Pen Runs Over a Bottle

1. Lee was about to pull up to give me a ride to Memphis when I discovered that the button on my jacket was precariously loose. It took the desperate combined efforts of Dr. Theresa and me to thread a needle. Suddenly that infomercial I saw in January 2011 about an innovative needle with a huge eye didn't seem so damn funny anymore. Once we got the needle threaded, precious seconds ticking away, Dr. Theresa secured that button in place like a speed demon. But that wasn't the end of the troubles! This is exciting already. So! 2. When Lee and I were about halfway to Memphis, I glanced down to discover that I was wearing the wrong shoes. For you see, I had an appointment at the Magic Castle in Hollywood later in the week, thanks to my friend Kate, who is a magician, and they (the Magic Castle, not magicians in general, nor Kate in particular) have a dress code, for which reason, and with some exaltation, I had recently purchased my very first ascot. Anyway, Dr. Theresa had to mail me my shoes. Or they would have never let me into the Magic Castle! 3. The Von's across from my hotel in Burbank no longer stocks the gigantic bottles of seltzer I like. 4. I saw Kent, who happened to be visiting from his new home (well, he's been there a long time now!) in Vermont. He wasn't going to the Magic Castle with us but asked whether I had been with him at the Magic Castle years ago when a guy made a baby appear. I said I thought I would remember something like that, but now I wonder. Was I? Did I? Would I? 5. Kent told me a dream he had had the night before, which I will abbreviate to its ruin. A yellow cobra comes out of a faucet and starts fighting a rat. Then a monkey runs into the room, grabs up the cobra, and begins choking the rat with it! I suggested that the yellow cobra coming out of the faucet meant that Kent needed to pee. 6. In TENDER IS THE NIGHT (the book I brought to read on the airplane) someone's monocle falls out due to a surfeit of emotion! Like in a cartoon! 7. Kent walked by while I was talking on the phone to Dr. Theresa. "Did you tell her about my dream?" he asked. Ha ha! Sure, we kidded him, it was the top of our agenda. Dr. Theresa used to call Kent "Big City" as part of an inside joke. Now, as she decided during the very phone call being described, she's going to call him "Big Maple." Because of Vermont. He has a beard now! Because of, I assume, Vermont. As these shenanigans were taking place I was about to leave for the Magic Castle, so Kent fussily rearranged my ascot (which I had tied myself; I'm not so hot with ties, but noting the ascot loophole in the Magic Castle's dress code, I deduced that an ascot would be easier to tie than a regular necktie... and I was right! An ascot, in its raw appearance, is like a big clown tie). 8. There are some things I can't tell you about the Magic Castle but maybe one day I will. One of them involved the invisible piano player who performs there. I wish I could tell you! Another guy kept making lemons appear out of thin air. Where were those lemons coming from? It was crazy! Magic is crazy. 9. At a Holiday Inn with Julia Pott, Pen, and Kent. "It is happening again," Julia kept saying during the karaoke at the Holiday Inn, purposely and accurately invoking TWIN PEAKS. Everyone there had chosen a sad song, as if by psychic prearrangement. Pen and Julia are especially fine dancers. Kent is a great dancer too, but what I remember is Kent and me sitting at a tall two-top with our really bad drinks, watching the fluid motions of Julia and Pen under the spell of a scrawny white-haired stranger moaning a song of absent love. (Pictured, above, a higher floor of the Holiday Inn.) 10. Back at my own hotel, alone... they were shutting down the bar when I came in... as I was sipping my nightcap a couple sat down next to me, a man and a woman. "The bar is closed," said the bartender, Harvey by name. "But we're getting married tomorrow!" objected the woman. Harvey has been known to do me a favor, so I proclaimed with a flourish, "Oh, allow me to get these two some champagne!" To which the bride-to-be responded quite severely, "No." Then, after a pause, "I want a 'chard.'" So I was like, "Never mind!" She went on: "Champagne is for tomorrow." And I said, "I understand." Why was I trying to force champagne down the throat of these innocent victims? And so to bed, as Samuel Pepys would say. 11. Now we have reached Saturday, and - speaking of Samuel Pepys - a bawdy section of our tale, so be forewarned, as bawdiness was not an area in which I normally dabbled, back in the days when I "blogged." At home on the Saturday in question, Dr. Theresa was suffering the calamity of a football game day. The streets were wild, she reported, and the home team was playing a team called "something like the Cockmasters," an assertion on her part that made both of us laugh even as she said it. "Well, it's something like that," she repeated, and vowed to find out. I begged her not to enter "Cockmasters" into the search engine of the computer. Anyway, it was the Gamecocks, which Dr. Theresa said she liked even less than Cockmasters, given the actual name's association with the practice of animal cruelty. 