Most Admirable of All

You know I don't "blog" anymore but people keep sending me new information about plovers' eggs. Megan sent me a passage from an old cookbook that says plovers' eggs are "incomparable in a salad or sandwich; and most admirable of all set like large opals in aspic jelly."

Mushrooms

Last night I watched UN FLIC on Ace Atkins's back porch - just look, there I am standing in front of the projector afterward - and I had a pretty good tweet about UN FLIC that I tweeted when I got home but then I realized that nobody wants to read tweets about UN FLIC, so I deleted my great tweet about UN FLIC, and that's when I realized I'd better "blog" about UN FLIC even though I don't "blog" anymore. That's what the "blog" is, I realized: a big old city dump. You don't want to drive out there to the city dump but sometimes there's some unwieldy thing you have to get rid of. So I was supposed to bring something "French" to Ace's, so I found this mushroom recipe in an old French cookbook, and I used about half a bottle of good white wine in these damn mushrooms - pardon my "French" - ha ha! And then they turn out to be these... mushrooms. Just some mushrooms lying there. Just some cold mushrooms lying wearily on a plate. "Serve very cold," the old French cookbook advised. It didn't help. They were just like... mushrooms. You eat one and you're like, "Yep, that's a mushroom." You know, maybe I was too timid with the coriander! "They can't possibly require THIS MUCH coriander!" I yelled. "These old French people were CRAZY!" Well, who's laughing now? The old dead French people, that's who. The only good thing about them (the mushrooms, not the old dead French people) was Dr. Theresa's suggestion that I bring along Bob Hope's cocktail forks for people to spear and eat them with. I also brought Bob Hope's very own personal (former) glass toothpick holder to hold them in! The cocktail forks, I mean. One of my greatest joys of the evening was seeing Bill Boyle's little girl absolutely murdering a strawberry with one of Bob Hope's cocktail forks. (In case some of you don't know why I have Bob Hope's cocktail forks, I bought them at an auction.) Well, anyway,

I didn't understand UN FLIC. Like, Richard Crenna spent a lot of time combing his hair! Like, I think I got up to pee and came back and Richard Crenna was still combing his hair. That's what my great deleted tweet was about. I can't remember the exact wording of my great deleted tweet, but it was something like, "Critics the world over agree that UN FLIC is the film in which Richard Crenna spends the most time combing his hair." So you can see why I deleted it. It's too specific for the high-pressure world of the on-the-go twitter user of today! This "blogger" I found ("click" here) has a more positive spin on that scene (pictured), which I will now quote: "Once we're inside the train, Melville's sure touch returns... The scene goes on for several minutes, during which we see Crenna carefully adjust his coiffure not once but twice... the meticulous preparations are mesmerizing." The fact that I was just all, "Boy, he is sure is combing his hair a lot!" is my own problem. As Bill Boyle pointed out, the long shot of the adorable little helicopter flying over the tiny train made UN FLIC look briefly like a Wes Anderson movie.

