McNeil Absolved of Blasphemy

1. We drove down to visit my parents. We got a rental car with some of that sweet, sweet satellite radio we have learned to enjoy. So I turn it on and here comes "American Pie," Dr. Theresa's least favorite song. When he sang "Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry," Dr. Theresa said, "Drive it in! You can't drive it fast enough for me!" Ouch! Later, I was thinking, hey, shouldn't a levee be dry anyway? Isn't it supposed to keep the water out? I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my idle musing. So, anyway, changing the selection before Dr. Theresa could explode, I noticed that one of the preset stations specialized in bluegrass. "Did you set this to bluegrass?" I asked with obvious astonishment. Dr. Theresa's response, which was not exactly an answer, was something like, "What's wrong with bluegrass?" The answer is nothing. There is nothing wrong with bluegrass. But when I put it on the bluegrass channel, Dr. Theresa made me change it again because bluegrass, according to her, "sounds like they did a bunch of coke." An exact quotation! 2. My dad goes to a particular Waffle House every Saturday morning with a collection of his cronies. Dad said that someone who lives next door to this Waffle House keeps chickens, and the chickens wander over and hang out in the parking lot. People feed them. It's all part of the experience. I was of course reminded of the Original Frosty Mug, and the chickens that used to peck around your feet while you tried to drink a milkshake. I wondered glumly and aloud whether the Original Frosty Mug could possibly still be open for business seeing as how the interstate has been improved - quite a few years ago now - to bypass the town. Dad said there was a new chicken at the Waffle House. I asked him how he knew it was new. He said it had "different feathers and a different attitude." He described it as a "quick-acting, small chicken who didn't know the procedure." Quote! 3. While visiting down there on the Gulf Coast, I received an email from McNeil, indicating that he had received his copy of the Apocryphal Gospels. He waited so long for it that I was sure he would be disappointed, but such did not appear to be the case, as McNeil remarked gleefully that Young Jesus should have been sent to military school. I do not consider this blasphemy, given the apocryphal nature of the text. 4. As we began our departure from the Gulf Coast by way of the Dauphin Island Bridge, I was given to remark, "Pelicans are cool. You know, they got their big old mouths." QUOTE! I thought I could put that line in an upcoming unpublished novel. Speaking of my unpublished novels, I'll have something else to say about them below. 5. I accidentally left my hat at my parents' house! It was a nice hat I bought at a shop in Pasadena recommended by Adam Muto. I wore it to the racetrack with Pen! If I ever want my hat back, I guess I'll have to visit my parents again. 6. While down there, I received texts from Megan on the evening she attended Wallace Shawn's new play. She has a good story about all that, but I shan't share it here as it is hers alone. But I will tell you this! When I got home, I was reading the New York Times... and look, I skipped the New York Times a couple of days while traveling. Was it a relief? I think it was! But now I'm back to reading the New York Times and I see a review of Wallace Shawn's new play. And here, I'll quote a little bit from the review, which observes of one character, "given his ontological understanding of the Big Bang, all action is preordained." So! I have a character in one of my unpublished novels who thinks the same thing! And I was like, oh no, people will think I am trying to rip off Wallace Shawn in the unlikely event my unpublished novel is ever published! So I sent Megan an excerpt of my novel, to get her opinion about whether or not people in this highly improbable future I have imagined will think I'm trying to rip off Wallace Shawn. Here, I'll share a small portion of the chapter I sent Megan: "Everything was made of molecules! Every single thing that ever happened was because of a couple of molecules banging into one another, causing the creation of the universe itself, in Gram Rattan’s understanding. Everything that happened after that was just more and more molecules banging around. Even the thoughts in Gram Rattan’s head! ... Molecules obeying immutable laws! That first molecule hitting that second molecule, well, that was the only thing that had ever really 'happened' in Gram Rattan’s opinion. The rest was gravy." So anyway, Megan told me that in the Wallace Shawn play, the moment must have passed so subtly she barely noticed it. I paraphrase. Anyhow, we can all breathe a sigh of relief! 7. You know who plays the "Big Bang Guy," as I call him, in Wallace Shawn's play? John Early! He was in an episode of SUMMER CAMP ISLAND I worked on! And Wallace Shawn was on ADVENTURE TIME! I'm not 100% sure, but I think maybe he was on SUMMER CAMP ISLAND as well. Anyway, based on a profile I read of him in the New York Times, he would love it if you went up and shouted that fact in his face, especially if he happened to be standing in a "temple of art." According to the New York Times, if there is one thing Wallace Shawn can't get enough of, it is standing around in a "temple of art." 8. You know I don't care to lug a big fat book with me when I travel. So I left Witold Gombrowicz at home. Upon my return, I opened it up and the first thing I read was "God, allow me to vomit up the human body!" Ha ha. You had to be there. That's old Gomby for you. Funny, I was already thinking of him as "old Gomby" when Megan texted, referring to him as "Gommy." I bet he would love it! As much as Wallace Shawn would love to be told by strangers on the street that when he was on ADVENTURE TIME, his character farted.

Fun with Kafka

Yesterday, as I texted Megan Abbott, I kept singing a phrase from Kafka's diaries in a Bob Dylan voice. It really works! Try it at home. "I keep remembering her ugly huge solemn Renaissance ostrich feather hats from the past"... I know it seems complicated! But just dive right in. Here are some helpful hints as you endeavor to sing the preceding phrase from Kafka's diaries over and over in a Bob Dylan voice: 1. Try to cram "I keep remembering her" into the upbeat. After that, it's a strictly normal rock-and-roll chugging rhythm all the way, as long as you 2. sing "Renaissance" in a triplet configuration. 3. Don't try to sing the phrase to the tune of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," though that would be the expected impulse, nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't quite fit, though. Just make up your own Bob Dylan melody. It's easy! Bob Dylan does it all the time! Okay, now you are ready to have the time of your life singing "I keep remembering her ugly huge solemn Renaissance ostrich feather hats from the past" from Kafka's diary entry of February 13, 1914, in your best Bob Dylan voice. The most important thing is to have fun!

