The Owl of Conceit

I called it! When the 2-person book club began reading this biography of Polly Adler by Debby Applegate, I said to myself, "Jack," I said, "If this book has an owl in it at all, it will be a so-called 'night owl.'" And what do you know? Applegate gives us "night owls lingered over a bowl of matzoh ball soup." Right again, Pendarvis! You're a genius. But that's not all. After I put down Polly Adler, I picked up my nightly tonic, an old comic book. Of course you recall how Tom Franklin brought me some old comic books in the hospital, and some more old comic books when I got home, and soon I was buying my own old comic books like a deranged fiend. But what you didn't know is that Tom brought me even more old comics books after that! He's like a golden goose that keeps laying old comic books and I promise never to open him up to see how it works, as in the old fairy tale. That story taught me a lesson! Anyhow, I was reading an old comic book from Tom's most recent delivery, a story about a character of whom, like El Diablo and The Shroud before him, I had never heard. And this lively fellow's name was The Viking Prince. So this here Viking Prince meets a princess, and this here princess says, "I WILL NEVER MARRY THIS -- THIS -- OWL OF CONCEIT!" So I shut my old comic book and lay there thinking my wise thoughts. And I thought and thought, and the thought came to me that the hilarious idea of an owl of conceit reminded me of a book I read at least a few times as a teenager, a book called THE PLATYPUS OF DOOM AND OTHER NIHILISTS, and I lay there trying to remember any of the contents, of which only a salacious detail or two came back to me. I still have my copy! As you can see in the photo above, it resides on the drugstore-style paperback spinner I have right here in my home office where I type these mesmerizing words that appear before your wondering eyes like magic. Okay, now I must move on to a spoiler for one of the stupid word puzzles in the New York Times. I know people are serious about their stupid New York Times word puzzles, so if you get up every morning and do a stupid New York Times word game puzzle (not the crossword) like some kind of glasses-wearing egghead, I advise you to stop reading now. All right! Here we go. Have you stopped reading? Ha ha! You don't exist! And if you did, you wouldn't have read this far anyway. So, one of the producers of a secret project I can't tell you about got me going on this particular stupid New York Times word game puzzle thing. So, you must recall that I spent the night tossing and turning and thinking about the platypus. Not something that comes to mind often! Not to my mind. This morning, I get up and do my stupid New York Times puzzle word game puzzle game puzzle thing. And one of the answers is... TRADEMARKS OF A PLATYPUS. In conclusion, I leafed through my old copy of PLATYPUS OF DOOM and there is a cigarette ad in the middle of it. That's how it used to be! I don't think my grandfather owned a book without a cigarette ad in the middle.

A Genius for Upholstery

"He has a genius for upholstery" is another line of dialogue in this Henry James novel.

Martha Raye Agonistes

As I humorously tweeted earlier today, "Watching a Doris Day movie last night, there was a song lyric 'see the clown falling down, it's the best show in town' and I thought what town is this? They need more options in this town!" Now, if I'm going to be honest, it's clear from context that the singers are referring to the whole circus, not just the clown falling down, when they claim "it's the best show in town." Still, the lyric, which is by no less a genius than Lorenz Hart, if the credits are to be believed, lends itself to humorous misinterpretation, and so I stand by my tweet. On the other hand, the song is performed during a parade that has, like, a dozen snow-white horses outfitted with Pegasus wings, and (unrelated to the horses) the most convincing ape makeup and pantomime I have seen outside of Kubrick's 2001. Also, they have a caged Martha Raye in a bright red lion costume. Now, leaving aside the fact that the plot centers around a rundown circus that is about to go broke - in which case, maybe cut back on the elaborate horse costumes - I have to admit this "show" looks pretty great, maybe it is the best show in town, what the hell do I know?

Brian and the Birthday Boy and Me

Here are my friend Brian and me at that birthday party I was telling you about. Sure, the birthday party guy was supposed to be anonymous, and that's his picture my thumb is poking at, but it would take some kind of internet genius to figure it all out, and nobody cares, plus he looks like a magnificent sad prince, so I feel okay about everything.