Sixteen Cucumbers

Mom came to town for a visit. I brought her to the genealogy room at the public library - a strange, dark little room. I can't believe I never "blogged" about that room before. But now I remember: I thought it was good enough to put into one of my failed novels. So I jotted some notes about it in a special jotting book which is now at the bottom of a pile of some other special jotting books, never to be seen again. We poked around the genealogy room and found a thin volume of reminiscences from a man whose name I believe was Glover Moore (?). When Glover was a lad, he and his sister Alice had a pet pig who enjoyed rolling over to have its belly scratched with corncobs several times a day. The pig's tail had two curls in it but sometimes it would run and the curls would straighten out. As it ran, it would say, "U-r-r-gh! U-r-r-gh!" I believe that was the spelling. Anyway, they ate it. The family ate it. I am sorry to tell you. And I was sorry to read it. The pig was "loyal to the end," wrote Glover Moore. And I closed the book and said to my mother, "Glover Moore and his magic pig/ Scratched it with corncobs/ ... 'til it got big." And Mom replied, "I've seen pigs caught and heard them squeal/ Getting ready for the great big meal." And I looked at her across the table and she said with a touch of sadness, "It's true." We also found something called the SNIPES FAMILY COOKBOOK, which included a facsimile of a long letter dated 1899, from Pearl Snipes of Benevolence, Georgia, to her beau Oscar Morrison. Pearl tells Oscar how she received his previous letter while she was at dinner and couldn't eat another bite. Sister teased her about the contents of Oscar's letter, so Pearl ran and shut herself in the other room. The family stood at the door and tried to get her to tell what was in the letter, but she wouldn't reveal a word. She is relieved to have it confirmed that Oscar hasn't been sporting about with another woman. She asks Oscar to give everyone her love and "keep a double portion for yourself." Mom said, "She was forward, wasn't she?" I said, defending Pearl Snipes, "She was his intended!" The letter was signed, "Your devoted intended." I think I have most of that correct. You can't remove the books from the genealogy room, so you have to stuff all the details into your head. Neither Mom nor I had thought to bring pen or paper. I will add that Pearl Snipes placed charmingly arbitrary phrases in quotation marks, kind of like Mattie in TRUE GRIT. The cookbook had a recipe that called for sixteen cucumbers and water with "enough salt to float an egg." There was also a recipe for "Bohemian Coffee Cake," which Mom wanted to copy for Dr. Theresa, having determined with one of Mom's favored genealogy websites that Dr. Theresa is, in part, of Bohemian descent. I said that the coffee cake probably wasn't ACTUALLY Bohemian (there was a recipe for "Martha Washington Cake" with cherry Jell-O, and I don't think Martha Washington ate that) plus there were many stern warnings posted, as I have already noted, about removing materials from the room. As we were leaving the library, whom should we encounter but Carla, who used to work at Square Books, but has recently become a librarian, long a fond wish of hers. Carla showed us her "staff picks" selection, which included my first book. How nice! I know she had lost all hope of ever seeing me at the library. I ran into Carla at the City Grocery Bar and she upbraided me for not being the faithful library patron I had sworn myself to be. She had never seen me there. So it was a sincere "staff pick," I think, with no thought I would ever hear of it. She put me on the shelf with THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, one of my favorite books, and QUEEN OF EARTH, a good movie (pictured). So I felt all right. And I was like, "Hey, Mom, look at that!" Carla told us that the genealogy room is an entity entirely separate from the public library, though housed in the same building - hence the many prohibitions. It has always been empty, in my experience, and running on the honor system, I suppose. There are a number of butterscotch-colored molded plastic chairs stacked up high and teetering in there, and some boxy, dead-looking computers. And Dennis the Menace panels in acrylic stands on the tables, for reasons that elude me. The Snipes family is mightily represented in several thick binders, though as far as I can tell they have no connection whatsoever to Oxford. There is so much Snipes material scattered around that I briefly wondered (though knowing full well the contrary truth) whether the Snipeses were some undiscovered inspiration for the Snopeses.

Chandelier Hat

I was kissing everybody on the cheek. Everybody in town! I kissed Bill Taft on the cheek. "Punk rock!" he exclaimed in response. (I finally understood the time Barry Mills kissed everybody in New York City, did I ever tell you about that? I think he wrote a song about it that went "Come here, girl, I'm gonna kiss you/ Hey there, boy, I'll kiss you too") Indulge me. Or don't. I'm just trying to remember why I was so happy for the past few days. This "blog" now works as my substitute memory. You're free to go. Bill and Caroline and Will came to town. Look! Bill Boyle took this picture of Bill and Will playing at the Powerhouse while Caroline sits ready to spring to the poetry podium and read some poetry. Caroline read some poems about the time the awful tornado tore through Cabbagetown. And guess what? Shana came all the way from Atlanta just to hear it. And guess what else! Last time Shana visited we were sitting on the balcony of City Grocery Bar and she started getting a million texts because THAT WAS THE NIGHT THE AWFUL TORNADO TORE THROUGH CABBAGETOWN.