Sweet Thoughts of Hawkman

Been reading in some of these old comic books about Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and one thing I notice is how much they like birds. These comics are slightly before my comic-reading time, I think... the Hawkman I remember wasn't as into birds, in my recollection. But Hawkman and Hawkgirl, in the older comics, they are really into chilling with birds, just hanging out with birds and shooting the breeze. Because they can talk bird language! Hawgirl says, "SUMMON OUR BIRD-FRIENDS TO SHARE OUR FUN, DEAR!" And Hawkman goes, "GOOD IDEA! WHEET WHEEEEET" - a couple of panels later he is talking about his "FEATHERED FRIENDS." They sure do love birds. It's nice. Like I say, by the time I knew about Hawkman, he was all business. He wasn't kicking back with some bird buddies anymore. It's sad. In the same story, Hawkman marvels over the very idea of sandwiches, and expresses his astonishment that the advanced minds of his home planet Thanagar never came up with something as awesome as sandwiches. Truly this is the best version of Hawkman. Lover of birds, appreciator of sandwiches! Also, Hawkman and Hawkgirl can't keep their hands off each other!

The Wonderful World of McNeil

McNeil has stumbled across a copy of the novel PAL JOEY that his grandfather checked out of the library... it's 58 years overdue! (See proof above.) The discovery led McNeil to reflect upon his own tardiness. He still has a copy of WITHOUT FEATHERS that was due back on May 26, 1982. "I guess it runs in the family. We get busy and forget!" McNeil's email concludes. Incidentally, McNeil dug out "his" WITHOUT FEATHERS and opened to page five, where he read "The only thing you'll do is in collaboration with an owl."

Owls

You are no doubt aware of my popular theory that every book has an owl in it. I don't "blog" anymore, obviously, yet I am compelled to tell you whenever I read a book with an owl in it. It's not the same thing! The magical new novel GOLDELINE by Jimmy Cajoleas contains any number of owls. Now! We know a few things about Jimmy: 1. Although he was in some classes that I "taught" I cannot and do not take any credit for his development as a writer. Why, I hear he was born with a quill in his hand! Literally! [This is a fanciful conceit, not an actual rumor. - ed.] 2. He was never in one of those classes in which I forced the students to put owls in their stories, cruelly enforcing the "Owl Theory of Literature" which would bring me such notoriety and profit throughout the academic world. So! I can't even take credit for Jimmy's owls. GOLDELINE takes place (so far!) in the woods, and often at night, so, you know, there are going to be some owls there.

You Eschew Froufrou Poo Poo

I was thinking about Richard Strauss's tone poem "Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche" and realized I don't really know much about Till Eulenspiegel himself. So I started poking around and was delighted to learn that Eulenspiegel means "owl mirror." So any collection of the Till Eulenspiegel tales might be said to have an owl in it, mightn't it? Sure it might. Why, look. Here's Till Eulenspiegel's supposed gravestone and he's holding an owl and a mirror over his head in case you don't get the point. During my idle research I stumbled on the website for that certain corporate behemoth, the name of which I never utter here. And someone had reviewed a collection of Till Eulenspiegel stories like so: "It seems like the punchline of every single story has to do with Euelenspiegel defecating on or in something or someone. That's it. That's the book's running joke. I suppose if you were an illiterate German peasant sitting around a hearth fire in the 1500s, you'd find these tales of feces and bad puns hilarious, but I didn't." I was fascinated to discover this living person who is so worked up about Till Eulenspiegel. And as you can imagine, he had inadvertently composed one of those "bad reviews" that made me want to read the book more than ever. For good measure, the reviewer rubs this salt in the wounds, though I hate to repeat it so close to our nation's birthday: "Of course, since a good majority of modern Americans are probably less sophisticated than an illiterate German peasant from 400 years ago, perhaps Till Eulenspiegel is due for a comeback. Hollywood could cast Johnny Knoxville... and he could crap all over American audiences, who will double over with laughter at every fart noise." Sold! I was naturally drawn to this reviewer's other reviews, which form a kind of epistolary novel or Robert Browning poem, in which you get to know the narrator by filling in the gaps. It's like that famous intellectual essayist said in his manifesto that time, we don't need novels anymore. Did he say that? It sounds like something somebody with a manifesto would say! Before getting into his one-star judgment of Folgers Classic Medium Roast Coffee Singles Serve Bags, our reviewer indulges in this bit of throat clearing: "I am no coffee elitist. I eschew status-conscious coffee drinkers and the frou frou coffee houses they frequent in order to be seen carrying green fringed cups emblazoned with quotes from left-wing icons." I've spent some part of my life trying to make up narrators who talk just this way, but I see once again that I am unnecessary. Also recommended: the same reviewer on the moral depravity of the Frankie Avalon movie BEACH PARTY.

