I'm Like Ladyhawke

Above, that's Adam Muto's tribute to my beloved characters Frowny 'n' Smiley! But more of that anon. First! I know you are so interested in how I switch from my daytime book to my nighttime book. My process, if you will. How do I stop reading one book during the day and start reading another book at night? Well, it's just like in the movie LADYHAWKE! Except instead of turning into a wolf as Rutger Hauer does with the setting of the sun, I put aside my daytime book and pick up my nighttime book! It's just that simple, folks. And before we go on, I'd like to mention that I repeatedly brought up LADYHAWKE in the Adventure Time writers room, and yet, somehow, we never stole anything from LADYHAWKE to use in the show, no matter how much I begged and cried. All right! But that's not the point. There isn't a point. But I'm sure you remember how sometimes my daytime book will blur into my nighttime book... like the daytime book will mention Gogol and then the nighttime book will mention Gogol, and so on (please "click" for a full catalog)... anyway! Yesterday, as my daytime reading was coming to a close, I read (in THE LOST STEPS by Alejo Carpentier, translated by Adrian Nathan West) "... the grave-faced toucan flaunts his breastplate..." at which point I opened up my nighttime book (a scholarly analysis of the roots of oral epic poetry) to see, of all things, "Rade's sword strikes fire from the captain's breastplate." Now, what does this mean? Nothing. I guess breastplate is an everyday word. Personally, I don't think about breastplates too much. But what is the universe telling me? To buy a breastplate? I don't know why I am reminded of a recent incident... yes I do. Anyway, I was at Square Books and I saw a new volume of previously unpublished Dream Songs by John Berryman. And I was like, well, he's been dead a long time. I asked Richard, who was standing there, whether they were any good or just some garbage someone swept up from John Berryman's floor and Richard said, and I do think this is an exact quotation, "Let's do the test!" And he opened the book at random and stuck his finger in and read the lines he found that way and they were good and so I bought the book. That's how Richard gets you! And this is related too, as I am sure you will agree: tonight, if you watch the special THE ELEPHANT on Adult Swim, you will see, in the commercial breaks on your ordinary television set, some extremely short "Frowny 'n' Smiley" episodes by me. So... when we were in one meeting during the making of THE ELEPHANT, Pen happened to mention that it was the 100th anniversary of the exquisite corpse, an art-making game which inspired the structrue of THE ELEPHANT. So, anyway! Today, in the New York Times, there is an article about the 100th anniversary of surrealism, and it includes the origin story of the exquisite corpse! Isn't that something? Today of all days? And I just thought of another thing: Matthew Broderick appears in both LADYHAWKE and ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE! Okay, I am going to buy a breastplate.

The Bouillon Incident

So Dr. Theresa and I were driving back from Memphis in one of those cars with that there satellite radio in it. And we tuned into an old-time radio drama starring Orson Welles, in which he kept talking about "meat juice," and, in fact, the title of the episode was "Meat Juice." I can tell you don't believe me! So "click" here and check out the title of episode 26! Well, after a bit, we began to get tired of hearing Orson Welles say "meat juice," as hard as that may be to believe. So we tried out different radio stations, and we were singing along, often inserting the phrase "meat juice" into a well-timed pause. Then we landed on an episode of American Top 40 from 1975 (presumably a different episode than the one we listened to in 2012 under remarkably similar circumstances), and old Casey Kasem spun "Third Rate Romance," a rather sleazy tune from my childhood. What filth my parents allowed me to listen to! Not recalling all the words, I bellowed over one verse the nonsensical imagery, "He was sittin' on a meat juice throne" and Dr. Theresa jumped in to provide the next line, "He was completely covered in foam." And now you can see why our 30th wedding anniversary is coming up pretty soon. You know what? I was going to save this photo (above) for that occasion, but now suddenly seems like the right time to show you Dr. Theresa (pre-doctorate) pointing at a hot dog in 1998. You may be wondering how I can date the photo with such startling accuracy! Well, I'll tell you. Kent Osborne took that photo at a professional baseball game at what was then called Turner Field. I don't know, maybe it's still called Turner Field! [It's not. - ed.] The president of TBS let us have his seats, so they were probably pretty good. I can't remember why he did that. To get us off his back? Once I ran into him in the grocery store and I was holding some bouillon cubes and all I could think to say to him was, "Bouillon cubes," as I waved my bouillon cubes in the air at him. He always had a mild and cheerful demeanor, but he made me nervous! I know it was 1998 (the hot dog photo, not the bouillon incident) because that's the year, so the "internet" tells me, that (in a different baseball game) Mark McGwire broke a big home run record, and it was on the very same visit from Kent that he watched Mark McGwire break that record on the TV at Manuel's Tavern, begging me (Kent was) to turn around and face the TV and enjoy the spectacle with him, but I kept my back turned to Mark McGwire for jerk-like reasons that now elude me. Anyhow, the "internet" says that (the Mark McGwire thing, not the bouillon incident) happened on September 8, 1998, and today is September 7, 2025! What a world. I don't like it.

