The Arts

For our own personal and individual reasons, neither Dr. Theresa nor I eats sandwiches anymore. And I do believe that is correct subject/verb agreement if you think about it for two seconds. So anyway, we were watching a "limited series" (those are terrible!) via "streaming" and it was a mystery thriller suspense drama of action! At one point the guy stops in a diner and orders up three sandwiches to go. And they look amazing, and I believe I will categorize them as "cheesesteaks," though I don't pretend to be an expert. But the scene does take place in Philadelphia. Even so, Dr. Theresa and I were taken by a simultaneous Proustian pang for some Italian beef combo sandwiches we enjoyed in Chicago in 2002. So then the guy gets in his car and starts having action-packed adventures filled with mystery and suspense, not to mention thrills, but we just don't care. All we can think of, and we say it out loud, is that "He's driving around with those sandwiches in his car!" In our distracted state we can't be sure, but it seems like it takes him several hours to get home with those sandwiches, and we're just thinking about how they've been sitting in the car all day. In other arts news, THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT started to seem too grotesque and disturbing to read in bed at night in the hopes of a peaceful slumber, so I switched over to DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather... and it - unlike THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT - gave me nightmares! And death isn't even close to coming for this guy yet! Although... never mind. No spoilers! In a final arts thought, was it really a "Proustian pang" (above)? Didn't Proust actually get to bite into his memory cookie? If I may be allowed to stray off topic, the holidays are upon us, and I should mention a funny Christmas wish I received from McNeil, who asked, "Are you doing anything for Christmas? Besides take your blood pressure and hope Santa brings you one more day - JUST ONE MORE, SANTA!" An artful construction by McNeil, in fact, who goes on to recall imperfectly my alleged love, when we knew each other as children, of the snack cakes known as Sno Balls. To be fair, McNeil couched his assertion in the always reliable "if I remember correctly" context. He was, however, thinking of, or misremembering, Strawberry Zingers, a product I ate 5 days of the week for some matter of years without the knowledge of my parents, and it truly is a wonder I'm alive today. I don't know if they still make them. Anyway, my metabolism must have bordered on the miraculous at the time. I was like Matter Eater Lad from DC comics! McNeil, it must be said, was on the right track, as both items in question (Sno Balls and Strawberry Zingers) were sprinkled with poisonously dyed coconut. [The coconut slivers on the Strawberry Zingers may have been unpigmented, actually, but they were surrounded by a spongy cake-like substance soaked in a deep, alarming, and, indeed, unnatural shade of crimson. - ed.] If I, like McNeil, "recall correctly," Strawberry Zingers came three to a pack, which, to my way of thinking at the time, meant that I should eat all three at once. And I was a skinny kid! If I am doing the math correctly, and it is a very simple equation, I was ingesting 15 Strawberry Zingers a week. This brings us back to Proust, doesn't it? But that's not the point. The point is that McNeil says he's spending Christmas in "a neighborhood that boasts a three-legged alligator."

Of Course She Did!

The rule is that every time I read a book with an owl in it, I have to tell you about it, no matter how the book makes me feel inside. It is my sad duty to inform you that the Million Dollar Book Club is reading a biography of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. You knew it would come to this. But that's not the bad part! How can I say this without alienating all the Nelson Eddy fans who flock to the "blog"? Well, reading this book, Nelson Eddy comes off as a scary monster, despite the efforts of the author to sort of gloss over everything that seems to make Nelson Eddy so very definitely a scary, terrifying monster. And the more she glosses it over, the scarier Nelson Eddy becomes. It makes for unpleasant reading. This is the nadir of the Million Dollar Book Club. Hey! I'll briefly liven things up by mentioning that today, while I was getting ready to take my blood pressure, I read some of that Pessoa biography, and Pessoa had a friend with a "full set of gold teeth." A full set! Not just a couple. All of this guy's teeth were made of gold. Okay, now I feel better. Back to the book with the scary monster. So, a contemporary reviewer quoted in the dual biography doubts that the "night owl clientele" of the Cocoanut Grove are going to dig the restrained decorum of Jeanette MacDonald. Anyway, as I texted to Megan - I don't have my phone here, so I'll approximate my observation - "I never dreamed the most messed up people we would ever read about would be Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy." (I know you don't know who they are. Would it kill you to google something? That aside is to you, the "blog" reader.) Megan texted back that they were more messed up than Salvador Dali. I responded they were more messed up than Tennessee Williams. She texted back that they were more messed up than Errol Flynn. And so on. I'll tell you one good thing. This book caused Megan to dig out the Jeanette MacDonald paper dolls she had when she was a kid. Of course she did!