The Tinder of Our Wishes

Hey remember when my book about cigarette lighters came out? Me neither! But for a while there I would see something and think, "Oh, I should have put that in my cigarette lighter book. If only I had known!" But after a while you stop thinking that because you'd go mad. Mad, I say! But I just read AGNES GREY. To my surprise there were no owls in it, because those Brontë sisters are usually reliable purveyors of literary owls. The closest we get are some rooks who fly away as the sun sets: "For a moment, such birds as soared above the rest might still receive the lustre on their wings, which imparted to their sable plumage the hue and brilliance of deep red gold; at last, that too departed. Twilight came stealing on..." And I was like, "Oh, boy! Here come the owls." But there were no owls. Here's what Anne Brontë DID have: something I would have stuck somewhere in my cigarette lighter book, had I read it in time... "the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes." I also enjoyed (this is unrelated) her elaborate conceit on the subject of a lonely glowworm. Anne Brontë is in great sympathy with nature. The same cannot be said for Arnold Schwarzenegger, I fear. We watched most of ERASER last night. You know, Dr. Theresa and I saw it in the theater when it came out, and I associate it with the very earliest years of our marriage. I did not recall the part in which Arnold is being pursued through a zoo by some bad guys, so he shoots out the glass on a tank full of alligators, and the alligators immediately begin eating the bad guys. "Don't they feed these alligators?" I wondered. Actually, what I wondered was "Don't they feed these crocodiles?" But I decided later that they were supposed to be alligators, for reasons that will soon become clear. So after the alligators eat the bad guys, one of them gets after Arnold, so he shoots it in the head. Hey, these alligators just helped him out! And isn't he responsible for them now? Doesn't he realize their terrible irony? But no, he just says, "You're luggage." That's what he says after he shoots the alligator. I found it unnecessary! First of all, the alligator is already dead. Second of all, even if the alligator was alive, it wouldn't be able to understand what you were saying. Third of all, why are you gloating? Even if forced into a situation in which she was required to kill an alligator (there is some arguable precedent in AGNES GREY), Anne Brontë never would have gloated about it! Fourth of all, why are you staying and making wisecracks to a dead alligator when there are more bad guys coming? In any case, his remark was in extremely bad taste. I decided they were meant to be alligators because I believe shoes and belts and boots and suitcases are traditionally made from alligator hide, not crocodile hide. I don't know the difference. I must sadly conclude by noting that Arnold Schwarzenegger appears in my cigarette lighter book more than once, poor Anne Brontë (as noted) not at all.

Jennifer Lawrence Admires a Conch

I guess you think I "blogged" an awful lot in May for somebody who stopped "blogging" in April. Shows how much you know! There was so much stuff I didn't "blog" about in May! You wouldn't even believe it. Here is some of it. 1. Stopped by Square Books and bought a notebook. Katelyn said, "Don't you like ______?" (She named another brand.) I said I found the binding inferior. "You should write a letter to the company!" said Katelyn. "I love writing letters to companies." I asked her, "What are you, a ninety-year-old man at heart?" "She does it after she eats her liver and onions," said Slade. Katelyn guilelessly confirmed that she loves liver and onions and wishes she knew how to cook it for herself. 2. Ace wasn't in his office, where I was supposed to meet him, so I sat in the anteroom (?) and looked at a magazine with this caption on the cover: "With a team of wildlife experts, Uma Thurman moves a white rhino threatened by poachers to safety." But you don't see any wildlife experts; you just see Uma Thurman hugging a rhinoceros's head. I like how scrupulous they are not to give us the false impression that Uma Thurman was out there wrangling rhinos by herself. 3. I started reading the new Don DeLillo novel, which is about cryogenics, I guess. That made me recall all of a sudden that McNeil and I tried writing a screenplay called BLUE PERIOD back when we were in our twenties. The plot was that two guys (?) got trapped in an industrial walk-in freezer and told each other stories while they waited and hoped for help to arrive. One story was about a war with Antarctica, maybe? All the stories were about being cold. I remember that McNeil invented a weapon called the ICBM (Icy Cold Banana Malted instead of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile). Another story was about a scam artist with a cryogenics lab. He froze celebrities and thawed them out on a desert island, where they were forced to act in a movie he had written. That's all I remember about the screenplay. McNeil, confirming that such an attempted screenplay existed, said it featured a character named Dean running for office with the slogan "Dean Is Clean." 4. I met with Julia via computer monitor. I thought she said, "You look great!" She actually said, "You look gray!" 5. My doctor's waiting room suddenly has all of Richard Howorth's old NEW YORKER magazines in it - with his home address on the mailing labels and everything! 6. Dr. Theresa went to lunch at Handy Andy and I had pangs of jealousy, traces of which I allowed to cross my face. I had been craving Handy Andy, having recently written about it for publication (details forthcoming, surely, though I am not "blogging" anymore): I feared I had misremembered the condiments with which the Handy Andy double cheeseburger is dressed! Fact checking! Dr. Theresa even offered to bring me one home to examine and consume, but then we remembered that I had a doctor's appointment shortly (different doctor; never mind why I have so many doctors!) and a double cheeseburger might not sit well at a doctor's appointment. 7. This other doctor had more standard waiting room fare: in PEOPLE I read about how Tennille of The Captain and Tennille was embarrassed by a damaged finger she suffered in a wheelbarrow accident as a child. That's why she always turned down movie offers! Meanwhile, "The Captain" wore his famous captain's hat even to bed, humiliated by a failed hair transplant. They struck me as... tragic? "Jennifer Lawrence admires a conch" was a phrase I read in US magazine. 8. In an ADVENTURE TIME meeting I was trying to say the title of the TV show THE BIG BANG THEORY but I accidentally said "8 1/2 MEN." Sadly, I was not trying to be esoteric or funny. My brain had simply fizzled out and died. A good laugh was had by most. 9. We drove past Tom Franklin's place and there was a chicken pecking in his yard. I don't think he owns chickens! (See also.) This was a fluffy chicken with black feathers, salted with white. 10. I realized that I didn't give you a truly complete picture of everything I learned from THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. I kept a bunch of it off the "blog" and crammed it instead into a novel that will probably never be published, but here's the epigraph, anyway: "Bees indeed make neat and curious works, and many other creatures besides; but when they have done, they cannot judge of them." 11. McNeil's apple tree (below) is producing again. 12. Megan Abbott and I emailed back and forth about what Lady MacBeth meant by "spirits that tend on mortal thoughts" and I sent her a chapter about demonology in Shakespeare from some old book. Only afterward did I realize that the old book was by T.F. Thistelton Dyer, who provided the epigraph for my new book of short stories MOVIE STARS! Yes, that is just one more example of the meaningless junk I didn't "blog" about this month. "Posting" this a week early I do hereby vanquish May's tyranny over my troubled and searching mind.

