Elvis in the Mariana Trench

Following McNeil's example, I watched WILD IN THE COUNTRY. It's one of Elvis's more somber and serious roles, a fact which my subsequent email to McNeil does not convey: "As you know, it begins with Elvis fighting and running. He runs through a bunch of chickens. He runs through a bunch of sheep. He runs into the woods, where we see a symbolic raccoon running and then a symbolic bear cub running. I thought he should run through a lot more animals. He should run through a bunch of monkeys! He should run through some dinosaurs! He should never stop running with and through and alongside all kinds of animals!" McNeil's eventual response was, "Footage of Elvis running through the Mariana Trench. That's the best I can do. I'm working outside. I don't know how those old-school guys did it." Later, I replied, "I have noted that in addition to Elvis singing a song about banana peels, Tuesday Weld uses a perfume made with banana oil. She and Elvis have a conversation about it." And that's a great transition. Thanks, me! Because as I was leafing through SWEET BANANAS to pick out choice bits for my upcoming reading, I noticed that there is an owl in it. The same owl in it at least twice! An owl I didn't even remember putting there. An owl I didn't notice even when I was writing about it. I guess I just can't help myself. Let's end things on a gloomy note because that's how life is and you need to face the facts. McNeil asked if I had ever "blogged" about Uncle Mort's burning down. The answer is no, because I had no idea that Uncle Mort's burned down. In fact, the last time I recommended Uncle Mort's as the number one spot near Jasper, Alabama, for country ham and eggs, it had already burned down!

Artist's Statement

Hey! Tomorrow is the big gallery show opening in Alhambra, California, so check it out! I think I forgot to mention it's ADVENTURE TIME and FIONNA AND CAKE themed, featuring works by more than 50 artists associated with those shows. My piece is called “100 Adventure Time Characters from Memory, Made with Covid.” I call it that because of all the Covid I had when I drew it with magic markers in a sketch pad that Dr. Theresa bought to cheer me up. Now, I was afraid maybe I had shortchanged the lucky buyer, if any, because, despite the ambitious title I had prematurely scrawled on the paper, I didn’t count the characters as I was drawing them, and then, after I had drawn them, I found them impossible to count. Until! Some weeks later, I struck upon the notion of identifying them all by name. Somehow, and I know how, but I’m too tired to tell you, a list of names was a much easier thing for me to count. So I’m happy to reveal that I overachieved, at least quantitatively: there are 106 Adventure Time characters in my drawing. A couple of them were driving me nuts because I couldn’t figure out, once I had recovered from my feverish agitation and actually examined what I had drawn for the first time, who the hell they were supposed to be. I worried maybe I had made some of them up in a delirium. But I thought about it all night and decided that one was a Gumball Guardian (I had forgotten they have noses) and one was the King of Ooo (I had forgotten a couple of his identifying marks, plus I had him in Princess Bubblegum’s crown, which, in my defense, he did wear for a while). Adam said I should sponsor a contest and see if anyone could guess them all. But who was a guy who was good at guessing? Oedipus? Well, he was until he wasn’t. Anyway, not even Oedipus at the height of his guessing powers could have figured some of my drawings out (Pen, for example, thought Chips and Ice Cream were Hot Dog Knights), so I’m going to tell you who I drew, in (once you see the "art") not a really helpful order: Cinnamon Bun, Hunson Abadeer, The Bear Who Liked Finn, Starchy, Tree Trunks’s Alien Husband, Little Dude, One of the Villagers from “The Visitor,” Shoko, Mr. Cupcake, Billy, Abracadaniel, Party Pat, The Comet, The Squirrel from “Up a Tree,” The Cosmic Owl, Bartram, Gridface Princess, Martin, Ice King, Y5, Banana Guard, Patience St. Pym, Flame King, The White Lion Who Became the Vampire King, Abraham Lincoln, Jermaine, Chips, Ice Cream, Lemongrab, Lady Rainicorn, Gumball Guardian, Shelby and his little brother Kent, Big Destiny, Marshmallow Kid, Blank-Eyed Girl, Peppermint Butler, Breezy, Scorcher, Simon, Original Gunter, Ice Thing, Ricardio, Mannish Man, Wildberry Princess, The Squirrel Who Hates Jake, Glob, Grod, Grob (we can assume that Gob is behind them, but I can’t in good conscience count that) Fionna, Mr. Pig, Shermy, Huntress Wizard, Snail, Sleeping Old Man (Prismo’s Physical Form), Tiffany, Princess Cookie, Finn, Joshua, Choose Goose, Toast Princess, Cherry Cream Soda, Flambeau, The Empress, Slime Princess, The Crabbit, Farmworld Finn, Betty, Toronto, Wooby Woo, Dream Warrior, Lumpy Space Princess, Lumpy Space Prince, Tree Trunks, Uncle Gumbald, An Ant, Crunchy, Glass Boy, Magic Man, Leaf Man, Banana Man, King of Ooo, TV, Wyatt, Bubble, BMO, Skeleton (from the Ble offices? Or maybe that’s a guy from the Deadworlds), Jake, Gunter (classic penguin version), Embryo Princess, Rattleballs, Mr. Fox, The Music Hole, Lemonhope, Prismo, Hot Dog Princess, Dream Bird Woman, Owl from “Up a Tree,” Loafy, James Baxter the Horse, Gingerbread Muto, Minerva, Bufo, Morty Rogers, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum. In retrospect, perhaps my biggest mistake was thinking until very recently (today!) that The Empress had one eye in the middle of her forehead like a Cyclops (though I knew better at one point). I could lie and tell you I was trying to draw Blaine from “Wizard City,” but I would only be hurting myself.