Experiments in Intercourse

First of all, relax! There is nothing at all wrong with the "blog." The culprit that drove me mad was just a curious virus that only I could see, infecting a particular browser in the hotel's business center... the very business center immortalized (in a tastefully fictionalized version, of course) in my almost-new book MOVIE STARS, suddenly the toast of New York town! I, however, was out in Los Angeles, and I brought my jotting book of precious jottings, but in my new anti-"blogging" spirit, I jotted nearly nothing on my trip. And yes, I made that decision out of pure spite! Okay, I will tell you one thing. Julia and I walked up to Ako and I said, "Ako, tell Julia what you told me about the miraculous powers of coconuts!" And Ako shouted with hilarious urgency, "IT'S NOT TRUE!" It turns out that I have been going around telling lies that Ako accidentally told me about the miraculous powers of coconuts. One day, as she related to us ruefully, she was telling the same story when it dawned on her with the force of epiphany how suspicious it sounded. So she looked it up and was mortified at the extent to which she had been misleading an innocent coconut-buying public for so many years. Then she explained to Julia and me what the powers of coconuts REALLY are, and to be honest, the coconuts still sounded pretty miraculous. Okay, I feel bad for you, so I am going to tell you two funny things from the airplane ride home. There was a peperoncino garnishing the plate of food they gave me. So I bit into it. It was just a small, ordinary peperoncino but it seemed to contain an abundance of juice. The amazing quantity of juice expelled even by my rather timid bite squirted all over my personal airplane video screen. It even squirted onto the ceiling over the passengers in front of me! So it dripped down on them and they urgently pressed the button to summon the harried flight attendant. "The airplane is leaking bright green fluid!" they told her. "We're doomed!" Or words to that effect. So I had to confess that I had squirted the peperoncino juice that had rained down on them like the stinging hot portent of a deadly malfunction. Then I was enjoying THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H.G. Wells, my chosen airplane reading, and I suddenly came to a chapter called - in embarrassingly big letters - "Experiments in Intercourse"! Ha ha! So I put my thumb over the word "intercourse" so the guy in the next seat wouldn't think I was reading something too sexy for an airplane. Wells just meant that his heroes were trying to find a way to communicate with the moon men. He didn't mean anything dirty! He meant "intercourse" in the sense of "communication." That's how people talked back in crazy times! But I hid it with my thumb anyway. Okay, I'll tell you two more things. Look at this picture. Adam says it's okay to show it now. I was going to wait until season seven of our show had concluded. There are still two more wildly surprising episodes to come but Adam says the titles are out there in the public now and everybody knows them so it doesn't matter. Well, some quite literal spy took this spy picture with her sneaky spy camera very early in the season and spread it around the "internet" without compunction, our most personal and private business, including some very revealing episode titles, though I don't believe I've given a large enough representation for you to see them. But the funny part is the map of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County that's on the wall. Look and you will see it! You may furthermore recall when it was presented to Kent and Pen. Scores of young detectives taken in by this remorseless charlatan and thief thought it was some kind of map of a previously unknown territory of Ooo, the land where ADVENTURE TIME occurs - as did, no doubt, the budding Mata Hari herself. Well, there are probably tons of 13-year-olds all inspired and debating ABSALOM, ABSALOM! now, propelled forward by their initially misguided researches - so everything turned out all right; aren't you as sure of it as I am? In my preferred version of these events, the emotionless miscreant helped everybody learn and grow even though she was trying to hurt and spoil! I'll finish up with something I've been sitting on for a month or so because I don't care about you anymore. I started reading a book called THE YEAR OF LEAR, about KING LEAR, sort of, and it has owls in it, but not even the same owls that KING LEAR has in it! Some other owls. Thomas Dekker is describing a miserable denizen of a plague house: "And to keep such a poor wretch waking, he should hear no noise but of toads croaking, screech-owls howling, mandrakes shrieking."