The Plumage of the Screech-Owl

I am not surprised that LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS is a book with an owl in it to add to my compulsive list of books I read with owls in them. Godwin mentions "the plumage of the screech-owl" as one ingredient in a kind of witches' brew recorded in the writings of Horace.

A World of Feathers

So as you know I've been thinking about MACBETH. So I was in Square Books to meet someone, and while I waited I leafed through a history book by Peter Ackroyd, which begins with the reign of King James, who inspired MACBETH in so many ways. And on page 2 somebody writes King James a letter suggesting he should have "a heart of adamant in a world of feathers." I thought that was okay! But I skipped ahead to Shakespeare. And that's when I was reminded (by this quotation: "Where the bee sucks, there suck I:/ In a cowslip's bell I lie;/ There I couch when owls do cry") that THE TEMPEST has owls in it.

The Only Explanation Was Offered By Our Dentist

Yesterday I picked up some good research items from that used book stall I like so much. It's in that strip mall across from Big Bad Breakfast, way in the back of the antique store. Check it out! One thing I found might be the most interesting self-published book I've come across since THE SCRAPBOOK OF A DETECTIVE. This one is by a livestock inspector named Dr. Harold Wallman, and it's a lavishly produced overview of his many collections of things. It's called 640 OF MY COLLECTIONS. They're put into alphabetical order and numbered. For example, collection #5 is "Alligators." The paragraph about his alligator collection begins, "The most intriguing alligator is controlled by two buttons." No set-up or anything, he just gets right to it. I don't think I'm getting across how unusual this book is. I'll keep trying. Collection #141 is "Cinema Photographs." He found most of these "in a Chicago alley. There were way more than I could take in a car, but I kept some... I had some fun with them by putting captions on them as to what I thought each character was saying. In one for 'Bed Time for Bonzo,' Ronald Reagen [sic] is standing there and he says, 'Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.' The lady holding the chimp says, 'You mean father, Ha Ha Ha.'" Dr. Wallman also has a collection of newspaper articles and cartoons containing the name Arnold. The description is somewhat muddled, but they seem to be a tribute to his friend Arnold Cohn, and he put together a scrapbook that is partly (I think) about the real Arnold Cohn and partly about other people who happen to be named Arnold that he pretends are Arnold Cohn (?), including, writes Dr. Wallman, and note the quotation marks, "a picture of 'him' on a motorcycle, as a wrestler, and with a great body. It ends with his car accidents, death, services and auction. Many entries are completely anachronistic." Collection #155 is "Coffins." The descriptive paragraph begins, "One of my skeletons came in a rosewood coffin." So right away you know that he has a collection of skeletons, and indeed there it is, collection #507: "Skeletons - Human." Here we learn that his RV caught fire in 1986, and the only skeleton he owned at the time was destroyed: "I soon tried to replace it at dealers in Texas and Chicago, IL. I was told that human skeletons were no longer available." He finally got one but "it is light brown in color. The only explanation was offered by our dentist who said it got that way from being kept in the dark." And yes, I read between the lines that he was driving around in an RV with a human skeleton, and you'll have to trust me that it's only one of the disturbing things I've read between the lines - and in the lines - in this book. In a closing thought, Dr. Wallman regrets all the collections he couldn't include. "Too late to be more than mentioned are dolls, scout parapernalia [sic], bird feeders and houses, feathers, crutches, lead sinkers, enema cans, and cloth patches." Speaking of dolls, I believe he claims to have a pornographic Charlie Chaplin doll...? Details are vague, though the doll is mentioned in collection #432, "Pornography." Hmm, it seems that the thermos mentioned there is definitely pornographic (don't ask) and maybe the Chaplin doll is something he picked up in the same lot. "There is also a 'dirty' pocket watch and wrist watch," concludes Dr. Wallman. Such is the fascination of this book that only now do I find time to mention that Dr. Wallman's 392nd collection consists of owls, of course.

Dog Cookie Faint

Did you know there was a sitcom starring Robert Mitchum and NATURAL BORN KILLERS' Juliette Lewis? Me neither! McNeil sent me a bunch of sad stuff from the last part of a Robert Mitchum biography, most of it so sad I'm not going to even tell you. I believe I've mentioned before that every biography of a dead person gets sad toward the end. I'm not even going to tell you the name of the sitcom because I don't want you to go searching for it and watching it the way McNeil forced me to do. Forced me! So Robert Mitchum is a formerly homeless man who is also the grandfather to some kids, and he goes to the grocery store and comes back with a bunch of junk food. Juliette Lewis disapproves! She shows a snack cake to the dog and the dog pretends to faint in disgust. A little girl pops out of a grocery bag! And I guess some other stuff happens. (Hey, I don't know why, but there are a lot of images on the "internet" of Juliette Lewis dressed up like this.)