Famous Cats of Mississippi

I am sure you will recall 2013 as the year that Pendleton Ward made our cat Big Boy (formerly known as Sad Face) famous in Japan. ("Click" here to assess the accuracy of my dubious statement. Big Boy is still doing fine, by the way. Thanks for asking!) Well, great news! We have a new feral kitten. Ace Atkins found her under City Grocery Bar. And thanks to my award-ineligible interview series ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, part 5 of which is AVAILABLE NOW, you can see a photo of that kitten, who has been named Teeny Houdini for reasons that I plan to put into one of a series of unpublished novels. If you "click" here you can get a free peek at Teeny Houdini, but the interview is behind a paywall, so you will have to pay good money (well spent!) to find out more about how Ace rescued her from under City Grocery. (I don't know if that's true. I think you've already learned everything. But! If you don't subscribe, how will you know about all of Ace's adventures on the set of the Pauly Shore movie JURY DUTY?) Ace took the kitten in to get her shots and so on, and when Dr. Theresa picked her up, the team behind the counter told her, as soon as they stopped quaking in mortal fear, "This cat will never be a sweet cat you can play with. She's a wild animal! This is a wild animal you're dealing with. You're in for a terrible surprise. I don't think you understand. This is a wild animal. Wild animal!" And then the guy carried her out to the car in the carrier, holding it way in front of himself like it had that thing in it that ate the cow (?) at the beginning of JURASSIC PARK. Well, Teeny Houdini is already as sweet as pie, so go to hell.

Sitting in a Big Owl

Well, I ordered and received a book called THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS, of course. See, Kitty Mrosovsky often mentioned this guy Jean Seznec in her "Notes to the Translation" of THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY. I don't think it's the same book of his she was talking about, though. Or maybe it is. All I know is that the cover seemed to show a king and a queen sitting in a big owl. Like Pee Wee and Simone in their dinosaur! A big owl head, I should say, not like the big owl at that boy's camp for troubled billionaires. "Hmm!" I thought. "I wonder if this book has an owl in it!" Because I wasn't sure that thing was an owl. You got this queen and king in their owl head, and over here there's some devils poking a guy in the neck with a pitchfork, and down here I thought I saw a three-headed lion (with dragon scales?), but once I checked the fine print on the back cover and saw that the illustraion represented Pluto and Prosperina, it all came together, and I was like, I guess that three-headed thing is Cerberus. On either side of old Cerberus, you got a lady in a hennin playing a musical instrument. This one doesn't look too happy about it. This other one doesn't seem to mind. I believe she's gone and got herself a many-stringed instrument capable of all modes, such as Plato (not Pluto) so despised - I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a viola da gamba. Not to be confused with what we know as an everyday viola, PLEASE! Get real. But none of this rigorous analysis tells me if that's an owl they're sitting around in, or if there's an owl anywhere in the book. I thought I could cheat and check the index for Minerva. She always has an owl hanging around! What a nut! But I don't know, there are so many entries for Minerva, and I'm so tired.