The Krebs

Melissa Ginsburg and Chris Offutt dropped by last night. They gave us a bunch of neat old matchbooks (in case my cigarette lighter book becomes a big hit and I want to write a sequel, Chris claimed ironically). I showed Chris one of Bob Hope's ashtrays from the time I bought a couple of Bob Hope's ashtrays and he wisely suggested that I display some of the old matchbooks in the Bob Hope ashtray. I've been picking through them and so far the best match (ha ha, "match") seems to be this one from a place called "The Krebs" in (according to the narrow top of the matchbook) Skaneateles, NY. Sounds like a town Bob probably slogged through in his old vaudeville days. And as you can see from the founding date proudly displayed, The Krebs would have been around back then. Much nicer than the diner where his vaudeville partner allegedly died from eating tainted coconut cream pie. The Krebs served Lobster Newburg, according to the infinitesimal amount of research I've done on the subject. By the time Bob could have afforded it, I doubt he was passing through Skaneateles anymore, if he ever did. Who am I kidding? Bob went everywhere! You can also see from the matchbook cover that the phone number for the restaurant was "14." That's some phone number! I remember when I was a little kid in Bayou La Batre you could call anybody in town by dialing just four numbers, okay children, I'm going to crawl back into my hole now.

A Bad Piece of Pie

Bob Hope's first vaudeville partner died from eating "a bad piece of coconut cream pie" in a restaurant in West Virginia! Don't worry, I am going to tell you everything I learn from this new Bob Hope biography by Richard Zoglin.

Please Don't Feed the Platypus

Just received the new Doomed Book Club selection, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS by Errol Flynn. The epigraph is three Bible verses about being wicked! So right away you know you're in for a good time. Ace is way ahead of the rest of us on this one. Yesterday he tweeted that Errol Flynn is running a coconut farm - is that what he tweeted? - in the section Ace is reading now. As Ace said would happen, a young Errol Flynn accidentally kills two platypuses by feeding them tadpoles! They are supposed to only eat worms! That's what Errol Flynn says. And his dad is a famous biologist, so I believe him. Poor Flynn gets shipped off to boarding school. "The assistant headmaster was a wonderful old gentleman aged about sixty, with the picturesque name of Sir Worthbottom Smith, a down-at-heels English aristocrat, a man with a withered arm..." But Flynn gets shuffled from school to school, always stirring up a ruckus. Now he's in trouble for sneaking out of the window at night so he can canoodle with Elsie, the maid. Before such tales of youth there's a prologue that takes place during the ruination of Errol Flynn's career. It promises much getting drunk on yachts, like the Richard Burton diaries and the Johnny Carson biography before it. Flynn learns that he is completely broke: "I went to '21' that day for lunch... when you are down and out, go to the best spots." A friend shows up and Flynn insists on buying lunch: "When flat, put on the old front - you know." Yes, Errol Flynn! I do know! "I started with a couple of Jack Roses beforehand. I worked up in my usual style to grouse freshly flown from Scotland..." Errol Flynn!

Sexy Vacation

Ha ha, the Banana Guards sure were dumb on last night's ADVENTURE TIME episode! During the meeting when we were talking about that outline I believe I said something like, "Why aren't these guys more on the ball thanks to Root Beer Guy?" (As you may recall, he was promoted to the position of their captain, and maybe because I did his voice I was especially upset that he wasn't apparently too good at his job.) Someone - was it me? - suggested that Root Beer Guy was on a "sexy vacation with his wife"... a line that actually made it into the episode for a little while before being cut somewhere along the way. But it remains in one form: this delightful promotional poster that storyboard artist Seo Kim did for the episode. Look, she even has his little cell phone vibrating with emergency on the table next to him, and he's (I choose to believe) drinking from a coconut with a straw - something I once did in Los Angeles for an ADVENTURE TIME meeting, though that's just a happy coincidence.

