Sleeping and Dreaming of Dreaming and Sleeping

You know, and these are the words you've been longing to hear, I believe I will tell you something about McNeil's dream of Dolores Hope after all. To wit, in McNeil's dream, Dolores Hope was concerned about her napping habits. And that brings up something important for everyone to ponder. It seems to me that McNeil is always dreaming about sleeping and dreaming. To be clear, people in McNeil's dreams themselves sleep and dream. Is that "normal"? I mean, do you dream about sleeping? Do you dream about dreaming? I don't think I do. Do I? I need some reliable statistics. My friend Mevelyn has described the "blog" itself as being like "a dream within a dream," but she was referring to its intentional ourboros-based design as a byzantine labyrinth of frustration and woe. What I'm talking about here, though, is real sleep! Real dreams! Within real sleep! And real dreams! My use of the word "real" bothers me a little, but isn't a dream inside a dream just a dream? That is, as "real" as the dream within which it... aw, screw it. Pardon my bold use of the vernacular! Do I even have evidence to back up my analysis of McNeil's dream content? You bet I don't! I tried corroboration for a few seconds, but do you know how many hundreds of thousands of times the word "McNeil" appears on this "blog"? It stymies both research and sanity. All I can offer is the anecdotal scrap that in December of 2021, McNeil dreamed about Carol Channing having a dream. Are you happy now? Can I get on with my life? Ace and I are supposed to walk around the neighborhood when he finishes his cereal. Do you know how long it takes Ace to finish his cereal? It's like Waiting for Godot around here. One day I want to see this magical cereal bowl that never empties.

Single Digits

By now you must be aware of how sullen my sister and I are when it comes to the Oscars. More accurately, at this stage of our lives, we just don't care. I say "at this stage" even though she is fourteen years younger than me. I guess she just got jaded at a much quicker rate! That is really none of my business. Anyway, for whatever reason, we have become like zombies or ghosts, helplessly replaying the actions we once undertook with (though it is impossible to recall it) enthusiasm (?). By which I mean that we still try to beat each other at guessing the Oscar winners. An empty endeavor! This year, we both achieved, if you can call it that, single digits as far as correct guesses went. But I am honor-bound to report that my sister's single digit was higher than mine. And I'll tell you why. She kept guessing FRANKENSTEIN. Every time she guessed it I would laugh and mock her with harsh sarcasm... no! I would never do that to my sister. It was mild sarcasm at most. A delicate hint of sarcasm! Almost soothing! I would be like, "Snort, snort, that's not going to win anything!" All in all, a disheartening experience. Life, I mean.

Wise

A memory came to me. I was sitting in an almost empty lounge at an Elvis-themed hotel mainly known, perhaps, for its onetime outbreak of Legionnaire's Disease, drinking Maker's Mark or Buffalo Trace and waiting for a catfish sandwich to arrive. When it did arrive I could tell at once - and I say this with little fear of committing libel - that it bore only the slightest familial relation to catfish, if any. Meanwhile, on the television over the bar, one of the STAR WARS prequels blared on a basic cable station, complete with commercial breaks. At the time, I had such thoughts as "Why am I here? What have I done with my life? What is the point of everything? How did I get into such a fix? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there a different way to live? If I could do it all over again, would I? Where could I be instead of here? Am I a bad person? If there is a God, why did he allow this to happen?" Now, however, in our current circumstance - and the following observation will hardly be unique - I think back on it in every detail with tender fondness as a glimpse of heavenly glory to which I wish I could return. Also! As long as I have you here, I am in the process of blurbing a novel, which contains a character "wise as an owl," in the protagonist's words. I do not think the future existence of the book has yet been publicly acknowledged, so it is not my place to provide the details. I do stick this reminder here just for myself, like a Post-It note, so that I will not forget to add the book to my list of books with owls in them, when the time is right. Maybe those will be better days!

Regrets

I don't have to explain myself to you! I don't even "blog" anymore. But anyway before my recent trip I was in Square Books looking for something to read on the airplane and I saw a Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald I had never noticed on the shelf before: NIGHTMARE IN PINK, and I walked right by it and didn't even pick it up because of my many, many problems with those novels, but somehow it stuck in my head. I find - and I'm sure it's some sort of compulsion - that if a book sticks in my head at Square Books, I always go back and buy it the next day. What if I miss out on something? And I went to bed that night thinking, you know, maybe NIGHTMARE IN PINK would be good to read on the airplane, even though I haven't truly enjoyed one of those novels yet, because it's really about weight and size when I'm picking out a book to read on the airplane; content hardly enters into it. And I comforted myself by thinking that no one was going to walk into Square Books overnight and buy NIGHTMARE IN PINK before I returned the next day. How bizarre that would be. But, reader, someone did. I went back and NIGHTMARE IN PINK was gone, and even though I didn't actually want to read it, and had already, the day before, bought the book I was going to read on the airplane instead, I felt cheated. Cheated by life! So in the following days, as I prepared for my trip, I would walk by the bookstore and look at the empty spot where NIGHTMARE IN PINK used to be. Okay! Upon my return, I was in Square Books one day and glanced at the shelf and NIGHTMARE IN PINK was back in stock... so I bought it! I read a little of it and put it aside because Megan and I got started on our book club book. At least my strange need to purchase this volume from a series I don't enjoy had been sated. Anyway! Last night I couldn't sleep and there was NIGHTMARE IN PINK, so I read some more of it. Yes, Travis McGee's morbid horror of being devoured by a woman was intact. "Any minute now the sticky tongue would flick out and snare me and yank me into that greedy maw." That's Travis McGee describing a woman. Now, there's a sort of woman that Travis McGee claims to like a lot, that he spends a lot of time striving to convince us he likes a lot, and, as Ace Atkins has pointed out to me, that woman "always dies." Now! I will say this for John D. MacDonald's technique, or maybe this is more about Ace's insight: wondering when the one woman Travis McGee "likes" is going to die keeps you reading. Like, "Oh no! Don't get too attached, McGee!" It introduces a distasteful (and possibly entirely external) source of suspense. So anyway, after spending some time with the woman whose "maw" terrifies him, Travis McGee goes back to the woman he claims to like and she says to him, "Wanna play owl?" And now you know why we're here: for reasons long forgotten, I keep a list ("click" here!) of every book I read that has an owl in it. After Travis McGee and his friend "play owl," and never mind what that is, I sincerely regret to inform you that they play something called "naked owl."