Making Some Headway

As you know, we're very, very concerned here at the "blog" with famed crime writer John D. MacDonald's attraction/aversion to hungry women who are storybook giants. I'm sorry! His PROTAGONISTS' attraction/aversion. Ace Atkins memorably described one such character as a "sexy woman who can lift a car." Well, McNeil has finished reading THE BRASS CUPCAKE and reports that MacDonald's hero, and these are McNeil's words now, "makes it with a 'rippling muscles' woman who drinks a whole stein of beer in one gulp, then wipes the foam off her nose with her knuckles." McNeil concludes his summary with an appreciative exclamation that is unprintable here in our family newspaper. Speaking of which, these Shakespeare HENRY VI plays are really violent! These guys stick some people's heads on poles and then they are like (I paraphrase, but only slightly), "We should make them kiss!" So they get these heads on poles close together and make it look like they're smooching. That's in Part 2, I think. In Part 3, Richard (who will grow up to be Richard III!) says (paraphrasing again), "Did I put up a fight? Why don't you ask THIS guy?" And he pulls a decapitated head from behind his back (I guess) and everybody has a good laugh. His dad is so proud of him! Dad pretends to ask the head a question, and for a second you think they're going to do a puppet show with it, like something out of a FAR SIDE cartoon. Anyway, the head budget on these shows must have been enormous.

Book Review

My "main book" right now, which I call it to distinguish it from all the other books I am reading for all the other reasons, is Colm Tóibín's novel about Henry James. Well, folks, the other night, I turned a page and it popped right out in my fingers. Not torn, the page, quite whole, it just neatly popped from its place and removed itself from the book as if it hadn't been glued there at all. "Is this something to 'blog' about?" I mused silently within the seething depths of my soul. "It certainly was a dramatic incident!" But I put it out of my mind, until last night, when I was somewhat further along in the story... POP! And those caps are not accurate. It was an inaudible pop with which a second page dislodged itself from the book. And, look. "Turning" the pages is too violent a verb for what I do. Why, I'm not even creasing the spine of this delicate darling book. I'm barely holding it open! The pages are just coming out. The first time it happened, I paced back and forth in front of Dr. Theresa, declaring that something like this had never happened to me before, in all my many, many years of reading books since the days I was a precious tot. Dr. Theresa mentioned some unrelated bookish mishaps from her own experience, but none, she agreed, in which the pages of a book were just randomly popping out. But! Allow me to come clean. As I dug through the "blog," which serves as my main form of memory after (and before) recent medical unpleasantness, I discovered a few similar occasions. If you like, you may "click" on the appropriate upcoming "hyperlinks" to learn more. There was a book left out in the rain, and, of course, the old dictionary that I literally read to pieces - the latter a sort of intellectual abuse to which I also subjected a collection of interviews with screenwriters. And who can forget the time I found a pristine-looking 40-year-old paperback and opened it up and eight pages fell out? Well, I could, and did, forget that. But let me point out that this book by Colm Tóibín purports to be brand spanking new, fresh from the warehouse. Oh, Scribner! Your name used to mean something in this dirty world! Surely Charles Scribner and all his sons are out there rolling in their various (I assume) graves.

Speaking of Fox Mulder

I wanted to “post” this earlier, but the AT&T “internet” stopped working over and over. Anyway, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. I got one of those junk headlines that you get on your phone, something like “The Queen’s Favorite Sandwich That She Ate Every Day Since She Was Five – And It’s So Basic!” So I took a screen grab of it and sent it to Ace. That’s all we do all day every day, grab stupid things that appear on our phones and text them to each other. Then I texted the same screen grab, with its accompanying photo of Queen Elizabeth II, to Sara, along with my own humorous commentary: “The answer? A foot-long chili dog.” Sara’s reply was something like (a close paraphrase here): “OMG, really???” So I sadly had to reply that no, Queen Elizabeth II did not, as far as I know, eat a foot-long chili dog every day for 90 years. As Sara expressed it in a subsequent text, her tragedy – ha ha! she didn’t say tragedy – is that she “wants to believe.” Just like Fox Mulder from the X-Files! I added that part. Speaking of Fox Mulder, I was reading another old comic book about The Atom, and he was fighting these tiny guys who lived in a cave and rode around on the backs of bats. The editor interrupted the story to announce that tiny people of a proper size for riding small flying rodents into battle most likely really existed at some point! He insisted, in the capital letters typical of old comic books: “THE ELVES, THE BROWNIES, THE LEPRECHAUNS, THE FAIRIES, ALL MAY BE FANCIFUL RECOLLECTIONS OF A RACE OF TINY HUMANS! CHARLES FORT WRITES OF THEM.” Naturally, I was interested to run across this use of Charles Fort's captivating ramblings as evidence. I always thought Charles Fort would be a big deal on the “blog,” though he has never ended up in even 10 “posts” so far, after all the “blog’s” horrible countless years of thankless and unwanted existence. You remember Charles Fort, of whom it was once recorded on a book flap that he "collected and published reliable accounts of colored rains, living things falling to earth, unknown objects in space and in the oceans, people who have mysteriously appeared and disappeared." Charles Fort, to whom Tom Wolfe casually alluded: "Cassady began fibrillating the vocal cords, going faster and faster until by dawn if he had gone any faster, he would have vibrated off, as old Charles Fort said, and gone instantly into the positive absolute. It was a nice weird party." Charles Fort, whose glowing owls inspired the owls in my own second book. Charles Fort! That’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to say Charles Fort. Oh! In conclusion – and you will have to pardon me in advance for blue language on a level such as never, in my memory, has been attempted on the “blog” before – I watched THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY again, and as I was looking it up afterward in Fujiwara’s excellent monograph, I ran across Jerry Lewis’s defense of the puppet sequence from THE ERRAND BOY, which, having grown wise over the years, I now welcome with arms open wide. In fact, I’m ashamed of some of my earlier “posts” in which I seemingly apologize for Jerry. Back in those days, I just wanted everybody to like me! Now I don’t care anymore. So, Fujiwara interviews Jerry, who says of the part of the movie in which he, Jerry, cavorts tenderly with (if I recall correctly) a flirtatious, languorous ostrich puppet and enjoys maudlin interactions with a little finger-puppet clown… Jerry, who says of himself, actually, “We call that a director with steel balls.” And I was like, you know what? He’s right!

