Abalone Biscuit Stick

1. McNeil dreamed - shortly before I left for Burbank on a bureaucratic mission that would stun and bore you - that I was transformed into a toddler and Donald Trump hand-fed me a biscuit. I did not report the dream at the time because I was about to leave on my trip and it struck me as a dream of ill-omen, best blocked out of my mind until my safe return. 2. I know you want to know what book I read on the airplane. Well, you're going to be so glad you asked. See, I had this one Virginia Woolf novel all picked out. It was the right size for the airplane. The content, delightful though I am sure it would have turned out to be, was of secondary interest. You see, I like to print out my boarding passes and slip them between the back cover and last page of whatever book I am reading on the airplane, and I don't like it if the edges of the boarding passes stick out too much. My boarding passes are printed on letter-sized sheets of paper, which I fold over once, maintaining the creaseless integrity of the printed matter. I told you you'd be glad you asked! Let's move to a new numbered section as I explain why I print out my boarding passes rather than checking in via an app on my phone. 3. My phone is too old! It rejects the app! 4. Anyway, I'm going to quote an email from Jimmy Cajoleas now. I don't think Jimmy will mind. "[Have you] read Water Margin? I'm halfway through the Sidney Shapiro translation (he calls it Outlaws of the Marsh) and I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever read in my life." 5. That made me remember I have a copy of that very translation! When I go to bed at night, I often lie on my side facing a bookcase where, as I recline in that position, Outlaws of the Marsh finds itself in my eyeline. I bought it in 2007, I think, and never opened it. And just about every night I look at it from bed and think, "Will I ever read that? I certainly doubt it! It's in a cardboard box containing four volumes!" I bought it at Square Books because when we first moved to Oxford, we had some people over for dinner, and one of them was teaching it in a class, and I got so excited hearing about Outlaws of the Marsh that I ran out and bought it and didn't open it for almost 20 years. So, the night before my flight, I separated Volume 1 from its cardboard-bound brethren. Though it is part of a larger set, the first book is the size of an old-timey mass-market paperback, hardly sufficient for securing my boarding pass in the required fashion. This was a new experience for me. Just when I thought I had done it all in this old world. Walking around with most of my boarding pass sticking out! Like some kind of hippie! 6. My seatmate on the airplane saw my iPod. Unlike the last person who saw my iPod on an airplane, she was not impressed. She said, "My husband has one of those and it drives me crazy." She didn't say why. 7. On a more positive note, she announced that she was from the same town as the woman who wrote the book THE EGG AND I, and she knew the descendants of the book's characters. She couldn't remember the name of the female lead in the movie version and I blew her freaking mind by saying "Claudette Colbert." Anyway, she was saying that Ma and Pa Kettle (supporting characters in the movie) were real people and I speculated that later movies about Ma and Pa Kettle (are you still reading this?), such as MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, were probably not based on true stories, as they were about fanciful things like winning a trip to Hawaii in an advertising slogan contest. Anyway, I don't have time to explain Ma and Pa Kettle to you. I "posted" a publicity still of them above, and I'll let that do the work. The important thing is that despite my know-it-all attitude about Claudette Colbert there is no movie called MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO HAWAII, as I learned when I looked it up minutes ago. It's called MA AND PA KETTLE AT WAIKIKI. And they're just working on a pineapple farm in that one! They didn't win a contest, as I needlessly misinformed my seatmate. Further research (WHY?) led me to discover that Pa Kettle does compose a prize-winning jingle in MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN. And that is the story of how all the Ma and Pa Kettle movies I watched as a kid eventually got mixed up in my head. Most of all, I was shocked to learn that Ma and Pa Kettle were from this woman's hometown in the state of Washington! I don't know where I assumed they were from, but it wasn't there. Sadly, we must now move on from Ma and Pa Kettle. I know you're disappointed. 8. My Uber driver's wife makes a living singing the national anthem at sporting events! You'd think he would have an interesting story about how someone gets into that line of work, but he didn't. 9. I broke my glasses. 10. I saw Kate, who brought with her a treat from Hong Kong: abalone-and-oyster-sauce flavored "biscuit sticks" (the latter two words in English on the box). They were thin, crispy little sticks and I could eat them all day. Savory, with, as Kate remarked, a little of the sweetness of the abalone coming through. 11. She also brought something from a side-trip to Japan: a sake-flavored Kit Kat bar. We tried that, too, and it made us want to throw up. 12. I ran into Cole Sanchez, who remarked, of my shirt, "Do we have the same shirt?" (He was not wearing the shirt - let me be clear: he was wearing a shirt, just not that one - but yes, it did turn out he had the same shirt at home.) Now, you must know, in order to truly appreciate this story, that we consulted Cole while writing the sartorially concerned Adventure Time episode "Bespoken For," because he is a stylish man who knows everything about clothes. So hearing that Cole and I have the same shirt made it a big night for me. I was telling everyone who would listen, "Cole and I have the same shirt!" Cole went home and rethought his life. 13. At the departure gate for my trip home, I sat next to a Pepsi vending machine. A man came and stood in front of it and coughed down into my face a couple of times. He stood in front of the Pepsi machine for five minutes, examining the various Pepsi products on display. Then he walked away, never to be seen again. 14. Dolph Lundgren is on my flight! Yeah! He's speaking Swedish! In the middle of a Swedish phrase, I hear him say "tough guys" in English. I thought, "If anything bad happens on this flight, he'll save us!" Dolph Lundgren's drink of choice? Cranberry juice. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was doing some kind of seated shadow boxing. His feet were subtly and elegantly "dancing," as I believe it's called in the boxing ring, as he cast some punches toward the seat back in front of him. He put on his shades before shadow boxing. "I'm living in paradise!" I jotted in my jotting book. The very sweet flight attendant, Diana by name, turned out to be a Dolph Lundgren fanatic, and addressed him with such giddy enthusiasm as the plane began its descent, to which he responded in such a cheerful and gracious manner, that I felt emboldened to turn around and tell him that he had given me confidence and peace in case of emergency.