12. Talked by phone to Megan Abbott. We spent some incredible amount of time (I will say 20 minutes) just parsing the monocle sentence from TENDER IS THE NIGHT (see #6, above): "His monocle fell out, with no whiskers to hide in - he drew himself up." Megan solved it for me. She also said I sounded sedated, like late-stage Judy Garland. From Megan that's a compliment! 13. "I'm happy talking to an idiot." - Rae Gray. 14. Saw Rae Gray and Ashly Burch and many others at a kind of sendoff before Kent returned to Vermont. Talked about books a lot with Rae and Ashly and we laughed uproariously about a number of things, as well as becoming somber and contemplative when the occasion arose. Steve Little was there and when he saw my jotting book he produced his own jotting book in solidarity! Then I admitted I had neglected to bring a pen and he seemed disappointed in me. 14. My friend had a birthday party. Hmm! I can't remember why he's always anonymous. Maybe I made him anonymous because I didn't know him that well when he started appearing on the "blog." Anyway, now he's anonymous forever and subsequently my tales of his birthday party will be shrouded in vagueness and mystery... like why were at least half a dozen cast members of VERONICA MARS there, supplemented by the equally dazzling stars of iZOMBIE and PARTY DOWN? See? Already I've said too much... let me be clear. My friend was not the creator of VERONICA MARS, whom I did meet for the first time that night, however, and who, upon learning that I reside in Mississippi, told me he had played at a club in Jackson in 1985, but he couldn't remember the name. I was pleased to correctly assume he meant a place named W.C. Don's, and to tell him the possibly true fact which I barely recalled hearing somewhere that it had burned to the ground. I played there in 1990. We just missed each other! He swiftly produced a photo of himself with a mullet in front of W.C. Don's. 15. My friend Joey, knowing me to be a huge VERONICA MARS fan, introduced me to Kristen Bell, to whom I remarked how surreal it was for me to see the residents of Neptune (the town where the show takes place) walking around, which prompted her to explain to me the concept of acting, ha ha! I'm making it sound like she thought I didn't know the difference between fiction and reality but that wasn't the case... I hope! No, she was explaining from long experience why people feel and act the way they do when they see someone who performed in something in which they (the viewer) became emotionally invested. But just for a joke (and because it was true) I pretended to conflate another actor from the show with his character, leaning in and murmuring confidentially, "Don't be alarmed, but Logan is standing right behind you." And then an incredible thing happened. Kristen Bell became Veronica Mars! Her voice and posture changed instantly, and she said in character, "That's okay, I have eyes in the back of my head." What a good sport to indulge me so! And what a dexterous display. It was something to witness, and I felt lucky to witness it. Then I ate some creamed corn. 16. The next day Pen and I were out doing stuff and we stopped on a side street. Pen said, "I'm going to park my car better." We were already on the sidewalk. Pen hopped back in his car and pulled up a few inches and immediately ran over a bottle that disintegrated into a million sprinkles of brown glass with a terrible BANG! I jumped and started laughing. We had just been discussing Groucho Marx in the car, and that's where my mind was. "I'm going to park my car better." POW! The timing was perfect. In a movie, his tire would have gone pssssssssssst, but the tire was fine. 17. "You think you're with a decent candy maker and then he starts screamin' at you," is one thing Pen said about Willy Wonka. 18. "It was often easier to give a show than to watch one." - TENDER IS THE NIGHT. 19. Sitting in the airport thinking I have nice shoes but my socks are falling down. As long as I bought an ascot, why not sock garters? 20. Also I saw a man with shoes so shiny they made me ashamed. Maybe his shoes were TOO shiny. Blindingly gleaming they were! Dr. Theresa always says she likes a leather shoe that's been broken in so it has some character. She understands me! 21. Rising to depart from the plane which had returned me to the Memphis airport, I heard a plaintive meowing behind me that made me pine for home. Why, this passenger had been traveling with her cat the whole time and I never knew.