Shana came back for some of that emotion recollected in tranquility you always hear about. Here's Caroline laying down some poetry on the people, photo by Kevin from the Isom Center. Caroline! A benevolent being who appears whenever she is needed! Whether you know it or not! Why, she appeared in Ohio (was it Ohio?) in a hotel room with Bill Taft and Kelly Hogan and me and the band They Might Be Giants. Did I know Caroline at all? In any case, my extensive knowledge of THE BRADY BUNCH (much to the annoyance of They Might Be Giants, as Caroline and I choose to remember it) stuck in her mind and led Caroline, eventually, to get me my first job that a human adult would have. And she has led me from milestone to milestone ever since... introducing me to Dr. Theresa, for example, as I have repeated several times. IT BEARS REPEATING. (Late addendum: I just now recalled - I think - that the very first time I met Caroline, she was Kelly Hogan's next-door neighbor and Kelly and I were out in the gravelly yard drinking wine from her grandmother's red Jell-O glasses; Caroline and her boyfriend were returning - why do I remember this? - from some unwanted and socially enforced visit to a gimmicky restaurant owned by some reactionary Georgia politician, can that be true?) The night before the music and poetry show, Dr. Theresa and I took Bill and Will and Caroline out to dinner and the restaurant was dark and everybody was holding up the menus to their eyes and moving the atmospheric candle around because we're all old now and Caroline had the idea for a chandelier that is also a hat. Or a hat that is also a chandelier? It sounded like a great idea at the time. Before the Powerhouse show Bill and Will played on the Thacker Mountain Radio show, our live local weekly fun fest. Introducing one song, Bill said that when he read Hamlet as a youngster he thought Hamlet was a real cool guy, but now that he's a dad, he really understands Claudius! "A middle-aged man trying to get things done," Bill said, but not exactly. Bill said it better. I sat next to Melissa Ginsburg! SHE HAD JUST SOLD HER FIRST NOVEL THAT VERY DAY. It's a thriller! I think this is okay to "announce." I think everybody knows. Melissa can write poetry AND thrillers! An enchantress she is! She liked Bill so much she wanted me to make her a mix tape of the awesome Atlanta music of my callow young adulthood. Okay, I was in my 30s. I was a late bloomer for callow young adulthood. Melissa and I slipped out and had a drink to celebrate. A twin celebration! Because also on that very same day I had sent off my cigarette lighter book to my editor.

Finished! Until I get notes. NO MORE THINKING ABOUT CIGARETTE LIGHTERS ALL DAY EVERY DAY. After the poetry and music it was back to City Grocery Bar. Shana came along with her friend Kerri, who has an extremely detailed tattoo of Burt Reynolds on her arm! Needless to say, we became fast friends. The next morning I was sitting with Bill and Will at Big Bad Breakfast and Jill, who runs the place, came up to say hello, and there was a nice "Bill and Will this is Jill" moment. Then Shana and Kerri popped in! Will's macaroni and cheese looked so good they had to get a couple of side orders. Kerri told me about how she developed her first-ever crush, and it was Burt Reynolds,

and it happened when she was four years old and saw SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. Then she had a dream, the first dream she can ever remember having, and in the dream Burt Reynolds kidnapped her in the car from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. But it was pleasant! In the dream. Sadly, Bill and Will had to hit the road (Caroline had vanished like a dewdrop - yes, let's say dewdrop! - early in the morning) but Shana and Kerri were up for anything! I took them across the parking lot to that used book stall I like. Below is a "selfie" of Shana and Kerri. Shana found an old red-and-white checked cookbook with a recipe for "Cinnamon Prunes"! And the previous owner had left little scraps of papers in the book with notes written on them.

Always a bonus! Shana and Bill and Caroline are the kind of friends that are FRIENDS FOR LIFE, even though I never keep in touch with anybody because I'm the worst. I mean, you see them, and all the love in your heart comes flooding out. I'm not leaving Will out! We never hung out with him quite as much, though he is fine and good and endlessly creative and interesting and someone we love knowing. He keeps his own counsel. Or maybe we do! Somebody's keeping it somewhere. SIDENOTE: I realize that I romanticize the past. My friends are unbelievably tough people who weathered unbelievably tough times. END SIDENOTE. Will walked through the woods near Faulkner's house holding a bowl of lima beans from the Oxford Canteen and made up a funny story we almost believed about a bear being attracted by the aroma. I found this used book:

As you can see, the front and back covers must have come off at some point, so they are held in place by silver tape. But other than that, the book is in fine condition. It has that severe polite formality I so enjoy: "When the President fell into the arms of Detective Geary he coolly asked: 'Am I shot?'" Geary unbuttoned the President's vest, and, seeing blood, replied: 'I fear you are, Mr. President.'" The book is, as the title page promises, "Superbly Illustrated." Here are some lovely photos of Mrs. McKinley, the former Ida Saxton. Now I'm not saying she's any Frances Cleveland! But in the bottom right photo, doesn't she look like Gaby Hoffman's character on GIRLS?