Karl Malden Wouldn't Sit Anywhere Else

When I go on a trip I still take my famous jotting book but I hardly jot in it anymore because I don't "blog" anymore, rendering the very act of jotting questionable. And besides, as Adam Muto rightly admonished me last time I won an Emmy (this is my subtle way of telling you that I just came back from Los Angeles with another one!) I should look up and experience the world directly rather than jotting about it while it's right there in my face. In fact, if you "click" on that previous "link" you will see a photo of me with my jotting book open and ready for jotting backstage in the immediate aftermath of the awards presentation two years ago. I'm the problem with America! But you know, I'm glad I brought the jotting book because I AM required to "blog" whenever I read a book with an owl in it, and on this trip there appeared in my path THREE books with owls in them. I couldn't believe it. It was a bonanza! Let's get right to them! Well, first I stopped by Square Books for something to read on the airplane, as I like to do. And I was drawn again to the Travis McGee novels of John D. MacDonald, though I never enjoy them the way I'm supposed to. But now I guess they say "airplane" to me because of some sick compulsion. I picked up this one called DARKER THAN AMBER and I was like, "This seems familiar." Because they all seem familiar. And the titles are interchangeable. So I put it back on the shelf and went home empty-handed. And I sat there and thought, why do I know that title? And I poked around on the "blog" and saw that my friend McNeil had mentioned DARKER THAN AMBER as being particularly sexist. But as far as I could tell from my own "blog" I hadn't read it, and perversely I decided to get it and see if McNeil was right. And McNeil was right! In fact, I would argue that Travis McGee goes beyond (?) mere misogyny into a psychotic fear of sex. Now, of course, we can't confuse the author with his creation, but I would argue that McGee is presented as an aspirational character. "Jake leaned back on his heels and stared up at me, like a man admiring a tall building," is a typically modest self-description by our narrator. And now please forgive me but I'm going to quote just a smidgen of the misogyny so you won't think I'm exaggerating. You have been warned. Here we find catalogued McGee's disapproval of women who have had too many boyfriends: "she suffers a sea change wherein her juices alter from honey to acid, her eyes change to glass, her heart becomes a stone, and her mouth a windy cave from whence, with each moisturous gasping, comes a tiny stink of death." What! What kind of writing do you call that? Moisturous! Moisturous? It has a certain purple tone that KNOWS it has a tone (A CERTAIN PURPLE TONE sounds like the title of a Travis McGee novel)... hmm... a tone approaching parody, but wanting it both ways... what is called in the business "kidding on the square," as I was once informed by Rob Schneider. Ha ha! But "tiny stink of death"? That's one of the grossest phrases I've come across. And later McGee refers to a woman's mouth as a "round horror-hole," okay? A ROUND HORROR-HOLE. Wow, I'm forgetting the owl. Weren't we talking about owls? McGee says that the eye of a corpse is "like a cheap glass eye in a stuffed owl." And you know what color that eye is? "Darker than amber," that's what color. So I was lying in bed reading this in the hotel room and Dr. Theresa was lying there too reading her own book - what a picture of contentment I am sure we made! - and she said, "Hey! This has an owl in it!" The owl in her book, she said, flew right into an inn and caused much consternation and dialogue. So! I finished Travis McGee and started a book of Sam Shepard short stories I had picked up at Skylight during one of our jaunts across the city. And in the very first story, some owls settle into a eucalyptus tree. So anyway that is a lot of owls in a lot of books for one trip. Speaking of Skylight Books! I ran into the actor Steve Little there, forced a copy of my most recent story collection on him (they had a couple of copies) and kind of harassed him until he fled the store. This is an accurate depiction of events. And speaking of Sam Shepard! So, T-Bone Burnett was one of the presenters at the Creative Arts Emmys, and I was determined to meet him at the ball following the show. And I did! Megan Abbott and I had been reading Sam Shepard's ROLLING THUNDER LOGBOOK, in which T-Bone Burnett appears, leading me to make the following brilliant remark to the distinguished musical icon of whom I have been a lifelong fan: "I saw a picture of you dressed up like a wizard!" (See above.) I'm getting everything out of order.

Let me check my jotting book and see which of my sparse jottings I've left out. Oh, went back to Dan Tana's and got the same booth. I was like, "Hey, I liked that booth when I was here before, can we have it?" And the maître d' was like, sure! "Karl Malden wouldn't sit anywhere else," he informed us. So here we are sitting where Karl Malden would be sitting were he still among the living. But he can't do a thing about it now! Photo by my brother. Well, I'm flipping through these pages and I hardly jotted anything, it turns out. I'm not sorry. On the plane ride to Los Angeles I was sufficiently convinced that my Biscoff cookie bore the face of a holy saint to request that Dr. Theresa take a photo of it, which she gamely did.

Barkley Absconditus

I'm four episodes into THE BIG VALLEY and it's interesting because the whole drama centers around an empty place where a person used to be... not until Laura Palmer in TWIN PEAKS was there another absent character so important to a show. He's the dead patriarch, Thomas Barkley, and I just saw an episode where the town is unveiling a statue of him, but there's a shadow over the face and we can't really see it, can anyone? Yes, yes, THE BIG VALLEY swirls around a terrifying abyss of meaningless where "the father" is supposed to be. Where is the supposed pillar of society? I don't suppose it's a coincidence [yes, of course it is! - ed.] that two bridges have fallen down in four episodes. I'm sure there is some theological approach to THE BIG VALLEY, something from Nicolas of Cusa, something about the deus absconditus.