Jerry 101

I just heard that Jerry Lewis passed away. Dr. Theresa and my pal Phil Oppenheim alerted me simultaneously. I feel terrible! I am going to try to update an old "post" that had ninety introductions to Jerry Lewis for the curious. I am going to try to find eleven things to add so I can call it "Jerry 101." [As a work meeting was coming up as this "post" was being typed, several, though not all, of the hastily retrieved final additions may be of a lesser quality. - ed.] 1. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? 2. For that matter, what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 3. Bob Dylan got "deeply into" Jerry Lewis. 4. Jerry was a hero to Richard Pryor. 5. Jerry shares expressionistic instincts with iconic rappers. 6. He made Orson Welles laugh. 7. Freudian aspects of Jerry. 8. He played a gig with Thelonious Monk. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. [See also - ed.] 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. So can it be a coincidence that Lynch was cast in a part originally written for Jerry Lewis? (See also.) 14. As muse to hardboiled Don Carpenter. 15. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 16. Jerry is the inventor of anti-comedy, his aesthetic also appropriated by the cinematic underground. 17. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone used to love so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. Do you think Jerry is redundant? No, he is "unfolding redundancy." Joke's on you! 22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Speaking of which, was Jerry an influence on Boorman's groundbreaking POINT BLANK? I don't know, but he should have starred in it. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? Or the possibly relevant fact that Jerry directed parts of THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine, if that's your cup of tea. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe. I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. 31. Jerry Lewis is part of Philip K. Dick's mystic vision of the entire universe. 32. You should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Jerry Lewis is a good singer. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe. 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen. 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog. 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. (Maybe because he anticipated one of Tarantino's more radical and disruptive narrative decisions by 40 years.) 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye. 51. And took some of the starch out of Tony Curtis by flicking ashes on his jacket. 52. Jerry is complicated. He "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." - J. Hoberman. 53. Jerry's influence on the Beastie Boys. 54. Jerry appears in works by acknowledged comic geniuses John Hodgman and Michael Kupperman. 55. But perhaps you prefer authors from Mississippi, a chunk of land with a notable literary history. If so, you should be aware that Tom Franklin and Frederick Barthelme have put Jerry Lewis in their well-regarded "Mississippi" novels. 56. So has Don DeLillo, though he is not from Mississippi, nor are his novels set there. 57. ARE you a historian, by the way? Then consider Jerry's breakup with Dean in its implications as "a national trauma." 58. Francis Ford Coppola cites Jerry as an influence. 59. Which reminds me: I recently read an interview that Scorsese did with Lewis in which he (Scorsese) cites THE LADIES MAN as an influence. I always assumed the scene in question was drawn from SATYRICON. But SATYRICON came out after THE LADIES MAN, so maybe SATYRICON was influenced by Jerry too! I just now decided that, while typing this. 60. Jerry's darker side a fruitful subject for literary speculation. 61. Speaking of which, John Waters said Jerry Lewis was "probably a monster!" Can there be a higher compliment? 62. Although (see previous "link") John Waters went on to praise his taste in costuming. So that subject is worth contemplation. 63. Though, intriguingly, to Waters's original hypothesis, Jerry repeatedly acknowledges the collusion of the innocent with the monstrous, especially within a single individual. (See also.) 64. Jerry's art provides some of the same challenges and rewards as Sun Ra's. 65. Jerry envisioned hosting Queen Elizabeth, Jimmy Hoffa and Helen Keller on a talk show. I still want to write that play. 66. Fascinating undercurrents to his on- and off-screen chemistry with Dean Martin. 67. I wrote a pretty good article about him once if you can find it. 68. And this "post" is all right. 69. Try to solve Jerry's universal problem. 70. The complex transparency of Jerry's genius can be profitably compared to Brian Wilson's. 71. Jerry reveals the intrinsic flaws in the very notion of successful human communication. 72. Maybe that's why he's constantly "rewriting his own being." 73. But before he rewrote himself too much, here's a 13-minute clip of young Jerry at his brashest and most engaging. 74. Jerry's anarchic devouring of the hand that feeds him. 75. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 76. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 77. Jerry is a model of tact and restraint compared to the makers of Jason Bateman movies. 78. As Jerry is, so you will be. As you are, so once was he. 79. Jerry, like Elvis, was a target of snobbery and classism. 80. I mean, even when he ended the Oscar broadcast EARLY, the powers-that-be still despised him. He gets under "the man's" skin. 81. For example, when everybody in "the establishment" was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 82. Did he inspire a character in a Wes Anderson movie? Probably not. But I think he inspired a character in a Noah Baumbach movie. 83. Touchstone for towering cartoonists Lynda Barry and Gilbert Hernandez. 84. Jerry deemed a subject worthy of the Savannah College of Art and Design. 85. Jerry cut short his formal education and set out to educate himself. 86. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he loves Jerry Lewis. 87. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise. 88. Camille Paglia seems happy about Jerry Lewis. 89. Even comedians who resist his influence must grapple with his legacy. 90. Jerry blurs assumptions about gender. 91. Hey, Sandra Bullock likes Jerry Lewis. 92. And John Sayles says "he did it all," though he was likely just being polite. 93. Jerry helps redeem the troubling "monkey riding dogs" trope. 94. Jerry advances clowning from sadness to rage. 95. Jerry's singing provides ballast in one of those ubiquitous "peak TV" shows that no one can get enough of. 96. Just the thought of Jerry Lewis makes someone laugh alone in a parking lot. 97. Jerry makes comedy of our basic existential choice. 98. See my AV Club interview on Jerry Lewis's literary influence, I guess. 99. Jerry of sufficient interest to narrowly escape being drunk-dialed by Cary Fukunaga. 100. Noted author Megan Abbott finds that watching Jerry is "akin to psychosexual quicksand"! 101. Appropriately at this moment, Jerry Lewis distracts me from James Joyce's elegiac short story, "The Dead," supplanting death with life!