In the Land of Richard Dix

Let me tell you about my Tuesday. First, I saw Cher. Then I walked into a room and immediately started acting in a scene with Anne Heche. Finally I sang a song with Joey Lauren Adams and Mr. Belding from SAVED BY THE BELL. Tuesday! Yes, I went on a little trip and believe or not I didn't jot anything at first. I was like, "I am going to be too busy to jot down anything for the folks back home!" Such was my hubris! I did not jot for more than 24 hours! Twenty-four jot-free hours! But then I was sitting in the Starbucks where I once saw the guy from Tenacious D who is not Jack Black, and I was reading the New York Times, and I came across this first sentence of an article: "Forty five minutes of monkey impersonations?" A rhetorical question, I suppose, but one requiring a single answer: a resounding, Joycean YES! And that made me recall something I read in my new book about kings before I left on my little trip: "every chariot had a fierce great mastiff on a leash standing in a cart or walking behind it, and every sumpter beast had a long-tailed monkey on its back..." That's about a procession in 1158, and when I first read it I thought it was about monkeys riding dogs, a subject we have contemplated at some length on the "blog," but rereading it just now, never mind. Then (back to the New York Times) I read an article containing Robert Mitchum's pick-up line to Edna O'Brien (which totally worked): "I bet you wish I was Robert Taylor, and I bet you never tasted white peaches." Mitchum! What a smoothie! And that's when I started feeling bad for not jotting anything. I remembered something from the day before which I had not jotted, for example: we were driving down the street and Kent yelled, "It's the diner where Larry Crowne worked in LARRY CROWNE!" And so it was. We drove by it again a day or two later and Kent suggested that we stop and get a picture of me in front of it and at first I resisted, and Kent said "WHAT!!!!!" and stopped the car and took the photo anyway (below) and right he was to do so. I saw Kent eat a lot of chicken, as usual. He loves chicken! But I also saw him eat a pork chop and a steak. We ate big steaks at a restaurant where Bob Hope used to eat! Taking a stroll after one chicken luncheon, Kent and I observed a young woman communing with two tame rats, which were sitting on top of a Los Angeles Times vending machine. "Don't freak out," she was saying calmly and sweetly to the rats. As this actually very charming person put forth to us the argument that rats are among the most misunderstood of God's creatures, she was engaged in some sort of handiwork - she seemed to be, possibly, knitting some clothes for the rats. Let's see what else I jotted. I ate at a restaurant where they give you a coconut with a straw in it to drink! I guess this is a pretty common thing, but somehow this was my first time. I had previously seen such a way of drinking a coconut only on GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. (Coincidence: upon my return home, I found an email from McNeil about the fact that Ida Lupino directed several episodes of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. McNeil seemed ashamed for not knowing this before!) One of the people at lunch was Ako Castuera, who used to sell coconuts for a living, and she regaled me with lots of amazing coconut lore, including something about coconut water and its use in blood transfusions during World War II, which led to a discussion somehow of the immortal jellyfish (or maybe that came up when we were debating the preferable place to visit: outer space or the bottom of the sea), and Ako - entirely different subject - told about a vacation she took on a cruise ship when she was a little kid and she spent all her time in the library. There was a library! Ako first discovered Edgar Allan Poe on that cruise ship, which put the endearing image in my mind of little Ako in the dark ship's library reading Poe while everybody else was up on the deck playing shuffleboard in the sun. Jottings! I saw my old friend Tom Bissell. He lives directly over the Hollywood Walk of Fame! In fact, he lives almost directly over Richard Dix's star. Oh, Richard Dix! Can I not get away from you? Your inexplicable stardom continues to haunt me. (Pictured, above, Richard Dix.) Tom and I talked about CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS and walked down the block to get a Mexican dinner and on the way back we witnessed a car crash! Everybody was okay, but the cars were smashed up. Okay! Now we are back to the fateful Tuesday. I was sitting in my hotel lobby when Cher walked through! I mostly saw the back of her head. Then my ride came and I went off to act with Anne Heche. FOR REAL! In what project, I am not at liberty to say. YOU'LL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH. Anne Heche was more beautiful in person than you can possibly imagine! She was not "done up" in any fancy Hollywood makeup and finery. You got the feeling she just walks down the sidewalk being all radiant. After we acted in a couple of scenes together she gave me a big hug and discovered, I am certain, that I was covered in flop sweat like Albert Brooks in BROADCAST NEWS. Like Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp before me (a phrase I type with astonishing regularity) I played Anne Heche's love interest. Okay, and then a bunch of us went out to sing karaoke (including Natasha Allegri, the nicest person in the world!) and Mr. Belding showed up and everybody was like, "Oh my God! It's Mr. Belding!" and somehow the last thing I did was sing "Jolene" with Mr. Belding and Joey Lauren Adams. Before that, I saw Joey Lauren Adams and Pendleton Ward do Elvis's "American Trilogy" together, and I thought to myself, well, that is probably the most surreal thing I will see tonight, but I was wrong.