The Hedgehog of Emptiness

I was a little early for lunch with Tom Franklin yesterday, so I stopped by Square Books, not intending to buy. But they had a big anthology of writings about magic, dating from ancient times to the Enlightenment, just sitting there propped up by the register. So I bought two copies, one for Tom and one for myself. An impulse purchase! Very clever, Square Books. At lunch, people would come up to our table to say hello and there we were, each with a large, black book next to his plate, the word MAGIC engraved on the rough, jacketless cover in huge gold letters. So we looked like a couple of evil old wizards in a book club, as we realized too late. (As you will notice, I have represented the overall tone with a picture of Paul Lynde as "Uncle Arthur," making his head appear in a silver serving dish.) No sooner had I brought the book home and thumbed through the first few entries (skipping some Bible stories I knew too well) than I found "Nightjar and screech owl shall take it,/ night owl and raven nesting there." And so it was without much surprise that it went on my big long list of books with owls in them that nobody cares about (the list, I mean). The passage was taken from Isaiah, but the translation looked funny to me so I checked in the old-timey goodness of my Geneva Bible: "But the pelicane & the hedgehog fhal poffeffe it, and the great owle, & the raue fhal dwell in it, & he fhal ftretch out vpon it the line of vanitie, and the ftones of emptines." I wonder why the last "s" in stones and emptiness looks like an s while all the other s's look like f's! Obviously it has to do with placement. But I don't care enough to think about it too much. (By the way, the magic anthology boringly translates "stones of emptiness" as "weight of ruin." Boo!) I wonder how pelican and hedgehog became nightjar and screech owl! (I won't lie to you, I had to look up "nightjar." I figured it was a bird. It was a bird.) I cared just enough to check my facsimile of the original King James Bible about this hedgehog business. "The cormorant and the bitterne shall possesse it, the owle also and the rauen shall dwell in it, and he shall stretch out vpon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptinesse." I'll tweet this to Jimmy. He'll care.

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.

Scarlet Fever Isn't All That

I took a very quick stroll around the square - less than half an hour - but what an adventure! First I heard someone yelling at me from a car across the street: "Dirty Grandpa! Hey, Dirty Grandpa!" I stopped and looked around, confirming to one and all that I indeed thought of myself as the dirty grandpa. The source of the catcalling was Ace Atkins, who, I may mention, refused to go see DIRTY GRANDPA with us last night. Then I passed by a young woman on the sidewalk. She was telling her friend about a case of scarlet fever she had contracted. "That's very rare!" her friend said with what sounded like delight and congratulations. "Oh, I don't think it's all that anymore," the young woman replied dismissively (modestly?). And so I continued on my way to Square Books, where I filled two empty spots on my recommendation shelf. For you see, Kent Osborne himself had purchased DIE A LITTLE by Megan Abbott and THE PINE BARRENS by John McPhee. Kent's reading habits are none of your business, but I just told you anyway. Kent almost choked on some Gus's fried chicken the other day and he said that as he thought he was dying his foremost consideration was how great such a death would be for my "blog" and I said I would never "blog" about his death so lightly! But now I just don't know what kind of person I am.

Movie Theater Pizza

About a month ago, when DIRTY GRANDPA opened, I mentioned in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting (in which I regularly participate from Oxford, Mississippi, while everyone else is in Burbank), that I wished Kent were in town so we could go see DIRTY GRANDPA together. Kent reminded me that he was coming here for a visit soon. I said I wasn't sure whether DIRTY GRANDPA would be playing, and Kent predicted it would still be "the number one movie in the country, like TITANIC." We shared a chuckle, you may be sure! So Kent finally got to town, and DIRTY GRANDPA was still playing, and we went to see it, accompanied by Bill Boyle, a De Niro expert and completist. Kent and I arrived at the movie theater an hour early, ha ha! But it is not a joke, despite my ha ha. Kent ordered himself a little cheese pizza from the movie theater's kitchen. I prayed to God he would consume it before Bill arrived. Bill, as you know, makes the best pizza in town, and such a movie theater cheese pizza would be an affront to him!

So Bill arrived and we all stepped into the movie theater to watch DIRTY GRANDPA, on practically the one-year anniversary of when Kent and I went to see 50 SHADES OF GREY in Silver Lake. Bill and Kent and I had the whole place to ourselves for DIRTY GRANDPA! But just before the movie started (or was it just after?) an earnest young couple came in to test the boundaries of their tender new love by going to see DIRTY GRANDPA. The credit sequence was striking, as you may see above. "It's like a Godard movie!" I kept screaming into the emptiness. I was also proud to notice that Dirty Grandpa wore a hat just like a hat I wore when I was twenty. Here you can see it on the movie poster Kent photographed right outside the theater. I think a bird has pooped on the Plexiglas, just under the "n" in "Grandpa."

Or that may be the designer's flourish, emphasizing the dirtiness of the Dirty Grandpa. After the movie, Bill and Kent and I adjourned to the City Grocery Bar to discuss many aspects of DIRTY GRANDPA.

These Potato Chips Aren't Hot

Late last night when I couldn't sleep I had to leave the room for a moment so I paused the TV. Paused the TV! Such a thing was unthinkable not so very long ago, as I have often remarked to an empty room. I paused the TV because I wanted to find out who killed Jay Mohr on a rerun of LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT. It struck me that there was something immoral about my action! Amoral? Problematic. Decadent. And not because I vaguely recalled (accurately) who killed Jay Mohr from the first time I saw it. No, because I couldn't figure out whether my ability to pause the TV was giving me a "choice" or removing one. So during the after-hours LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT reruns there were commercials for things called Xeljanz and Rummikub. The former is a drug and the latter is a boardgame. I realized that "Rummikub" sounded funny only because I hadn't heard it before. That's on me, not on the blameless pastime of Rummikub! But Xeljanz sounded terrible because a focus group probably came up with it. Like, "Raise your hand if you think a medicine that starts with x and ends with z sounds 'real' enough to purchase." I thought about which letter in Xeljanz was the worst, and I decided on 'n.' Ha ha, I like to pretend someone is reading this. The n is close enough to an m that one thinks of Xeljamz, which sounds like a compilation CD of ungodly music, maybe. [It would be corporate slang for "excellent jams"! - ed.] There was also a commercial for a boardgame called Googly Eyes, which nicely ties together Rummikub and Xeljanz, because Googly Eyes requires its players to don vision-distorting eyewear. Now I ask you! Does that sound healthy or safe? Oh, I'm sure it's fine. I recalled that Dr. Theresa had opened a bag of sriracha-flavored "Kettle Brand Potato Chips." I had inquired, earlier in the evening, how they were and Dr. Theresa said, "The bag says 'HOT!' but they're not hot." And she was right. I tasted one and it reminded me of ketchup-flavored potato chips from days gone by. "Ha ha, what dunces we were in the 1970s, eating ketchup-flavored potato chips," I reckoned. And that reminded me of something called "Andy Capp's Hot Fries," which were not hot, and not fries - were, in fact, tough little girders composed of, perhaps, densely compacted corn dust or corn waste - and which had as their mascot the unpleasant Sunday comics character Andy Capp, now long forgotten. So I thought I'd scoot to the "internet" to discover the inevitable nostalgic "chat rooms" dedicated to such grisly and obsolete products. And that is how I found out that both of these things - Lay's Ketchup Flavored Potato Chips and Andy Capp's Hot Fries - are still in production to this very day. (See also.) Thank you for attending to this blistering jeremiad on the subject of contemporary society. I trust your eyebrows were in no way singed by the force of the dynamic fury I unleashed. (Full disclosure: I suddenly recall that as a lad, upon discovering the ketchup-flavored potato chips, I marveled openly at the brilliance of the inventor. And we do love ketchup on our french-fried potatoes, do we not?)