And of course the book is filled with fascinating, uh, what's the word for it? When you reveal stuff without meaning to, like a Browning character? For example, the bodyguards pay no attention to the actual assassin because they are busy checking out an "Italian, whose dark, shaggy brows and black mustache caused the professional protectors to regard him with suspicion." Talk about profiling! Eyebrow profiling! And see where that gets you. After the books, Shana and Kerri and I went to The End of All Music, which they were more than taken with. They were ecstatic! They kept saying, "We should move here!" Lots of people say that. Dr. Theresa and I used to say it. I'd be happy if Bill and Caroline and Will and Shana and Kerri moved here. But then what? You have to ask yourself. What happens to the magic? And just yesterday the dopes who can do such things suddenly dumped our fine, progressive university chancellor for their own shady reasons. What if Shana and Kerri and Bill and Caroline and Will come back and have to search for us in a dystopian wasteland?

I'm Sorry, America

Hey I'm so sorry I forgot to tell you about "Dump Cakes." I meant to "blog" about them when I "blogged" about Judd Nelson, which I never did. So! You remember that certain kind of commercial. Dr. Theresa likes the one where they start out by telling you how hard it is to water plants, with reenactments of people trying in vain to water plants. I like the one where they demonstrate how hard it is to use a wallet! Wallets are hard! Well, the other night I saw one in which they tell you how hard it is to follow a recipe, and they show a harried woman throwing flour everywhere while she tries to figure out this "recipe" business. But don't worry! This spokesperson has invented something called "Dump Cakes" and you can buy her "Dump Cakes" cookbook. I will paraphrase slightly, but she demonstrates like so: "Take some fruit! Dump in some cake mix! Now dump in a can of soda! Voila! Now you have a dump cake!" Those are truly the ingredients: fruit, cake mix, a can of soda. I thought it was a weird joke at first but it was not a weird joke. This person is so serious about her dump cakes. She also has a cookbook called "Dump Dinners." DUMP DINNERS. In case you think I am making it up, I am going to "link" to the "dump cakes" "web" site, which DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN ENDORSEMENT OF DUMP CAKES.