New Horizons in Handsomeness

It was cool enough, early today, for a walk in the park, and in the park, there is one of those dumping grounds - ha ha! it is nicer than I am making it sound - for unwanted books. You know, a little wooden house where you can put old books for hoary old scavengers such as myself to pick through with our trembling fingers. And today we had a real find: THE NEW LAROUSSE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ANIMAL LIFE. Honestly, "NEW" might be stretching it. But there was a pic of a solemn leopard on the cover, and I didn't think of it as having birds in it - that was not my motive for snagging it! - although I do realize that birds are animals (despite the fact, conclusively proven by the "blog," that pelicans are not owls; is that a syllogism?). All right! You know what I'm leading up to: once I got it home, I opened the book at random, to page 429, upon which was displayed a photo of a "Ferruginous Pygmy Owl," which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with Lou Ferrigno, sadly. My eyes twitched over to page 428, the facing page, where I saw the words "The Little Owl (Athene noctua) is a small, handsome-looking bird." (See also.) My skittish eye twitched back to page 429 and landed on "The handsome Snowy Owl." So! These people really think owls are handsome, or at least two kinds of owls are. Maybe they are repulsed by the features of some other poor owls. I have not yet ascertained whether they find mammals or reptiles handsome.

Twisted Dharma Stories

Stopped by Square Books yesterday and picked up a Penguin paperback called BUDDHIST MEDITATION: CLASSIC TEACHINGS FROM TIBET. If it's any of your business! This collection starts with a few old poems, and the second poem in the whole book introduces an image that readers of the "blog" are sure to go into a tizzy over, for reasons of which I need not remind my initiates: "Old Owl sits on the rock and hoots." Next comes a question to which I could only answer yes: "Do you sit upon your rock,/Spouting twisted dharma stories to others?" Speaking of which, I had lots of thoughts about those WORLD'S FINEST COMICS starring Batman and Superman that Tom Franklin brought me in the hospital. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to express them anywhere, except in texts to Tom, but the combination of being sickly and quitting social media is a potent one! Plus, discovering the owl in yet another book opened the door to a legitimate "blog" "post" and now my fingers may type as much as they like and no one can stop them! These comic books are from back when I used to read comic books, and Batman isn't cool and edgy, as I suppose he is now. Like, Superman will say (I paraphrase), "All right, Batman, I'm going to go to outer space and do some important stuff. All you have to do is watch this one guy, and he's literally asleep, can you handle it?" And Batman goes, "Sure thing, Superman!" (Again, I paraphrase.) And in the VERY NEXT PANEL, someone is bashing Batman in the back of the head with a big stick. Down he goes, out for the count! He had one job, as the hilarious meme from years gone by would have it. I have always pictured Batman as being very alert. On the anecdotal evidence of the two issues of WORLD'S FINEST that Tom brought me, I can also say that Batman and Superman are surprisingly testy with one another, bickering and petty, like some old couples. Often, they keep their bitter feelings deep down inside, and express them only in thought bubbles. Here I will cease paraphrasing and give you a couple of direct quotations. "WHERE IN BLAZES IS SUPERMAN? WE WERE SUPPOSED TO MEET HERE BY THIS OLD SUGAR MILL BY NOON!" Batman sulks with a petulant look on his face. From a separate story: "BLAST! IT'S ALL BATMAN'S FAULT... IT WAS HIS TIP I ACTED ON. SOME DETECTIVE!" Superman silently rages. "AND WHERE IS HE?" he adds, exposing the odd Beckett-adjacent sub-theme of these comics, which is that Batman and Superman wait around for each other a lot, demi-gods paralyzed to helplessness by a perceived dependency that perhaps does not exist. In the same story, Superman is so over Batman's crap that he demolishes an office desk with his fist in frustration, although it is not adequately explained why Superman is sitting behind an office desk like a chump. In conclusion, Dr. Theresa reports that there is a rabbit in the backyard RIGHT NOW. And it's Easter!

Sorry State

It's the time of year when we come together and assess the state of the "blog." Isn't it? Well, it should be! Look. As you know, I stopped "blogging" in 2016 because I got depressed the day our TV blew up. Year after year, the number of "posts" decreased, satisfyingly, though the "blog" continued to function on a minimalist level, due to routine maintenance requirements, such as telling you every time I read a book with an owl in it. Then, of course, our lives were altered by a famous pandemic, and I was called on by a grateful nation to start "blogging" again to cheer up the world, resulting in the first increase in "blogging" activity since our TV began to smoke during a viewing of Bob Hope in I'LL TAKE SWEDEN. After those heady times, whatever that means, of 2020, the "blog" began to sink back into the mire, where it belonged. That is why it is so sad to report that after a second, post-pandemic pattern of steady decline, the number of "posts" unexpectedly went up this year, defying the predictions of our greatest scientists and thinkers. What is to blame for this disheartening development? We cannot say it is only because I encountered a record-breaking (?) FIVE books with owls in them in November alone. For who can forget the owl drought that preceded such bounty? No, it's all because I quit social media in late 2022. Unless this is social media. Is this social media? In short, my fingers had grown too used to typing and could not be stopped. For the record, we reached the tipping point during McNeil's reflection on the first time he saw a liter bottle of Coca-Cola.

