Oh My Goodness

My current "nighttime book" is a Penguin paperback of the Apocryphal Gospels, translated by Simon Gathercole. I finished reading the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus goes to school at about age five. Anyway, the teacher starts to teach him the alphabet and Jesus isn't having it. He says (I paraphrase, sorry, Lord!), "Just tell me about the letter A. Then I'll see whether I think you can handle B." Naturally, the teacher does a terrible job explaining the letter A. So Jesus says (I'm quoting directly now) "Pay attention, sir, and understand the arrangement of the first letter. Notice here how it has diagonal lines and a stroke in the middle, and then you can see the alpha's lines pointing and straddling, joining together and parting, leading off and going up, circling and darting, tripartite and double-edged, of similar shape and thickness and kind, rectilinear, equilibrious, isometric and isomeric." All right! And here's the part I identified with: the teacher goes (quoting again) "Oh my goodness, my goodness, I am a befuddled wreck of a man!" which is exactly what I used to say every day when I was a teacher. Weirdly, you know what this reminds me of? So, when we were working on the ADVENTURE TIME episode "Diamonds and Lemons," which was a Minecraft tie-in, few of us knew enough about Minecraft. Taking myself as an example, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that it existed. That was it for me. So we had one member of the team (I think it was Cole Sanchez) who knew everything about Minecraft, and he gave us a crash course in its intricacies. Also, we watched people playing Minecraft on YouTube. And I remember there was one guy in particular who just played Minecraft and said "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" over and over. "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" fifty times in a row as he played Minecraft. "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness," he said, thereby racking up millions upon millions of "views." And that's when I knew writing was dead. That was the moment! I was like "I have no future." Because you don't need to hire somebody to write down "Oh my goodness" fifty times in a row for you. Though I bet Samuel Beckett might have tried it out! We may also recall the time I read an online reviewer who was persnickety in an unintentionally amusing way, and I thought, you know, I try to write characters who talk like this all the time, but why? Here they are already existing in real life for the world to enjoy. Anyway, when Jesus is eight years old, he kills an especially mean teacher. Kills him dead! Once again, the point of contention is the alphabet. At the end of that episode, Joseph takes Jesus home and tells Mary to keep an eye on him, quote, "in case people who provoked him ended up dead." That was the first time I ever laughed out loud at any Gospel, apocryphal or otherwise. Cole teaching us about Minecraft reminds me that we had a bee expert come in and tell us all about bees on SUMMER CAMP ISLAND. But my memory is that everything we learned about bees was too depressing to use.

McNeil Bits

To be clear, these are not "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits." These are little bits of McNeil himself, though one of them is connected to his bogie bits, if you will. He mentioned Bogart giving a bellhop a nickel tip, and I wondered what year that was, so that maybe I could calculate how much the nickel tip would be worth today. I have a lot of time on my hands. McNeil was at work, so he did not have his 700-page Bogart biography with him, but, to satisfy my curiosity, he paraphrased, from memory, an interview with the bellhop, who, according to McNeil, "laughed and made an excuse for Bogie, saying something like, 'I'm sure he mistook it for a quarter, haha.'" Thus we may conclude that the nickel wasn't worth a whole hell of a lot. Next McNeil bit! McNeil is always keeping me informed about all the greatest scientific wonders of the age! Sometimes, these developments disturb and frighten him - for example, the massive catapult that shoots satellites into space or the discovery of a giant secret planet. (And here I should remind you that you really need to access the "blog" on your desktop or laptop computer, so that you can enjoy the use of handy labels such as "McNeil's Greatest Fears." If you "click" on that one, it will take you to the numerous examples of all of McNeil's very greatest fears. We're just scratching the surface here! If you are looking at your "blog" on your phone, the labels do not appear, and therefore, much to your sorrow, you will never know the full and staggering extent of McNeil's greatest fears.) Other times, man's quest for knowledge fills McNeil with glee, such as when he was inspired by the idea of making diamonds out of skeletons, and suggested we take up graverobbing. Or when he read, and here I quote myself quoting McNeil, "an article suggesting that all the gold on Earth came from the collision of dead stars and [said], 'Let's go get us some of this!' seemingly suggesting a trip to outer space." This time, McNeil seems pretty hyped up about a company that, as he puts it, "sells sunlight from space. You open their app, and wherever you are (at night and on a clear evening, I presume) they project sunlight down from a satellite. Fine. Of course you could see how you might drive a neighbor insane. Or what a nifty burglar alarm it would be. Or now you would never have to drive at night, I guess." I take McNeil's word for these things. It's good enough for me! Finally, after watching HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK due to a 45-year-old recommendation of mine he found while cleaning out his attic, McNeil chose, seemingly at random, a movie from the "blog's" Big List of Movies. Now, I couldn't vouch for it, as I haven't seen it, except for the opening scene. It was one that came to us through a memorable description ("click" here) by noted musician Kelly Hogan, and the name of that movie was SOMEONE I TOUCHED. Summarized McNeil: "Everyone got syphilis but found out about how love works I think."