Oh Boy

Speaking of newspapers, in his new book ALPHABETTER JUICE, Roy Blount Jr. has an interesting section on headlines. One of his favorites is "Coconut-Carrying Octopus Found." He calls it "alluring," and he is right. But I saw an AP headline the other day that I found alluring in an opposite way: "Ga. Police: Upset Councilman Spills Food at Diner." It was alluring because it was so boring! By sheer coincidence, as I compose this very "post" I see via his twitter account that Ben Greenman is currently concerned with a "non-story" (AP again!) bearing the headline "Spacewalking Astronaut Gets Something In Eye." Greenman's favorite part seems to be "The spacewalkers noted that the problem with tears in space is that 'they don't fall off of your eye... they kind of stay there.'" But I think MY favorite part is what the astronaut says when he gets something in his eye: "'Oh boy,' Feustel moaned." PS: Blount quotes a scholarly journal as saying that the octopus building a little house out of coconut shells is "the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal." But is that really tool use? Are we to believe then that every bird who makes a nest is "using tools"? I don't think so! I consider it an insult to the mighty crow who with patience and ingenuity fashions a hooked instrument to dig bugs out of a tree. THAT is real tool use, my friends. Let's not throw around "tool use" so casually. PPS: Last night at dinner with Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly I started to talk about crows. "Don't get me started about crows!" I actually exclaimed. And, "Have I mentioned this before?" Everyone replied, "Yes." Said Beth Ann, "And you sent me links about it." So I have become this guy who constantly rambles about crows at social gatherings of every kind, and follows up with helpful e-mails. PPPS: Since I began writing this very long "post," and you really don't want to know how long it takes me, it's too sad, the AP has changed their headline to the disappointingly more specific "Spacewalking Astronaut Gets Stinging Soap In Eye." PPPPS: They also edited out my favorite line, "'Oh boy,' Feustel moaned." That makes me mad! Did NASA contact them and say it reflected badly on the space program? I call it censorship! It really used to be there. It came right after the line (which is still there, for now) "'Sorry, buddy,' Fincke said."

Oblique Frozen Mammoth Recollection

Theresa and I were watching a movie called SO LONG AT THE FAIR, the plot of which reminded me of something I had read in that touchstone of my tender youth, the Reader's Digest publication STRANGE STORIES, AMAZING FACTS. But never mind about SO LONG AT THE FAIR. While I was looking for the particular article, I stumbled across a section entitled "Ten-Thousand-Year-Old-Steaks," which is about some woolly mammoths found frozen in Siberia, and how delicious they are! Yes, says Reader's Digest, "In spite of the thousands of years that have passed, the meat is still good enough to eat - according to those who have tried." But those few passing words are all you hear about the people who supposedly ate millennia-old woolly mammoth meat! Not another hint about it in the article, nor anything at all about steaks, save for the title. Why am I telling you this? Well, no good reason. But remember my novel that I first turned in to my publisher over a year and half ago and it was coming out in August and got reviewed and everything, and maybe someone will bring it out someday when they're feeling better, but I don't know because nobody will tell me? Remember that? Well, I believe I refer obliquely to these frozen mammoth steaks in that novel. You'll never know because 1) it's oblique and 2) you'll never read the novel because it only exists in a mysterious land somewhere far away with coconut moonbeams and butterscotch lakes and ever so many pixies as far as the eye can see. But I thought it was funny that those frozen mammoth steaks must have been stuck in my head since childhood, and I had no idea where that image came from when I put it - or something like it - in the semi-nonexistent novel. How about that! Thanks for everything, Reader's Digest! The idea probably wouldn't have stuck in my head for so long had it been more concrete than "those who have tried," and I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere for somebody. Oh, here's the section from my book. Who cares? Maybe I should just publish it here on the "blog" one random paragraph at a time: "He thought he remembered a newspaper story about a Viking ship that had been frozen in the ice. Scientists found steaks on board, steaks from Viking times, and Burns believed that the scientists had cooked and eaten one of the steaks just for fun, although that didn’t sound like scientists, who were usually a******s."