Door Trouble!

Well, you know I don't "blog" anymore, but I usually tell you if I go to Los Angeles and all the wonderful things that happen there in the magical city of broken dreams. I went to Los Angeles recently, but much of the "material I gathered" is going straight into a secret project I'm working on with McNeil for actual publication. And the rest, well, I thought about using the "interesting details" in a novel, but then I thought, oh, that sounds hard, writing a novel, maybe I won't do that. 1. Scallops at an Elvis-themed hotel. Does that sound like a good idea? Ordering scallops at an Elvis-themed hotel? As you know, I often stay in Memphis the night before a flight, for easy access to the airport. And sometimes I stay in an Elvis-themed hotel. And this time I ordered scallops, which, even as I was doing it, seemed like the last thing a person should order at an Elvis-themed hotel. Well! I'm still here. The scallops had an aggressively candied flavor. 2. At the Elvis-themed hotel, my hotel door wouldn't shut all the way! Well, I put on that latch thing they have at the top of many hotel doors and hoped for the best. 3. I lost my favorite pen somewhere in Los Angeles. Almost immediately! Why bring your favorite pen on a trip? On the other hand, why settle for a less-loved pen? Don't you want to feel happy? A grown man ought to be able to keep track of a pen. Should a person of a certain age, however, have outgrown notions like "favorite pen"? 4. By a weird coincidence, I was in town on a national holiday, just as it occurred in 2015 (please do yourself a favor and "click" here for corroboration), so the office was closed on Monday, and I found myself in the EXACT same bistro in which Kent and I had a green chartreuse before going to see 50 SHADES OF GREY together at the movie theater next door, so I had a green chartreuse in Kent's honor, though Kent lives in Vermont now, and I was all alone, it was a desperate sight, let me tell you, drinking a green chartreuse all alone and thinking of Kent. 5. "My twin will hug me... sometimes." - Hilary Florido. 6. Dan Tana's, just the place for dinner with my brother! I got there a little early, so I sat at the bar waiting. I listened to a guy who seemed to be on a first date telling a woman that he was directly descended from William Bradford. He was telling her all about what kind of wine to order after her martini. A Malbec will be velvety and heavy, but without the tannins of a cabernet, he yammered. Whereas a "pinot" will be "fluffy." See? This could have all gone in a novel. Anyway, it wasn't a first date, because he suddenly asked, "What's your name?" She said her name was Lurleen, a name I know because it was the name of the wife of the awful governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who briefly became governor herself, and I was born in Alabama, so we know the name Lurleen. But this guy was enraptured. "WHAT A BEAUTIFUL NAME!" he rhapsodized. Ha ha! If this were a novel I couldn't use the word "rhapsodized." I'd be kicked out of the novelist club. Then he said something that surprised me: "My wife's name is Melody." I didn't see that coming! But he was still trying to pick up Lurleen, I'm pretty sure. "WHAT ARE YOUR PASSIONS?" he oozed. Ha ha, I hate my verbs today. I hate them so much that I sort of love them! She said she liked to paint and what do you know, this guy's brother is a famous artist! "I could do you a lot of favors in the art world," said the putative descendent of William Bradford. "And do you know why? Because my brother loves me! HE LOVES ME!" How the rest of the story went, I just don't know, because my own brother showed up, speaking of brothers, and we were escorted to our table. 7. As my brother and I were eating I glanced up and thought I saw Thomas Middleditch, star of TV's SILICON VALLEY, sitting at the bar. I asked my brother, "Hey! Is that that guy?" My brother said I had to be less obvious so he could find a reason to stare inconspicuously. So I looked in the opposite direction, which frustrated my brother! "No, you have to look in sort of the SAME direction!" he said. So I looked at the TV over the bar, where there was a car race going on, which seemed like something a person would look at, and my brother was able to stare properly at the person whom he indeed confirmed to be Thomas Middleditch. 8. But then, later, out on the sidewalk, after dinner, we seemed to be walking behind that same guy, and I humorously remarked that he would think we were stalking him. "That's not the same guy!" my brother said. I insisted it was the same guy who had been sitting at the bar. "He's wearing the same suit!" I said. "Yes, he's wearing a black JACKET!" my brother replied dismissively. Trouble in the family! So I thought the guy had never been Thomas Middleditch, and my brother thought the guy sitting at the bar had been Thomas Middleditch and this was a different guy we were looking at now. I suppose we'll never know, unless Thomas Middleditch gets in touch. I will just say that the guy at the bar, whom we both took to be Thomas Middleditch at the time, was really making a meal out of his knuckle. He was gnawing ravenously on the knuckle of his right forefinger like there was no tomorrow! 9. Reading a book in translation and the translator uses "trooper" when he means "trouper." How can I trust him now? 10. Back at the hotel in Burbank, I returned to find my hotel room door cracked partly open! If you will glance up at #2, above, you will see that a theme for the trip had formed! I gently and suspiciously pushed the door the rest of the way open, like a person in a movie would do. Nothing was amiss. 11. Cole Sanchez taught me the word "subluxation," meaning a hyperextension of the joint, and I asked him what a hyperextension of the joint was and he said it was when he, Cole, made someone's elbow or knee go in the direction it doesn't want to go. Ouch! It's all part of of what I believe he called "Brazilian jiujitsu," which he practices. He also told me about choking people until they pass out. Don't get me wrong, it is another move in the same sport! "They can submit," he explained, meaning that the person can tap out before they become unconscious. I asked whether there were people who refuse to submit and Cole said that yes, some people are so annoyed that you got past their defenses they would rather just let you choke them unconscious than undergo the humiliation of submitting. 12. I went to see Dianne Wiest performing her magnificent and inexhaustible heart out in Samuel Beckett's great play HAPPY DAYS. I made up a funny blurb for it: "It's a different kind of 'Cheers' for THIS Sam and Dianne!" I eavesdropped on the people sitting in front of me. They have stopped eating octopus because they met a really smart octopus. The guy had a long gray ponytail and was wearing a bracelet that said "RESIST!" Anyway, it's funny because Julia Pott had just been talking at dinner the night before about not ordering the octopus for similar reasons, though to my knowledge she has never met an octopus in person. I'm skipping over most of the dinner with Julia because it's going undiluted into my project with McNeil, alluded to in the introductory paragraph above. 13. During the Beckett play, a certain segment of the audience would go HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! whenever Dianne Wiest, as the character Winnie, said something like, "One forgets one's classics." HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! "One forgets one's classics." HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! They were laughing like it was the farting scene in BLAZING SADDLES. Naturally it made me think of what Kierkegaard said about farce, which makes me no better than them. 14. There was a guy in the hotel bar two nights in a row who also laughed HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, but I don't know what about. His laugh suggested he was either an opera singer or Paul Bunyan. Booming, highly articulated and distinct HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAs. He really pronounced each HA. "Boy, that guy really enjoys life," I said out loud to myself, bitterly, alone at the hotel bar.