Ghosts Are Dancing In Space

"Eugenia smiled, her eyes sparkling, as if a small butterfly with golden wings and diamond eyes were flying around inside her head..." That's my kind of writing! It's from POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRAS CUBAS, by Machado de Assis, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. I have no other place to note it, so I note it here. As long as I'm here, I could tell you about a little email exchange that McNeil and I had recently. I told McNeil about BLESSED EVENT, a movie from 1932, which, I noticed while watching it recently, contains a passing allusion to television. A character ponders whether Dick Powell's sex appeal will translate to television, and another character makes a joke, which I paraphrase here: "Sex over the televison? It'll never catch on!" And I was filled with astonishment, as I often am, for no good reason. I was astonished, specifically, that the audience for BLESSED EVENT in 1932 would have been expected to know what television was. Well, right away, McNeil found a wikipedia page for a 1932 televison series called THE TELEVISION GHOST, which was just a guy dressed as a ghost for 15 minutes a week, telling you a story about how he got murdered. It seems to be legit, and of course I trust McNeil, but I could find scant secondary sources supporting its existence. When I checked the New York Times archives for "Television Ghost," I found that the august institution never saw fit to report on it. The combo of words did bring up articles with interesting headlines from the appropriate time period: WIZARD SCIENCE IS ANNIHILATING SPACE (that one had the subhead "Airplane, Televisor, and Radiophone are Signs of Wonders Yet to Come") and HOW TO EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE? SCIENCE IN A QUANDARY and RADIO IMAGES AND 'GHOSTS' ARE DANCING IN SPACE. When I looked up the broadcaster of THE TELEVISION GHOST (the station W2XAB) I did find reviews for some of their contemporaneous programming, such as when Mayor Jimmy Walker (pictured, above) literally (I think) lifted a curtain from the "sensitive photoelectric cells, or radio 'eyes,'" to reveal George Gershwin playing the piano, among other entertainments. Anyway, then McNeil sent me an article about a machine they have over there in China that heats itself up to ten times hotter than the sun. What could go wrong? The next day or so, McNeil and I ended up in a lenghty, discursive disagreement (?) about Bogart and Bacall's house keys, and what hidden meaning we could draw from a photo we saw of them. When asked whether it was our most pointless discussion to date, McNeil announced his intention to "crunch the numbers" on that.

Sparkle

Madcap, dizzying whirlwind of a day, by which I mean I received an email from McNeil, who inquired therein, "Did you once have an idea that put Shakespeare and Bob Hope on an island? Does that ring a bell?" It did not ring a bell! In fact, I had no idea what McNeil was talking about, and replied as much. McNeil responded: "I think they were on an island talking about each other's plays/films. I remember you sent it to me - this is when we were unemployed - and I can't remember what I suggested...putting them on separate islands? But that doesn't make any sense." Nor did it make sense to me, the recipient of the email and supposed author of this demented notion. I asked, searching my mind and finding nothing, was it a play? Were Bob Hope and Shakespeare in heaven? McNeil replied, "I'm pretty sure it was a short story and they were trying to make each other's stuff 'better'. Hahaha. That sounds funny now that I'm all jacked up on caffeine." When I again insisted I had never written such a thing, McNeil agreed that perhaps I had not. I began to think he was gaslighting me! "I could have dreamed it," he wrote. But he couldn't leave it there. He tracked down emails from a long-defunct account of mine, and produced documentary evidence that in 2005, I declared that he and I should watch every Bob Hope movie and read every Shakespeare play and have phone conversations about the process, which we would transcribe and publish. I think I was trying to invent the podcast, though I believe the podcast had, without my knowledge, already been invented at the time. Anyway, it depressed me to hear how little my ideas have changed... I have a column running right NOW for which I just talk into a digital recorder and transcribe my own words. When I noted as much with some chagrin, McNeil wrote back, "A diamond will always sparkle!!!!" with the four encouraging exclamation points you see before you. In actual fact, as it turned out, it was MCNEIL who wrote, "I've got it!" He then described, in that 2005 exchange, an elaborate framing device for an epistolary novel in which we both crash-landed in the South Pacific on adjacent islands, too treacherous to travel between, but with currents that made it possible for us to write each other messages in bottles about Shakespeare and Bob Hope. Thus was one mystery solved, while other mysteries, perhaps, presented themselves.