Kingdom of the Grackles

I keep hinting around about some project like it's some big secret, but it's not a secret and it's not a secret project, it's just a project, I guess it's a project. Hey! Remember when I went to an auction of Bob Hope's personal effects and then I wrote an essay about Bob Hope's ice buckets, and ice buckets in general, for THE ATLANTIC, and this was before the "Ice Bucket Challenge" became popular (remember the "Ice Bucket Challenge"?) so now my article is totally obsolete? Well, that essay series is related to a series of books that Bloomsbury is putting out and they asked me if I could think of an object I wanted to write about - another object - and I scratched my head and said "Cigarette lighters?" And looking back, I think I only said that because I had a lot of leftover notes about Bob Hope's cigarette lighters. But anyway, now I am writing a book about cigarette lighters and that is my so-called "secret project." So I flew to Oklahoma City to view a large private collection of cigarette lighters. (The lighters are actually in nearby Guthrie.) But I'm not going to tell you about that or it would spoil the book! Ha ha, you're not going to read that book, are you? TELL ME THE TRUTH! But here, let me look at my famous little notebook of famous jottings I always famously jot when I travel and see how many jottings are useless for the book and thus safe for me to share. Well! As always the question was what to read on the airplane. I looked around the shelves here at home and I just wasn't feeling anything. So I went to Square Books and leafed through Martin Short's autobiography again. I would never buy Martin Short's autobiography! I don't know why! Sorry, Martin Short! I like Martin Short. And I'd sit in a bookstore and read his autobiography for free - no better than a thief! - but I just can't make myself buy it. On the cover of his autobiography his head forms the "O" in "SHORT." But! His mouth is wide open, so maybe his mouth is the "O" in "SHORT." Or maybe his head is the solid part of the "O" and his mouth is the emptiness in the middle of the "O." I read some stuff about how he met Danny Thomas and Danny Thomas always carried a pistol in a holster on his hip! And then I put Martin Short's autobiography back in its proper place and went upstairs and started looking for a small paperback suitable for airplane reading. As I described some of my likings to the booksellers Kate and Kaitlyn, Kate exclaimed, "Do you like vampires?" Now, there is no way that Kate could have known I am currently working on a Marceline story for ADVENTURE TIME - a meeting about which story was to take place later that very afternoon! - so vampires and all their peculiar habits had been particularly on my mind.

(That's not a spoiler, is it? You know Marceline the Vampire Queen is a character on the show, right? Besides, Adam Muto himself recently tweeted these drawings of Marceline from the thing we've been working on - sketches by Hanna K.) So Kate and Kaitlyn tried to get me to buy a book called THE QUICK by Lauren Owen. "I'm a hundred pages in and there are no vampires yet," said Kaitlyn. I replied that that was fine. I reminded Kaitlyn of a book I had recommended to her, THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters, and how you had to wait a long time for the ghost, and Kaitlyn said, "There ARE NO GHOSTS in THE LITTLE STRANGER!" (This is an argument I've had before with other people.) So Kaitlyn and I argued about that in a friendly fashion while Kate thrust the vampire book into my hand. A big clunky hardback! Too big and heavy to carry through airports with my fragile arms. But I opened it up to page one just to be nice and the first sentence is this: "There were owls in the nursery when James was a boy." AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! So I said, "Sold!" And I left Square Books fully convinced that I would grit my teeth and lug this monster of a novel (523 pages, that's not so terrible) onto all the airplanes. BUT! I stopped by Ace Atkins's office and he had a nice, light paperback copy of LABRAVA by Elmore Leonard on his desk because he had been wanting me to read it. Ah, that's more like it. Sorry, Kaitlyn and Kate! But you almost had me. The vampires will be here for me when I get back. Ace urged me to stay at the Skirvin in Oklahoma City (he was there a lot when he was researching his Machine Gun Kelly book). Ace said the Skirvin was famous for being haunted and he sent me a New York Times article (!) about how professional basketball players who stay at the Skirvin get most especially haunted (!!). But I had already made reservations somewhere else. Ace also told me about a good steak place, but I had already - on Wright Thompson's recommendation - made reservations at Junior's, which Wright described in a tweet as an "old school 80s oil money cocaine rich dark red leather whiskey and T-bone joint."

And yes, that was a recommendation! So I guess my unintended message to Ace was "Screw your thoughtful suggestions!" Though I did bring that book he loaned me. I looked up the Oklahoma City weather on the "internet" and asked Dr. Theresa if she thought I should bring my overcoat. I wanted her to say no! We had an overcoat debate. Then it was time for my ADVENTURE TIME meeting. Kent popped up on my computer screen and started agreeing with Dr. Theresa! They were ganging up on me. But I didn't want to drag my bulky overcoat through the airport. Finally, Pen joined the meeting. "How many degrees should it be before I wear an overcoat?" I asked him. "Overcoats are fun, so I say any degrees," Pen replied. I explained that I prefer to travel light. One carry-on messenger bag, one book, and the clothes on my back! That's it! Pen suggested turning the overcoat into a hobo bindle and putting all my stuff in it. I said, "Yes, that's what they like to see at airports." When Pen found out I would ALSO be wearing my blue smoking jacket (under the OVERcoat) he had second thoughts and came around to my side! "I've seen Pen walking around with no jacket when it's FREEZING!" Kent objected, hinting that Pen was no judge of when to wear an overcoat. Now let's get to the jottings you've been craving. I'm skipping some good stuff because I'm tired. Too bad for you. 1. Went to Junior's on my first night in town, just as Wright had suggested. The cab driver, Cecil, took me past a strange building. I couldn't get a really good look - it was a pale, imposing lump in the dark - but I was intrigued enough to ask him what it was. Cecil said it was the "Gold Dome," a vestige of the glory days of Route 66. Cecil also mentioned the "Milk Bottle Building," but I didn't see that and don't know what it is.