Fly As Ever

Here's a photo from Kent's party. Look at all these geniuses. There's Adam in the foreground, as well he should be. And the back of Lyle Partridge's head is deep in conversation with Rebecca Sugar. And then I thought that was the back of Aleks Sennwald's head but Kent says that is the back of Tom Herpich's head! In fact, Kent pointed out, Aleks is visible way back there in the background, in another room, or another plane, ethereal and floating in a violet-blue (?) light. I just assumed she was a ghost! Oh, but continuing along toward the poster on the back wall we see Jesse Balmer and why there's none other than Seo Kim herself, thoughtfully musing! Meanwhile Jesse Moynihan leans against the other wall, as fly as ever in his downy sweater. I also see an elbow and a pocket flap and the back of another head. I'm not "blogging" anymore, but come on, you have to let me get the rest of this ADVENTURE TIME stuff off my chest. You don't want me to bottle it up inside, do you? DO YOU?

Or Maybe It's Genius

As you know, I'm not "blogging" anymore, but someone on twitter called McNeil a "filthy troglodyte" for not enjoying the works of Robert Sheckley, whoever he is. And it's all my fault. See? I told you "blogging" was useless. I should have included the final, qualifying line of McNeil's email: "Or maybe it's genius, but it sure seems like it sucks." Is everybody happy now? In the old days I would have looked up Robert Sheckley on wikipedia and probably found out he saved a baby from a fire or something and then I'd have to "blog" again about how sorry I was for besmirching Robert Sheckley via McNeil but now that I'm not "blogging" anymore I never have to learn how unfairly I've maligned Robert Sheckley and it's a huge relief.