Living

We watched DESIGN FOR LIVING the other night and now I am going to give you some big spoilers. So Miriam Hopkins is in love with best friends Gary Cooper and Fredric March, and they're both in love with her. So at the end they just all stay together! I am reminded of a possibly hallucinated article I read about Joe Orton trying to write a script for the Beatles. I may be imagining this. I think the Beatles were all supposed to marry the same woman in the final scene. Yes, that may be entirely imaginary on my part. So let's forget it! But I think you'll agree that in conventional moviemaking Miriam Hopkins would have "chosen" either Gary Cooper or Fredric March. (In fact I was stunned when I put it to Dr. Theresa that surely anyone given such a choice - between the two actors as mere physical specimens, I mean - would choose Gary Cooper - why, no decision could be easier! - and Dr. Theresa blithely informed me that she - Dr. Theresa herself - thought she might pick Fredric March!) As I have just spoiled for you, however, DESIGN FOR LIVING just sticks with its original concept, or situation, and stubbornly follows it through. I was impressed by this rigor! And it reminded me of some other movie I couldn't quite put my finger on. I thought about it all night and couldn't remember. I was thinking of some other movie, and I knew I had written about it somewhere. I remembered talking to Adam Muto and Kent Osborne about it. I remembered saying I admired the way the writers put themselves in a box right at the beginning and then just spent the rest of the movie marching toward the inevitable conclusion. But I couldn't remember the movie. (Parenthetically, I now recall that back when I was teaching I once tried to explain to some undergraduates - at their request - what a "story" was. And I said, "Well, if there's a man standing on top of a mountain and he rolls a snowball down, and there's a man at the bottom of the mountain and he just stands there in the snowball's path, and the snowball gets bigger and bigger and it rolls over the man at the bottom of the mountain, who's just standing there, and crushes him, that's NOT a story." And then I said, "Wait a minute, maybe that IS a story." And now we see again why I'm not teaching anymore. But I went home and wrote the story and it was printed in a small literary magazine so I guess that makes it a story.) So! I searched through all my emails and couldn't find any reference to this mysterious other movie that reminded me of DESIGN FOR LIVING. So then I searched the "blog" for any "posts" containing both words "logic" and "structure," and as you can imagine, there were none. And then somehow it came to me that the movie I had in mind that reminded me so much of DESIGN FOR LIVING was ICEMAN, in which Timothy Hutton is part of a scientific team that digs up a Neanderthal played by John Lone. And they unthaw the caveman and he's alive. And the rest of the movie - which I won't spoil for you as much as I did DESIGN FOR LIVING - is a bunch of filmmakers trying to figure out what would happen if a scientific team unfroze a Neanderthal. And you can imagine right from the outset that somebody said, "Well, this isn't going to end well for the Neanderthal." And maybe, "Well, let's try to make it as nice for him as we can." I figured out that the place in which I had written about ICEMAN was the 1,000-page book that is not to be published until after my death. It really exists! And why am I writing about ICEMAN in a 1,000-page book that is not to be published until after my death, if ever? That's a great question!

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.