The Ten Greatest Moments of 2015

10. This cat staring at this statue head. 9. The pitcher that didn't get fixed. 8. I forced a guy to make his first chicken Alfredo pizza. 7. Lawrence Welk's sexy daughter-in-law. 6. Burt Reynolds tattoo. 5. Mice sleeping under the snow. 4. Elaine Stritch in a western. 3. The dog that could hop on its hind legs with rhythmic precision. 2. Just now, while typing up this list, I dropped an olive pit on the floor and had to crawl around on my hands and knees to find it. 1. And now I just dropped a piece of cantaloupe and caught it between my knees before it hit the floor!

Hilarity, Texas

Dr. Theresa and I watched PARIS, TEXAS last night. Dr. T said that Harry Dean Stanton made her think of Buster Keaton, and I was already thinking of the Laurel and Hardy movie BLOCKHEADS (I think that's the one), where Stan doesn't know the war is over and Ollie has to reintroduce him to civilization. And there were obvious parallels to Chaplin, especially THE KID. Harry Dean does lots of pantomime, like when he's learning to walk like a "rich father" and the subsequent scene where he breaks the ice with his estranged son by skipping and walking backward. They even waddle into the sunset together Chaplin style at the end of that sequence. Yet PARIS, TEXAS is a pretty somber movie! So I started to enjoy making all these comedy connections. Like, Dean Stockwell and Harry Dean Stanton have a scene high up on a billboard featuring a beautiful woman, just like Dean and Jerry at the beginning of ARTISTS AND MODELS. That may be stretching it. And there's a scene with the dinosaur from PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, though that's just a coincidence because PARIS, TEXAS came out first. Not by much! I like to think they were filming at the same time. What a party that would have been. Ah, it's all just a big coincidence. In fact, by the end of the movie I had started getting depressed, like, a million people have probably already thought of this. I'm not even going to google it. I had recorded the movie from TCM, so after it was over, I watched the intro. Dr. Theresa had better things to do. The actor Jason Lee had chosen PARIS, TEXAS in his role as "guest programmer." And he told Robert Osborne that it reminded him of Chaplin! So I was like, I'm not even going to "blog" about this. And then I did.

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again to "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up," your only place on the "internet" for all the biggest scoops on the entertainment show business stars of tomorrow. THIS JUST IN! Your eyes do not deceive you. That's MY BROTHER with STEVE LAWRENCE. If you don't know who STEVE LAWRENCE is, you're even worse than we thought. And frankly we never thought much of you. As WILL FRIEDWALD says in his BIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO THE GREAT JAZZ AND POP SINGERS, aw, there's six pages of double columns here, and the print is so tiny, never mind. Speaking of the fine crooners of this proud nation, BILL BOYLE set twitter ablaze yesterday when he stumbled across an LP by MATT DENNIS at THE END OF ALL MUSIC. Soon everyone on twitter was joining in the hot new "MATT DENNIS" kick. No less than MEGAN ABBOTT weighed in with her fave MATT DENNIS album cover:

Not only can THIS DENNIS KID swing, he's written quite a few hit numbers! We predict he'll go far.

BILL BOYLE dug up a clip that supports our astonishing claim. You'd be a fool not to "click" it. Here's the LP that got BILL so worked up, and we couldn't help but note that it is the cheery antithesis of a devastating PORTER WAGONER album cover. Talk about "flip sides"! The world is a strange place, as your friends at "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up" have noticed. Sometimes you're MATT DENNIS and sometimes you're PORTER WAGONER and there's nothing you can do about it.

Say! Your intrepid glittery-eyed troupers here at "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up" must have crooners on the brain!

Because we just remembered that we forgot to ever remember to tell you that the bar at the Lamar Lounge once graced EDDIE FISHER'S house! It's even crowned with a big, proprietary "EF"! But nothing last forever, folks. That's just the way it is. Take DINOSAURS! Who but noted author MARY MILLER came back from a recent excursion to IDAHO with a bag of genuine dinosaur poop from a souvenir shop?

And who was the recipient of this notable benefaction? None other than your humble purveyor of "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up." Our favorite part of the inscription? Her insistence that we "enjoy." That's all the "All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up" we have time for today. Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars"! And in the words of MARY MILLER, "ENJOY!"