The Ninety Paths to Jerry

Soon it will be Jerry Lewis's 90th birthday. So I have "punched up" an old "post." In the old days there were only fifty, but now there are NINETY different ways to approach Jerry, should you find him unapproachable. I present this as a public service. Choose the path that's right for you! 1. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? 2. For that matter, what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 3. Bob Dylan got "deeply into" Jerry Lewis. 4. Jerry was a hero to Richard Pryor. 5. Jerry shares expressionistic instincts with iconic rappers. 6. He made Orson Welles laugh. 7. Freudian aspects of Jerry. 8. He played a gig with Thelonious Monk. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. So can it be a coincidence that Louis CK cast Lynch in a part originally written for Jerry Lewis? 14. As muse to hardboiled Don Carpenter. 15. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 16. Jerry is the inventor of anti-comedy, his aesthetic also appropriated by the cinematic underground. 17. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone used to love so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. Do you think Jerry is redundant? No, he is "unfolding redundancy." Joke's on you!

22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Speaking of which, was Jerry an influence on Boorman's groundbreaking POINT BLANK? I don't know, but he should have starred in it. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine, if that's your cup of tea. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe. I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. 31. Jerry Lewis is part of Philip K. Dick's mystic vision of the entire universe. 32. You should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Jerry Lewis is a good singer. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe. 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen. 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog. 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. (Maybe because he anticipated one of Tarantino's more radical and disruptive narrative decisions by 40 years.) 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye. 51. And took some of the starch out of Tony Curtis by flicking ashes on his jacket. 52. Jerry is complicated. He "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." - J. Hoberman. 53. Jerry's influence on the Beastie Boys. 54. Jerry appears in works by acknowledged comic geniuses John Hodgman and Michael Kupperman.

55. But perhaps you prefer authors from Mississippi, a chunk of land with a notable literary history. If so, you should be aware that Tom Franklin and Frederick Barthelme have put Jerry Lewis in their well-regarded "Mississippi" novels. 56. So has Don DeLillo, though he is not from Mississippi, nor are his novels set there. 57. ARE you a historian, by the way? Then consider Jerry's breakup with Dean in its implications as "a national trauma." 58. Francis Ford Coppola cites Jerry as an influence. 59. Which reminds me: I recently read an interview that Scorsese did with Lewis in which he (Scorsese) cites THE LADIES MAN as an influence. I always assumed the scene in question was drawn from SATYRICON. But SATYRICON came out after THE LADIES MAN, so maybe SATYRICON was influenced by Jerry too! I just now decided that, while typing this. 60. Jerry's darker side a fruitful subject for literary speculation. 61. Speaking of which, John Waters said Jerry Lewis was "probably a monster!" Can there be a higher compliment? 62. Although (see previous "link") John Waters went on to praise his taste in costuming. So that subject is worth contemplation. 63. Though, intriguingly, to Waters's original hypothesis, Jerry repeatedly acknowledges the collusion of the innocent with the monstrous, especially within a single individual. (See also.) 64. Jerry's art provides some of the same challenges and rewards as Sun Ra's. 65. Jerry envisioned hosting Queen Elizabeth, Jimmy Hoffa and Helen Keller on a talk show. I still want to write that play.

66. Fascinating undercurrents to his on- and off-screen chemistry with Dean Martin. 67. I wrote a pretty good article about him once if you can find it. 68. And this "post" is all right. 69. Try to solve Jerry's universal problem. 70. The complex transparency of Jerry's genius can be profitably compared to Brian Wilson's. 71. Jerry reveals the intrinsic flaws in the very notion of successful human communication. 72. Maybe that's why he's constantly "rewriting his own being." 73. But before he rewrote himself too much, here's a 13-minute clip of young Jerry at his brashest and most engaging. 74. Jerry's anarchic devouring of the hand that feeds him. 75. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 76. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 77. Jerry is a model of tact and restraint compared to the makers of Jason Bateman movies. 78. As Jerry is, so you will be. As you are, so once was he. 79. Jerry, like Elvis, was a target of snobbery and classism. 80. I mean, even when he ended the Oscar broadcast EARLY, the powers-that-be still despised him. He gets under "the man's" skin. 81. For example, when everybody in "the establishment" was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 82. Did he inspire a character in a Wes Anderson movie? Probably not. But I think he inspired a character in a Noah Baumbach movie. 83. Touchstone for towering cartoonists Lynda Barry and Gilbert Hernandez. 84. Jerry deemed a subject worthy of the Savannah College of Art and Design. 85. Jerry cut short his formal education and set out to educate himself. 86. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he loves Jerry Lewis. 87. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise. 88. Camille Paglia seems happy about Jerry Lewis. 89. Jerry blurs assumptions about gender. 90. Hey, Sandra Bullock likes Jerry Lewis.