Monster Face

Our Halloween film festival continued with MACABRE... uh... Dr. Theresa and I are both big William Castle fans and advocates, but MACABRE was sort of like THE ROOM of horror movies...? Maybe that comparison holds up...? I'd have to watch them both again back to back, which I'm not. So it was on to THE HAUNTED STRANGLER, all Boris Karloff and insane asylums. The monster face in that one reminded Dr. Theresa of her own scary Helena Bonham Carter impression (from Kenneth Branagh's FRANKENSTEIN) which she has stopped doing over the years thanks to my constant begging. Naturally, we wanted to see another Boris Karloff insane asylum movie after that, so we watched BEDLAM (pictured). It was a philosophical, theological horror movie! And maybe not a horror movie. Maybe it was a philosophy movie. But it had just enough Halloween stuff in it.

Talking Gorilla Martini

You've got to hand it to the Man Who Likes KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS: he always knows which movie frame to grab to illustrate one of his "posts." (You can check out his whole "blog" there on my sidebar of "links.") Here we see the talking gorilla from CONGO contemplating a martini. Now, there is nothing not to love about that. BONUS FUN FACT! Dr. Theresa and I saw CONGO on the big screen in Edinburgh. You know, instead of exploring a historic castle or something.

They Came to Burgle Carnegie Hall

They were showing a movie called THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS on TCM last night and I was tickled because it made me think of my favorite fake movie title from THE SIMPSONS, which also furnishes the title of this "post." But I got into THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS 30 minutes late because first I had to watch George Saunders on THE COLBERT REPORT. So when I switched over to THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS, some dude was saying to Elke Sommer, "Honey, there's nothing harder to get into than another man's robe," and it was said with such dull authority that it depressed me, one of those lines that only wants to sound like it means something but it maybe probably doesn't mean anything and it doesn't care. It would rather sound tough than be tough. Right away the movie seemed too solemn and proud of itself, or proud of its supposed hipness, or something, and I didn't watch the rest, no, you couldn't even call it repressive desublimation, whatever was going on there. There was a sour feeling. What's wrong with me? I'm basing all this on one line, I didn't give THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS a fair shake! Last time I saw George Saunders, less than a week ago, he recommended Kerouac's VISIONS OF GERARD, which by coincidence I had just recently purchased at Square Books, so I'm reading it now and here's a fragment I enjoyed: "people may count themselves higher than pigs, and walk proudly down country roads; geniuses may look out of windows and count themselves higher than louts..." (He's on the side of the pigs and louts.) Also "teaching" ON THE ROAD and I forgot that near the end they have a big party in a castle! "and Charity creeping around upstairs in her nightgown with a flashlight."

Crickets 'n' Corn Dogs

I watched a thing about Macbeth on PBS, yes I did, shut up, and Lady Macbeth was like "I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry" so I guess Macbeth is a book with an owl in it. Also last night I saw the great George Saunders eat a corn dog, yes I did, shut up, it was a lot nicer than hearing an owl scream, in fact it was adorable. Hey, as long as I've got you here, I'll tell you how Larry took me to his orchestra rehearsal tonight, so I was the only audience member in the huge auditorium and an opera singer walked out and started belting the hits to the nosebleed seats! So I was just sitting there all by myself and it seemed rude not to clap because I felt she was singing right at me - she was really selling it, man! - but I just sat there real quiet digging the weirdness because of course you can't interrupt the rehearsal by clapping. And then I went to pick up some falafel for Dr. Theresa, who lived all over the Middle East for many years, but her fave falafel is from Petra, right here in Oxford, MS, just across the street from the James Food Center. While I was waiting for the falafel, some guy asked if he could sit with me! So I said, "I guess." So he sat down and told me why George W. Bush was a better president than Albert Einstein would have been. So I was like, "Cool." He was just some dude. Oh yeah, and yesterday I was giving a little lecture about Jack Kerouac and a student suddenly stood up and said "I can't take it anymore!" and left - "it" being me, I guess, this whole package you've got right here. All right, I think that's everything.