The Toastmaster Who Wasn't There

Now, how was Ace to know of my disenchantment, or whatever it is, with the idea of the Oscars? So he casually mentioned that he thought Conan O'Brien did a good job. "Well, we'll see about that!" I thought with churlish... I don't have a good noun to finish that sentence. The adjective churlish stopped my brain! So I scurried around on the "internet" like a little rat and watched a couple of minutes of Conan O'Brien doing his monologue. In my foul mood, I couldn't concentrate on his razor-sharp wit or whatever everybody thinks it is. All I noticed was how he amateurishly clapped his hands together every 10 seconds. He didn't know he was doing it! Such was my interpretation. His body was out of his control! And so on. Such was the content of my bitter thoughts. So I used email, the old person's medium, to craft a sentence only a 200-year-old man could appreciate: "All I’m saying is you wouldn’t see Bob Hope clapping his hands together every 10 seconds like the toastmaster at the Kiwanis Club." Ace responded that the Kiwanis make excellent pancake breakfasts and have programs to help children in need. So I really felt like a jerk after that. After some thought, I realized what a few of my problems were, and I encapsulated them thusly: "Once I was in a play and someone videotaped it, and when I watched the videotape I was horrified to see that I was involuntarily and unconsciously clapping my hands together every 10 seconds for no discernible reason. Conan's only real crime was reminding me of my own many failures! Also, I picked the Kiwanis Club at random, assuming they were a generic men's fraternal organization such as Fred Flintstone used to belong to. I didn't know anything about them! I should have turned the merciless spotlight on myself, not on the innocent members of the Kiwanis Club! I don't even know if they have toastmasters!" It was like when the guy in MULHOLLAND DR. (above) said "There is no band." That is, there was no toastmaster. Or to paraphrase Stanley Kubrick, I have always been the toastmaster. It's like in ANGEL HEART when... never mind. I don't want to spoil ANGEL HEART for you. I know you've been meaning to get around to it. Similar to the plot of that one Dan Duryea movie of which I can't recall the title. Wait! BLACK ANGEL. Why do they all have angel in the title? Let's forget it. Please join us tomorrow, when we start over with a clean slate, beginning with McNeil's revelation of some startling theological insights. I'm unemployed. PS The toastmaster I'm imagining wouldn't clap his hands together every 10 seconds anyway. He'd be gripping the podium in white-knuckled terror.

Feelin' Ancient

Am I going to read THE ILIAD? I'm afraid it appears likely. Was it Emily Wilson who got me on this ancient kick? I read her translation of THE ODYSSEY and her biography of Seneca, and then six plays by Seneca that she translated, which ruined me for reading things that were not ancient. I've even read ancient things I haven't bothered to tell you about on the "blog," such as Josephus. Josephus! And before I took up Witold Gombrowicz for the Million Dollar Book Club, Tacitus was my daytime book. Sitting around reading Tacitus in the broad daylight like some kind of animal! And I guess I'll pick up where I left off if I ever finish Gombrowicz. Okay, I'll be right back. I need to do a little research. All right, I'm back. I have confirmed a nagging feeling. It wasn't Emily Wilson who got me into all this. It was Kirk Douglas! ("Click" here for details.) Sorry, Emily Wilson! Anyway! I guess you're wondering where all this ILIAD crap is coming from, though. Well, remember when I decided to become interested in Simone Weil? I don't suppose any of us will ever forget it! So I'm going around learning stuff about Simone Weil and I see that she wrote a famous essay about THE ILIAD. So I get hold of that and I'm like, "Uh-oh! Here we go again!" And do I want to get my Robert Fagles translation of THE ILIAD off the shelf? Well, hell, no. Didn't I read it already? Or part of it? Did I ever finish it? Also, it's on a shelf behind a glass door with latches at both the top and bottom. That's a lot of work! The bottom latches, in addition, have some stuff piled in front of them, such as my blood pressure machine. Oh! Speaking of my blood pressure machine, let me come clean about something. I've told you many times that I stopped reading old comic books. I still say that is true. However! I do have a gigantic hardcover DC "omnibus edition" of comics that I currently sample while relaxing for five minutes before blood pressure time. This sturdy volume has just the kind of spine I need for laying out the book flat on the dining room table, where the medical task in question is undertaken. So yesterday, or the day before, I think, I saw a representation of the DC comics character the Spectre, and... here... allow me to quote an email I sent to Adam Muto on the subject: "I was looking at a DC comic book from 1989 and it had the Spectre in it, and he was really ripped! I was like... he's a ghost! Has he been going to the gym? You're the only person I could think of to tell." I did not add... "Or should I say RIPped?" because I thought such wordplay would make Adam sad and disappointed. Then I poked around on the "internet" because I was afraid "ripped" wasn't the right term. I spent a lot of time on "web" sites dedicated to parsing the difference between being "ripped" or "shredded" or "jacked" or "swole." But we're getting off the subject! Are we? Well, I recalled seeing a newish translation of THE ILIAD at Square Books. And given the fact that I'm going to have lunch with Tom Franklin one day soon, I just know I'll stop by on the way and pick it up. I can see the future! This ILIAD wasn't translated by Emily Wilson, but it had a blurb from Emily Wilson. [Wrong! - ed.] Now, as a person who has both given and received blurbs, I know that blurbs aren't really worth spit. Except for the time Lauren Graham blurbed one of my books! That one counted!