Corn

"When I think of sour corn, I think of Dean Martin." What a cryptic sentence! Well, there's a paragraph that explains it but I like it better by itself. That's from yesterday's menu at the Southern Foodways Symposium, an indescribable annual summit concerned with global politics, economics, history, art, activism, race, space, place, family, gender, science, agriculture, industry, philosophy, and so many other subjects, and I know I'm leaving out food, but as one of the organization's oral historians described her mission yesterday, "It's about the people, not the food." That being said, superstar chef Sean Brock and his mother made us a 20-course lunch. A 20-course lunch! That will really make you take a nap. Sean Brock and his mother made this 20-course lunch for more than 400 people (as seen above). He said the most people his mom had cooked for until yesterday was about ten. Earlier that morning I gave an unnecessarily blistering talk about the TV chef and humorist Justin Wilson, a relatively harmless entertainer who is long dead. I put on some sunglasses and just went full "insult comic" mode. I'm not even sure why! The talk as given wildly diverged from what I had so carefully researched and printed out. Maybe I was possessed! Actually, Gustavo Arellano spoke right before me and he was ON FIRE and I was like, "Uh-oh, I'm gonna have to DO something to follow that." And nature took its course.

As you can see, I wielded my Emmy as a comedy prop and the whole thing went very well despite my inexplicable viciousness, which I believe worried JoAnn Clevenger, the astonishing doyenne of New Orleans's iconic Upperline restaurant (at the Symposium to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award), who stood up in the Q&A section to nobly defend Mr. Wilson, a frequent customer of hers. I saw her later in the evening and she told me some complicated things from Justin Wilson's personal life. "I always like the underdog," she said. We had a nice talk about it. I also saw Sean Brock and he said the 20-course lunch was "the most important meal" he had ever made and "the meal I was born to make." He was referring to its transcendent emotional content for one thing. All I could think with extreme gratitude was, "We got to eat the meal Sean Brock was born to make!" I also told him that his mother's statement - "When I think of sour corn, I think of Dean Martin" - could be the first sentence of a novel. It's my favorite sentence right now.

I guess the other thing I need to tell you is that John Currence got dressed up in a shrimp costume and was positioned above a dunk tank filled with grits. He told me he studied Gary Busey in the movie CARNY (pictured) to perfect his aggressive dunk-tank patter. "Were those really grits in there?" I asked Blair Hobbs about the dunk tank. "It looked like brown water," said Blair, which for whatever reason sounded like the worst thing to get dunked into. I honestly doubt that the Southern Foodways Symposium, with its deeply concerned soul,

would waste grits, or anything else that could help someone. For example, another lunch, this one made for us by Mashama Bailey (pictured here with Joe York, whose pinpoint accuracy as a pitcher dropped shrimp-Currence in the tank; "Your Emmy won't save you now!" yelled Joe as I walked into the danger zone between him and his target), was ingenuously based on ingredients that usually get thrown away: Chef Bailey's salad was made with the stems of the collard.