McNeilileaks

You know I don't "blog" anymore unless it's firmly in the national interest, such as what I call "McNeilileaks," in which I reveal the private contents of my friend McNeil's emails without his permission. So I emailed McNeil about my surefire scheme to make a fortune by crossbreeding an apple with a lemon, producing a sweet lemon! Just think how much easier it would be to make lemonade, among other uses for this versatile fruit of my creation. McNeil shut me down succinctly! "What you will end up with is a sour apple - which already exists. What you might end up with is a lemon-sized sweet fruit, like a tangerine, which already exists." Ouch! The truth hurt. But remember, this is the same McNeil who wanted to steal people's skeletons and make diamonds out of them.

Why Music Boxes Are Creepy

A strangely frequent reason that people visit this "blog" is to search for an answer to that (apparently) eternal question "Why Are Music Boxes Creepy?" I feel bad - guilt-ridden, truthfully - because that old "post" to which they are so often directed (you'd be surprised how many times a day people want to know why music boxes are creepy) is misleading. Some kid had written in to me with the idea that "Maybe music boxes are creepy because they are a purposeless vestige of Europe's aristo-centric period." And I quoted him in that "post" much too approvingly. Of course that's NOT why music boxes are creepy. Nor is this kid's highfalutin statement true in almost any way. Music boxes, for example, aren't any more "purposeless" than anything else. I gave that kid too much of a pass! I was trying to be nice. But now, all these years later, sad people who want to know why music boxes are creepy look to me for answers (several times a day, bewilderingly) and get nothing! And that kid is six years older now, so I suppose he can handle the truth that his big theories are full of beans. People aren't watching a movie about a dark house where a music box starts to play in the dead of night and the hair rises on their arms because they are suddenly reminded of "Europe's aristo-centric period"! Sorry to be so harsh! But you, theorizing kid, are probably at least 28, I'm going to guess, whoever you were, a full-grown adult by now who can accept the facts! I suppose music boxes are creepy because they are light and tinkly, for one thing. Scary noises in literature often start out soft... the rats scratching in Lovecraft, the beating of the telltale heart in Poe ("such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton")... soft music is scary at night... whistling, like in M or THE STEPFATHER... some awful killer is always humming softy to himself as he sharpens his instruments... also, music boxes are meant to be activated by the human hand (might be thought of, in fact, as an "alarm" of sorts... did people place diamonds and gold in them for this reason? Someone else may feel free to research the matter), so if you suddenly hear one in the middle of the night, when everyone is supposed to be asleep, something is wrong... like the record player and the wind-up toys and such in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND... music is a human endeavor, and maybe the mechanism IS an unwelcome (creepy?) reminder that our works can go on without us. And of course the kid from the old "post" WAS sort of onto something... in that a music box is a form of entertainment that a ghost might find comforting. Like, "I remember these!" Yes, just the sort of sentimental object to which a poor dead ghost might be attracted... a private, lonely entertainment even in life... so personal, maybe you shouldn't be overhearing it... a box to receive a particular soul... like a coffin... and yes, it IS a voice from the past, with a limited vocabulary. It can play only one thing... over and over... like a ghost... like the obsessive thoughts of a madman... like me... like that dude in MOBY-DICK... and slowing down, little by little... I was having drinks with Lee Durkee and he mentioned how music boxes are always slowing down... Sometimes they wind down unresolved, like life. There's nothing tenser in music than the "suspended fourth"... that's where the power of the music box's creepy cousin the jack-in-the-box comes in... the relationship between suspended chords and suspense. Bach could really leave you hanging, except he always had the luxury of resolving, except when played on a music box, I guess. Lee Durkee also contended that musical selections have something to do with it. "Music boxes don't play 'Turkey in the Straw,'" he said, emphasizing the jauntiness of that hoedown. I'll have to think about that. Is it true? And in any case I suspect "Turkey in the Straw" could be creepy enough on the right music box... Is the similarly bouncy "Pop Goes the Weasel" creepy just because we've heard it on so many dilapidated jack-in-the-boxes? Or is it the disturbing foreknowledge that the weasel is bound to "pop"?... Melodies are messages... pianos play by themselves in movies... half-forgotten snatches... they're trying to tell you something... they can't quite tell it to you straight... what's creepier than an oracle? And when you open a music box, a little ballerina figurine or such often begins to twirl stiffly... we think at once of what Freud said about dolls in his essay on "The Uncanny," but I think that book is in Dr. Theresa's office at the other end of the house and I don't feel like getting up. In conclusion, I apologize to all the people who have read that lazy and erroneous previous "blog" "post" lo these many years. My intellectual cowardice is beyond appalling! Another possible answer is: music boxes aren't creepy. (Illustration: Vera Farmiga looking at a creepy music box in a scary ghost movie we went to see with Chris Offutt. I saw Vera Farmiga checking into my hotel last time I was in Burbank! Sorry I forgot to tell you. I pestered her with fawning and she was real nice about it. She was wearing a stylish hat!) PS One Kris Simmons, whom I know via twitter, has chimed in to say, ha ha! - wait, is that even a pun? Do music boxes "chime"? - "I think it's because they sound out of tune." And she's onto something I hadn't considered! What could be more ghostly than these rusty gears and teeth and coils and knobby spools... still striving, but bent and warped by senescence? I ask you! Remember Edmund Spenser's ghosts with iron teeth... An out-of-tune music box is an echo, touchingly faded and changed... like a ghost... or a reflection... am I too suggestible? But this picture of Ms. Farmiga hints at a mirror in the lid... wasn't that common in music boxes? And aren't mirrors doorways into other worlds...? We just did a whole ADVENTURE TIME episode about that! Do I need to get all GOLDEN BOUGH on you...? So music boxes have little versions of ourselves inside... or else who's looking at what in that little mirror when the music box is playing by itself...? Okay! I'll keep adding more reasons music boxes are creepy. Send your suggestions to CREEPY MUSIC BOX c/o "Writer" Oxford, MS 38655. If you don't think music boxes are creepy be sure to include NOT CREEPY MUSIC BOX on your postcard.