Events Spiral Out of Control

What's a typical day like for me, you ask? What? You didn't ask? Who are you? Where am I? Most days I sit around looking up stuff like how many calories in an apple. Yesterday was different. I went out to see Beth Ann Fennelly onstage at the launch event for her latest book THE IRISH GOODBYE. I got into town a little bit early because the tradition is to have a quick drink at City Grocery Bar before the reading, at least that has always been my personal understanding. And look, I don't make it out to the bar as much since the famous unpleasantness of almost two years ago. So I was disinclined to miss out on my special treat. But get this! City Grocery Bar was closed for a private party! That happens from time to time, enraging me. It can strike at any moment! The private party, not the rage. Although that can also strike at any moment. There is no warning for either one. Anyway, Bill Boyle arrived early as well, so, with a little more than half an hour to go, we departed the venue (Off Square Books) and walked around the corner to Proud Larry's, which even the bartender there referred to as the "backup" for literary whatever the hell it is. Life? Bill didn't want a drink. He was just keeping me company and keeping tradition alive. So important! That's what I said to the golden-brown liquid in my glass so it would know it was not being consumed in vain. Anyway, we had a nice talk (Bill and I, that is, not the glass and I, though we got along great too) and then we moseyed back over at 5:31 PM, just one minute after the event's official start time. And let me tell you something: we couldn't even get in! Not only was every chair occupied, the rear of the store was packed with a standing-room-only crowd AND there were people kind of smushed up in the doorway and spilling out onto the sidewalk. Well! I wasn't really surprised by the turnout, especially for Beth Ann, though I have long assumed that literature is dead. An unsuspecting Dr. Theresa, meanwhile, was on her way, having just finished teaching a class, and I had to tell her to come pick me up at Proud Larry's instead. Please be assured I had already purchased my copy of THE IRISH GOODBYE upon my arrival. Anyway, back around the corner we went and I sat at the bar with Bill again and ordered some to-go food for Dr. Theresa and myself... our go-to order at Proud Larry's, yes, our to-go go-to, that's right, or our go-to to-go would probably be a more proper way to put it, two grilled chicken salads with the lemon-red wine vinaigrette. And, if we're really feeling daring, we cheat and split a quesadilla. And boy were we feeling daring last night! And look, you're not going to believe this incredible tale, but I had already ordered the quesadilla before looking at my phone to discover that Dr. Theresa had texted her request for a quesadilla. Yes, you read that right! That's the kind of magic that thirty years of marriage will get for you. What a night. What a world. What times we live in.

Say No to Chiromancy in 2026

Well, Kate Tsang sent me an amazing present - a tiny replica she fashioned of my novel SWEET BANANAS. I placed a penny beside it so you can see just how tiny a replica it is. In the foreground, that's Bob Hope's ashtray, but that's another story. I was going to photograph the tiny replica in the palm of my hand to emphasize its tininess, but then I decided I didn't want the palm readers of the "internet" to know everything about me and my future. Hey! You know what that makes me think of? The time Dr. Theresa and I went to a dinner party and the host had a few drinks (or maybe that was us) and told us that he had belonged to a secret society in Greece with 13 members, and each member specialized in a different occult art! And his was palmistry. I'm sure he read our palms that night but I don't remember what he said. All I remember is that his wife, who was from Italy, made a big pot of spaghetti with tomato sauce, which everyone ate except for the chiromancer, who sat at the head of the table nibbling on a lettuce leaf.

A Word of Diminutive Form

Y'all are going to go crazy from excitement when I tell you about this! So, remember the other day when I was remembering reading "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" at the University of South Alabama? I don't suppose any of us, if we existed, will ever forget the time I remembered that. So I started thinking to myself, "Jack," I started thinking, "wasn't 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' some kind of creepy-ass junk and doesn't that mean it probably has an owl in it, which is something you supposedly love, Jack, you wily old bastard?" (I just shocked myself with my own profanity, but I see I have "blogged" the latter word twice before - "click" here and here for context. I know you won't, you bastard!) So I found my giant volume of Robert Browning and started reading "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." And I read stanza after stanza, and I got to the part where it became clear... well, he's like, "a burr had been a treasure-trove." In other words, it's a bleak landscape! There's nothing there for an owl to perch on! So I was getting discouraged, all right. Then Dr. Theresa, who was preparing dinner, asked me to help out by seasoning the fish. Which I did gladly! And let me tell you: I know you're worried, but I left the book open flat on my TV tray, and it didn't snap shut and make me lose my place, and I'll tell you why: it has a broad, sturdy spine! Just the kind of book spine I go nuts for! So after I season the fish, I sit back down with the book and I'm not feeling too optimistic about any owls, you know, but here's old Childe Roland and he's getting pretty freaked out by this weirdo landscape, and he asks himself, "Will the night send a howlet or a bat?" And with my keen mind hard at work, I was like "A howlet? That's got to be an owlet!" And damned if I wasn't right for once in my sorry life. I looked at the etymology in the OED and here's where it gets super exciting!!! Remember how I like to beat myself up over the time in my second book when I tried to give a character a comical French accent like some kind of jerk? And I was like, "Why did I ever think a French person would say 'owl' like 'howl'?" Well, well, well. The OED says that howlet is "Apparently a borrowing from French... hulotte, in 16th century hulote, a word of diminutive form." So who's the jerk now? Is it still me?