Deciduous

"Do you exist?" Ace Atkins asked McNeil to his face the other night, settling a question - we hope! - that has persistently plagued the "blog." McNeil affirmed that he does indeed exist. Barry B., who was also in town for my birthday, reported that, back in Atlanta, Phil recently remarked again upon his disbelief in McNeil - RECENTLY! - which seems incredible, given that Phil once sent McNeil something in the mail. Did he think he was mailing something to a ghost? Oh, how we stubbornly ignore the evidence in front of our eyes. While he was in town McNeil inspected the cashew tree he mailed me for my birthday, speaking of mail. I have to say, it's looking kind of sickly. I think often of the song "Grandfather's Clock," which is about some old dude who dies when his clock stops ticking (or his clock stops ticking when he dies) and I worry about keeping the birthday cashew tree alive on similar principles of sympathetic magic. But I draw some consolation from SIBLEY'S GUIDE TO TREES, which I've been coveting at Square Books, and which my sister and brother-in-law kindly got me for my birthday (yes, they were also in town! As you will see, everyone was in town. It was really nice! And though I kept saying NO PRESENTS, people gave me stuff, perhaps most startlingly Bill Griffith, who strode across Snackbar with a machete [for me]. "Like ADVENTURE TIME, get it?" he said). For example, I read about deciduous trees in the introduction, and took some comfort from looking at the sickly tree and thinking, "Oh! It's deciduous, that's all. Yes, that's what a deciduous tree must look like." Sometimes we can deceive ourselves with our fancy book-learning, maybe! As far as I can tell, this kind of straight-up cashew tree doesn't generally grow in the United States, though trees in "the cashew family" (including various pistachios) do. "Many species in the family exude a blackish resin from broken twigs and develop blackish spots on the leaves." Check! "Many species in the cashew family... have toxic oils in their leaves and stems." Gosh! Poison ivy and poison oak are related to the cashew. Gee! Yesterday I was thankfully able to point out to McNeil a few new, tender shoots on the cashew tree, nestled among the blackening and withering leaves. But we're not here to talk about trees! I'm sure the main thing you'd like to know is whether we had another "McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival" while McNeil was here. We did not. And yet a peculiar mini-film-festival did occur. Dr. Theresa and Leslie (who was also in town: see?) were idly flipping around the movie channels for something to watch when they came across THREE FUGITIVES, that Martin Short/Nick Nolte team-up that everyone was probably waiting for once upon a time. Some quality of the film - Dr. Theresa and Leslie referred to it as "flatness" - they found compelling and numbing. I came in after they had already succumbed to the flatfooted vibe it exerted. McNeil came in to find all three of us staring dumbly at THREE FUGITIVES. Martin Short is an an unwilling bank robber who needs money for his moppet of a daughter who has LOST THE ABILITY TO SPEAK. "Charlie Chaplin has a lot to answer for," I said at one point. (I think it was a long shot of the Little Girl Who Couldn't Talk alone at the very end of a park bench, her hands folded in her lap, and Martin Short was really pushing the wet-eyed, gulping sad clown thing, to use Bruce Handy's definition of the term, which is looser than mine.) Late in the film Dr. Theresa and Leslie came out of the coma-like trances into which THREE FUGITIVES had lulled them for a segment in which Martin Short is forced to pretend to be a pregnant woman, Nick Nolte "her" concerned husband and the little girl is transformed into the "couple's" little boy. The academic portions of their brains kicked into overdrive at the sight of the gruff loner Nolte learning to be a "true man" by performing the role of the "man." Perhaps he, without changing his physical appearance, was in the most elaborate "drag" of all! The next day (or was it the day after?) in the post-celebration haze, a groggy Dr. Theresa and Leslie felt they "needed" another movie exhibiting the same "flatness" as THREE FUGITIVES, and charged me with finding one that was just beginning on one of the movie channels, which is how we came by chance to FEDS, a buddy comedy starring Rebecca De Mornay and Mary Gross (pictured) as would-be FBI agents. Once again I was moved to say, "Charlie Chaplin has a lot to answer for," but I can't remember why. Besides, the real phantoms hanging over both THREE FUGITIVES and FEDS were Martin and Lewis, of course. Martin Short (who often impersonates Lewis) and Mary Gross are the child-like ids (Mary Gross in a gun shop sticks a pistol in the front of her pants and does a strange, wiggling Jerry-like dance) while De Mornay and Nolte are the loners, the smooth operators, who learn to allow themselves to become dependent on their "weaker" counterparts. (And, as McNeil pointed out during the cross-dressing sequence of THREE FUGITIVES, Jerry often took the "female" role, appearing, for example, in remakes of THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR and NOTHING SACRED in the parts originally played by Ginger Rogers and Carole Lombard.) Ha ha ha, I know nobody is reading this! McNeil (who came over in time to catch almost all of FEDS) wondered whether there was a sequel, a FEDS 2, and though it seemed obvious that no one had scrambled for a follow-up buddy comedy from Mary Gross and Rebecca De Mornay, McNeil checked his iPhone, just to make sure. And of course there was no FEDS 2. Yet a sequence that played over the final credits seemed to promise just that. The ridiculous optimism we need in order to continue living! Leslie argued with force and clarity that both THREE FUGITIVES and FEDS were about the fact that we become the roles we perform. Then some great monster in the scheduling department saw to it that CONTINENTAL DIVIDE came on right after FEDS. What a double feature! As no one felt capable of movement, we sat through CONTINENTAL DIVIDE - marking the second time I have seen it in four months, a preposterous circumstance I never would have believed had some Cassandra informed me of it in advance. Yet Leslie, who had never seen it, championed CONTINENTAL DIVIDE for a long spell, repeating "I don't see why this movie is 'bad,'" at a number of points. Well into the second act she spoke of its charms convincingly, citing, for instance, the cinematography that made everything in Chicago look like "old Polaroids," and exclaiming when Blair Brown busted up the shotguns of some eagle poachers against a rock that it was just the kind of thing she (Leslie) always fantasized about doing. But soon, beaten down by the movie's numerous willful missteps, she gave up, finally concluding that CONTINENTAL DIVIDE seemed like a movie that was stitched together entirely of scenes that had been edited out of some other movie. McNeil pointed out that it aspired to the condition of the "screwball comedy," yet lacked that genre's essential ingredient: unnatural speed. The director, he thought, could have improved the movie a lot simply by getting everyone to talk faster. Thwarted by a misguided allegiance to so-called "realism"! Hey, I don't want you to think we only watched movies. Leslie also went through an old community cookbook reading recipe titles and we'd make up songs about them - or, more accurately, imagine who might have recorded a song with such a name, like "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie" (Bob Dylan) and "Baptist Pound Cake" (Leonard Cohen; "Baptist Pound Cake" being a sexy, taboo metaphor - some woman takes pity on Leonard Cohen and feeds him "Baptist Pound Cake" in "the alley behind the church.") In summation: 1) Sometimes we can deceive ourselves with our fancy book-learning. 2) We stubbornly ignore the evidence in front of us. 3) We become the roles we perform. 4) Ridiculous optimism is required for the merest survival. These seem like terrible birthday lessons! So why was everything so much fun?