A Defining Gesture

Thanks to a timely tip from Megan Abbott I watched some of I'LL TAKE SWEDEN on TCM last night. But - and here's the fascinating part! - I went to bed before it came on. But then I couldn't sleep! So I got up and watched it until our old, box-shaped TV from the 1990s finally died. I'LL TAKE SWEDEN killed our TV! And then - this is true, also - I got up and had a terrible new back pain and I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror and some of my hair had turned white! I mean, I noticed a lot more white than I've noticed there before. I'LL TAKE SWEDEN! It's mostly Bob Hope walking around gracefully in many different beautiful suits, which I am sure he kept, because he was a terrible cheapskate. But I mean, he is a good walker and hand gesturer. Here (above) we see him with one hand just below his ribs, seeming to pantomime the thought, "These kids these days!" I would describe it as a defining Bob Hope gesture, though it occurs just once in the film (at least in the hour I saw last night). McNeil could confirm its essentialness and describe it better than I could. He has a knack for cataloguing these things. I remember once we were watching a movie in which Jeremy Northam played Dean Martin, and Jeremy Northam (as Dean Martin) was applauding something while holding a cigarette between two fingers, and McNeil said with delight and authority, "That's just how Dean Martin clapped!" Oh, how I wish McNeil had been here. Only he would have understood why I actually laughed a couple of times, once at a fantasy sequence in which Bob Hope's imaginary grandchildren are forced to eat a parrot, and once at some dumb wisecrack Bob Hope made while riding around with his head sticking out of the sunroof of a small Swedish vehicle.

There is one part (seen here) when he is looking at Frankie Avalon with real hatred. Like, I don't think he's acting! Or, actually, I think he turns out to be a better actor than we ever gave him credit for. Or both! He seems to be thinking, "THIS is what it's all come to? THIS? THIS FRANKIE AVALON?" Or he could be deep in character, thinking, "No way this motor-scooter riding rascal is gonna marry MY daughter!" I just can't tell. In addition, Frankie Avalon takes Tuesday Weld to a strip club on a date! For all his grousing about Bob Hope do you think this is where Mike Nichols got the idea for the scene in THE GRADUATE? Tuesday Weld is much more blasé about the strip club than Katherine Ross was, though there is identical twirling involved! However, it is not graphically portrayed in this case. The twirling in question occurs offscreen and is alluded to discreetly by Bob Hope and Tuesday Weld (see also). The strip club is called The Pink Kitten and the bouncer dresses like this:

Squirrel Expert

I ventured out of the house and appeared on the Thacker Mountain radio program last night. Slade had Band-Aids on several of his fingers because - as Katelyn informed me and Slade later confirmed - he had been attacked by a squirrel. Someone called the hospital and was put in touch with a "squirrel expert" who said "Squirrels in Mississippi don't have rabies." Katelyn and I were like, hmm, maybe consult a second squirrel expert. In any case, Slade played the upright bass in the house band in his usual nimble manner. Maybe even nimbler! I'm not kidding, he was doing some complex runs. Maybe he has squirrel powers.

An Unforgettable Adventure

Once in a great while I like to astound you with one of my spine-tingling adventures from real life. So! The other day I went to the dry cleaners with a jacket and also the white shirt upon which a friendly jostle from Pat McHale had caused me to spill a quantity of red wine. As I was about to get out of the car, I reached into the pocket of the jacket and pulled out a coaster from The Temple Bar in NYC, upon the reverse side of which Pen (or Kent? - something in the curve and thickness of that forefinger makes me think Pen) had drawn a happy little "thumbs-up" character. Now, it was raining! You must understand the meteorological aspect of the situation to thoroughly enjoy the ins and outs of my rousing tale. I sat in the car figuring out where to put the coaster so I wouldn't forget it and it wouldn't get rained on, made of paper as it was. I was so preoccupied with the matter that - "as in uffish thought [I] stood" (Lewis Carroll) - I locked my keys in the car! Not having a cellphone, I had to use the dry cleaners' phone to leave a message for Dr. Theresa. A message I prayed she would receive! After transacting the business for which I had embarked upon this ill-omened journey I stood in front of the dry cleaners, a conveniently extended portion of the roof sparing me from the weather. Every time someone pulled into the parking lot I made eye contact. Who knew what vehicular form my salvation might take? Many unspoken - indeed, telepathic! - communications, conveying human feeling in all its glorious and abysmal range, blossomed in these numerous though brief encounters. At last the dapper manager of the dry cleaners himself stepped forth and offered me a ride somewhere far away from the dry cleaners. Perhaps I was too scruffy and emotionally confrontational to be standing outside a respectable dry cleaning establishment! But I think he was just being nice. My faith in Dr. Theresa and her network of generous acquaintances being what it was, I declined his offer. And at last, here came Blair Hobbs, graciously transporting Dr. Theresa, who had brought her own set of car keys. "I'll drive," said Dr. Theresa. We stopped to get some cat food since we were near the place where we get cat food.

Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis

Welcome once again to "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis," your guide on the "internet" to the complex and fascinating world of bookmarks! As you no doubt recall, a footnote in an old edition of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY led me to Godwin's LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS. Well, friends, a footnote in LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS made me finally want to read THE FAERIE QUEENE. So I searched around the house for the dusty old SPENSER'S POETICAL WORKS I knew I had somewhere. My friend Lucy - with whom I lost touch some years ago - gave me several books that had belonged to her late father, a scholar. This is one of them. I noticed that THE FAERIE QUEENE section already had a bookmark in the middle of it! This bookmark must have been sitting here in just this position for - I'll make a guess - 40 years. It's a white slip of paper, folded over once. Well, the part that has been in the book for all these years is white, but the top part, exposed to air and sun, is brown. At first I thought it would be good to use this old bookmark as MY bookmark. And I even thought I'd see whether there might be a secret message written on the inside of the folded paper. But as soon as I nudged the bookmark with my finger, out of the position it had held for some number of decades, I knew it was the wrong move. I felt intimations of ghostly retribution. I put the bookmark back where it belonged as best I could, but the spiritual damage may have already been done. Today's tip is "DON'T MESS WITH GHOSTLY OLD BOOKMARKS OF THE PAST." That's it for today's "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis." Until next time, "Mark my words!"