Book Junk

In the New York Times they are always grilling people like "What books are on your bedside table?" I have a stack of books on the bedside table but I don't think the New York Times could figure out anything about me by inventorying them. I mainly use them as a kind of pedestal. And then there's a book on top, which is whatever book I currently read in bed. But the ones underneath it have been sitting there for so long that as far as I know they may have fused into a single volume. But! Something interesting happened the other day when I started reading the giant big huge enormous big large big dragon book by Joe Hill. I found that THE PENGUIN BOOK OF SPIRITUAL VERSE, which has long capped the mighty pedestal of books, was too small and flimsy to serve as proper direct support for the hulking dragon book. "Where the hell am I going to put this book of spiritual verse?" I said to myself blasphemously. This story just gets better and better. Well, I moved it to the little table that sits alongside my favorite chair. And that provoked me to do something I haven't done in years, I guess: open it up. And what do you think I saw? An owl? You're right! And it was in a poem I've read before... haven't I? "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake. And yes, of course, I've read it before. But I guess I haven't read it in at least 14 years, as William Blake has not until now featured in my long list of books with owls in them, begun all that time ago. Or... could it be I just never finished reading this poem before? It's longer than I remembered! My memory of it gives out pretty early, with "A Horse misusd upon the Road/ Calls to Heaven for Human blood"... I feel like every time I get to that part, I kind of sit there and nod thoughtfully for a while... and then do I shut the book? Anyhow, it turns out that a little later on we have "The Owl that calls upon the Night/ Speaks the Unbelievers fright"... a line that does not sound familiar to me at all. I'll tell you something else strange! Are you excited? And have I actually told you anything strange? Well, I noticed for the first time that this Penguin paperback is signed by its editor, Kaveh Akbar. Maybe that's not strange. I don't know why, but I never thought of a Penguin paperback being signed... maybe because the author is almost always dead. Also, I bought it new at Square Books, on an ordinary shelf, not specially marked... and I do always think of Penguin paperbacks as something like... cans of Vienna sausage? I don't expect the person who shepherded those Vienna sausages through the process to sign the can! Although, if someone personally selected each sausage, and nudged them all perfectly and snugly together, which would be analagous to Kaveh Akbar's fine work here... I am too tired to follow this line of thought. In a final bit of book news, the City of Oxford, Mississippi, has, for mysterious reasons, suddenly rescheduled its Christmas parade! The Christmas parade will now occur at roughly the same location and time as my event with Ace tomorrow night! I guess we'll finally find out who's more popular: Ace Atkins or Santa Claus.

Marvelous McNeil's Mad Martian Movie Musings

Anyway, McNeil wrote to say he recently watched the brand new UFO documentary that, I assume, has the very nation abuzz. I said oh, should I watch it, and McNeil said no. His favorite part was how the interviewees were placed in settings that, to quote McNeil, "were all different, but they were all very Dino-ish. Cozy. Sophisticated." With the characteristic adjective "Dino-ish," McNeil alludes to 20th-century entertainment icon Dean Martin. McNeil went on to note that one interview subject was not afforded the same luxury as the others. He, to again quote McNeil, "was in a black t-shirt in front of a chalkboard. Walking around a lake, alone, cold, hands in pockets. Sitting at the foot of some national monument - alone. Hahaha."

Reading Stinks

The other day the thought occurred to me that I might have become eldery enough to start reading John le Carré. I asked around among some friends, and Ace boasted that he had started reading le Carré at the age of fifteen. Ace was already elderly at the time! That's my conclusion. Anyway, as you know, I have been reading ancient (as opposed to elderly) things, or about ancient things, for quite a while now, so when I picked up John le Carré from the bedside table last night and read (I paraphrase lazily), "The stock market was troubled in Zurich," or something like that, my immediate reaction was "Zzzzzz," because I had fallen fast asleep after two paragraphs. But it's not John le Carré's fault! Or maybe it is. I mean, on Halloween, I was finishing up Seneca's plays and reading stuff like "They say the spirits groan here in the dead of night, the grove resounds with the clattering of chains, and the ghosts howl... Old tombs break open, releasing hordes of wandering dead." You try going from that to the Zurich stock market.

Animal Friends

I know what you're asking. Did we spend part of our 30th anniversary celebration as you might expect, revisiting the grim site of the miserable death of Meriwether Lewis, which we accidentally discovered on a prior anniversary trip? Yes and no. We paid tribute to it as we drove by, sending good wishes aloud to Meriwether Lewis's ghost, but we were too busy thinking about how we hadn't eaten all day, and we were eager to reach our destination. Sorry, Meriwether Lewis! Now I'll fill you in on the rest of our trip in a massive, unreadable, unbroken chunk of text, such as has been a "blog" tradition for more than 19 years, God help us all. We saw lots of cool animals, including a donkey and a goat who seemed to be good friends. At one point we were stopped at a traffic light behind a huge tanker truck, and printed on the rear of the tank were the words - and only these words - THE WORLD'S BEST COFFEE. "Is that full of coffee?" I blurted idiotically, causing Dr. Theresa to laugh for the next 10 miles. In the instant, I meant it! You may recall that my brain was famously stunned into a stupor at a not entirely distant point in the past. You'd think it would have fixed itself by now! The truck was full of fuel, of course, which it was carrying, no doubt, to a convenience store/gas station purporting to serve THE WORLD'S BEST COFFEE. There is no conceivable reason to fill a tanker truck with coffee. One night we had a great dinner and walked back to the hotel, where, on the previous evening, we had sat in the lobby bar and gazed across at an elegant recess filled with a different kind of furniture, and upon that furniture there sat a man who Dr. Theresa swore was the late Truman Capote. Anyway, we vowed at the time that we would go sit in that elegant recess with the nice furniture on a future evening. Well! I thought it was time. Dr. Theresa wasn't so sure. I kept saying how much fun it would be to sit in the elegant recess and "people watch." Finally, I talked her into it. She sat there grudgingly sipping a ranch water as I tried out a towering wingback chair such as Mr. Burns might use on THE SIMPSONS. Anyway, we were sitting there like that when a woman in leather pants walked by and did a double take. Then she came back and - Dr. Theresa reenacted this gesture often in the aftermath - sort of displayed her palms and circled them in the air as if trying to encompass her wondrous vision (me). "You look regal!" she informed me from across the lobby. So I looked at Dr. Theresa like, "Huh? Huh? I guess 'people watching' was the greatest idea ever!" She laughed and we realized we were feeling pretty great, so we went up to the room and ordered an after-dinner pizza. That's right! We decided we were even because recently the guy who was restocking the greeting cards at Walmart tried to pick up Dr. Theresa. I don't think he was wearing leather pants. In the morning, Dr. Theresa had a few things to take care of, so I went downstairs before her to get some coffee and wait for her to join me for breakfast. As I would be alone for a short time, I brought along my anniversary reading material, Seneca's version of OEDIPUS, translated by Emily Wilson, because I know how to have a good time. A guy got on the elevator with me and said, "You a stoic fan?" I didn't know what the hell he was talking about until I looked down and recollected the Seneca book in my hand. I said, "Sure." He said something about admiring Seneca's letters and I replied, and I think this is an exact quotation, "Yeah, well, the plays are nasty." Thus ended our discussion of stoicism. Sitting there with my coffee, I started thinking about that book I read about ancient Greece not too long ago, from which I learned that the hyper-masculine bros of the "manosphere" are really into the Stoics these days. I wondered, was that guy a "manosphere" guy? Did he think I was part of his special "manosphere"? Well, it's my own fault for carrying around a collection of Seneca tragedies like some kind of secret handshake. As Oedipus says in Emily Wilson's translation, "The guilt of my times is mine." On the way back home, Jon Langford called, and I answered Dr. Theresa's cellphone because she was driving. See, Dr. Theresa is bringing Jon here (to Oxford, Mississippi) for some events soon, including a concert on Saturday the 25th, which you should really attend, though I know you don't exist. But anyway, please "click" on this "link" and get informed! I know you won't. So I kept getting disconnected and finally had to give up because we were tooling down the Natchez Trace, and for the first time in my life, I felt I was in that contrived horror-movie situation... as you know, in a contemporary setting, there must always be a reason for the protagonist's phone not to work. That seemed interesting when I started typing it. As we continued our journey home, the satellite radio with which our rental car came equipped began to play a song I could have sworn was called "Everybody Dance Now," but, as I learned from the accompanying dashboard display, is actually called "Gonna Make You Sweat," which I guess everyone knew but me. Dr. Theresa was very concerned when she believed she heard the narrator of the song declaring that he would make us, the listeners, "sweat until [we] bleed." Sweating until He bled is what the Savior did in the Garden of Gethsemane, as you probably know from Luke 22:44. Well, I looked it up when we got home and yes, the guy in that song wants people to sweat until they bleed. Is this a good way to end this "post"?