Color Accuracy

Look! I took this picture of Kent and Ashly. I told 'em they looked like a Hal Hartley movie. I'm not sure that's accurate. But whatever they look like, they look great, don't they? This was snapped between the Creative Arts Emmys and the Creative Arts Ball. That's right, we went to the Emmys! The Creative Arts Emmys. They're just like regular Emmys. They are regular Emmys! They're Emmys! But more creative. And sure enough I brought my jotting book that I always fill with my special jottings just for you. In fact, Adam Muto had to keep reminding me, "Put your book away," because I was jotting backstage after we WON Emmys and people were trying to interview us and take nice pictures of us and give us our Emmys and I was dazed and jotting.

Here, for example, we find me hugging a giant Emmy statue with my jotting book in my hand - the famous jotting book you've probably been waiting your whole life to see! - moments after winning an Emmy. HOW DID WE GET HERE? We must begin a couple of days before the Creative Arts Emmys, on Dr. Theresa's birthday! 1. We were in a nice restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee. The next table received an unordered caprese salad, which caused a minor kerfuffle! I said, "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold." So we started quoting poetry at each other. Dr. Theresa said she likes "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking" and I said, "Death, death, death, death," which I believe is a quotation from it (?) and Dr. Theresa said, "Uh, it's my birthday." 2. The next morning I had to leave Dr. Theresa behind! She drove back to Oxford and went to work while I climbed aboard an airplane, where I watched that recent biopic about Brian Wilson. There is a scene where he is on an airplane yelling, "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!" That was a funny thing to show on an airplane. 3. I kept thinking, "Brian Wilson IS James Baxter!" Meaning the ADVENTURE TIME character James Baxter the Horse, not James Baxter the beloved animator for whom James Baxter the Horse is named.

"Can we get a horse in here?" is one thing that Brian Wilson said during the "making of PET SOUNDS" montage. 4. Dramatically, my pen cap dropped to the floor and rolled away, beyond all reach! I could no longer put that pen in the pocket of my nice pants without some danger. THIS MIGHT SERIOUSLY CURTAIL MY JOTTING! As you will see from the unreadable verbosity of what follows, such was not the case. 5. But as I was thusly fretting, I lost the whole pen, which rolled under the feet of a possibly mean old man behind me on the plane. I opened up the window shade and saw brown mountains and brown land, some dry river beds, some roads, I think, cut into the land. I thought, "There it is, the Old West!" I brooded sentimentally about the people who used to cross it the hard way. "Every Valley Shall Be Exalted" was shuffling through on the iPod and I thought, looking at the land, "Handel had the seeds of the future in him!" Ha ha! What a lunatic! I mean me, not Handel.

But anyway, it sounded like Handel knew that he was writing a great number to listen to while you're looking out the window of an airplane. 6. Safely at the hotel bar I sat next to a bigwig from Technicolor. Technicolor! I didn't know it was a business anymore. "I calibrated this TV because I couldn't stand it," he said, meaning the TV over the bar. I asked what movie he liked best, ignoring plot and direction and everything else but color. He said, "You mean COLOR ACCURACY." I don't think that's what I meant! I may have meant the opposite. But it turns out all he cares about is color accuracy. Before this guy looks at a piece of film or video to make the colors accurate, he sits in a dark, empty room for an hour staring at nothing! That's how he starts his job every day! To get his eyes properly adjusted, I think. "It's not meditation!" he said with some urgency, as if afraid I would think he was some kind of meditating person. It's a practical aspect of his job - that's what he meant. 7. Now let's go to the Emmys. IF WE CAN. I was sitting around Kent's place sipping some iced tea when he casually said, "Did you bring the tickets?" AND GUESS WHAT. I HAD FORGOTTEN THE TICKETS. I had to rush back to the hotel! What a caper! When I returned to Kent's place,

Ashly was already there to meet us. Like most of your more glamorous Emmy types, we arrived by Uber. We saw Anthony Bourdain on the red carpet. He said I looked nice! Which I only mention because I was worried about my red pants. WHY DID I BUY RED PANTS, I kept worrying. I was NOT worried about my jacket, which John T. Edge so graciously loaned me for the occasion. Well, I was worried about buttoning it. 8. While we were standing in the lobby waiting for the ceremony to start, I got to talk to Rebecca Sugar! This was an especial thrill for me. I admire her work so much, and she left A.T. to work on STEVEN UNIVERSE just before I arrived on the show, I think. I had taken note of what she was doing and saw the magnificent scope of what the job could be. Before, we had met only once in passing on the street in front of the Cartoon Network building.