I was reminded of the only other time I've been through Oklahoma City. It must have been 1988 or so. I got fired from my job and my friend Tony and I decided to drive across the country, often sticking to the old Route 66. When we drove through Oklahoma City it was literally covered in a white fog, the whole city. We didn't see a single thing. I later turned that incident into a short story for the fine Oklahoma literary magazine THIS LAND. We pulled up at Junior's. It appeared to be an office building! I walked into a sterile corridor with many doors and wasn't even sure I had the right place: it looked like the door to a dentist office waiting room. But as soon as I opened it up I was in Narnia! I literally walked into a different world. (I may as well mention here that Junior's was the second Oklahoma City restaurant I had walked into with "NO WEAPONS" etched in frosted glass at the entrance.) 2. That publicity picture earlier in this "post" can't do Junior's justice. I felt like I was in VERTIGO, TWIN PEAKS, THE SHINING and a Megan Abbott novel,

all in the best way, and I ate a princely meal that James Garner would have eaten in THE WHEELER DEALERS. 3. My table! They put me at a weird table, which felt like the best table in the house to me. It was a two-top nudged right up against a plate glass window, and on the other side of that window, inches from my left, was the blackness, flecked with gold and red, of a dark bar, with people wearing bolo ties and fur stoles and laughing and SMOKING! It was like a membrane through which I could see another time, and because it was soundproofed it really had the effect of a dream, a thin membrane providing a tempting glimpse of a whole other existence I could almost reach out and touch. 4. After dinner I had to go through that looking glass. It smelled like smoke! I never wanted to leave. 5. I spilled rye all over Ace's copy of LABRAVA. 6. I met three nice women who were out for a night on the town together. One was a realtor, one was an aspiring poet and one was drinking expensive cabernet and studying from an enormous textbook entitled HUMAN ANATOMY at the end of the bar! 7. The next day I went out to Guthrie to visit my contact with the lighter collection. I hired a driver named David to take me. He was born in Ethiopia. He said he works at the Skirvin a lot and Ace will be pleased to hear that he brought up the ghosts. Many of David's passengers have told him about being haunted at the Skirvin. David thinks it's a bunch of baloney. He doesn't believe in ghosts. He is a believer in science and evidence. He had a lot of very interesting psychological theories to explain why and how people fool themselves into thinking they see ghosts at the Skirvin. David's a big reader so we talked about books a lot and he told me interesting stories of his mother and father back in Ethiopia. 8. I can't tell you anything about the lighters because I'm saving it for my book. But I just stared at one of my notes ("Frankenstein nose" is all it said) for several minutes in total panic, thinking, "Oh my God! My notes are useless! I can't write this book!" But then I realized it was "Frankenstein noise." One of the lighters made a noise like the machines that brought Frankenstein's monster to life in the old movie. That's what that note meant. And that's all you're getting out of me! 9. My friends Sarah Marine and her husband Bayard Godsave live in a small town an hour away from Oklahoma City and they were nice enough to come all that way to meet me for dinner. As I stood outside the hotel waiting for them I saw a large group of young women approaching from a nearby park. Their leader was wearing a tiara and a satiny black sash! But they turned the corner before they got to me and I could not read the sash. It was not a parade of any kind, just an informal gathering or stroll with a tiara and sash. 10. Like Dr. Theresa and myself, Sarah Marine and Bayard are early diners. So early, in fact, that the restaurant wasn't open when we got there. We had some minutes to wait. Sarah Marine suddenly realized that we were very close to the memorial for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. So we walked over there and it was a very moving and deeply solemn place to be. I heard a solitary bird make a an eerie and prehistoric but, I thought, weirdly beautiful sound. 11. Sarah Marine pointed out the bird in its tree and told me it was a grackle. 12. Boy, let me tell you, Sarah Marine is down on grackles. "They don't fly, they run," she said disdainfully. "But that one is in a tree," I said. Sarah Marine said, "I'm talking about the REAL grackles, the parking lot grackles." She said no two grackles look alike, they're all ragged and mangy in different ways, missing different feathers, slovenly, and she seemed to resent the grackle in the tree as a poser, I guess, a pretentious grackle that thought he was too damn good to represent his squalid kind. And yet I detected no affection for the punk grackles she apparently considered more authentic. She talked about a grackle standing on a corner gnawing on a chicken bone. She saw this same grackle eating discarded chicken wings in an ugly way in the same spot on two separate occasions!

Bayard kind of tried to take up for the grackles a little bit, but had to admit that they stand around chewing on cigarette butts. Bayard and Sarah Marine quoted an ornithologist who hates grackles. An ornithologist! (More on this later.) I could not help but recall the poor cormorant, and that book I have about how everybody hates cormorants. 13. Bayard, on grackles: "Our friend says they look like gasoline." Sarah Marine: "They're shimmery." Bayard: "They're the color of gasoline in a puddle." I must say all of this sounded kind of exotic and tantalizing to me, but Sarah Marine would have none of my sympathetic grackle talk. Sarah Marine: "They sound like something broken." Bayard: "A broken toy." Sarah Marine: "A broken toy of nightmares." I remarked that I kind of liked the way that one grackle sounded. "You haven't heard them when they start grinding," said Sarah Marine. 14. It's a cliché, but the walk back to the restaurant in the gathering darkness took on a Hitchcockian feeling as grackles gathered all around us - I guess I should call them a "flock" but they seemed more like a swarm or a horde - numberless grackles! - and they did make an uncanny racket, and it may have been terrible, but it struck me as unearthly, and for that reason kind of thrilling. INTERESTING SIDE NOTE! Just before I hit the button to publish this "post" I received an email from Sarah Marine: "I'd been thinking that as we stood at the edge of the glimmering reflecting pool at the Oklahoma City Federal Building Memorial, I may have been unfair to the grackle in my musings. Then, I pulled Fifty Common Birds of Oklahoma by the ornithologist George Miksch Sutton off the bookshelf & again feel mostly disgust and pity for the Common Grackle. I've attached a section from the entry on the Common Grackle. Sorry, not sorry, grackles!"