What I Jotted

I have a brief break in my long trip - just enough time to get down to the grim business of "blogging." I feel guilty, being away from you for so long! So while I was gone I jotted a few humble musings with my humble jotter. Here are the full, chronological transcriptions for your delectation: 1) It is not unusual to see someone driving with his or her arm out the window. On the way to the Memphis airport, however, Theresa and I witnessed a gentleman driving with his arm AND his leg out his window! There was something yogic about it. He was wearing a tube sock on the foot that he had strenuously managed to stick out of his window while driving. It made us think of when we saw that woman smoking a cigarette and eating a strawberry ice cream cone at the same time. 2) On the flight from Memphis to Phoenix, reading DIE A LITTLE by Megan Abbott (pictured) I came across this nice phrase: "rain pail eyes." The same hungry character steals from a candy store where she works: "a waxy cream, a brittle honeyed toffee, a dissolving coconut spume." 3) In a bar in Phoenix, listening to some locals complain about the heat. I'm GLAD! I didn't want to be the whiny tourist. I was relieved to find through eavesdropping that the locals were as distraught as I was. I took a short walk and got a SUNBURN! At some point in the walk I called Theresa on the cell phone to - only half in jest - put my affairs in order. I genuinely felt that I was going to swoon or do some other manly thing. When I got back to the room, the TV was reporting that the current temperature was 107. I'm no geographer and I hate generalizations about various regions but I am going to go ahead and state for the record that there is NO SHADE IN ARIZONA, which makes matters worse. On a non-heat-related note, I heard one of the customers at the bar say, "I have to move 5,000 pounds of rubber today." I don't know precisely what he meant but I was sitting there thinking, "That sounds like a hard job!" The bartender, with whom I had a friendly conversation, had lived in Oxford, Alabama, at one time, so I was able to converse knowledgeably with her on the pristine restrooms at that particular interstate exit. "Do you find it a different kind of heat here?" someone asked me later. "Yes," I replied. "A hotter kind." We shared a chuckle, you may be sure! 4) In Abbott (on the flight to San Francisco) we find an orange with a "glaring rind." 5) MY WORST FEARS WERE CONFIRMED. I met a bookstore events coordinator who, in his introductory notes, referred to me as a "YA writer," having been misled by a certain poorly vetted review. In the bookstore's newsletter, a jaunty red balloon appeared beside my picture, along with a notation that my event was a "Special for Young Adults!" (Exclamation point theirs.) Luckily, no young adults showed up. But my audience was nice. Their names were Pamela and Frances. Hi, Pamela and Frances! 6) California really is "cold and damp." Before, I had always pooh-poohed those particular Rodgers & Hart lyrics. California always seemed nice and warm to me. I thought, "What are y'all talking about, Rodgers & Hart?" But yes, I got up one morning to general coldness and dampness. 7) Looking for a new part of the book to use for a public reading, I glanced at the "hay information" chapter with which "The Farmer" had so graciously helped me. I was mortified to discover that the hay information is in Chapter 23, whereas in my elaborate and affectionate inscription in the Farmer's personal copy of the book, I had mistakenly thanked him for inspiring Chapter 25. That chapter is about foot odor. 8) I ate a large burrito in the presence of Eli Horowitz, whom I had not met before. I dropped many parts of the burrito on my shirt over the moments we spent together, confirming, I feared, his assumptions (as I supposed) about persons of my particular age, regional origin, and body type. Of course, Eli is nicer than that and appeared to bear the revolting spectacle with gracious good humor. 9) I met a San Franciscan who has seen a UFO in San Francisco "from fifteen feet away"! 10) Went to a wonderful party at which a magnificent accordionist was perhaps insufficiently appreciated (though not by me; I DID appreciate him sufficiently, which is to say, a bunch) because there was a lot of other stuff going on. Here's the "web" site of the magnificent accordionist, Rob Reich. 