictured). It was like 50 SHADES OF GREY, ha ha, not really! It was the latest in virtual reality technology! I seemed to be flying, superhero style, over an old city. When I first started flying, I accidentally swooped toward the ground and shouted "Aaaaaaaaaaah!" exactly like the audiences in 1903 who went to see THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY and got scared that the train was going to run over them. (Did that really happen? I am going to say yes.) There was also a virtual reality where you throw a ball to some kitty cats. That was more my speed. 17. McKay mailed me a copy of THE LEOPARD by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. She was thanking me for my recommendation letter because she got accepted into a swank artist colony in Italy. I hate to tell her, but she got in on her own merit. I write the most glowing recommendation letters imaginable but they're just the kiss of death. Nobody gets into anything that I recommend them for! I'm glad McKay proved to be the exception. So I was reading THE LEOPARD on the plane and it is a book with an owl in it: "from the overhanging bell tower came an elfin hoot of owls."

18. On the flight back I had a layover in Minneapolis, and I am almost 100% sure that Lou Ferrigno (who plays Billy on ADVENTURE TIME) was on it! In fact, he broke in front of me in line to get on the plane and even jostled me! I am almost 100% sure I was jostled by Lou Ferrigno! It wasn't on purpose, I am sure. I am no more to Lou Ferrigno than an ant! Nor should I be. When the plane landed, and he stood to retrieve something from the overhead bin, I noticed that the man I took to be Lou Ferrigno had a high-tech looking black gizmo behind his ear. This is anecdotal and rude to boot, but I recalled that Mr. Ferrigno has a hearing impediment, so that small gadget, whatever it was, helped confirm my assumption. Now I am going to look for a current photo of him. Well, yes, by God, it was him!

A Funny Fellow

The 18th-century collector of slang Francis Grose "picked up much of his research first-hand during his nightly wanderings through London's criminal slums, accompanied, so it has been claimed, only by his man Batch and later by his companion, 'a funny fellow' properly named Tom Cocking, whom he christened 'The Guinea Pig.'" - THE VULGAR TONGUE by Jonathon Green. Anyway I want to hang out with those guys. Especially Batch. Batch!

Frith!

I've encountered the name Frith three times recently. Is that strange? Probably not! The butler's name in REBECCA is Frith. Then Megan Abbott was staying in a hotel on Frith Street or Frith Road in London. I was curious about the address because I was going to check out my handy GAZETTEER OF BRITISH GHOSTS to find any nearby ghosts for her convenience. Unfortunately I am ill-instructed in the use of a gazetteer and ignorant of the geography of London. (Megan did say on twitter that she was visiting Stirling, Scotland, where reside "TWO famous ghosts: the Green Lady & the Pink Lady [unrelated].") Then I was reading in Jonathon Green's history of slang - THE VULGAR TONGUE it's called - about Mary Frith (pictured), also known as "Moll Cutpurse," a 17th-century high-end fence of jewelry and such. She also specialized "in stealing and returning shopbooks and account ledgers that had specific value only to business owners." She dressed like a man and scandalously frequented tobacco houses! In fact she once suffered official public punishment for dressing like a man. A letter-writer reported to a friend, "she wept bitterly and seemed very penitent, but yt is since doubted she was maudelin druncke, beeing discovered to have tipled of three quarts of sacke before she came to her penaunce." Who wouldn't? There was a play written about her in 1611, THE ROARING GIRLE, and she "even appeared on stage at the Fortune Playhouse. She was dressed as a man and closed the evening's performance with a jig." A great typo in this edition says that she died in 1859, which would have made her 275. I've noticed a few other typos so far. Get it together, Oxford University Press! Ha ha, that jaunty admonition was supposed to be the end of this "post," but it strikes me as I type this that the name Frith may not have been a coincidence in the novel REBECCA. The late Rebecca is often praised and just as often decried for seeming like a man, and our nameless narrator offers to to be more like a boy for her husband (!), and I think there is at least one other woman in the book who is described explicitly as boyish, hmm, not to mention Maxim's sister and Mrs. Danvers. And Lee Durkee told me that there was an aspect of Du Maurier's personality that she referred to as "the boy in the box," recently mentioned also by Carrie Frye in an interesting essay, ("click" here). Gee, as long as I'm typing I should mention that I also read in Green about the 16th-century cross-dressing taphouse girl "Long Meg," who hung out with famous poets, the king's jester, and "the Spanish Knight, Sir James of Castille." She "delighted to assume man's apparel and at last went to the wars with King Henry and returned wedded to a soldier, and set up a public house at Islington." I've also learned more about the bookseller Richard Head, who turns out to have been an important collector of criminal lingo. Green is as baffled as I am by John Aubrey's claim that Head "could transform himself into any shape," though it's a fitting thought here.