Blank

I have three gigantic books going, four if you count the audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE. Rememeber when I fancied myself a one-book-at-a-time man? At night in bed, instead of old comic books, I now read old BUDDENBROOKS by "blog" favorite Thomas Mann. Then, of course, there's the Pessoa biography I read in bits and pieces as part of my blood pressure ritual... the doctor has me taking my blood pressure less often now, so I may never finish it. Just like Pessoa never finished his masterwork, THE BOOK OF DISQUIET. Ha ha, oh, Pessoa, you're something else. And I have a smaller book next to my favorite chair, but I don't want to talk about smaller books today. I want to talk about the 800-page monster THE SOT-WEED FACTOR by John Barth, which seems like a single joke stretched out to unimaginable lengths, something I can deeply respect. So, in THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, we find "a countenance blank as an owl's," which is fairly neutral as far as owl depictions go in figures of speech. As you know, an owl is "wise" if it's lucky, but more often it's drunk or stupid, etc., at least as far as the owl-hating literary giants of our times are concerned. "Blank," I'll take. It is at least more accurate than the "grinning" and "smiling" owls we have run across elsewhere. Please "click" on the "hyperlinks" for more owl information, or visit your local library.

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

I'm sure some of you, if you existed, would be wondering about McNeil and why he hasn't bothered much with his bits lately... specifically, his "Li'l Bogie Bits," which is what we call it when he throws us a couple of bones based on the 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart he has been reading. Well, here's what happened: he thought he had left the book somewhere and lost it. Maybe in another state of the union, I think? But then he found it at home under a pile of... unspecified stuff. Of course, Freud would say that McNeil just doesn't care about his "Li'l Bogie Bits" anymore, so he effectively hid the book from himself. But Freud would be wrong! Speaking of Freud (and don't worry, we'll get back to the promised bits), McNeil told me he's reading SYNCHRONICITY by Carl Jung. I know what you're going to say! Freud isn't Jung. Well, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. All I know is I can't think of one without the other, like the two great flavors in a Reese's peanut butter cup. Like, when Freud and Jung were arguing that time and there was an inexplicable explosion in a nearby bookcase. I think I have that story right. And that reminds me of another story! I made it into a chapter of SOUR BLUEBERRIES, my novel that no longer exists on this planet. So I think I can quote it here and no one will care. And this is a true story, and I didn't even change Leslie's real actual name to protect her innocence: "That made him think of the time he and Leslie were arguing about Kubrick and Mike Nichols on New Year’s Eve and there was a loud bang from the other room and everybody ran in and saw that the oaken bookcase with all the film books on it had cleaved itself down the middle in despair and the film books were in a pile on the floor." Okay. What was I saying? Oh yeah, and then there was the time that Freud and Jung were on a train, I think, right here in the USA, I think, home of the "blog," and Freud got it in his head somehow that Jung was comparing him to a corpse preserved in a bog, and Freud swooned and fainted! I think I have that story right, too. But if I don't, who cares? Oh yeah, and what about when Frasier had a Halloween party and came dressed as his hero, Sigmund Freud? I feel, in a related matter, that Frasier would occasionally (though maybe not in the episode in question) make a sarcastic quip about Jungians. I don't have the sources to back that up. None of this is the point. The point is (well, this might not be the point, either) that I was telling McNeil about an Elmore Leonard novel I was enjoying and McNeil said he was envious, because he wasn't making a lot of headway with SYNCHRONICITY (in a subsequent email, he indicated that he was starting to get into it and groove on its vibes, though not in those words). Explaining that he wished Jung's examples were simpler, McNeil wrote, with what I took as plaintiveness, and I believe this is a quote, "Why not cats walking through a door?" So I closed my email and I opened up Elmore Leonard and I read "A cat walks in the room..." WHAT! So I emailed McNeil back and said, I believe, "Synchronicity!" or some other smart remark along those lines. Now for the bogie bits, which I will now attempt to reconstruct before your very eyes through the power of memory. One of them was... hmm... I guess Bogart was getting sick of Sinatra coming over to the house and drinking up all of Bogie's booze, and also (if I am recalling correctly) putting the moves on Lauren Bacall, who was Bogart's legally wedded wife. What was the other one? It had something to do with Bogart winning an Oscar. McNeil did not specify the movie, but I am guessing it was THE AFRICAN QUEEN. I'm not looking it up because I don't care about anything anymore. Anyway, Bogart's buddy tells him if he wins he should act real cool and snarl "It's about time" and casually walk offstage like some kind of tough customer. So Bogart is like, "Wow! That's a great idea! I'll do it!" And then he wins and gets up there and blushes and giggles and cavorts about the stage all giddy and squealing. That can't be right. But as I have already expressed, I don't care. I was reading more of the Elmore Leonard in a doctor's waiting room today. I took it instead of my prescribed waiting room reading material. After that, I stopped by Square Books because my copy of THE ICEMAN COMETH had arrived. I ordered it because I was watching the movie version the other day, and the character Hugo, played by Boss Hogg from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, said what I could have sworn was "Life is a crazy monkey face!" So I was going to check the text and see. So Dr. Theresa is driving us home and I'm flipping through the end of THE ICEMAN COMETH and I find Hugo saying "Hello, nice, leedle, funny monkey-faces!" And another time he goes, "Hello, leedle Don, leedle monkey-face!" I don't know, maybe he's all about the leedle monkey-faces the whole way through, though where I got "Life is a crazy monkey face!" I don't know. In my defense, Boss Hogg isn't exactly Demosthenes in this role. And he is forced by the author, as you have witnessed, to say things like "leedle." When I read the whole play, which I promise you I never will, perhaps I'll come across the exact line that I misheard. Thank you. This has been "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits." Now leave me alone!