My Nephew Is a Genius

Last time I went to Atlanta I forgot to bring my little jotting notebook in which to jot my little notes. You won't catch me making that tragic mistake twice. 1. On the drive to Atlanta this weekend, "Jokerman" by Bob Dylan played. Some particular lyric - I can't recall which; by necessity, one cannot jot while driving - made me think for a split second, "Maybe this song is about Jerry Lewis!" (You may "click" here to refresh your memory about the time Bob Dylan got obsessed with Jerry Lewis.) It did have a "sad clown" vibe. But it also has a bunch of mystical stuff about "kings dressed in scarlet" or something. So never mind. Or, wait! THE KING OF COMEDY. I believe he dressed in scarlet. I don't really think "Jokerman" is about Jerry Lewis. But I was driving alone and had time to think. 2. The occasion of the drive was Barry Mills's birthday party. Who should be there but Craig "Sven" Gordon. We reminisced without irony about the old band we used to be in together, just like a couple of living relics from the cliché museum. 3. Somehow the band Kansas came up, prompting Sven to reveal that the lead singer of Kansas moved into his neighborhood for a time and could often be spotted jogging! 4. Chris Lopez came to the party. An interesting beetle landed on his arm. It looked just like a piece of popcorn. 5. Last time I saw Barry's daughter she was two years old. Now she's nine. Barry told her how when she was two, she liked it when I made crazy trumpet noises, it would really make her laugh. So once I was doing that and Dr. Theresa encouraged me like so: "Work it, Jack!" And Barry's two-year-old daughter suddenly shouted, "Work it, Jack!" Ha ha ha! Barry's daughter bore the retelling of this story with good grace uncommon in one of her age. She was thoughtful and polite about the rambling of her elders. 6. Look!

Barry's birthday cake, of admirable fluffiness, was decorated in remembrance of that kids' show that Barry and I used to make. 7. I met a guy who is working on a feature film about the founding of McDonald's, starring Michael Keaton and Laura Dern. He showed me a picture of "the first McDonald's" building and set that he had helped construct in a town north of Atlanta. "It'll be there a few weeks and then it will be gone, like it was never there," he said. I probably said, "I just had a dream about Laura Dern!" I probably said, "Tell her!" 8. I met a woman named Jenny who I thought said she was "as culpable as any vicar." I asked her, "Did you just say you are as culpable as any vicar?" She replied, "No." She also wanted to know what Lopez and I were like when we had "velvet nubs for horns." Or did she say "fuzzy nubs"? My jotting is unclear on this point. Perhaps she said both. She meant to ask what we were like when we were young. Lopez said, anticlimactically, that one of us would generally walk into a bar and the other one would be there, and one of us would say, "Are you gonna finish eating that?" Jenny asked whether we would sit across from one another or on the same side of the booth on such occasions, and the conversation dwindled. 9. Hey! Remember when I was amazed to learn that there were chickens living on the roof of Manuel's Tavern? I finally got to eat some of those eggs, "rooftop eggs" they were called on the menu, when my sister and brother-in-law and nephew Jasper had brunch there. Jasper wanted a pancake and some French fries. My sister was hesitant! But I was a strong advocate for this hugely appealing and innovative idea. I couldn't believe I had never thought of it myself! French fries are a perfect breakfast food. Why doesn't everybody serve French fries with breakfast? They are not that much different than so-called "home fries." My sister finally said okay, and I like to think my relentless nagging had something to do with it. 10. On the drive home, I saw a coyote run across the highway! I don't think I've ever seen one in person before. I know Melissa and Chris have some living out near their place, but coyotes strike me as exotic in our region. I guess they're not. I have to remind myself about the time I was so excited to see some wild turkeys on the side of the highway, and every person I know told me it's no big deal to see wild turkeys and that I was a sucker for being excited. And now I suppose you're all going to tell me that everybody has French fries for breakfast where you come from. Liars!