McNeilileaks

Don't even pretend! I know you want to know what McNeil dreamed the other night. And luckily he emailed me about it. I'm going to cut-and-paste his email right here in our latest installment of... McNeilileaks: "Last night I had a dream that my grandfather (long dead) ordered a pack of playing cards that featured Dean Martin images (also long dead) instead of the regular pattern of 7 diamonds, for example. You know the type. My grandfather was a fan of Dino as well. Anyway, when the cards came the images were 52 frames of the same scene from unknown (to us) public domain movie with Dean Martin in a long beard, thick mustache, and black hat...standing outside a house looking straight out of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. 52 images with a slightly different turn of the head of a barely recognizable Dino. A nightmare."

HIDE JEWELS IN SANDWICHES

Hey! I was researching my cigarette lighter book when I came across an old newspaper article about "44 unset diamonds concealed in a cigar lighter." I don't think I'll use it - my book is about cigarette lighters, not cigar lighters! - but there it is, just for you. The article bore the irresistible headline "HIDE JEWELS IN SANDWICHES" and began, "Sandwiches spread with gold pieces or diamonds and eggs spiced with unset gems have been successfully used by international smugglers." It also contained this choice sentence: "While the officials were vainly searching his baggage, they were struck by the fact that he was ostentatiously but rather nervously devoting himself to a huge sandwich."

Urruhh!