It was so much fun and fascinating to get to hear her talk about her songwriting process, just for one thing. 9. Okay, so Mel Brooks presented the first award. I think Kent was the one in the whole crowd who leapt quickest to his feet and instigated the well-deserved standing ovation. 10. Kent went to the lobby to get a beer. You can get a beer during the Creative Arts Emmys! They're no squares! So Matt Weiner, creator of MAD MEN, was coming into the auditorium as Kent was leaving. So Kent said, "Hi!" and Matt Weiner said, "Hi!" Later, Ashly saw Kathryn Hahn in the women's restroom! She was really nice! Little did I know that later, at the ball, I would foist myself (psychologically speaking) upon both Beau Bridges ("Here's all I want to say to you: FABULOUS BAKER BOYS." Ha ha, what an idiot I am) and Key from Key and Peele!

11. So in between the awards and the ball, Rob Sorcher, the CCO of Cartoon Network, invited everyone to fancy bar nearby. We had a lot to celebrate. Not only did ADVENTURE TIME win best animated short-form series (here I am unintentionally photobombing Adam as he makes his acceptance speech), but Pat McHale's OVER THE GARDEN WALL won best LONG-form series! Here you can see a "candid shot" of Pat in the background as he stares into his drink and contemplates the fleeting nature of happiness at the fancy bar:

Yeah, I know most of these pictures feature me, but this is my "blog," I mean, gee. I hate you! Leave me alone! 12. My notes get really jumbled around this point. Should I jump ahead, as they indicate, and talk about when Pat McHale gently jostled me, causing me to spill wine on my white shirt? Pat dropped to his knees in unnecessary apology, with such flair and dexterity that he resembled James Brown at the end of a performance! 13. BUT! first we must get to the ball. That was tricky! No one seemed to know how to get there. There was a strange line between buildings, almost a maze, and Matt Weiner was at the head of it, walking fast. He was like the Pied Piper! Harry Crane (pictured) from the show was walking beside him, looking just like Harry Crane.

I still felt anger at him for his bad doings! Matt Weiner was leading everyone down dead alleys and around false corners. I was walking at some distance behind, side by side with Tom Herpich, who won TWO Emmys that night! One for individual achievement on A.T. (his marvelous solo episode "Walnuts and Rain")

and one for his work on OVER THE GARDEN WALL. (I should mention that the episode that won us the best series Emmy was Kent's solo episode "Jake the Brick.") So Tom had Emmys in both hands, and my Emmy kept banging into his as we walked along - LIFE IS HARD! - until I had the bright idea of switching hands (though I kept unconsciously switching back). Then I offered to carry one of Tom's Emmys for a while. Because they're heavy! He gladly accepted. BUT THEN I saw that our CCO (who greenlit MAD MEN back in the day as well as greenlighting ADVENTURE TIME - this guy has a greenlighting thumb, I tell ya!) was striding alongside Matt Weiner, at the front of the line, having a chat. So I chucked Tom's Emmy back at him like a lout and raced to the front of the line for my big chance to... WAIT! WHAT AM I DOING? I forgot to tell you what it's like to "win an Emmy." 14. So. It really is completely surprising, just like they say. Kent kept telling me, "After Mickey Mouse beats us we'll go have a drink." And we all thought that! And I didn't even think I cared. But I started caring! The whole thing is such a blur that when somebody asked me the next day who presented our award, I couldn't remember. Adam said he felt much the same way. Neil Degrasse Tyson was onstage, in retrospect, and it all happened so fast I didn't even realize he was announcing our award. In fact, I was softly muttering something blasé about Neil Degrasse Tyson's persona to Kent just before - WHILE? - it happened. 15. I saw the CCO gesticulating urgently as I waddled slowly up the aisle. He was giving me those "hurry up" gestures. When you get onstage you're just confused. You can't hear anything. I couldn't hear what Adam was saying to the world. 16. After you win an Emmy you look around for somebody to tell you what to do. Nobody really does. Somebody with a microphone asks questions. They take your picture. I foolishly knelt on one brittle knee in the front row with Kent and then I couldn't get up. I put my hands on Kent's shoulders to help steady myself as I rose and I nearly crushed Kent into the ground. It was a terrible spectacle of oldness. Then you go into a room and meet these two women behind a table, just like the volunteers at your polling station on Election Day! They make you find your name on a piece of paper and sign it. That's so you can get your Emmy. By now I understood that I was actually going to get one, the actual statue, but I still couldn't understand that it was happening. Then you have to carry it around all night! At the ball, I'd pick it up whenever I left the table. I didn't want to lose it. And I was weirdly attached to "my" Emmy, the one I had happened to choose from the random array. (The plaque with your name on it comes later, they tell me.) A stranger came up to me and said, "There are two kinds of people here tonight, the people who carry their Emmys around with them and..." It was obvious she was giving me a stern chiding for being that crass sort of person whom she had first mentioned. But I didn't want to lose it! The Emmy, I mean. 17. Although I must admit that Kent and I very purposefully took our Emmys with us when we went to see Pamela Adlon at her table. We thought they would get us closer to her! Like we wouldn't seem like maniacs! All this, even though Kent has voice-directed her for ADVENTURE TIME in the past. Still we were enthralled and nervous!

The woman who took this picture couldn't figure out how to work the camera. I said, "You say you're in the television industry?" which was supposed to be cute and lighthearted, but I think it came out more sarcastic than I intended! She repeated it after she took the picture. "I was trying to be funny," I stammered. It is probably best not to "try to be funny" at the LOUIE table. "You were funny," Pamela Adlon said, patting my arm and being nice. The woman who took the picture is the casting director for LOUIE, so you know how good she is. After the picture-taking we talked to her for a while about that, especially the little girl who so dazzlingly plays Louie's younger daughter, and how she came to find her and how she had known she was right for the role and why it's so tough picking the right child actor. And of course I brought up the time they tried to get Jerry Lewis for the part David Lynch ended up playing. 18. Then Kent and I went to gawk at Anthony Bourdain, whom I know a little bit. We discussed his role in ARCHER. He said he'd love it if his character came back and I kept rudely reminding him that he fell out of an airplane.