11) A satisfying conversation with a cab driver. He said the thing that made him decide to drive a cab was a Bob Denver (pictured) movie called THE SWEET RIDE. It changed his life, he said. It's unavailable on video, he said. In the cab with me was an editor (not my editor, but a nice one indeed) from MacAdam/Cage, my publisher. This editor hails from Bakersfield. I tried to explain to her how awesome Buck Owens (also from Bakersfield) is. She wasn't buying it, entirely. She kept saying, "The Buckaroos? The BUCKAROOS?" as if naming his band the Buckaroos made him a bad person. The cab driver expressed some profane opinions about Bakersfield. Then he explained that THE SWEET RIDE was about men with "low" or no jobs who managed to effortlessly "get" beautiful women. 12) Never thought I'd hear my editor sing "Tiny Dancer" at a karaoke bar. But I did. 13) Make that two consecutive mornings confirming the accuracy of Rodgers & Hart. 14) At a great little bookstore called Dog Eared Books I picked up a first edition of Bob Hope's first stab at an autobiography, 1941's THEY GOT ME COVERED (not to be confused with the Hope film of the same name). It's a weird little book, paperback, very plainly put together... a blank back cover with no promotional copy or anything. Lots of pictures inside and an intro by Bing, but still weighing in at a skimpy 95 pages. Like my first edition of THE TOTAL FILMMAKER by Jerry Lewis, it set me back just six bucks. Naturally, I had to call McNeil and brag about my find. McNeil almost immediately found a first edition of THEY GOT ME COVERED on the "internet" for 99 cents. But with shipping and handling it'll be $4.98, so I don't feel too bad. And mine's in perfect condition, looks brand new. 15) In a coffee shop, still reading Megan Abbott. Here is the kind of sentence I love. It's like the sentence by Jesse James, Jr., but artful and purposeful, which is what makes it special: the art of no (apparent) artifice. It's my favorite kind of sentence in the world: "The music is so beautiful I think I'll never hear such beautiful music again." 16) Bad news: the erroneous "YA" designation (see above) goes up as my book's official description on the unnamed behemoth and arbiter of all received opinion. Good news: PW agrees to fix it by taking out the two offending letters "YA." The rest of the reviewer's obviously close reading remains untouched. 17) Jason Headley's wife, it turns out, resembles "blog" fave Paula Prentiss. 18) Trouble on the flight to L.A.: When the time comes for electronic devices to be turned off, one passenger refuses, loudly and angrily explaining that an iPod can never be turned off. "You have to wait an hour, then it goes to sleep," he says. Five or six passengers and crew gather to help him turn off his iPod. "It's not really off," he says. 19) Oh, I forgot to mention: I had an early flight to L.A. so I was up before dawn in San Francisco, looking for coffee. On the street, it was just me and the "Space Age Jesus" (as he introduced himself). He said, "Don't be afraid. I bring the light to the darkness." 20) Just a few blocks from my Los Angeles hotel, a theater was showing "blog" fave THE APARTMENT on the big screen. So I got to see that. I was reminded how early the big secret is revealed (to us, not to Jack Lemmon), and how the power of the story derives from that tactic. 21) Ran into an old acquaintance in LAX. I believe the odds are remarkable. In any case, it has never happened to me before. This very nice man, Mike by name, is a rock drummer of no small repute. I believe it is not too bold or personal for me to assert that he was once linked on the gossip pages with "Blog" Buddy Kelly Hogan. The last time I saw Mike was in 2005, in Chicago, during my first ever book tour, where we went to his apartment, ate enormous, locally grown pickled mushrooms from a big Mason jar, ordered authentic Chicago pizza, listened to music, and watched a FRASIER rerun with Kelly. Three years later, that is, yesterday, it turned out that we had both "performed" on the same weekend and in the same vicinity, missing one another entirely until our paths crossed at the airport. On parting, I received a hug! I did not anticipate it! It was unexpected yet not unwelcome. Mike is big and bearish and therefore prone to hugging.