Most Important Meal

Later tonight the annual Halloween film festival will continue with GREMLINS 2. In the meantime, we've watched the Frank Langella version of DRACULA. Having just read the book, I found myself becoming one of those annoying people who says, "That's not in the novel!" and "THAT'S not in the novel!" And really not much of the novel was in the movie. But honestly, no Dracula movie really represents what's in the novel. The novel is a lot better than any Dracula movie I've seen, though I sure hate to be a guy who says things like that. The Langella DRACULA was enjoyable. It did bring out the native sauciness of Dr. Theresa, who kept saying things like, "Jonathan is kind of a ****" and "Her dad is a *****!" One thing that especially got under her skin was the way Donald Pleasance responded to tragedy by eating breakfast. I had to tell her that that IS in the novel: the characters are constantly eating a hearty breakfast to fortify themselves for a battle against Dracula. "Well, it is the most important meal of the day," said Dr. Theresa with notable sarcasm. I have never before seen this version, but when Megan Abbott was in town, she and Dr. Theresa discussed their shared childhood trauma of watching Frank Langella as Dracula climb down a wall toward his victim. See, now, that IS in the novel, the wall-climbing, I mean, but in a different context (OH, WHO CARES? WOULD YOU LISTEN TO ME?). In fact, last night at the party at Faulkner's house (at which, I forgot to tell you, they served raw oysters from my hometown), I saw Lee Durkee, who said that DRACULA is one of the few books he has ever read - maybe the only one - that truly scared him. The image he brought up in particular was, as I think he put it, Dracula "spider-walking down the castle wall." Lee thought that my mentioning certain sentences from DRACULA on the "blog" was a way of making fun of the novel, but not at all. I found it incredibly scary, too. My sister is reading it now and she is also scared. We're all scared. He's scary.

Reminiscent Saucer Intimations

I am also reading THE SUNDIAL by Shirley Jackson. I'm sure you recall my sound advice to have a small book and a large book going at all times. Today I was reading THE SUNDIAL and I thought, "This reminds me of Charles Portis." I was thinking particularly of MASTERS OF ATLANTIS. And then I thought, "I wonder if anyone has ever compared the works of Shirley Jackson and Charles Portis." Yeah, that's right, I think a lot of things you don't care about. I seem to recall that Jonathan Lethem, in his introduction to WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, compares Jackson's narrator Merricat Blackwood to TRUE GRIT's Mattie Ross. As I was thinking all these interesting thoughts I turned the page and SUDDENLY there were intimations of flying saucers reminiscent of Mr. Portis's novel GRINGOS. Here's some dialogue: "Once that saucer with your name on it leaves, it's gone. And remember, they won't take you if you're wearing metal or been indulging in fancy wines." This leads another of Ms. Jackson's characters to respond: "I am sorry, but I am afraid that we will not be able to qualify for your space ship. I myself cannot do without my fancy wines."

So Much Learning

I watched TWIN PEAKS all day on Easter and I thought that was kind of weird but then I watched the "making of" documentary and learned that the pilot FIRST AIRED ON EASTER! Wow! Aren't you glad you read "blogs"? I also learned that Queen Elizabeth (the current one, of course) watched TWIN PEAKS - once she was upstairs at her castle watching it while Paul McCartney was downstairs playing a concert for her birthday and she didn't even care - and then I learned a third thing but I can't remember what it was.

Gothic Subterfuge!

Speaking of castles! I was checking my recommendation shelf at Square Books yesterday. Sales are down! But that's not the problem. Some unauthorized personage - a renegade Horace Walpole fan! - had tampered with the exquisitely balanced arrangement and stuffed in an extra book: THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO. Nothing against Horace Walpole! Don't worry, I took care of it.

"We Mock the Thing We Are to Be"

Yesterday I was going to tell you about how my brother went to a wedding (yesterday) at the castle where Charles I got his head chopped off! And Kanye West was at the wedding! And I thought, Kanye West + site of royal beheading = true love 4ever. And then I thought, Well, if I "blogged" about that would I be any better than the New York Times gossip columnist I am always ragging on? So I deleted the "post" before it was done. But as if in answer, this very day in the New York Times the gossip columnist goes to a wedding! And Joel Grey is there! And I thought, Well, my story is a lot better than that. It's not really a story, though, is it? Oh well! Mel Brooks once made a memorable statement on the subject (see above).

"Blog" Mail "Bag"

Time once more to take a peek into the "blog" mail "bag." Lee Durkee writes in to take up for his beloved Edward de Vere (from the shadow of whose ancestral castle he writes). No way, says Lee, did Edward de Vere have that unfortunate accident in front of Queen Elizabeth. "John Aubrey was famous for getting things wrong," Lee says. Edward de Vere did, however, Lee admits, "set an entire village on fire while orchestrating a mock battle for [the Queen's] entertainment (he heroically helped douse the flames)." Does that count as heroic, though? If you started the fire to begin with? But I don't want to get into another Edward de Vere argument with Lee. Meanwhile my brother-in-law David writes in with an interesting real estate listing. If you scroll down all the pictures of the property, you will see that there is a skeleton in the basement!