Well, let's see. Errol Flynn has stolen some diamonds and now he is on a ship with a hookworm expert named Dr. Gerrit H. Koets who looks "like a blond, amiable orangutan in a mink coat." Dr. Koets "fancie[s] himself a Lothario without equal" and likes to stand on deck baring his "entire torso" which is "covered with dense blond hair... Perhaps obeying some atavistic impulse, he started pounding his enormous chest with his hairy fists. He hollered, 'Gorillas do this before they mate! Urruhh!'" Oh yeah, and "His huge flabby belly undulated uneasily with each breath." We really get to know a lot about the body of Dr. Gerrit H. Koets, hookworm expert. But that's not the important part! See, what I'm trying to tell you is that Dr. Koets wears "big owl-like glasses," which makes MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS by Errol Flynn a book with an owl in it, like every other book, because every book has an owl in it and I'm the guy who tells you every time he reads a book with an owl in it, which is every time I read a book, because it always has an owl in it. Owl in it.

Jerry in the Jeans With Chicken

Turns out Kent Osborne isn't the only guy who likes to eat chicken. He just happens to like it the most! But John Currence was in Louisville, Kentucky, last night, eating what he says was some great fried chicken at a place called Franco's under a photograph of another satisfied customer... Jerry Lewis! John sent me this photo of the photo. Please "click" here to read about the time I ate a hot dog under a photo of Jerry Lewis. And please sing the title of this "post" to the tune of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (see also).

Night Sauce

Hey remember when my dad said that a person who "eats chicken and crabs will eat anything"? Anthony Bourdain agrees with him, at least about chickens. "Chickens are dirty." That's just about the nicest thing Anthony Bourdain says about chickens in KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL. And don't forget Werner Herzog, who accused chickens of "bottomless stupidity... fiendish stupidity" and a number of worse and grosser things, horrific things. I like KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL because Bourdain introduces us to people like "the doomed-looking night saucier." I'm not sure we'll get any more of him than that description, but as Mercutio said, "'Tis enough, 'twill serve." Is that what he said? I can't leave you without mentioning Kent Osborne... because Kent LOVES chicken! Ha ha what a country. Just the other day Kent was passing by what used to be the Diamond Club, where he tended bar in his youth. Ward McCarthy and I went there once and we were like, "What is up with these crazy kids." We said it with a period, not a question mark. That was 20 years ago, I guess, but our hearts had already withered. Well, Kent discovered that somebody has turned the once-hip Diamond Club into a "Buffalo Wild Wings" establishment, and I can't say Kent seemed sad about it.

Diamond Jerks

When I couldn't sleep at 4AM I got up and decided to see what kind of crazy mix-ups they were getting into on the Gem Shopping Network. This dude was barely trying to sell gems! He was showing vacation photos. It went on a while. He took pictures of everything! Like the street in front of his hotel, for example. Just the street, lying there being a street. Then he tried to sell some opal rings, but his heart wasn't in it. So he showed another picture. WARNING! WARNING! I am about to tell you something awful, so don't read it if you are feeling squeamish, or are squeamish by nature. It is similar to the last time I gave you a warning. This dude suddenly showed his vacation photo of SOME PEOPLE BARBECUING A DOG. I'm sorry. Now, perhaps you live somewhere where it is a regular matter to barbecue a dog, and I'm not putting forth any judgement. So be it! But I did not expect to see it on the Gem Shopping Network at 4 in the morning. I fumbled for the remote - too late! too late! - and switched over to a movie where Keanu Reeves was being a World War II soldier and he had these lines of dialogue: "I don't want to sell chocolates anymore... in the war, I had time to think." So I switched back to see what this guy on the Gem Shopping Network might possibly do next. He was reading gem quotations he had printed out. Slow night on the Gem Shopping Network! One was (this may not be exact), "You can learn to grade diamonds in an afternoon, but it can take you 25 years to learn to grade a sapphire." This sapphire expert was really sticking it to those hoity-toity diamond jerks.