15. At dinner, Sarah Marine told me there's a statue of James Garner in Norman, Oklahoma, and the waitress said, "It's all covered in flowers now," referring to Mr. Garner's fairly recent passing. 16. The restaurant music (before it shifted to "Tears For Fears" mode a bit later in the evening) consisted of popular tunes with a "surf guitar" twist. The theme from GOLDFINGER was one. I mentioned that it was Dr. Theresa's go-to karaoke number. Bayard asked whether I had ever seen the FRASIER episode when Frasier and Niles sing "Goldfinger." I had to say no! Bayard said that the old piano player in the episode can only play "Goldfinger." With Martin's encouragement, Frasier and Niles sing along - reluctantly at first, but with growing enthusiasm. That sounded like a good one! I was sorry not to recall it. I mentioned an episode of FRASIER that had recently disturbed and troubled me and Sarah Marine said, "I have a problem with an entire era of FRASIER." We discussed it. "Why did they give Daphne bangs?" is one thing that Sarah Marine asked plaintively. 17. Sarah Marine said their hometown consisted of "a grain elevator and an intersection." Bayard added, "We have a liquor store that sells Samurai swords." 18. The bottled water in my hotel room had a Bible verse printed next to the expiration date! Not the whole verse, just a citation: "John 5:15." I made a note to myself to look it up in my Geneva Bible when I got home and see what it's all about. "The man departed, and told the Jewes that it was Jesus, which had made him whole." Hmm. Gee. That's what it said on my bottled water! 19. David drove me to the airport the next day and proved himself once again a delightfully wide-ranging conversationalist. He had much of interest to say on the subjects of Christopher Hitchens, Agatha Christie, Karl Marx, Field Marshal Rommel, asceticism, tribalism, and democracy. He was proud that Ethiopia (which he called "the second oldest Christian country in the world," and gave me some history on that) had never been colonized. He told about having to kill goats and oxen as a young man and how his people hardly ever eat a female animal - they eat the rooster, for example, instead of the chicken. "Meat is for rich people," he said. He described being a poor child and - as a kind of entertainment - watching strangers eat meat. "That was our window shopping," he said. 20. I forgot to tell you about the earthquakes! I wasn't in one. But when I was looking at the lighter collection, the collector showed me where several of his lighters had fallen and some had been damaged, and he said, "That's what happens with the earthquakes. We had five earthquakes last week." I think that's what he said. It was something like that. I haven't transcribed the recordings yet. But he is 82, and I thought maybe it was just a strange hyperbolic thing that an 82-year-old man might say. On the drive back to the city, I asked David whether Oklahoma City has a lot of earthquakes and he said, "We had 4,000 earthquakes last year." WHAT! I haven't looked up anything to corroborate that, but Megan sent me an article from THE ATLANTIC detailing a large number of earthquakes in Oklahoma. I didn't see a number so mind-boggling as 4,000 (I haven't looked into it very carefully) but the article did mention a single recent weekend in which Oklahoma had SEVEN EARTHQUAKES! Seven earthquakes in one weekend, I said! David says that the oil men try to tell everybody it's just nature at work, but David knows it's the fracking. 21. Announcement at the Oklahoma airport: "Will the passenger who left the big bag of money at the eastern checkpoint please come get it." 22. "He told Cundo, watching him pick at his cole slaw, he ate like a ******** owl." - LABRAVA

Weird French Governess Strikes Again

Every book has an owl in it, but seldom have I been less surprised to find an owl in a book than when I found one in UNCLE SILAS by Sheridan Le Fanu. As you well might imagine, it is the narrator's weird French governess who is compared to an owl: "She looked steadily in my face and very wickedly. I gazed at her with dazzled eyes - I suppose as the feathered prey do at the owl that glares on them by night."

A Countenance Rather Sensitive and Melancholy

Yesterday I laughed out loud, and hard, when I saw a book called THE DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT: PLIGHT OF A FEATHERED PARIAH at Square Books. I guess it was a similar feeling to when I first saw that someone had written a book about seahorses called POSEIDON'S STEED. Ha ha ha! That's still funny. So dramatic. But I immediately felt guilty about laughing at the cormorant. I don't know anything about cormorants. So I bought the book to make up for laughing at it. And just glancing through it, God, people are awful to cormorants. I don't want to read this book! It's really sad. I didn't know people were so mean to cormorants. And there I was at the checkout counter, not having even cracked the book open, nonchalantly joking with Richard about how everybody apparently hates cormorants judging from the title of this book, and Richard said, "DOUBLE-CRESTED cormorants" and we parted agreeing that everybody is probably totally cool with single-crested cormorants, but yeah, it's not funny anymore. The dust jacket flap says the double-crested cormorant is "an iridescent black waterbird superbly adapted to catch fish. It belongs to a family of birds vilified since biblical times and persecuted around the world." And then I opened up the book right to some horrible stuff happening to cormorants. Oh no. And PART I is called "What Are Cormorants?" and starts with a beautiful drawing of two happy cormorants being affectionate (I think), anyway they're sort of nuzzling sweetly. Now I feel terrible. Poor cormorants! Sorry for "cormoranting" about it, ha ha! Then I went to City Grocery Bar, where McKay McFadden took this photo of Megan Abbott reading my tarot cards with a "phone app" (I guess) as Bill Boyle contemplates what it all means and I don't know if the tarot works on a "phone app"! I guess we'll find out! I had the feeling that Megan, just to be nice, was giving an overly positive spin to my hellish cards of inevitable doom. Oh, at Off Square Books I bought a gothic novel by Sheridan Le Fanu for a cool four dollars. So I'm pretty excited about that. I was telling Megan about the first two paragraphs. The first one is a long description of a room, and the next one is a description of a girl in the room: "A girl of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed, and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl." I found the passage unusual and very satisfying.