With Creamed Cabbage Thou Must Fill My Crown

Hey don't you want to hear about the old cookbook I was reading because I was trying to remember the word "gremolata"? (It didn't help.) Naturally I wandered over to gelatin. According to this cookbook, "Jellied Ginger Ale Cubes" make a terrific salad garnish! This cookbook also tells you how to have a party for Washington's birthday. "Fill tiny blue and silver tri-cornered hats with red gumdrops and set these at each plate." For Lincoln's birthday serve "buttered steamed rice," plum pie, and the majestic (I assume) "Crown of Frankfurters"! Ingredients: 20 frankfurters and 2 cups cooked sauerkraut. That's all! Although you can "Fill crown with stuffing, creamed cabbage, creamed cauliflower or Potato Balls instead of sauerkraut." Ha ha, Potato Balls, the capital letters make it funny. This is the CULINARY ARTS INSTITUTE ENCYCLOPEDIC COOKBOOK: DELUXE EDITION from 1976, "newly revised," though it was first published in 1948, and reads that way. I also found one of my brother's old report cards folded up (hidden?) inside!

It's a Frosting Poodle Christmas

I give you this poodle made of frosting from the cookbook MAGIC IN FROSTING, courtesy of Kelly Hogan. Now you don't even have to "click" on it because I told you what it is... and perhaps that's the greatest gift of all.

Legend of the Country Captain

Hey I stopped by to see John Currence at his office and there was famed food stylist and my pal Angie Mosier snapping photos of a bowl of country captain. What's "country captain," you ask? It's one of those regional dishes like West Indies salad that I promise I'll explain to you one day but I never will because I'm always so tired. But that's not the point. Angie was snapping photos for John's upcoming cookbook. "There's a lot of profanity, I noticed," said Angie of the text of John Currence's cookbook. Then she and John Currence began swapping some profanities to humorous effect. But that's not the point either. The point is that I got to eat the food after they took pictures of it! John put the country captain in a skillet and heated it up on the stove and poured it into a bowl in a less stylized incarnation than the one in which it had so glamorously appeared for posterity just moments before and I ate every piping hot and succulent morsel of the country captain and in addition could have eaten, might very well have eaten - indeed was explicitly encouraged to do so - the crab cakes that were prepared and photographed afterward but I had some errands to run and I drove off looking in the rearview mirror with a single tear making its way down my face as the crab cakes receded into the irretrievable distance and I thought of all the lessons I had just learned. So if AND WHEN you buy John Currence's cookbook and you go to the page where the country captain is and you see the picture of the country captain you can think to yourself, "Jack ate that country captain! Wow," you can think, "How about that! Jack ate that country captain. THAT country captain! That one RIGHT THERE! Hey, honey, come take a look at this! Jack ate that country captain! No, I'm serious, THAT COUNTRY CAPTAIN RIGHT THERE. But he didn't eat those crab cakes." And then you'll close the book and stare thoughtfully - and somewhat forlornly - into the emptiness of space.

Correction

The woman who played Cissy in FAMILY AFFAIR did NOT "perish under tragic circumstances" as the schoolyard rumor would have it. Sadly, the girl who played her sister Buffy did. I recall that schoolyard rumor as well. But in my schoolyard, anyway, the entire cast of FAMILY AFFAIR was afflicted in one way or another. Happily, though, Cissy is alive and well and according to wikipedia she was promoting THE FAMILY AFFAIR COOKBOOK in Scottsdale, Arizona, just last year. There are probably no more schoolyard rumors. Google has destroyed them.