Catamount Update

"You know, there's a college football team named the Catamounts. Western Carolina University," writes McNeil. McNeil would have us believe there's a WESTERN Carolina! I hastily misread that as "West Virginia," so when I first searched for an image, I discovered that there is a catamount team in West Virginia as well, and this catamount isn't trying so hard to be "cool":

And finally, below we find the Western Carolina mascot at what a press release refers to as his "birthday party," which was attended by some other mascots ("some of his closest mascot friends" says the press release). One of these mascots is named "Ted E. Tourist." He represents a team called the Tourists! Which seems like a bad name for a team. But what bothers me most of all is this bobcat's weird - which is to say, normal - hands (also, is he wearing RINGS on his middle fingers?):

Jerry Epiphany #2

Just before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting the other day I was conversing with my twitter friend Brian about a talk show Jerry Lewis had in the 80s, cashing in on his role from THE KING OF COMEDY. He told Suzanne Somers (pictured) she had "pizzazz," or so I remembered.

I thought Kent Osborne's brother Mark had introduced that clip to me on a privately circulated VHS tape of oddities, but Kent didn't remember that. During the meeting he found Jerry's talk show on youtube and watched it and started cringing. Meanwhile, although (because?) from my end of the video conference I could only hear the audio and see the reactive cringing, I was cringing FOR Kent, or for Jerry, I couldn't tell which, they were inseparable. And I had an epiphany. All of my epiphanies are about Jerry Lewis. Yes, as I've observed, Jerry anticipated Andy Kaufman, and now that I think about it, Jerry's first act, when he was little more than a kid, was lip-syncing to records, mirroring exactly the first performance by Andy Kaufman on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. (Tony Clifton = Buddy Love?) As J. Hoberman observed, Jerry "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." So he can razor in on the phoniness of show biz satirically while living without qualms the actual life of a show biz phony. That old Fitzgerald thing about the rare ability to hold two opposed ideas in your mind at the same time, blah blah blah. Or as Megan Abbott said in an interview I did with her, "the unconscious and conscious are always this close... I’m putting my fingers together very closely... just this close always and always brushing up against each other constantly. And so we often are thrown into ourselves in ways that are alarming and we often have to see things about ourselves because we can’t completely hide from the unconscious." Jerry's 80s talk show was not art (was it?) but it crystalizes what Manohla Dargis said about Jerry disturbing "all those nice people in all their fancy clothes." Meaning us! So why, for me, Jerry is more powerful an artist than, say, the comedy team (how they'd probably chafe at that old-fashioned term) Tim and Eric, or any other contemporary practitioner of "anti-comedy" (I guess we call it) is that Jerry is doing what they do, but HONESTLY and not ironically. At heart it's helpless and noble. That was the epiphany.

I watched a documentary about Divine, who on some basic level was as non-ironic as Jerry Lewis. For Jerry Lewis and Divine, show biz is a joyous religion in the service of a dark god, ha ha, how dramatic. Jerry Lewis is the father of Divine. There are minor similarities too: each, while young, created an overwhelming and brilliant persona that became a kind of consuming trap. Patterns of paternal fracture and rapprochement. I don't know. Maybe Jerry (who cross-dresses kind of touchingly - like late-period Divine - in THREE ON A COUCH) has a drag queen's instinct (lip-syncing!) for novelty, exaggeration, nostalgia, luxury, disguise and self-creation. And like Divine maybe he's suspicious of (guilty about?) revering some of those things and so turns them on their head. It occurs to me that Jerry has spent most of his life in a form of drag - like Pee Wee Herman! why can't I stop typing? - and maybe like Paul Reubens's some of Jerry's "bad" behavior can be attributed to the emotional violence required to break out of its strictures. Drag as freedom, drag as constraint. Can we call Suzanne Somers hunched over on roller skates a kind of enforced "drag"? Maybe I should think this out. But I don't think I shall. Somebody else on twitter was complaining that he can't watch Jerry because Jerry is "needy." All performers are needy. The glorious thing about Jerry and Divine is that they don't cover it up. They revel in it and they make us face it. Now we're all super smart and in on the big joke. Only when we watch them are our reactions are visceral and true.

Eugene Lighting a Candle

Dr. Theresa was watching THE PINK PANTHER on TCM just now and she said, "Hey, wasn't Eugene in this movie?" And weirdly, Eugene popped up on the screen just then, as the butler who is lighting some fireworks for Peter Sellers, who is dressed as a knight and thinks what he has is a regular candle. Mayhem is to ensue. So I got to put my finger on the TV screen and say, "Yes! That's him!" She talked to Eugene on the telephone once but sadly never met him in person. This photo I took of the TV is lousy but I am an old man and don't know how to properly use a computer to take a photo of a TV screen so go to hell.