John Dee Fan Club Report

"Was awesome. Especially when they dragged him screaming down to hell." So ran Lee Durkee's review of DOCTOR FAUSTUS at the Globe Theatre, a performance of which he attended yesterday. That was the condensed version, as presented in a facebook comment. Later, Lee followed up with a nice, long email, portions of which will be presented below. Dr. Faustus is thought by some scholars (one scholar?) to be Christopher Marlowe's negative portrait of Dr. John Dee, while Prospero represents Shakespeare putting a nicer gloss on him. Also Neoplatonism is involved, says Lee, but let's keep this rolling along. We don't have all day! All right! And now let's turn it over to Lee Durkee, reporting from England: "a blockbuster version of Faustus all stops pulled Hollywood style. It was great, though it wasn’t Elizabethan in any way; there were more actors on stage in the opening scene than existed in an entire old school troupe, but the play, essentially a series of slapstick vignettes inserted kinda jarringly into the stream of a dark narrative that’s not nearly as interesting... worked because it was prop-filled and bawdy [WARNING: one example of bawdiness follows below - ed.]... I was leaning against the runway tongue of the stage and half the time had to crane my head directly up to see the actors, and what I’ll always remember is that O in the sky above them. Shakespeare’s O, his Globe, which even in a theme park void of ghosts (the remains of the real Globe were discovered a quarter mile away while the new one was being constructed) was haunting, that view upward with clouds passing overhead an Elizabethan archetype... Props galore included giant dinosaur-boned birds, representing dragons, on which Mephistopheles and Faustus scoured the globe looking for trouble. Giant masks of Helen, of demons, behind which costume changes were made. Books opened into flames. A wench ran on stage with a Roman candle spurting fire from her crotch. [I warned you! - ed.] The three trap doors were in constant use, props and people appearing and vanishing, especially during the highlight of the play, the parade of the seven deadly sins. John Dee would have been proud of them... My legs held me up okay in the pit, though we all sat down during intermission... Fun to watch the people in the boxes the same way the nobility used to get ogled by the runts. There were a couple of moments when things went wrong and the actors had to improvise and bite back giggles, and in many ways these are always my favorite moments, the spell gets bubbleburst and replaced by a moment of intimacy between the actors and crowd filled with grins and shrugs. A floating castle helium balloon that was supposed to rise up out of the Globe and reproduce one of Faust’s spells instead floundered in a downdraft, was captured by an audience member, who then let it go a moment later; it drifted back onto the stage just as some regent was complimenting Faustus on his magical castle-in-the-sky illusion. The balloon seemed playful almost and finally Meph grabbed it and stalked off stage with it while Faustus laughed and the crowd laughed... Another great moment was when some king of evilness hit a tennis ball into the crowd, and the crowd member tossed it back, and the king broke out in laughter, as did the audience... afterwards I decided to follow the crowd across the walking bridge over the Thames, just like in the old days, and of couse I got lost and then ended up an hour later, still looking for the tube, finding The Shakespeare’s Head instead and popping in for a pint."

Leaping Werewolves!

Spent the Fourth of July in the traditional way: reading about werewolves. Is this is the service of my sprawling fantasy epic? I honestly don't know anymore. Here's some good stuff from OF WOLVES AND MEN by Barry Lopez: "Olaus Magnus writes... that at Christmas werewolves gathered together for drinking bouts and forcefully entered houses for the purpose of raiding the wine cellar." Go, werewolves! Later, they "gathered at the walls of an old castle where they engaged in leaping contests." In the book, the picture above is captioned, "The Livonian wolves at the leaping wall." Happy Fourth of July!

Saps

Laura Lippman has written down some good, insightful thoughts for you to read about James M. Cain's MILDRED PIERCE (different than the earlier Slate magazine essay of hers on the same subject, which you can find after a few "clicks" here). Here's a sample sentence: "The not-so-secret dirty little secret of hard-boiled fiction is that it’s awash in sentiment; those tough guys, for all their intelligence, can be the biggest suckers of all." See, that is close to something I have been pointing out to my hardboiled fiction class... so often your hardboiled protagonist (especially in a traditional detective novel) NEEDS to be a sap for the story to work. How often does the detective with an ill-advised soft spot end up working for a client who has no money? How often does the client who starts the book betray the detective's tender trust? I will tell you: EVERY TIME! I mean, how often does our hero fall hopelessly in love with a photograph (Sughrue in THE LAST GOOD KISS) or painting (McPherson in LAURA) of an alluring young woman who is presumably deceased? Forget sentimentality! Half the time we're practically wallowing in gothic romance. Hardboiled fiction is as full of ghosts and castles and raging thunderstorms that reflect the wildness in the characters' hearts (see MILDRED PIERCE!) and vampires as anything. Isn't Veda a vampire? Doesn't she blossom as her once-vibrant host is reduced to a shapeless, worn-down shadow, "a panting, dumpy little thing in a black dress"? Lippman's point is about the comparative lack of sentimentality in Cain (as opposed to Chandler, for example), a true observation, but even tough, practical Mildred is a sap where Veda is concerned. (Bled dry! Fed upon! "Sapped"! Vampire!) And I guess Captain Ahab is a sap for Moby-Dick. Can't you see what literature is trying to tell us? We're all a bunch of saps!