Dear Stinkpot

Ace Atkins and I went to Memphis yesterday to have adventures such as eating chicken. Ace had a peculiar book catalog in his truck. He got it in the mail. The publisher's specialty is "Books only you would like," as Ace put it to me. There is, for example, a biography of Bob Hope's sidekick Jerry Colonna. The catalog description is brief: "Written by Jerry Colonna's son!" it exclaims, and that's all. Here's another catalog description in its entirety: "Acting exercises from the voice of Yogi Bear!" For an autobiography of some guy: "He was more than the voice of Lucky Charms cereal!" Lots of exclamation points in the copy, but none for THE DAY THE STARS STOOD STILL. It's the "memoir of Logan Fleming, top wax artist" from the Movieland Wax Museum. The cover shows Mr. Fleming, I guess, in a kind of Ingmar Bergman shot, half of his face obscured by what I believe to be an eyeless wax figure of Richard Widmark. EYELESS! Is that supposed to be Richard Widmark? I don't know. But he sure is eyeless. So that's a book cover. THE FAMILY AFFAIR COOKBOOK is by the woman who played Cissy on the sitcom FAMILY AFFAIR. Didn't she perish under tragic circumstances? That was the schoolyard rumor! I see in microscopic print on the cover, "Foreword by Dawn Wells." She was Mary Ann on GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, you idiots. I'm sorry I called you an idiot, because here's a bio of someone of whom not even I have heard: WALTER TETLEY: FOR CORN'S SAKE. Ha ha! That's some subtitle! The subtitle of Gary Burghoff's autobiography promises an unusual format: MY LIFE IN POEMS AND SONGS. A volume of letters from vivacious silent screen beauty Louise Brooks is called DEAR STINKPOT. "See, that's where an editor could have stepped in," Ace suggested. You really do not want to call any book DEAR STINKPOT, but especially a book of letters from Louise Brooks, even if she liked to call people stinkpot, I really have no idea. Titles are iffy. Eddie Cantor's daughter wrote two books: DON'T WEAR SILVER IN WINTER and STOP THE WORLD! I WANT TO TELL SOMEONE OFF! Walter R. Deasy, "owner of the carousel in Los Angeles's Griffith Park" calls his memoir THE MERRY-GO-ROUND IS WORN. I know how it feels. The subtitle is AN ANTIQUE MAN FINDS LOVE ON AN ANTIQUE CAROUSEL. Here, I really should "link" to the publisher. The least I could do is try to sell a few books for them. I deactivated my facebook account so I am going to have to "post" pix of me eating chicken here from now on, and I apologize in advance. Hey, I went over to John T. Edge's last night and he measured my head, never you mind why, and there is a picture of that floating around, too, and sure, it will show up here sooner or later, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry for everything forever.

I Might Be Tired

You know, folks, I might actually be tired of checking out self-published UFO books from the University of Mississippi library. Today I got one with a plastic spiral binding like a regional cookbook might have, and another one in a white three-ring loose-leaf binder such as kids carried to school in 1979. That's a "book" I checked out of the library! Photocopied pages - some letters and newspaper clippings mixed in. But somehow I didn't feel happy. I also got three more publications from the Saucerian Books company of Clarksburg, West Virginia, including FLYING SAUCERS ARE WATCHING YOU by John C. Sherwood. Saucerian Books look practically professional compared to those others! I don't know what kind of deal Saucerian Books had going with the library - evidently it was pretty amazing, because the library is admirably stocked with a panoply of Saucerian Books. But in a telling sign of my malaise, I abandoned at least three or four other Saucerian Books publications on the study table today, including one (I think it was called SAUCER WARNING) with a full-page illustration of a space monster resembling a large, threatening pickle. My heart wasn't in it. I did get a small spark from the romantically titled paperback THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND SAUCERS, from Understanding Publishing Co. of El Monte, California. Like all the books I enjoy most, it has no blurbs or description on the back. I've only read the introduction so far, which is done in that certain style I find so much better than anything I could ever write, and often try to emulate: "Flying Saucers is a strange subject. For a long time it was treated as though it were immoral. Most people refrained from discussing it in public. Those who did were often considered brave, radical or foolish."