McNeil All Hepped Up

McNeil is all hepped up about Brain Boy. How do I know? I received this message from him: "Oh boy!!! I'm all hepped up about Brain Boy... According to Wikipedia 'Brain Boy' was just his nickname (hahaha..as if his parents would actually name him that) and he never had any kind of costume - though he looks straight out of BOTTLE ROCKET." I would only add to McNeil's reflections that Brain Boy got his powers when his father was killed by an electrical tower. That's rough!

Goal Oriented Protagonist

You know, McNeil and I were talking a while back about how nobody talks like Dean Moriarty, at least the way Jack Kerouac portrays him in ON THE ROAD - nobody talks like the characters in ON THE ROAD. But Leslie and I were walking to campus today and we talked about dinosaurs and globes and Nietzsche and Marx and abandoned malls and I suddenly thought, Leslie talks just like Dean Moriarty, she is the only one. Later I confirmed it with Dr. Theresa, who said, of Leslie, "We were talking about dinosaurs too." Leslie came over later and leafed through a Rothko book and started explaining why Rothko was like John Coltrane and then we took her to Snackbar where she said the devil was the "goal-oriented protagonist" of THE EXORCIST. The funny thing is that I ran into Lee Durkee in the library earlier today and he, too, brought up THE EXORCIST. Scary! Anyway, at Snackbar, Leslie ate tripe. Because that's what Leslie does. That's her thing, man. Leslie! We'll miss you. Be careful going back to Iowa City, okay.

John Dee Fan Club Report

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

Bar Gossip

I was sitting at City Grocery Bar waiting for Ace Atkins (and Dr. Theresa, who had nobly decided to "grade papers" BEFORE "having a drink"), listening to three people at the table next to mine debating the relative qualities of gold vs. platinum. Then they talked about their friend who is so rich she displayed dinosaur bones at her wedding reception!

Return to Oatmeal

Phil has sent what I might rightly call a "trove" of "links" relating to oatmeal, a recent subject of conversation. I'll share a few. In an interview with the "blog," Phil - speaking on the topic of oatmeal - confesses to liking "all of it, prestigious to plebian... Pre-marriage, when I didn't care about calories or blood sugar issues," Phil continues, "my favorite was the multi-hued kind with 'dinosaur eggs.'" Dinosaur eggs??? the interviewer exclaimed. Tell us more! he enthused. Phil obliged with this "link" to one consumer's experience with Quaker's special oatmeal in which tiny dinosaurs hatch from eggs with the addition of hot water. Adds Phil in a postscript, "The Quaker Company is strangely quiet on this subject. Nice to see Quisp makes their homepage, though." Phil goes on to lament the absence of the Quangaroo (an old acquaintance of Quisp's) from the Quaker "web" site. (Pictured, the Orange Quangaroo, not to be confused with Le Kangourou. As I recall, my mother - normally an extraordinarily easygoing type when it came to breakfast cereals - held the very idea of Orange Quangaroos in bitter disregard. Speaking of disgust and breakfast, while searching for a representation of the Quangaroo, I came across this image [below] for a cereal I tried once as a child, a cereal that even then it made me sick just to look at. It turned the milk into something that resembled medicine. I hate to "go negative," but I do seem to recall my gag reflex coming into play, forgive my crassness at mentioning such a thing.)

Pantomatic For the People

Sally Timms has spoken. It's almost time for the third annual traditional Christmas panto at the Hideout Bar in Chicago. And once again, I am honored to help out with the script. I was loath to divulge this year's theme, but I see it is already up at the Hideout's "web" site. As you may recall, we have assayed fish and Vikings. Now it is time for dinosaurs. Please prepare yourself for MUTINY ON THE BEAGLE: A DARWINIAN ROMP IN SEARCH OF THE JURASSIC ORIGINS OF CHRISTMAS. Expect some hilarious Fletcher Christian references! Once again, Mekon and man-about-town Jon Langford will star as the "panto dame." I found this picture of him on the Hideout site. Just look how handsome he is! Though the picture may not help much because he will certainly be in drag when you see him. Pantomatic!

Clash of the Titans

I have noticed that famed former automotive tycoon Lee Iacocca's "blog" (in real life! for real! "click" here for confirmation!) has not been updated since March 27, beating Jon Host's record of "blog" inactivity by more than five months. Both men have seemingly noticed that "blogging" is something akin to a worthless pursuit. I have noticed this myself, but I lack their capacity for manly self-control. I plan to check the "blog" of each of these titans every day. I will let you know which one blinks first.