Eugene Lighting a Candle

Dr. Theresa was watching THE PINK PANTHER on TCM just now and she said, "Hey, wasn't Eugene in this movie?" And weirdly, Eugene popped up on the screen just then, as the butler who is lighting some fireworks for Peter Sellers, who is dressed as a knight and thinks what he has is a regular candle. Mayhem is to ensue. So I got to put my finger on the TV screen and say, "Yes! That's him!" She talked to Eugene on the telephone once but sadly never met him in person. This photo I took of the TV is lousy but I am an old man and don't know how to properly use a computer to take a photo of a TV screen so go to hell.

Which Saint Was Broiled

My brother-in-law emailed immediately! He knew just which saint was grilled. St. Lawrence! I decided to look him up in my moldy old multi-volume BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS, which as you know contains all the most boring facts about saints. Well, the entry on St. Lawrence (Laurence, they spell it) has some spicy details for a change. And forgive me, for they are horrific and gory, though I spare you the worst. You can stop reading! While they were grilling poor St. Laurence on the grill, "His face appeared... to be surrounded with a beautiful, extraordinary light, and his broiled body to exhale a sweet agreeable smell... [He said] with a cheerful and smiling countenance, 'Let my body be now turned; one side is broiled enough.'" (Or as my brother-in-law put it in his email, "Turn me over, I'm done.") Well, that was horrible, I'm sorry.