"Blog"trospective 4: The Moon

The most recent "blog"trospective, the one about movies, is getting lengthier and more complex all the time, and, like a rare and beauteous orchid, requires constant tender attention. I was wondering: what subject is grand enough to warrant a new "blog"trospective, yet seldom enough remarked upon here to cause me very little effort ever again? Then, naturally, I thought of the moon, which is big and enjoyable and full of romance. But if we go for a while without mentioning it, nobody minds. Just today, however, I was looking at some footage of the moon landing and thinking, "What if the landing is real (which it is, of course) but the FOOTAGE is fake? Would that be so terrible? Maybe the government was proud of landing on the moon but knew no one would believe it without visual 'proof.'" I am sure even the most halfhearted search of the "internet" would turn up someone who has already thought of this, and believes it, too. With that, I give you our newest "blog"trospective: MOON, THE: Abbott, Megan; drinks the shine of on at least two occasions---Aldrin, Buzz, attitude of after return from---art on---astral voyages to---beings who live there afraid of their own farts---bloodied by the last traces of a storm---blue, in eye---book about landing on remains concerned with NASA vending machine choices---Burton, Robert; believes in life on---Carson, Jack, face of looms like---chili burgers offered at site of rocket launch to---coconut beams of---commercial for moon food---compared to "a mouth that is kissed"---crescent---daze inspired by---DELRAY'S NEW MOON---deposited on Earth via beam of---down---down at the end of the boulevard---dude falls in love with---eating sausage on---eclipse signals the death of Jerry Lewis---elephants dance in the light of---explodes---eye floats up and fits perfectly into, an---THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON by H.G. Wells---fist fight on---fixing of---flashing like a torch---gardens peaceful and sweet-scented in light of---gibbous---Gleason, Jackie and---golf club used on---guarantees the fertilizing act---Howorth, Lisa; texts about blue---humorously titled "post" involving---in August---interesting information about---is the color of fat---Johnson, Junior; known for hauling shine of---Kennedy's famous "let's go to" speech---landing discussed on the Gem Shopping Network---landing real; footage of landing fake---Lewis, Jerry, gets hypothetical ant in boot on---like a hot cannon-ball---lovers meet beneath light of---Lunaire, Pierrot---Mailer, Norman; writes about---"man in the moon" costume from Lyly's ENDYMION---Martian version, a---Menace, Professor Moon---milking of---Moon, Keith---Moon, Keith; drum kit of blows up---Moon Knight, gigantic black-and-white compilation of---moon operas---Moon Woman---moonflower---mooning around---mooning away---MOONRISE KINGDOM---non-stop multi-colored trip to---not a planet---on a book cover---on a mural behind Shirley MacLaine---owls appear in Mailer's book on---personified by an art student---raking of---rise of---role of engineers using slide rules in exploration of---shining through leaded windows---SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT by William Boyle---silver apples of---Stevens, Connie, shouts at---stories from blue cafe of---strawberry moonshine---tiny little sharp crescent ones thrown by Knight of---unicorns gazing at---used to illustrate "post" about Doyle from GILMORE GIRLS---Van, Bobby; dancing of purported to be "as new as a rocket trip to the moon"---vestal livery of---wakefulness of---Whorton, James, Jr., believes people might be living on---wolf beholds---wonder expressed by resemblance to---writers can't get enough.

Hey, Everybody, Look At Me, Look At Me

Remember how sick and tired I was of making up magisterial things to say about my second book and trying to trick everyone into buying it? Well, now something has happened and I think it's okay because it's not me, it's somebody else, and it's about my FIRST book, so that's okay, right? If I draw your attention to it, I mean? Let's go back in time. First Tom Franklin gave my book to some nice people. One of them liked it so much that he called me up on the phone and surprised me. Later I began to correspond with another of these strangers, who soon became a special email "buddy," and her name is Laura Lippman. She's a writer, too! And I read some of her work and was "blown away" by it as the charming vernacular would have it and what a happy time we had emailing back and forth and telling each other nice things. Well, next thing you know, NPR asked her to talk about a book she "frequently recommends to other people" and I am happy and proud to say that out of all the books she might have chosen by authors living and dead, she temporarily went crazy in the coconut and picked mine. You can read her flattering essay right here by "clicking" on this brightly highlighted sentence you are reading right now. And those NPR people were kind enough to include the entire text of one of my short stories and even a "link" to this "blog."

Sammy Davis, Jr.

Hi, I just got my "contributor's copy" of the February "Believer" magazine. I have a very short piece in it, in which I seem to poke some fun at Sammy Davis, Jr., but not really. I thought I should mention here, as a supplement to that piece, that I enjoy Sammy Davis, Jr., quite a bit. In fact I got the idea for the piece while I was listening to the CD "Live at the Coconut Grove" and thinking, "Wow! I wish I could have been at this show!" The hip quaintness of the stage patter is part of the fun (see Joe Flaherty as Sammy Maudlin). But you know, Mr. Davis was talented, too. I particularly like some of his live work. On the Coconut Grove CD, his rendition of Cole Porter's "In the Still of the Night" is relaxed and fluid. I guess I often seem to poke fun at musicians and other artists for whom I have true affection. Gilbert & Sullivan & Bob Dylan I have mentioned here before. And there are certain things I appreciate about Mickey Rooney, even. Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray are good examples of my problem. They have done nothing but good for the world, really! DEAD MAN and GROUNDHOG DAY are two of my favorite films, and that's just a small sample of their excellent work. Returning to Mr. Davis for a moment, "click" here for some poignance. (If you "click" here right now, you will see a reference to the Dec./Jan. issue of "The Believer," but I believe that after February 1st, you will see information about the February issue, and maybe they will "post" some or all of the Davis piece.)