Passing Through

As you know (?), I take my blood pressure twice a day. Before doing so, I sit silently for five minutes, for a ten-minute total per day. And as I sit so silently and still, waiting to take my blood pressure with all the suspense of someone slowly scratching off a lottery ticket, or Charlie Bucket peeling off the wrapper of a chocolate bar, I read a book. To qualify as my "blood pressure book," the book must be a sturdy hardcover with a mighty spine that allows the volume to lie open flat on the table. That is the only requirement. All this you know. But I don't think you knew that my current blood pressure book is a biography of Fernando Pessoa, which is about as long as THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. Anyhow! And forgive me for going over some of my other reading habits but it's so obviously important. Anyhow! I have also been reading old comic books at night, ever since Tom Franklin brought me some old comic books in the hospital. But I have to say I'm getting tired of the old comic books. Something has... changed. Something in the... I want to say... no I don't... national mood??? I didn't say it! Let's not talk about it! Once I finish the current pile, which is swiftly dwindling, that may be it for old comic books, at least for a while. Old comic books can't soothe me anymore. Anyhow! ANYHOW! I was very surprised, as Pessoa's biographer, Richard Zenith, which sounds like a name young Fernando Pessoa would have made up, analyzed a specific sort of Pessoa poem by saying, and here I quote my blood pressure book, "And the scenes and moods are not only juxtaposed, they also interpenetrate, passing through each other the way Superman passes through walls, without him or the walls losing their structural integrity." Talk about juxtaposing and interpenetrating: at last my blood pressure book and my old comic books had met! BUT WHY? The comparison is striking for a number of reasons, several of which I am about to tell you until you can take no more. First! The allusion does not seem particularly Pessoa-friendly, especially since Pessoa died in 1935, well before the creation of Superman. Now! We must of course admit that the biographer has an advantage, in this case, over his subject... that of still being alive (as far as I know). Therefore, he can draw from any range of examples he likes, including those from a future unimaginable even to his very imaginative subject. BUT! Pessoa is conducting seances just a couple of pages later. Isn't a ghost something that passes through walls? Might not a ghost be a more universally recognizable figure for the average reader, if the average reader pictures something that passes through walls without losing its structural integrity or altering the wall? I hope it is not blasphemous to suggest that one also thinks of Jesus, in his appearance to St. Thomas. But I'm not done! The biographer's Superman example is interesting to me because... do people know Superman can do that? I mean, I do. But I have made a serious study of all his oddest powers. A superhero who is more famous for vibrating through a wall is the Flash, if you know about the Flash, but, of course, more people know about Superman than know about the Flash... yet the question remains! Does the reader with a rudimentary knowledge of Superman realize that he can vibrate through a wall? I have no evidence to back up what I'm about to say, but I suspect that the average reader, if asked to imagine Superman going through a wall, would picture the "Man of Steel" busting right through it with his super fists, like the Kool-Aid man or the Schlitz malt liquor bull, not that my latter two examples were known for using their fists. The Schlitz malt liquor bull, being a hooved quadruped, was not even capable of making a fist! While the Kool-Aid man may or may not have been able to make a fist, I doubt whether he had the arm extension necessary for pounding down a wall with it, especially as he, if I recall correctly, grasped in one hand a pitcher of the same sweet liquid with which his living body was filled. Nevertheless, it can be easily proven with video evidence that both the Kool-Aid man and the Schlitz malt liquor bull BODILY knocked down their walls, as, I put forth, most people would credit Superman with doing as well. (I am including the "beer label" on this "post," even though the Schlitz malt liquor ads issued, according to my hazy memories, the specific command "Don't say beer, say bull!" May the Schlitz malt liquor bull forgive me and not crash through my wall. Amen. Not that I am worshipping a golden calf! Not even a hypothetical one made, unlike the all-too-fleshly Schlitz malt liquor bull, of golden malt liquor, however tempted I might be at this moment to drink a calf-sized container of such a brew.)