Singing and Dancing on an Airplane

Last night I switched over to TCM after the movie TEN THOUSAND BEDROOMS had been on for a while. I seemed to recall that this movie was reviled as one of the crummiest movies ever committed to film, so I watched a little of it. When I came in, Dean Martin and Anna Maria Alberghetti were drinking wine and lounging around on a long couch on Dean Martin's lavishly appointed private jet while another Dean - Dean Jones, to be specific (see also) - was doing some kind of strange peeping tom action from the cockpit. And I was like, "What's wrong with this? Nothing!" I was like, "Why, this movie has everything!" I was like my friend Leslie watching CONTINENTAL DIVIDE: "I don't understand why this movie is 'bad.'" Then Dean Martin got up and put on the radio (or a record player? on an airplane!) and started singing to Anna Maria Alberghetti and then they started dancing and singing to one another and I was going with it. So I decided to look up TEN THOUSAND BEDROOMS in my copy of the book DINO: LIVING HIGH IN THE DIRTY BUSINESS OF DREAMS by Nick Tosches to check my vague memory of how much TEN THOUSAND BEDROOMS was (and is) hated. "The picture almost killed Dean's acting career in one fell swoop," writes Tosches. And, "The picture was a stiff." I will say this: it could not hold my attention, the picture couldn't. I ignored it as I kept reading more passages from DINO: LIVING HIGH IN THE DIRTY BUSINESS OF DREAMS - much more captivating. Wow, I love that book (which I first encountered when Phil Oppenheim loaned me his chunky, tattered mass market paperback)! I remember teaching it in a grad class and this one dude was like, "This book is terrible. Why are we reading about Dean Martin? He's just a jerk." I paraphrase. But anyway, it was as if I had been stabbed in the heart, and if I am recalling correctly, I never recovered and we couldn't really talk about Dean Martin anymore for the rest of the semester due to my trauma. I lost the ability to speak and reason! Say, will the abbreviated remainder of my life be spent nursing festering grudges against students who briefly rubbed me the wrong way? Apparently! So (back to last night) over an hour later I put aside DINO: LIVING HIGH IN THE DIRTY BUSINESS OF DREAMS and glanced at the screen, on which I was startled to discover a slowly revolving platform (seen above) with all these women in pink ball gowns (I guess) playing mandolins (last night I couldn't think of the word "mandolin" and kept mentally calling them "lutes" - like, "Why are all those ladies playing lutes?" A sign of incipient dementia!) and as you can plainly see there were some accordions involved as well. Next thing you know Dean Martin is singing a duet with his butler, all about how hard it is to be a millionaire. His butler sings skeptically in reply. Or replies skeptically in song. Which made me question something Dean Martin said about TEN THOUSAND BEDROOMS, as quoted in DINO: LIVING HIGH IN THE DIRTY BUSINESS OF DREAMS: "I may sing one or two songs in it, but it's definitely not a musical." Here's the thing. Okay, if you sing on an airplane along to prerecorded music, that is arguably diegetic sound (as the film scholars say)... but if you start a conversation with your butler that suddenly turns into a duet, you are in a musical, no doubt about it, sorry, Dean Martin. And the butler song was pretty terrible. Yes, things were sagging. Anyway, I have been listening to Dean Martin records all morning, and I listened to him sing a lyric that goes "I'm just a face without a name, walking in the rain," and he sounds jolly about it, like, "Wheee!" Like, "Ha ha, I'm a face without a name, just kidding." And I couldn't help but think of how Frank Sinatra would sing that lyric ("click" here and extrapolate). But sometimes you can't take all those Sinatra mental breakdowns and you just want to hang out with Dean Martin.

Wow St. David

Wow man this set of BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS I have is even more waterlogged than I remembered! And it smells weirder, I bet, than Kelly Hogan's copy of THE HUCKSTERS. There is deadly stuff growing on the volume containing St. David. Yet that shan't stop me from keeping my promise to look up stuff about St. David for you on St. David's Day: "he obliged all his monks to assiduous manual labor in the spirit of penance: he allowed them no use of cattle to ease them at their work in tilling the ground." Sounds like a fun guy! "St. Kentigern saw his soul borne up by angels into heaven." So that's cool.

Black Marble

It is St. David's Day and by coincidence I am reading a little about the brave people of Wales right now in FOUNDATION by Peter Ackroyd. In this part, Edward I wants to take over Wales. He claims kinship with King Arthur, the problem being that Arthur is often considered Welsh, and "It was rumored that he was not dead, only resting, and that he would come again to destroy the enemies of the Welsh." So anyway Edward dug up a couple of people he said were Arthur and Guinevere. "The corpses of Arthur and Guinevere, if such they were, were wrapped in silk by Edward and his queen before being placed in a tomb of black marble. Their skulls were retained for public display. They were definitely dead." Hey, I don't know anything about St. David. Later today I promise to look him up in my waterlogged set of BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS and I'll tell you all about him!

Tales of the Golden Lobster

So the gossip columnist for the New York Times went to a party. There are lots of sentences like this: "Later, we wandered the mansion’s art collection and snapped photographs of him as he petted a taxidermy leopard." And "Male models working as butlers flanked the entrance." And then a male model offers the gossip columnist a tempting snack of lobster that is LITERALLY COVERED IN GOLD. Strange encounters with seafood make up a big part of her work. Here is a "link" to the whole thing if you don't believe me. But just trust me. You don't really want to read about that, do you? Maybe I do it so you don't have to! I know "gossip columnist" is not exactly the correct phrase but I have decided not to care. Speaking of fancy things, Dr. Theresa and I watched a new soap opera called REVENGE, set amongst the fancy people. There was a scandalous temptress named Lydia Davis! Ha ha ha! Yes, just like the brilliant writer and translator. Well, it seemed funny to me. Never mind.