Jack Warden's Realistic Shish Kebab Reaction

Remember what I told you about Jack Warden's performance in WAKE ME WHEN IT'S OVER? Of course you don't! That was like half an hour ago. But look at him in the background of this publicity still, reacting realistically (grim concern laced with irritation) to the "zany comic spectacle" of that guy from STALAG 17 dressed in an elaborate plumed and silken costume and bearing enormous flaming shish kebabs before him.

The Tough Figure Inside

Hey so yeah I have something really important to tell you so you know how I keep a long and faithful list of every book I read that has an owl in it? And you know how I have been buying old, yellowed comic books through the mail in an embarrassing and public attempt to reconnect with my lost youth? Well here is something that combines both of those fantastic hobbies! In the first issue of Jack Kirby's THE DEMON, a beat cop discovers Jason Blood (the Demon's alter-ego) conked-out on the ground in front of some mysterious ruins. Theorizes the cop, "YOU POKED AROUND THE OLD 'WARLY RUINS'... HEARD A HOOT OWL... AND RAN 'TIL YOU HIT A TREE." My friend Brian said this owl thing of mine "turns all of human literature into 'Where's Waldo.'" He meant it in a good way! But I just don't know anymore. Now, this has nothing to do with anything, but Jason Blood has a wacky pal named Harry Mathews, one t, just like the famed Oulipo writer (see also). And when Harry Mathews goes to a party at Jason Blood's house, he puts on a musketeer hat with a big plume and starts dancing to some rock-and-roll records, saying, "LET'S GET OFF THE WEIRDIE JIVE, GANG! LET'S ROCK IT! AND SOCK IT! --- AND SEND IT FIRST CLASS MAIL!!" I just wanted to tell you that. I also got the first issue of the comic book KA-ZAR by mistake. I had it confused with something else. What a vomitous example of purposeless consumerism I am. But in the first issue of KA-ZAR, Marvel Girl compares Iceman to Jerry Lewis. So for a moment I felt whole again. And finally let me draw your attention to the portion of an advertisement reproduced above. I saw it in another one of these DEMON comics and I suddenly remembered seeing it all the time when I was kid. It's for some weird toy where you pretend to sculpt a statue but you're not really doing anything. The statue has already been sculpted for you! And there's some gunk around it that you lackadaisically chip off to make you feel you're accomplishing something with your life. Boy, that really makes you think, doesn't it? Furthermore, the ad portrays its protagonist wallowing in the self-delusion his pointless new toy explicitly encourages, to the mockery and derision of his friends... a strange selling point. "BILLY USES THE SAFE CHISEL TO SCULPT AWAY THE SOFT OUTSIDE," says the ad copy. "EVEN HIS HARDEST BLOWS WON'T HURT THE TOUGH FIGURE INSIDE!" Just like my heart.

Cold Gloves

"... gusts of wind storming the treetops... and the two dead birds that were laid on the bonnet, for plucking, coming alive, their breast feathers unfolding as they lifted off and did a small circuit that simulated freedom, simulated life. When she caught them they felt soft and furry, like cold gloves that had been left outside." Cold gloves! That's pretty good. From WILD DECEMBERS by Edna O'Brien. I am sorry the birds are dead in that example.

Well What Do You Know!

Dudes! Come on! I have already startled and astonished you with the news that EVERY CHARLES PORTIS NOVEL HAS AN OWL IN IT. So now I am reading his play DELRAY'S NEW MOON, which is printed in a book called ESCAPE VELOCITY: A CHARLES PORTIS MISCELLANY, edited by Jay Jennings, and just heed this line of dialogue: "They say it's so dark in those woods that the owls fly in the daytime there, and the bats flit." And then Mr. Mingo replies, "And the nighthawk, with his fine white throat." I included that line just because I like it. But the main thing I am trying to tell you is that not only does every Charles Portis novel have an owl in it, every single Charles Portis BOOK of ANY KIND has an owl in it! This is a big day all right. Is there any liquor in the house?

10 Greatest Moments of 2012

Hey I see everybody is doing these end-of-the-year lists and it never gets old! So I am going to do one based on my 10 greatest moments of the year as far as I can remember them based on my "blog": 10) The time I ate a salad and watched a rerun of WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU. 9) When I had the idea that hardboiled eggs should make a comeback as bar food. Speaking of which, I watched some of THE VERDICT yesterday, and Paul Newman cracks a raw egg into his mug of beer before drinking it in one huge gulp! Seems manly and efficient. That is not one of the 10 greatest moments of 2012, I am just putting things in context for you. 8) The time I took a pain pill and watched GRAPE APE. 7) I watched a FRASIER where Frasier's dad kept beating him at chess. 6) I read that hyraxes defend themselves by "presenting their rumps." 5) When I watched part of a werewolf movie. 4) The time Mr. Belding from SAVED BY THE BELL and Rory from GILMORE GIRLS were on the same episode of MAD MEN! 3) The moment I first realized that Ray from EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND was going to make out with Lorelai from GILMORE GIRLS. 2) When I read this sentence: "Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers." 1) Up at 4 in the morning, watching them sell skull-shaped novelties on the Gem Shopping Network.