Product of Belgium

Last night we dropped by the home of John Currence and Bess Reed-Currence and John whipped up a delicious dinner on the spot. He can do that! Afterward, as we sat around talking, John magically produced a Biscoff. That's right: THE GREATEST COOKIE EVER SERVED ON AN AIRPLANE. When he saw how my little eyes lit up and heard my rhapsodic odes to the Biscoff, John said, mysteriously, "Then I have something you're going to love." And he did! Friends, he had a jar of something called BISCOFF SPREAD. It had the appearance and consistency of peanut butter, but PEANUT BUTTER IT WAS NOT. It was as if someone had smashed together thousands of Biscoffs into a single tablespoon of creamy goodness, the way Superman used to squeeze a lump of coal until it became a diamond. (See also.) And bear in mind, dear reader, the Biscoff is no lump of coal. The Biscoff is THE GREATEST COOKIE EVER SERVED ON AN AIRPLANE. And yet my analogy stands and the Biscoff is to Biscoff Spread as the lump of coal is to the diamond. So you can imagine. I checked the ingredients of the Biscoff Spread and I am not kidding, here is the primary ingredient listed: "Biscoffs, 57%." Also on the label: "PRODUCT OF BELGIUM." And that is all I remember. Perversely we spread the Biscoff Spread on the Biscoffs themselves, which I think should have caused the universe to fold up, but we're still here, I guess. (Image from the Silver Age Comics "Blog," natch.)

Now I Know Everything About Kings

This book says that Edward IV "possessed a toothpick made of gold, garnished with a diamond, a ruby and a pearl."

Confused but Solemn

I have been meaning to clear this up! While Peter Ackroyd's statement that "he remained a staunch royalist for the rest of his life" seems to suggest that Samuel Johnson believed Queen Anne's touch when he was three years old cured him of scrofula, Boswell says otherwise: "The touch, however, was without any effect." There's also this detail, which I like: "Being asked if he could remember Queen Anne, 'He had (he said) a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood.'"

"Blog"trospective 10: Gelatin

So I just read three books with Jell-O in them: so what? It would be dumb to make a "blog"trospective called "Books with Jell-O in Them" just because our big, lush "blog"trospective about books with owls in them is so enormously popular and all anyone ever talks about ever all the time. Once I read three books in a row with Pernod in them, and that went nowhere. But by opening up the field a little, there may be enough material here for a true "blog"trospective worthy of ranking alongside the rest of them, which nobody cares about. For example, my WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, UNABRIDGED, SECOND EDITION from 1974 lists "jellies made with gelatine" (they add the extra e 'cuz they're fancy!) as the second-greatest definition of "gelatin." So anyway, enjoy this "blog"trospective about gelatin and shut up. agarita bush; fruits of make jelly---attracts bigfoot---bags of arrive---Canadian sitcom inspires forum on---Castuera, Ako; talking about jellyfish with---certainty of the jelly factory, the---color of rubies in the setting sun, the---congealing veins, my---contributes to Dr. Theresa's love of toast---cow's blood as---cruddy bloud---Currence, John, takes a culinary blowtorch to some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches---dandy in aspic, a---drinking wine from Jell-O glasses---elves made of---EnerGel---enough for 10,000 pieces of toast---fails to redeem book---Farmer's Daughter Salty Dog Marmalade---fig preserves---freed from---ham hock and red pepper jelly on toast---Hope, Bob; rewards mistress with the gift of jam---in GIDGET---in Martha Washington cake---in PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT---in two Philip Roth novels---in works of Lucia Berlin---jam on pancakes---jellied ginger ale cubes---jellyfish in the works of Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann---jelly-like substances in the works of Osamu Dazai and Walt Whitman---Kerouac uses "jello" as a verb---Lord Grimthorpe's last words invoke---Lucky Charms marshmallows contain gelatin made with pork---Martin, Dean; relationship of song stylings to---McNeil receives a free lemon jelly donut---Mickey Mouse stares at his reflection in some Jell-O---Mrs. Abington's better than Mrs. Thrale's---oils up your joints---picking up Jell-O cubes with fingers---plovers' eggs set like large opals in aspic jelly---poisoned---possibly immortal jellyfish---proponent of aspic given a diamond by the Tsar---puts one in mind of a character name from ANIMAL HOUSE---quivering in a spoon---red pepper jelly---robot standing in aspic---salamander eggs resemble---some varieties of might possibly on occasion be classified as "sweetmeats"---SpongeBob gets jelly from jellyfish---tartness of---tearful separation from---terrible flying bags of---used as a metaphor by George Kennedy---water the color of "lime jello"---Welles, Orson; has eyes like side-orders of---woman made of, a.