What the Butler Knew

Did you know that in Chapter 20, Mack Sennett's autobiography suddenly turns into a real-life murder mystery? Neither did I! I am guessing that other members of the Doomed Book Club (the majority of whom are "crime writers") knew about this going in, but it took me by surprise, yes sir. Chapter 20 contains such phrases as "and in his vest pocket a platinum watch which had stopped at precisely 7:21" and "Peavey, the butler, went on to tell what he knew."

Your Gray Vest Is Stained With Tears

Gosh, there is so much to tell you. Like, some magazines came in the mail! I didn't say the "much to tell" was interesting. Maybe some of it is. Let's find out! Oh, well, I have been concerned that maybe you think I made up "The National Clean Up Paint Up Fix Up Bureau" (which I mentioned yesterday) because it sounds so fake. "Click" here, then, for a catalog description from the time Christie's famed auction house was selling a letter from President Johnson to the Director of the National Clean Up Paint Up Fix Up Bureau. Okay? Yes, so, as I was saying, my copies of OXFORD AMERICAN and THE BELIEVER arrived in the mail yesterday. I haven't yet had time to inspect them thoroughly but I have already noticed lots of great things. For example, Michael Kupperman is in the OA. What? Somehow I didn't expect that! It was an unexpected delight! Plus there is a wonderful new short story by Jim Whorton. Best of all, Mr. Whorton's "author bio" at the front announces that he has a new novel coming out next year! That is something to look forward to. John T. Edge contributes another masterful column that will make you hungry, this time on the subject of Buford Highway in Atlanta, where, at "a bare Korean restaurant in a strip mall," John T. has "black goat soup with watercress and green onions" and slurps "raw crab with a wobbly texture and a briny finish that gave me the shivers." It is a tale of Korean barbecue and Vietnamese fried catfish in which John T. sees the evolution of the South and Southern cooking. Buford Highway is where Caroline and Dr. Theresa and I used to go and get a whole huge karaoke room to ourselves! And I think maybe some chicken wings and some bottles of wine. Those were the days. I mention them because I am elderly and filled with mawkish sentiment for times gone by. Near the end of his article, John T. justly and soundly and roundly mocks creepy "Southern fabulists, whose misplaced affections for the region are informed by xenophobic tendencies and Neo-Confederate sympathies." So it is weird to see a recent segment about him on the ABC news show NIGHTLINE introduced by an anchor who stupidly invokes "Spanish moss and plantation houses," which is sort of the opposite of what John T. is about. Some guy in a newsroom cubicle must have said, "Quick! I need something about the South!" And the guy in the next cubicle yelled back, "Spanish moss and plantation houses!" And the first guy said, "Perfect!" and hit "print." And then the reporter in the segment actually has a voiceover praising John T.'s "Rhett Butler charm." WHAT? John T. has a lot of work cut out for him. I don't mean in the charm department, because he has plenty of that. But, you know, two steps forward and three steps back. The segment itself is terrific, especially when John T. rhapsodizes about this and that. You can watch it by "clicking" here. It won't take you to the piece directly. You may have to do a site search for "barbecue." Wow! This is getting long. And I don't care! I know you stopped reading a long time ago. So you will never see how smoothly I went from OA to NIGHTLINE to THE BELIEVER by keeping the focus on food. So far my favorite thing in THE BELIEVER, and maybe my favorite thing ever, is an intricate two-page collage of "the great sandwiches of English literature." There are five sandwiches from the works of Donald Barthelme alone, including "Your gray vest is stained with tears. Let me make you a ham and cheese sandwich." And there are four or five sandwiches by J.D. Salinger, too. I am not doing it justice, this thing. It is set up to look like a menu. Oh, just go get a copy, you need to see it for yourself. It really makes for hours of fun! You will never tire of it, I tell you. A sandwich from PNIN! A Flann O'Brien sandwich ("They give you a beef sandwich with no beef in it...") and so on. Two butter and sugar sandwiches are represented! "Blog" readers will certainly recall the butter and sugar sandwiches that the aforementioned Jim Whorton used to take with him to school, as mentioned here almost four years ago. See how I am helping this mammoth "post" hang together? (Also, we discussed one President Johnson above and Whorton once wrote a novel involving the ANOTHER President Johnson!) The butter and sugar sandwiches on the BELIEVER chart come from Toni Morrison and Harper Lee. And now gently take my hand and we shall speak again of Jerry Lewis. Oh, wait, let me connect it, because I can! Through the power of sandwiches! There is a fascinating section of DEAN & ME in which Dean and Jerry spend hours in a deli with Marilyn Monroe. So right after that I am reading the part where Dean and Jerry go to visit Frank Sinatra on the set of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM. And you know who else was in that movie, don't you? Arnold Stang! So I got very excited. Like, "Maybe I will be able to write a 'post' entitled 'Lewis On Stang,' all about a great meeting of the minds between Jerry Lewis and Arnold Stang." But Jerry does not mention Arnold Stang and it all remains a glorious dream.