Your Life Will Change

You HAVE to come to the Powerhouse Theatre in Oxford tomorrow (tonight? THURSDAY!) to have a life-changing experience. Once again, that's TOMORROW NIGHT (Thursday the 19th) at the Powerhouse Theatre. Did you hear me? I GUARANTEE it will change your life! I know firsthand. The people performing there LITERALLY changed my life, as you can see in this old "link" ("click" it, you lazy fool! It's much better than this). Dr. Theresa and I had dinner tonight with Bill Taft and Caroline Young and Will Fratesi (drummer for Cat Power; you super cool dummies have heard of that!). Tomorrow they'll be performing at the Powerhouse, as I said. You may recall Bill from the day we had a tornado and he blew all my students' minds anyway, more than a tornado. COME LET HIM BLOW YOUR MIND MORE THAN A TORNADO. Tonight we found out that Bill's daughter is at Yale and writing for the school paper there! WHAT! I thought she was a baby! (See also.) Tonight Caroline and I recalled when we were eating Chinese food in Washington, D.C., the night Bill's daughter was born, and taking bets on what her name would be. I said "Lily" and Caroline said "Veronica." I was closer. "You had more letters," Caroline admitted tonight. Caroline (as you will see if you "click" on that interview, you goober) has had perhaps the greatest influence of any human on my life... she introduced me to Dr. Theresa for example! Bill and Caroline were in our wedding. Patti Smith and Bill once played together! WHAT, are you better than Patti Smith? I kind of thought not! COME ON OUT. Will and I were talking about when he used to deliver pizza to Dr. Theresa and me. Those were good times! I think he was even playing with Cat Power then. Musicians have to hold down many jobs! Being a musician is hard! Will would come over bearing a pizza we had ordered and then we'd all sit down and watch THE SIMPSONS together. Here's the point: COME TO THE POWERHOUSE THURSDAY AT SEVEN. The hard-to-find and truly life-changing documentary BENJAMIN SMOKE will be playing then too! Once I rode illegally in the back of a furniture truck with Benjamin and we peed in a coffee can and he coerced me into stealing a shirt. I DON'T STEAL! Come see the movie and maybe you'll "get it." And there is free food THURSDAY NIGHT - made by the geniuses at Oxford Canteen! - and free vodka. I guess you'd have to be an idiot of the highest order to stay home. If your life doesn't change I WILL GIVE YOUR MONEY BACK even though IT IS ALL ABSOLUTELY FREE.

To and Fro

Hey remember in the Geneva Bible when God asks the devil, "Where commeft thou?" and the devil says, "From copafsing the earth to and fro, and from walking in it"? You're probably wondering about my recent travels in the same way! Okay, you twisted my arm. But to understand my wandering properly we have to go way back to when my glasses fell off my head in the lobby of a swank New York City hotel some months ago. I lost a very nice silver pen in that same lobby! And Megan Abbott gave me a pen to replace it. Was the replacement a fancy silver pen? No! It was one Megan picked up in a hotel during her own travels. This pen was a gift from the heart! And cheap though it may have been, it was of an unusual and pleasing shade of blue, its body made of a sturdy, semi-opaque plastic, I believe. It advertised a company called Kimpton, which owns hotels and restaurants, apparently. So on my recent trip to Birmingham to do a reading, I thought I had left the pen Megan gave me behind in a bank! But when I came home it was just sitting there on the TV tray. While in my Birmingham hotel room, I distractedly watched the shoe factory show. Hey remember on GILMORE GIRLS when Luke had a daughter with another woman and that woman was angry when Lorelai (who was dating Luke at the time) hung out with the daughter and it caused problems in Lorelai's relationship? Well, now they are making Lauren Graham go through that plot line again on the shoe factory show, just like the other time they stole a plot from GILMORE GIRLS and marched Lorelai, I mean, Lauren Graham, through it. Lauren Graham is like some doomed soul, forced always to reenact the same torments! What a bummer. While I was watching the shoe factory show, Dr. Theresa was back in Oxford, having an elegant dinner with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls and T. Cooper, whom she had introduced on the Thacker Mountain radio program earlier in the evening. THEN! It was on to New Orleans, where I saw many of my fave former students from back when I used to teach: Abby, Elizabeth (wearing her mother's prom dress from 1968!), Burke, Rachel and SKIN MAG, Ryan, and Anya (wearing a wedding dress because IT WAS HER WEDDING DAY, a happy occasion I wouldn't have missed for the world). It was a lovely ceremony on the porch of an old house, the kind of house where I kept looking up at the attic windows expecting to see a gently approving ghost but I didn't. Burke gave me a book with this great first sentence: "Art has a way of undermining all aesthetic theories." Just like Jerry Lewis! I added the part about Jerry Lewis. On the drive back to Oxford, "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys came on the radio and I suddenly remembered going to see a feature-length documentary about the theremin back in Atlanta with Dr. Theresa - I think it was just called THEREMIN - and Brian Wilson was interviewed in it about the memorable theremin part in "Good Vibrations." You know how Brian Wilson thinks and talks. He's a genius! And he comes off very open and vulnerable and eccentric sometimes. And I think he said the theremin was scary and made him think of sex. Is that what he said? So, the director of THEREMIN was there for this screening (and as I recall, so was Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer!) and in the Q&A session afterward, some fool in the audience asked the director if it was "hard not to laugh" when interviewing Brian Wilson and the director shot back with shocked sincerity, "No, it's hard not to cry." And that came back to me so vividly while I was driving that I was completely absorbed in experiencing that memory and sort of forgot I was driving. Has that ever happened to you? Don't do that! It's not safe! Dr. Theresa snapped me out of it. And then I started thinking that Brian Wilson's genius might be profitably compared to Jerry Lewis's in its directness. When Kelly Hogan was just visiting us, she was trying to learn a Brian Wilson song for an upcoming performance. Hogan expounded thoughtfully on the lyrics "I wrote a number down but I lost it/ So I searched through my pocket book, I couldn't find it/ So I sat and concentrated on the number and/ Slowly it came to me so I dialed it/ And I let it ring a few times, there was no answer/ So I let it ring a little more, still no answer" and their relationship to the complex transparency of Brian Wilson (which is different than Jerry's complex transparency). Complex transparency! (It comes to me just now that the theremin documentary featured a clip of Jerry's encounter with a theremin in THE DELICATE DELINQUENT.)