"But you didn't see me hit the ground!" said Anthony Bourdain. 19. At the ball I thought it was kind of funny that they were playing Billy Joel muzak. And then I thought it was even funnier when I figured out that the Billy Joel muzak was being played by a live string orchestra! By the end of the night, there was live dance music, and when we were "leaving" we ended up dancing for five or six or seven songs instead, Kent and Ashly and Tom and me.

Who knew Tom could dance? He can really dance! Why is that surprising? Well, as Seo Kim said the next day, when I astonished her with my tales of Tom's dancing abilities, Tom "never moves." Adam confirmed Tom's economy of motion. "Saving it up," Tom said (concisely!) when confronted. Well, he certainly puts it to good use when the time comes! I don't know who the eerie faceless figure in the background of this photo (above) is. Maybe it's Slenderman! 20. Oh! Painstakingly analyzing a vine of our dancing frame by frame, I find this evidence of Pat McHale's wine crimes.

21. The next day I went to have brunch with my brother and nephews. My brother made me bring my Emmy with me to show the boys. When you leave the Emmys they give you this thing like - as my brother and I both independently said, and what is wrong with us? - a baby coffin to put it in. It was hard to carry. "Wah, wah, wah, my Emmy is heavy," my brother rightly mocked me. At brunch we talked about how you make a homunculus and debated my brother's preposterous claim that "most purple food is bitter." "Grapes!" I kept yelling at him. "Grapes!" 22. Then came the great bag hunt, my brother's Ahabian quest to find a canvas bag into which my Emmy coffin would fit. He said it would be easier for me to take it to the airport that way, and he proved to be right. He drove us all over the place in his search for the right bag. The right bag indeed proved elusive! Though not entirely. Sometimes we went in; sometimes my nephews and I waited in the car while my brother went in. Once he left us in a dark parking garage and we all sang (without accompaniment; car and radio were turned off and the windows were rolled down) the Roy Orbison song "In Dreams." As creepy as it was for us, we only imagined later the probable terror of the other poor people in that parking garage, listening to us trying to sing Roy Orbison's song about that "candy-colored clown" who comes into your room late at night. 23. The next day I went to the office and had lunch with Seo Kim and Sam Alden. Somebody at the table next to us was explaining to his coworkers that the only reason people die is that the sun poisons them, otherwise we would all be immortal. This led to an interesting discussion after they left, and maybe one day I'll type it up, I have all the jottings right here, and they are pretty good - like about how big lobsters can get (really big!) - but man, I'm tired! 24. Writer's meeting with Adam and Ashly! We got sidetracked watching David Lynch clips on the enormous TV in the conference room, focusing on Lynch's obsession with lip-synching...

a total coincidence having nothing to do with singing "In Dreams" in the car with my nephews! In fact, it all started because something reminded Adam of James from TWIN PEAKS. In what might have been the hugest coincidence of all, I thought I saw Dean Stockwell at the airport on my way back home! But it wasn't Dean Stockwell, so it wasn't any kind of coincidence, and I guess I shouldn't have even mentioned it just now. But I did. This "Dean Stockwell" I saw turned out to be an actor named Peter Brown. I've never heard of him (or seen him in anything, as far as I can tell), but I could tell he was an actor. And the "internet" says he is one year younger than Dean Stockwell. I was so close! And his wife was excited that I recognized him, and she was so happy and sweet-natured I didn't have the heart to correct her. 25. I'm leaving out a lot of stuff, believe it or not. I guess the eager archivists of the future will have to devote their lives to studying the quaint runes of my little jotting book to find out what else Seo and Sam and I talked about at lunch. 26. Oh yeah, sorry, I started "building up suspense" about a "Matt Weiner story" all the way back in #13, above. But there isn't one! Joke's on you! No one is still reading this. Joke's on me! Well, there is a story, but I don't meet Matt Weiner in it. I'll tell you later. I won't tell you later.

I Don't Teach

Yesterday when I was watching EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE I noticed that the song "Coca Cola Cowboy" by Mel Tillis played on the soundtrack, a song I had completely forgotten. And it tickled me because suddenly I thought of Kelly Hogan. I don't know why. Yes I do! Because "Coca Cola Cowboy" is exactly the kind of song Hogan, with her extraordinary musical sensitivity, will always find some surprising way to examine and appreciate. So today I had an urge to listen to the whole song. AND HERE'S WHAT I NOTICED! Clint Eastwood, star of EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, is mentioned in the chorus! The narrator tells us of a woman who derides him (some derision!) for having "an Eastwood smile and Robert Redford hair." I immediately thought of the scene in Eastwood's BREEZY in which Kay Lenz and William Holden ATTEND A CLINT EASTWOOD MOVIE. What is going on, Clint Eastwood? You have been sneaking some French New Wave style high jinx on us all these years. I'm actually sorrier than ever about my knee-jerk smart-aleck reaction to that thing where he talked to an empty chair at the Republican convention. I need to admit that Clint is BEYOND me. So what do we call this? "Meta"? Is that what they call it? I don't teach school anymore. I remember some grad student who told me he rolled his eyes at anything "meta" and I said "Do you roll your eyes at DON QUIXOTE?" and he snarled "YES!" Now you know why I don't teach anymore.