Chocolate-Covered Pendarvi

I want to reiterate that I meant no disrespect to the Ellenbogen name with my fanciful speculation that Jerry Lewis would have fun saying it. In the pinched little world of this "blog," it is a compliment of the highest order! As the Dr. Ellenbogen who wrote me pointed out (through the use of vivid if startling medical imagery, renaming a particularly painful and embarrassing affliction after me in jest!) Pendarvis itself is an unusual surname. But oh what I wouldn't give to hear Jerry Lewis say it. That is where Dr. Ellenbogen and I differ, apparently! As I have boasted, I spoke with Mr. Lewis on the telephone once, but I do not recall him saying my name, and certainly I would recall that, wouldn't I? Which reminds me of a story lending credence to Dr. Ellenbogen's point. Once the spouse of Mr. Ward was doing a "shoot" (as we used to call it in the TV business) with the comedian Martin Short, who improvised some asides to an imaginary butler named "Pendarvis." This occurred before she and I met, up until which time she had assumed "Pendarvis" to be a crazy word that Martin Short made up. (Interestingly - ha! - Mr. Short is known for his impersonation of Mr. Lewis.) In addition, someone - I believe it was the man who hates "blogs" - told me that there were some items called "chocolate-covered Pendarvi" on an episode of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show, though I have never found a clip confirming his recollection. (NOTE: I believe the "blog" needs a picture of Bullwinkle, so no random illustration today.) And in conclusion, my own meticulous research bears out the fact that Pendarvis is a funnier name than Ellenbogen: there are 980,000 matches for Ellenbogen in a google search and only 206,000 for Pendarvis, making the latter nearly five times more unusual than the former. In conclusion, I apologize to Ellenbogens everywhere. It is an honorable name, and fun to say, and worthy, and I meant no harm.

James Parker Gets Me

Hey, my book - which I suspect does not exist in a physical state, though I can't get anyone to call me back and confirm this because I suppose maybe there has been a gas leak in the building lasting for several months - has been reviewed kindly and perceptively by one James Parker in "The Phoenix" of Boston. Mr. Parker says of my main character, "His state of spiritual concussion... is somehow our own." Spiritual concussion! I really like that. The review is filled with similarly felicitous turns of phrase. Even when Mr. Parker mentions a passage for which he doesn't care, a conversation with a butler, he uses one ("P.G. Wodehouse with his head cut off") that I would be more than happy to accept as a blurb. I mean, I'm not kidding. If only the book would come out so we could stick some blurbs on it.