Fun With Eggs

While Kent was in town he found a copy of Alicia Silverstone's cookbook at Off Square Books and took a picture of it. Here is the part where Alicia Silverstone teaches you to make egg salad sandwiches!

Fate Cannot Harm Me

Have you been looking for Jerry Lewis's recipe for Bavarian cream? Look no further! From Phil Oppenheim comes this precious "link." It's an article by Alan Scherstuhl, whom you may recall as the man who dug up the instructional booklet ENJOY YOUR PIGEONS. This time he goes from pigeons to doves. In the celebrity cookbook he has uncovered (that's a photo from it above), there's a recipe for "Doves Epicurean" including this declaration: "After the partaking of these fine-feathered birds done to such intoxicating perfection, the sportsman can say with the epicure, 'Fate cannot harm me, for I have dined today.'" Plus look for a cameo by "blog" fave Carol Lynley!

Adelaide Trigg

I was sad to get the news from a "myspace" friend that Adelaide Trigg, an old, fond acquaintance from back in my Mobile days, has passed away. You can "click" here to read a remembrance of Ms. Trigg by my friend Katherine Clark. Here's a little quotation from it: "Adelaide had been one of the founders of The Haunted Book Shop, a social as well as literary gathering place in downtown Mobile. She had hosted book-signing parties for Harper Lee, Truman Capote and even Thomas Mann. Then there was the family homestead, popularly known as Termite Hall, which began as an inn in the late 19th century and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Adelaide and Eleanor [Marston, Adelaide's sister] had grown up there as children, later lived there together as adults, and Adelaide died there last week." I got to go to Termite Hall a few times, once for a barbecue with my late friend Eugene Walter. (Clark's piece also contains a nice, quick sketch of Eugene.) I remember Eugene arguing with Adelaide's sister Eleanor over whether orange juice was a proper ingredient for barbecue sauce. I mean, they were serious! It got ugly. Eugene wrote a great, weird cookbook called DELECTABLE DISHES FROM TERMITE HALL. I stupidly gave away my copy back when all these fine people were still alive (John T. has a copy, I think. It seems to be hard to find now), so enthusiastic about it and wanting to share. I worked at the Haunted Book Shop for a few years, too, and my favorite days were always when Adelaide dropped by. I think she was the nicest, most interesting woman in the world, always kind and dignified. She tracked down strange old out-of-print books for me, like a first edition of A MAP OF VERONA by Henry Reed. I'll see if I can find a poem from it on the "internet" and "link" to it here in honor of Adelaide Trigg.

It Is Funny

The title of this book (pictured) made me laugh because it is funny. I found it "linked to" on my "fave" Aquaman "blog." You know we try to stay above this kind of thing, but sometimes we can't help it because it is funny.

The Amazing Oyster Coincidence and Other Stories

The Southern Foodways Symposium never ends. That's just one of the great things about the Southern Foodways Symposium. For example, last night, when we got home from the Symposium, we called Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly to thank them for the wonderful stay in their guesthouse. Tom and Beth Ann were on their way to eat a roasted pig by a campfire in somebody's yard. It was kind of a final hurrah for the Symposium, which had officially "ended" that morning. When Theresa and I were on our way home, we stopped for gas somewhere in Alabama and a man and woman got out of their truck and started talking to us about the Symposium! See, it never ends. The man was Tommy Ward of the 13 Mile Oyster Company, who had provided the incredible, beautiful raw oysters we had eaten the night before. And tonight we're cooking a recipe for "Chicken Bog" that we got from the Lee Brothers cookbook. See? It never ends! I met Ted Lee after my panel. Then we saw the brothers later at the mass book signing. Man, that was some book signing. Everybody was eating, even though it was right before the huge oyster supper. Eating and signing and buying books and eating and reading and eating. They had West Indies salad (I just learned this weekend that people who aren't from the Gulf Coast don't know what that is!), sparkling wine and peanut brittle with bacon in it! BEFORE supper! Yes, there was lots of pork with which to reckon. The lunch on Friday included a lemongrass-roasted pork po-boy with crawfish - yes, crawfish! - mashed into condiment form. I'm sure that over the next several days I'll have lots more to say about all the nice people we met and the fine food. Everybody should go to this thing!