My Cloak of Blue

Hey! This is real boring. But you know how I can't settle on anything to read right now. When I was cleaning my office recently - ha ha! I told you this was boring, and we're just getting started! - I found where I had hidden (and forgotten) the galley of a Frank Sinatra bio that came out a couple years ago, I guess. I hid it because my sister was visiting and I was giving her the hardcover for Christmas (I think)... hmm... and for some reason that doesn't make total sense, I guess I thought I needed to hide the galley from her... Well, I started reading it, and I'm not enjoying it very much... seems to me the author is trying to be Nick Tosches, but he comes off more like "a little boy lost in a big man's shirt," to quote Elvis Costello... lots of phony hepcat lingo and street talk in a loosey-goosey "novelistic" style, peppered with the occasional "classical allusion"... ugh. I mean, ugh unless you're Nick Tosches. (Hey, remember when I made that guy read a Nick Tosches book and he hated it? So I guess it serves me right.) BUT! Megan Abbott really liked this Frank Sinatra book, the one I can't get into, and she has never steered me wrong about anything, ever, and let's remember I am just in a bad mood all the time, for which I blame Errol Flynn and his depressing autobiography. I haven't recovered! Megan put her finger on the problem in an email this morning: "I think you've been reading too much chest-thumping male stuff in a row! You need to mix in something feminine, and sly!" So now that I have made excuses for the Frank bio, and introduced a reliable source who very much enjoyed it, I think it is okay to say it is bumming me out, and by bringing it out into the open I have allowed myself to tell you that it has an owl in it, well, young Frank is said to have a "night-owl disposition" and that's really all it takes for me, it totally counts, so this book can go on my obsessive list of books I happen to read that have owls in them and I don't feel bad about my mental health at all, thanks for asking. An owl is not a chicken, but they are both birds, so here is a Sinatra-based chicken from an old Warner Bros. cartoon. (Between typing that sentence and this one, I read some more of the Frank Sinatra bio. The author says that Tommy Dorsey had "a deliciously corny nickname, the Sentimental Gentleman of Swing." But I recalled that earlier in the book he refers to "a soupy, utterly forgettable Frank Loesser ballad," which he then quotes with snotty intent: "Here comes the night, my cloak of blue." I mean, what's wrong with that? What makes one of those things "deliciously corny" and the other "soupy" and "utterly forgettable" [you'll note I didn't forget it]? But of course I know that being a writer means making such blithely arbitrary distinctions hundreds of times per page. So you can see what kind of rotten mood I'm in.)

Big Baby

Hi! I was in Alabama. A lot of family was there, including four of my innumerable nephews. Sometimes when I am driving I end up taking crazy exits. Like, remember when the grifter tried to grift me that time? And the time I ate some items that may or may not have been chicken livers? Once Dr. Theresa and I got in the middle of police action - guns and everything! - during what was supposed to be a quick bathroom stop in Baltimore, but that's a long time before I knew you, "internet." This time I stopped at a gas station with homemade posters everywhere, just plain white posterboard scrawled with black Sharpie, and they all said, "BUY YOUR STUFF AND GO" - not like a boast of convenience, more like a terrifying threat. That gas station had a surprising number of flies in it. Next door to the station I could see the tall, faded sign for something called the SAFE HOUSE LOUNGE sticking up over the trees. It made me feel nervous! Why would you have to insist that your lounge is safe in its very name? FAST FORWARD. On the way back from Alabama, I stopped at a dumpy little gas station in a town called Wiggins, but the bathroom was so nice! The tiled wall was the color of pistachio ice cream. And it smelled good! The bathroom did. Fresh and clean! The only thing marring it was the name BIG BABY. Big Baby had printed his name fairly neatly on the toilet paper dispenser. That was it! What a clean and pleasant bathroom. I watched the most recent episode of ADVENTURE TIME with the whole family, there in Alabama. Which means I watched the death of Root Beer Guy with my traumatized nephews. Ha ha! They were not traumatized. They got a huge kick out of Jesse Moynihan's action-packed, beautiful and brilliant episode. But you can't blame (congratulate?) Jesse for killing Root Beer Guy. He squeezed that in at my insistence! Did you know I did the voice of Root Beer Guy? So I guess I am sensitive about the character. He became the Captain of the Banana Guards but he never did much to improve them. I felt really bad about his failure on the job. I thought if he were dead I'd feel more comfortable with the Banana Guards staying so dumb. Nobody wants to see a smart Banana Guard. Hey! I know I shouldn't ever talk about "internet" "commenters" because who cares? But I saw this one dude (I guess) on the "internet" who said the episode was "absolutely incoherent." He or she was also just waiting with itchy fingers - maybe! - to be the first commenter on the review, which is fine! What would Freud say? WHO CARES? I just want to say that my four-year-old nephew totally got what was going on in the episode! So did my 17-year-old-nephew and all the nephews in between. Dr. Theresa wanted to "watch it again." She doesn't say that about much of anything. She laughed really hard when Maja the Sky Witch banged her head on that tree and the little x's went over her eyes. Classic! But anyway, it's none of my beeswax and commenters can make any comments they want just as quickly as their fingers can type. It's a free country! Ha ha, it's the Fourth of July! But man, I just loved the episode. It makes sense that someone might see bounty and spiritual generosity as incoherence. Maybe bounty and spiritual generosity ARE incoherent the first time we approach them with our struggling minds. It's kind of like what William James said about St. Paul, oh, forget it, I don't want to get into it. But yes, I am comparing Jesse Moynihan to St. Paul. But Jesse has none of St. Paul's hang-ups. Just a few of his own, probably, like all of us. Jesse's art is full to bursting! Whereas St. Paul preferred to bottle stuff up. Maybe. I got Jesse's book FORMING (I think the sequel is out now) at Square Books, and it's just fantastic. Sorry I started talking about an "internet" comment. I had something else I was going to say, probably about a gas station, but I forgot.