Forever Owls

Owls again! Owls forever! How often have I told you? All great books contain owls. Take the work of one Ben Greenman for example. He has fashioned a book (CELEBRITY CHEKHOV) wherein he takes stories by Chekhov and replaces the main characters with celebrities. Allow me to give you an example: Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake are caught in a violent storm. According to Britney, Justin "kept laughing and talking all sorts of nonsense. He said it would be nice if we could suddenly come upon a medieval castle with turreted towers, with moss on it and owls, in which we could take shelter from the rain and in the end be killed by a thunderbolt."

Fair Kitty

I checked out a book from the library. It's from 1893 - not a reprint or a later edition, an actual physical object manufactured in 1893: THE GHOST WORLD by T. F. Thiselton Dyer. If you are interested in the state of ghost studies in 1893, this is probably the book for you, I guess. Each chapter has a terrific title. Chapter X is an examination of "The Headless Ghost." There follows an entire chapter on "Phantom Butterflies" (big in Cornwall and Slavonia, apparently). In the former, we get a quotation from Sir Walter Scott on "a spectre at Drumlanrick Castle, of no less a person than the Duchess of Queensbury - 'Fair Kitty, blooming, young and gay' - who... amuses herself with wheeling her own head in a wheelbarrow through the great gallery."

Maud Newton Does It Again

In Maud Newton's famous sidebar she "links" to a Joyce Carol Oates piece about the Shirley Jackson novel WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE. It made me want a copy. But when I made it over to Square Books, they had sold out of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, so I bought THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson instead. All I have really read of Shirley Jackson before now is "The Lottery," a short story that terrified me nearly to death in the fourth grade, and you have to ask yourself, what kind of country were we living in when they used to make you read "The Lottery" all the time in fourth grade? But now I have read the first 22 pages of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and am prepared to say that it is THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN. One thing leads to another, usually because of Maud Newton, and this is the only good thing about the "internet."

The McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival Wrap-Up, Pt. 1

Film scholars from all over the world have been pestering me for details about the McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. After letting it all sink in, I must say the festival began and ended with disappointment. The first twenty minutes of SALT AND PEPPER were all we could stand, for example. Yes, we men who can watch anything - defeated. We did watch it long enough to see the canary yellow turtleneck pictured at this "link," and thus were able to note that the leading lady of DON'T RAISE THE BRIDGE, LOWER THE RIVER seemed to have borrowed a lot of Sammy Davis Jr.'s clothes. On the plus side, SALT AND PEPPER made its own sequel ONE MORE TIME seem like a masterpiece. Now please understand. I am not recommending that the amateur should just dive into ONE MORE TIME. It requires years of training, of knowing what to look for. Mr. McNeil remarked at one point, for example, "I can tell Jerry [Lewis, who directed] walked everybody through this scene step by step." Imagining that was more fun than the actual scene! McNeil was also highly appreciative of Peter Lawford's special bachelor room in the castle, though the carpet was not shaggy enough for his (McNeil's) liking. McNeil still contends that THE PATSY is the pinnacle of Lewis' talents as a decorator. "The colors are more subdued," he explained. Then he gave Theresa an interesting lecture on attractive lamps in the films of Jerry Lewis... the way they match the drapes, and so on. At some point during the presentation, Theresa disappeared, and we sorely missed her for the rest of the festival. As for the disappointment that ended the program, THE WRECKING CREW contains off-the-charts misogyny, even if one adjusts for the cultural norms of the time or endeavors to think of misogyny as a mere plot device that runs the engine of a certain kind of farce. They blew up Nancy Kwan AND Tina Louise, for example. Blew them up! And I don't even want to tell you what happened to poor Elke Sommer. What a downer. But the festival did have its unadulterated highlights, which will be addressed in coming days. (Pictured, Nancy Kwan, so wrongly mistreated in THE WRECKING CREW.)