Gasp!

Yesterday, I was sitting in my favorite chair, watching a movie called YOUNG BESS, which I had recorded off of TCM. It wasn't the most interesting movie ever made, and my eye wandered to the side table, where THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY was just lying there. I thought, and may have muttered half-aloud, "Well, this book has every kind of animal in it, including some that don't exist, but no owls! And here I am almost at the end of it." Indeed, friends, I was closer to the end than I knew: many of the remaining pages were taken up by "Notes to the Translation." (A wonderful translation by Kitty Mrosovsky, I should add!) There were but three scant pages of the text itself to go! Anyhow, with the movie still playing, I opened it up, and right there, on the third page from the end, there were owls! Owls! Reader, I actually gasped. I gasped at the owls. I don't think I gasp very often. But maybe I am going around gasping all the time without knowing it. This time, I noticed. Nor were they just any owls. They were "owls with snakes' tails." Now, that's something you don't see every day, brother.

This Is a Great Story

I had to run out of the house and sit in a medical-type waiting room today, only this time it wasn't for me! Anyway, I left in such a hurry that I didn't grab the book that I reserve especially for doctors' waiting rooms. I snatched up the book most conveniently located instead, on my famous side table, which (the book, not the table) happened to be THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY by Flaubert. Now, I'm sure you remember when I was reading THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA and I was all wild-eyed and brimming with hysteria when I discovered it had a cithara in it. I was like, "Wow! A book with a cithara in it! Now I've seen everything! That's never going to happen again in MY lifetime!" So I was sitting there in the waiting room this afternoon and next thing you know I'm reading about a cithara. It just goes to show you, believe in yourself and you can accomplish anything.

McNeil's Li'l Sausage Bits

Welcome once more to "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," where McNeil reads a 700-page Humphrey Bogart bio and I pass the savings on to you! As you may recall, we were on the fence about whether the casting of Dooley Wilson in CASABLANCA was a legitimate bogie bit. As McNeil put it, Wilson "was not their first or even second choice, but....that's how sausage is made. I'm not sure that's how sausage is made." Which reminds me of a whimsical quotation from a whimsical narrator in my beloved bestseller (it's neither beloved nor a bestseller) MOVIE STARS: "There is a reason no one wants to know 'how the sausage is made.' How the sausage is made is terrible." And here you may note the most significant difference between my "blog" writing and my "real" writing: on the "blog," that second sentence would have ended in an exclamation point. And, honestly, in most of my "real" writing too. I wonder why I didn't do it! But we are getting far away from McNeil's li'l bits. McNeil says that Lena Horne was considered for the role of Sam! He also contends, rather boldly, that CASABLANCA would have been "twice as good" if Lena Horne had played the role. And I do say that such an observation indeed qualifies as a bogie bit. Another bogie bit is of a sad nature, as it depicts Mayo Methot, in a drunken rage, getting herself wedged tightly behind a sofa somehow. But let's get back to sausage. By a weird coincidence, I was listening to an opera when I received the first bogie bit alluded to above. That's not the coincidence. So, in a while, I was like, "What the hell is this opera about? I don't speak whatever language this is!" And I looked up the plot on the "internet," and this guy in the opera gets in trouble for eating a sausage on the moon! I guess you think I am making that up. But I will tell you the name of the opera - THE EXCURSIONS OF MR. BROUCEK - so you can look it up for your damn self. So I was like, "Sausage!" And, believe it or not, it was, by another coincidence, the second opera I had listened to THAT WEEK about somebody going to the moon. (The other one was Il mondo della luna by Baldassare Galuppi... and I can almost swear that Haydn wrote an opera with a similar title and subject matter, but now I am just showing off my knowledge of moon operas.) This is getting long, but I have more to tell. I just hope the lousy AT&T "internet" doesn't stop working before I'm done. We're getting something better installed on Monday! Leslie came over to watch INLAND EMPIRE the other night and we couldn't finish because the AT&T "internet" crapped out. So we turned off the lights and put on these plastic toy rings that have colored lights shooting out of them and Dr. Theresa requested Kraftwerk, so we danced around to that for a while, and then switched to a playlist by Kate Tsang. But the main point is that... you know all those books I am reading all the time in various circumstances? Now I've had to add a book that I put next to my laptop in my home office for whenever the "internet" goes kerplunk and I'm just sitting there with a stupid look on my face and nothing to distract me from the terrible abyss. There are books littered all over the place around here, it's a sad mess. Oh! So... one of the most recent books I had downstairs, on the side table near my favorite chair, was DAISY MILLER by Henry James, which somehow I had never read before. And in it, a character quotes from MANFRED, the poetic drama by Lord Byron, and I liked the quotation, so I dug out the old SELECTED POEMS of Byron and started reading MANFRED. And I hadn't made it too far, just to lines 196 and 197 of the first scene of the first act, and what did I see but "When the falling stars are shooting,/And the answer'd owls are hooting"? And you know what that means. Well, as long as I'm here, I'll mention a message I received yesterday from DJ Gnosis, who said he had gotten a news alert about his own old "blog," and when he checked it out, he saw that a "web" site called - I think - casino.org had discovered a 2008 "post" of mine, and a contemporaneous "post" by DJ Gnosis commenting on it, about the time I "posted" the first-ever photographic evidence on the "internet" of the existence of the Foster Brooks robot that used to live in Las Vegas until it was dismantled and sold for scrap metal, as we all must be eventually. Quoted in the article? Foster Brooks's own daughter! I would "link" to the article, but, being in the midst of a nightmarish effort to scrub old zombie "links" from the "blog," I am no longer much inclined to "link" to outside sources. Nothing against casino.org! Anyway, this on the heels of my 45-year-old letter inspiring McNeil to watch HARRY AND WALTER GO TO NEW YORK. Given enough time and patience, such meaningless things can happen.