Melted Fezzes

Well! Megan and Dan came to town and we went out and had a ball. Bill Boyle appeared on the scene and we drove out to Water Valley to a place called the Crawdad Hole. Somehow Megan knew about it. Dr. Theresa and I had never heard of it. As Dan pointed out, a restaurant has to have a well-placed sense of confidence to put "Hole" in its name. It was great! Great enough for "hole." I'm kind of sorry to tell you about it, because they only serve food until they run out of whatever is fresh that day, and I don't want you to eat it before I get there next time. We had so much stuff spread over the checkered oilcloth (was it checkered? It should have been!) - crab legs and sausages and corn on the cob and Mississippi tamales - that's a famous thing, if you didn't know! - and oysters, both sweetly raw and succulently grilled, all superb, and all washed down with a pitcher of ice-cold beer that went perfectly with the food. No crawfish because they were out. Megan said they told her it wasn't crawfish season. But we didn't even miss the crawfish. Then we were supposed to meet Ace at a "secret bar" but we went to the "secret bar" and it wasn't a "secret bar," it was the shabby back room you have to walk through to use the toilet at a local pizza restaurant of small repute. So we were like, "THIS IS ACE'S SECRET BAR?" But the story hasn't ended. MORE LATER. Because we had made a basic mistake about the "secret bar" and it wasn't Ace's fault! Now I'm going to start looking at whatever I jotted down last night on scraps of paper in my wallet and on bar napkins. As I recall, some of it might be bawdy and shocking! You know I don't like to "go there." Blame the liquor and high spirits of rekindled camaraderie. The first note I see just says, "Remember the Night." I'm like, hmm, this isn't as scintillating as I recalled. Was I just telling myself to remember the night? Then it occurred to me. It's the name of a Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck movie that Megan thinks Dr. Theresa and I would like. A nice sentiment, but a disappointment in the realm of fevered inspirations scrawled on tattered scraps from bars. Muttering, we left the (temporary) debacle of "secret bar" and went up to City Grocery. There we encountered Randy Yates, owner of Ajax, who was talking about his former fez collection. That seemed bar-napkin worthy. I wrote down what happened to Randy's fez collection: "I lived in such a [crappy] house all my fezzes melted." That didn't seem like a sentence I had heard before. Oh yes, I have noted here on the back of a postal receipt that Bill Boyle claimed, "If you were stranded on a desert island, all you'd need was Guinness and breast milk." I told you you'd be scandalized! Ace came to CG and took us back to the secret bar. We had lost Megan and Dan by now, but Angela had appeared, a delightful and special treat! And the bar really was different all of a sudden. It was darker and there was a fancy man to make Bill Boyle take off his baseball cap! When we sat down, the server asked if we'd like a complimentary shot, and unless I am crazy, the shots were being offered in empty shotgun shell casings. You know, the way they do in a secret bar. Bill was the only one who drank one and - still miffed about his forcefully doffed baseball cap - said, "That was terrible!" But he said it in a gruffly charming way that made even the server laugh. And when they brought out ice water, they offered to put drops of rosewater in it. Which we accepted! Now, rosewater was popular in Cairo, Egypt, when Dr. Theresa was growing up there, but I believe in the U.S. I have witnessed only her little brother Hesham (he's a full grown man, not a "little brother"!) spiking anything with it. Bill had gotten himself into a rare mood I enjoy seeing him in on those spare occasions when it happens - a touch of lovable surliness that comes over him with just the right amount of fluid help. Surliness isn't the right word. Sweet irascibility? Acting the wiseacre? I don't know any good words. Anyway, he didn't seem to care much for the rosewater. He said - and I was afraid this didn't even show up on the napkin! It was so dark and the server gave me a pen that wrote in PALE ORANGE INK, and I couldn't tell whether words were falling upon the napkin at all - "They're serving us old lady sweat and we're drinking it like we got nothing better to do." Then he said, "It's like you're licking your grandmother's armpit." And then I THINK he said (I didn't write it down) "Don't get me wrong, I'd lick my grandmother's armpit, she's a great lady!" But I may have made that part up. I'm afraid I haven't done justice to the secret bar, which was very pleasant and conducive to much convivial talk and served excellent grilled cheese sandwiches.

New York Gala

Last night Megan Abbott attended a gala at which our old pal Anthony Bourdain spoke ("old pal" - ha ha! But no kidding, Megan and I were on a TV show with him once and if you don't believe me you can "click" on this "pic" of Anthony Bourdain with part of Megan's face and my empty chair). Last night Bourdain was at a table so far away Megan could never reach him. She also ordered a French 75 that never came. It all sounds so symbolic!

A Moment of Disorientation

Dr. Theresa and I are latecomers to this movie THE ROOM that everybody says is so awful, and it really isn't "good." But I have to say that while watching it I experienced one moment of bracing and unexpected disorientation worthy of David Lynch. It's near the beginning of the film (I think), after we have seen some of our main characters having interactions in their living room. Suddenly two people we've never seen before come into the same (now empty) room and start enacting their completely unrelated story. For a few minutes - before their situation is "explained" - they seem extra-dimensional or ghostly. I was pleasantly baffled and sort of had the creeps. One of them is this guy (pictured). He made a lot of funny faces and chewed food with his mouth open and exuded a cheerful banality I've seen in some Lynch characters. He also suffered a terrifyingly arbitrary pratfall. Okay, that's my take on THE ROOM, sorry I'm a decade late, goodbye, sorry for everything.

