The Third Cough Drop

I caught a cold Wednesday night? Thursday night? Dr. Theresa got me some cough drops. Yesterday I put one in my mouth and the shell - I guess we'll call it - caved in (by design! though little did I know) and mentholated goo oozed out. It was a surprise! And not an unpleasant one, despite the way I just described it. These were "dual action" cough drops, according to the bag. I checked after my surprise. Like, "What is going on with these cough drops?" The effect was bracing and medicinal. I don't know how I feel about the phrase "goo oozed" - at best you could say it's sort of onomatopoeic. Makes me think of a line from "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church" about "clammy squares which sweat as if the corpse they keep were oozing through." Sorry! But that's almost the only thing I remember from school. I also remember "Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea" from "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner." That's all. After about the third cough drop, the novelty wears off.

City 2000!

Finally took a tip from McNeil and watched BEAT GIRL. I bet you didn't know that beat girl's dad has a large box in the middle of the living room, and inside the box is an entire miniature city he has designed and built. "Real Superman stuff," says beat girl disdainfully. Beat girl's dad calls it "City 2000"! Says beat girl to her new young French stepmother: "Don't kid yourself he's in love with you. He's in love with City 2000." Indeed, beat girl's dad stands over City 2000 with a glazed look in his eyes, brooding and drinking a dark cocktail. Beat girl's young French stepmom looks like a science fiction creation herself, with an astonishing white helmet of hair and shocking black eyebrows and a futuristic raincoat. And maybe white lipstick. Lots of other stuff happens. Like beat girl and all her friends go out and put their heads on a railroad track because they're so bored with life. And Christopher Lee spies on beat girl through a two-way mirror! "Drinking's for squares," we find out. One of beat girl's friends is shamed by the gang because he is secretly drinking gin out of a cough syrup bottle. "Have a dry martini, general?" his Eddie Cochran-like friend mocks. Featuring Oliver Reed as "plaid shirt." That's his character's name in the closing credits!

Feeling Better

McNeil is chugging prescription cough syrup so don't worry about him! He is probably feeling better than you.

Cherry Flavored Space Commander

Once again I violate my own rule and add a new photo to the memory banks of my dangerously overstuffed computing machine. I hereby give you Laura Lippman's "heavy glass robot." But as you can see, he is not a robot at all! He is clearly some sort of space commander. Another correction: the same "heavy glass robot" "post" was poorly worded on my part, and I made it sound as if I would have poured the robot (sic) down the sink. Clearly, I meant the cough syrup. But ha ha! The confusion reminds me of an old James Thurber joke. See, a guy has a large, lurid bump on his head and his friend asks why. "My wife threw tomatoes at me," comes the reply. The friend is astounded and bemused! How could tomatoes cause such an injury? The first man says, "They were still in the can." Thurber told it better. The "blog" regrets the errors.

Heavy Glass Robot

Over on her "blog," Laura Lippman is "blogging" about her penchant for collecting coin banks. Recently she picked up "a heavy glass robot that once was a container for children's cough syrup." And I was like, "Heavy Glass Robot would be a great name for a band!" Because I am one of those people I hate, one of those people who always says "that would be a great name for a band" no matter what anyone says. I believe there are other people who do this, but most of them stopped about midway through college in the 1980s. Apparently I never will. What else was I like? I was like, "Man, if I had had some children's cough syrup in a robot bottle I would have taken it all at one time so I could play with the robot! Or poured it down the sink at least." Which is why I am sure they no longer put children's cough syrup in a heavy glass robot. The end. For further reading: the time Laura Lippman and I talked about about mimes and robots.