Missing Gods

As you know, I used to say I had stopped "blogging" but now I have stopped saying I have stopped "blogging," for reasons I have listed repeatedly for no one. Anyway, there are so many interesting things happening every day that it is almost impossible not to "blog," don't you agree? For example, I know I bought a book at Square Books... let me check my private records... yes, yes, it seems that in May of this year - almost certainly on the same day I received a new belt that caused quite a stir - I bought a book that caught my eye, a book purporting to contain a complete list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt. This is not to be confused, of course, with my DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT DEITIES, a work of a broader scope. For a while, as I can recall by way of the images that dance so merrily inside my brain, the book I bought about the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt - "COMPLETE" the cover boasted! - sat on the low-slung marble-topped side table where I keep a few books for browsing as I loll about in my favorite chair like a dissolute dandy of yore. I eventually moved the book because it was taking up too much space. I think it interfered with the old cat when he tried to use the table as a means of access to my lap. BUT WHERE DID I PUT IT? The book, I mean, not my lap. That is what I have been trying to figure out for three or four days now. The good thing is that if I ever find the book, it will give me something else to "blog" about, thereby staving off (or helping me embrace?) the abyss. Now you get it!

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits: 4-6

Welcome back to what some say is everyone's favorite "internet" feature, McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits! Our friend McNeil is already up to Bogart's third wedding in the biography of that icon he is reading. It seems that the drink of choice at the splendid affair was something called a Black Velvet, which I could research and tell you all about, but I have decided not to. You don't care about me! Why should I care whether or not you know what a Black Velvet is? The main thing is it got everybody really drunk really fast. That's bogie bit #4 for you collectors! The Black Velvets caused the character actor Mischa Auer to take off his pants and run up and down a long table. You know Mischa Auer best from Hellzapoppin. No you don't! Philistine! I can't keep spoon-feeding you details about who Mischa Auer is. I have my own life to live! Allegedly. Whether or not Mischa Auer was wearing underpants was not divulged in McNeil's email. In conclusion, I have a leftover bogie bit that I forgot to include in the previous installment. It seems that Humphrey Bogart's boyhood nickname was "Hump." For no very good reason, it reminds of how John Wayne took banjo lessons from a boy named Fat. And THAT reminds me of the time that John Wayne pulled an apple corer out of Bogart's back. It had been jabbed in there up to the hilt by his clearly upset wife, though whether said wife was the one alluded to in bogie bit #4 is beyond the scope of our current narrative. Furthermore, the thing about having an apple corer jabbed in his back does not count as bogie bit #7. Bogie bits come only from McNeil. Get it straight!

Having a Small Get-Together

I was reading in one of these old comic books about all of his superhero friends throwing a bachelor party for the Atom. And here's the thing! All his superhero friends are regular-sized, and here's the Atom at his bachelor party, and he's about a damn inch tall, pardon my language, and he's sitting in a teeny tiny little chair that can zoom around for convenience. But here's the thing you need to know about the Atom... yes, you NEED to know. Get over yourself! Anyhow, although the Atom uses his shrinking powers for the good of humanity, he doesn't HAVE to be a damn inch tall all the time, pardon my language. He can be any damn - pardon my language - size he pleases, up to and including the size of his regular human self. So why is he sitting there like a clown during his entire bachelor party being one inch tall while all his human-sized friends hang out drinking beer and eating cake? That's my question.

An Attractive Spine

Well, I certainly have gotten myself into some kind of fix with all these books around here, each one carefully calibrated to fit a different portion of my complicated life. For further details, feel free to "click" the appropriate "hyperlinks" in the "body" of this "post." You know about the old comic books I read in bed at night, and the book I took on my recent visit to my parents, which should be distinguished from the sort of book I take on an airplane (determined mainly by size), although I haven't been on an airplane in some time. But the possibility is always lurking, and I do have a number of books around here that would work on airplane, THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA being my current top contender. No doubt you will remember how I, with unknown metaphysical ramifications, took my book for doctors' waiting rooms on my most recent parental jaunt. That was a mistake, and I'm going to have to think about it seriously, as I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow. And most of all, you are thinking of JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, what I would probably call my "main book." There's some trouble with that! You see, I started our new book club book today, so room for the last bit of JOSEPH will have to be made in some other portion of my packed schedule. By the way, in a book club meeting conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order this morning, we voted to rename ourselves the Million Dollar Book Club. My cofounder, I believe, was still calling it the Doomed Book Club, long after I had stopped. Let me check the minutes of today's meeting in order to quote myself accurately: "I stopped thinking of it as 'Doomed Book Club' years ago, after those slackers peeled off one by one, like dirty rats escaping our beautiful sinking ship!" I don't believe I've ever told you that I keep yet another book by my favorite chair, just in case the TV goes on the blink. Right now it's TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED. But none of this is what I wanted to discuss. So! One kind of book I haven't mentioned yet (in this "post") is my "blood pressure book." This is the one I read for five minutes at a time as I sit up straight and breathe normally before taking my blood pressure. The latest of those is the new (?) one by James Ellroy. I'm not sure it's new. But it was still in hardcover at Square Books, where I was captivated by its attractive, glaring spine. You might be asking how James Ellroy could possibly soothe anyone's blood pressure. I'll tell you. It's something about these rat-a-tat, rhythmic sentence fragments, like a hateful, violent metronome lulling me into a peaceful trance. Just yesterday, I think, there were three short sentences or fragments in a row about owls. Night owls, of course. "Night owl this. Night owl that. Night owl the other." I paraphrase delightfully.