Halloween Gets Real

I know I have bored you with my fascinating story of how our Halloween Film Festival will probably be shorter than ever this year because of all my October travels. We have managed to squeeze in THE MUMMY'S SHROUD and RE-ANIMATOR if you are keeping score. Ha ha! Who are you, person who doesn't exist? Yesterday we were distracted by something else that had many horrific elements and some "downer" aspects with which you know I hate to trouble you, but there is a happy ending... though not for every creature involved! You have been warned. So anyway we have been feeding this feral but sweet-natured blue-eyed cat that hangs around our neighborhood. Many times when Lee Durkee has been walking past our yard he has seen the cat. He became quite taken with it. (It is the kitten we were trying to coax off the roof in another unforgettable "blog" "post" you may have forgotten.) He said if we ever caught it he'd like to try to bring it into his house and make it a pet. Now, Dr. Theresa had already caught this fellow - the cat, I mean - once and had him fixed and got all his shots and had him tested for dangerous diseases and everything. She does that out of her own pocket when she finds a feral cat, just to help out and keep the population down and make sure they're healthy. So on Wednesday she saw that the cat - we cleverly call him "Bandit" because of the black "bandit" mask across his blue eyes - had a hurt leg. Fearing he had been hit by a car, Dr. Theresa caught him and took him to the vet again. He had only fallen from a great height and twisted his leg and scratched up his nose a little, the doctor reported. So, now that he was drugged and compliant, a perfect opportunity to take him over to Lee's house so he could recuperate inside and find himself in a new home! The exciting and terrifying parts of the story that will make you question the meaning of existence are coming up soon, don't worry. So Dr. Theresa and Lee set up the cat in a safe, small space: Lee's bathroom. That night our pal Joey and her practically brand new husband Brian came to town so we all went out for a big night on the town square. Everyone came out. Semmes (the man who was once almost in a plane crash with Werner Herzog) told a story about peeing next to Bob Hope. (You know, I should do a "post" about the time I peed next to Rob Reiner and the time Ward McCarthy peed next to Robert Mitchum, but I am getting far afield of the existential horror I mean to express here. OR AM I?) Joey told about when Vince Vaughn gave Buck Owens a prop knife from the PSYCHO remake, only it was a real knife, but Buck Owens didn't get that part - he thought it was some kind of trick knife and started slashing it madly at everybody (including Joey) and laughing with glee while people fled in actual terror that Buck Owens might jokingly kill them. SO! Now we are coming up on the part of the story that will trouble and alarm you! And then it turns almost into a David Lynch movie. When Lee got home, he couldn't find the cat anywhere. And then he noticed that the CAT HAD CLIMBED UP SOMEHOW AND OPENED THE WINDOW and escaped. This is a window that is hard to open. It sticks! And Dr. Theresa had shut it securely herself, expressly so that the cat could not get out of it. But this cat displayed remarkable dexterity and cunning. Not only did it manually slide open the difficult window, it pushed out the screen and dropped from a height of 10 yards (Lee's house is on a steep slope) and vanished. We found out the next morning. We feared the worst! The cat was already injured! And Lee's house overlooks a heavily wooded ravine filled with wild animals. Dr. Theresa set out walking the neighborhood for signs of the cat. I soon followed. In my haste I forgot my glasses. At one point I met Dr. Theresa coming from the opposite direction and I pointed at something I saw moving and said, "What is that?" And Dr. Theresa said, "It's a raccoon." It was a sick raccoon! A poor sick raccoon stumbling and circling and appearing confused in the broad daylight. To add to the nightmarish quality of the scene (made more impressionistic by my blurred vision) the raccoon was on the street in front of what appeared to be a gulley filled with colorful rubble. There's some kind of construction going on. And three guys are taking a break from work, saying and doing nothing but sitting there in the bed of a pickup truck wearing red-tinted sunglasses and expressionlessly, without comment, watching this dying raccoon try to make sense of the world. It was truly a hellish scene. Dispirited and with little hope we went on looking for the cat. We walked through the parking lot of the Chevron on the corner and it was deserted - like weirdly OMEGA MAN deserted - except for two large crows who were just WALKING AROUND the empty, silent parking lot like they owned it. Silent except for their eerie cries, that is! As we went on into the neighborhood I began to notice that the Halloween decorations seemed sinister. So many skeletons! We were forced to pass by the raccoon a few more times, and on one of those times it had died. We found all sorts of weird things in the neighborhood, things we had never seen before, like a tumbled-down shack filled with rusty machinery and glass. All this time Lee was out looking for the cat too. Finally we gave up. When it was close to getting dark, Dr. Theresa decided to go back out. (I couldn't join her because I was in an ADVENTURE TIME meeting. I was not feeling it! Pen and Kent cheered me up by singing funny songs they were making up and then I showed them this Little Rascals clip ["click" here] that Kelly Hogan sent me a long time ago, and we all got a lot of enjoyment out of it. Art helps!) On Dr. Theresa's lonely way in the gathering dusk she met Lee, who had a forlorn expression and told of a harrowing experience. He had heard an otherworldly shrieking from the woods behind his house! He said it was the worst sound he had ever heard. And as he walked deeper into the brush, he came upon the omen-like vision of A BUNCH OF GROUNDHOGS ALL STANDING ON THEIR HIND LEGS AS IF FROZEN IN ETERNITY AND GAZING IN HORROR IN THE SAME DIRECTION, the direction from which the scream had come that had also haunted Lee. Things did not look (or sound) good. Lee and Dr. Theresa split up. Dr. Theresa walked deep into the treacherous woods and sat on the ground and softly called again and again. She was about to get up and head home when she heard a response. She called again. The response came louder. Finally she saw in the distance the feral cat actually running toward her! This is not something feral cats do. Somehow she scooped it up (this is not easy to do with a feral cat; in fact it is impossible) and carried it in her arms UP THE STEEP BRAMBLY HILL back to Lee's place. And Lee came walking back forlorn and when Dr. Theresa, covered in dirt and thorns, told him she had the cat he couldn't believe it. But that's Dr. Theresa for you! She's my hero. So anyway, they blocked up that window real good.

Banana Truck

I happened to turn to a channel last night on which Joey from FRIENDS was pushing a chimpanzee out of a transom and I almost forgot to tell you the chimpanzee was wearing a clown suit. Then Joey left the storage shed and found an empty clown suit by a desolate fence and said in a worried voice, "Ed?" It was a movie called ED! In the background, a banana truck was pulling away and the sound designer laid in some chimp noise ("Ooh ooh! Aah aah!") to let you know that Ed had probably made his way into the departing banana truck. Then I changed the channel. I'm not bragging. I don't even know why I changed the channel. Also, it was somebody in a chimp suit.

Properly Crammed

I would like to apologize to the labels ADVENTURE, BLOOD, DREAMS, DRUNK, EMPTY, FAVES, FISH, FURNITURE, GLORY, HAPPINESS, HEADS, HEAVEN, PROUD, RICE, SHINY, SILENCE, SLEEP, SPIRIT, and STATUES, which should have been appended to a recent "post" but could not be crammed properly into place.

Dusty Old Paper

Aw, this Artie Shaw biography doesn't smell that bad... just like dusty old paper, which is a pretty good smell, actually. I have a vivid childhood memory (ha ha! I am so boring! You can turn away from me in disgust now) of smelling a copy of PILGRIM'S PROGRESS by John Bunyan that I checked out of the public library in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. A smell I still recall and savor! Ha ha, what a loser. The library was shaped like a log cabin... hmm... it was made of logs, I think... I guess it WAS a log cabin... but the shape seemed... ironic? Some kind of statement? Hell, I don't know. Several years ago my brother and I were back in the Bayou and we stopped by the building and it was empty and the windows were smashed. Anyway, I'm just 32 pages in and Artie Shaw has already killed a guy.