Frasier, Briefly

Welcome to the newest gem in our popular "Briefly" series. On the heels of "Arts, Briefly" and "McNeil, Briefly" comes "Frasier, Briefly," where we plan to talk about the TV show FRASIER, briefly, whenever the occasion arises. Ironically, our first "Frasier, Briefly" will not be brief, I think. That's the way we do it at the "blog"! We're like, "Who cares?" Today's "Frasier, Briefly" consists of two celebrity FRASIER assessments. First comes Kelly Hogan, the "blog's" appointed FRASIER expert, who has been recently called "a torch singer" by both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times but they don't know what they're talking about because she's so much more. A FRASIER expert, for example. "It turns out that that's one episode that I've never seen," Hogan writes of our recent reflections on the episode in which the eponymous Frasier hires a butler, "and, relating to what you said about the implied needlessness/redundancy of dvr-ing Frasier, how is it possible that I've missed one? I don't rightly know. It's at this point that I must confess (as I have to only a few close, trusted associates... and now all of your 'blogdom') that I am currently working my way through ALL seasons of Frasier from Netflix, and just finished season 7 where Daphne leaves Donnie at the altar and jumps in the camper with Niles at her wedding. I watched this episode a few weeks ago, on tour and in Amsterdam for the first time ever, in bed in a hotel room, with all of Amsterdam outside at my disposal, but too tired to even move - much less go looking for Dutch trouble. Anyhow - in looking for info about the 'butler' episode of Frasier, I found an 'all things Frasier' website that made me feel a little better about my chronological Frasier Netflix obsession." (Here Hogan provides a "link" to an episode summary from the site in question.) "Yes, it's from season 8," she continues, "which explains why I haven't seen it yet. But it's only four episodes away! ...and yes I cried that night in Amsterdam when Daphne and Niles finally made out..." [note: Hogan goes on to give a list of reasons why she might have been unduly emotional that evening and asks us to cut her some slack on that account. But those reasons are none of your business! The "blog" has its limits after all. - ed.] Thanks, Hogan! Next up, the official word on novelist Tom Franklin's "fave" FRASIER episode, straight from novelist Tom Franklin himself: "My favorite Frasier," writes Tom, "is when Sam Malone from Cheers visits and both Daphne and Roz are all gaga over Sam. See, we forgot Sam's sex appeal in the later Cheerses when the writers made him a parody of himself, but when we see how he's viewed outside Cheers - where even Carla began to mock him - well, we see he was one of TV's great characters. God Bless Sam Malone," Tom concludes patriotically. I don't know. It struck me as patriotic.

What's Wrong

I think there's something wrong with me. Last night I was getting sleepy and couldn't stay up to watch my usual FRASIER reruns. According to the capsule description provided by the satellite company, the first one was about the high jinks that ensue when "Frasier hires a butler who spoils everyone." Well, how could I miss that? So I recorded it with my handy dvr! And in the cold morning light I had to ask myself if it is really necessary to dvr a FRASIER rerun. They come on all the time! Has excessive convenience corrupted my soul? This is a question I had. And also, why was I so eager to see the one (which I can't recall seeing before though surely I have) in which "Frasier hires a butler who spoils everyone"? The temporary butler, obtained under amusing circumstances, is a sitcom staple. I remember when Andy Griffith hired a butler, who was played by the same guy who played Dr. Bombay on BEWITCHED (Bernard Fox, pictured, whose name I perhaps sadly had at my fingertips and did not even need to look up). A butler in Mayberry! And when Jerry and George pitched a sitcom-within-a-sitcom on SEINFELD, it involved a butler as I recall. But yes, there's something wrong with me, I think. I am going to send this "post" to our "blog's" FRASIER expert, Kelly Hogan, for analysis. PS: Allow me to mention that if you "click" on the name "Dr. Bombay" above, you will be delighted to find that the "link" has an audio component of the particular type treasured by McNeil.