Winking Mannequins of Yore

Hey there used to be a sitcom called THAT GIRL and all my life I have been pronouncing the title like this: "THAT girl," but last night I heard the recorded voice of Marlo Thomas, the star of THAT GIRL, in an interstitial piece on TCM and she said it like this: "that GIRL," and it was like my whole life had been a sham. And that was all I was going to tell you today. Except that to my recollection she flew a kite with her own picture on it in the opening credits of THAT GIRL, which seems like a weird thing to do. And that was all I was going to tell you today. But when I looked for a photo to illustrate this "post" I found this image (above) of Marlo Thomas as "THAT GIRL" biting her glove and my brain asked me wasn't that the scene from the opening credits where she looks at a mannequin in a store window and it winks at her? So even though I was going to base this whole "post" on my feeble memory that everyone loves so much I went ahead and looked on the "youtube" and found the opening credits and YES she does fly a kite with her own picture on it and YES a department store mannequin is winking at her only GET THIS. She sees HERSELF in place of the department store mannequin. SHE SEES HERSELF AS A DEPARTMENT STORE MANNEQUIN. And that was all I was going to tell you today. But then I remembered that my friend Ward sent me the shabby, awkward opening to THE NEW ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW the other day, struck and depressed as he was by it. "Andy's expression looks like he's already given up" on the show - IN THE OPENING CREDITS! - noted Ward in the accompanying email. "Click" here to confirm. I would only add that the theme song sounds sort of like the regular ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW theme song played backwards, some sort of failed network attempt at mass brainwashing, probably. Oh wait and I also wanted to tell you that the THAT GIRL theme song starts out like this: "Diamonds, daisies, snowflakes, THAT GIRL. Chestnuts, rainbows, springtime, it's [is? - ed.] THAT GIRL!"

Cold Light of Morning

In the cold light of morning I feel sort of bad about all the tweets I tweeted about Clint Eastwood's performance last night, cracking dirty jokes as he did to an imaginary President Obama represented by an empty chair. But it really was unexpected, and so striking and fascinating as it occurred, and I don't think it's going too far to compare it to something Andy Kaufman would have done back before we were all in on the joke, a tough era and sensation to recall. The only tweet I still like is one I tweeted after Mitt Romney, during his acceptance speech, said, "God bless Neil Armstrong" and I tweeted, "God bless Neil Armstrong... he's sitting right here in this chair." Get it? Because Neil Armstrong is dead. Yeah. Nor do I wish to imply that "Hot Stuff the Little Devil" was the only literary subject discussed by Megan Abbott and myself during our recent summit. We also talked about Richie Rich. I described Richie Rich's father as "epicene." Megan recalled how she used to draw pictures of faucets encrusted with diamonds, inspired by the palatial bathrooms of Richie Rich and the similarly opulent digs in the Shirley Temple movies she enjoyed as a child. Egged on and abetted by Dr. Theresa, she applied some of the Freudian technique she loves so much to uncover exactly when and how my youthful appreciation of the excessive lifestyle of Richie Rich turned to loathing and horror. It took up much of our lunch at Ajax. In the end there were certain things I could not say aloud, so I wrote them on a piece of paper, which Dr. Theresa and Megan Abbott passed back and forth for analysis.

McNeil Has Been Reading

McNeil's been reading the "internet" again. I guess he read that after death "for $3,000.00 your body can be cremated and then turned into a diamond (1/4 karat)." And now he wants us to "rob graves and make diamonds out of the bones." It's another one of his crazy schemes!

To Do

On the agenda for today: walk down to Square Books, check the index of Diane Keaton's new autobiography for Jerry Lewis references. Ah, it's a full life. PS My friend from "She Blogged By Night" has been on a Neil Diamond kick lately, and is thus surrounded by scholarly tomes about Neil Diamond. As a favor, she has checked the indices of her Neil Diamond books for Jerry Lewis references and sadly reports that there are none. I find this highly suspicious! After all, both Neil Diamond and Jerry Lewis starred in remakes of THE JAZZ SINGER. And yes, in 11th grade I took a date to the Neil Diamond remake of THE JAZZ SINGER. Why must you torment me with these irrelevant questions about my personal life? If you want to see a movie starring Sir Laurence Olivier, Lucille Ball's daughter, and Neil Diamond, I guess this is probably the movie for you. I'm sorry. So, listen! One of my friend's Neil Diamond books has Danny Thomas (also the star of a JAZZ SINGER remake) in the index, but not Jerry Lewis. Danny Thomas but not Jerry Lewis! Highly suspicious.