So Long, You Ancient Pelican

McNeil came to town for the Third Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. The Second Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival took place in 2010. So you can imagine our eagerness to get the latest installment of the festival up and running. We got out a statue of John Wayne that Megan Abbott sent me for my birthday and put him on the TV tray to watch over us. It was pretty late and McNeil was barely off the plane himself when we watched the John Wayne airplane drama THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY. About 30 minutes in, we noted that John Wayne hadn't really done anything. An hour in, John Wayne - still not having done much of anything - announced his intention to take a nap! I forgot to tell you about the scene where a grown man gives a long speech about John Wayne's character, all the while licking an ice cream cone for reasons that remained unclear to us. I mean, I know why someone might enjoy an ice cream cone, but it was a peculiar decision dramatically. McNeil and I argued over whether or not it was the director William Wellman's idea. McNeil said no way, but I said if Wellman didn't like it he would have walked over and knocked the ice cream cone out of the guy's hand. I suppose it was just to give the actor something to do with his hands, some "business," while he delivered his monologue, a variation on the old "acting with your pipe" trick. I joked that next time we saw him he'd be eating a candy apple. That reminded McNeil that he had just seen candy apples for sale at the airport. "Eight dollars!" McNeil reported indignantly. Eight dollars for a candy apple. What a world. John Wayne didn't get to take that nap because the plane he was copiloting got into some trouble and he had to go back and explain things to the passengers. He made a really long speech about airplane emergency procedures - no, not a speech, really. It was like a brochure. "He's not acting, he's talking!" McNeil said. But he said it with admiration. It was true that John Wayne efficiently and clearly outlined what to do when your airplane is probably about to land in the ocean. It wasn't until OVER TWO HOURS INTO THE MOVIE (it was a long movie) that John Wayne finally slapped around Robert Stack. Action! At the end of the movie John Wayne walks away and some guy says, "So long, you ancient pelican." We talked about what that might have meant for a while and then we stopped. Next up: the Dean Martin sex comedy WHO'S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED?, in which Carol Burnett does some strongly implied proto-twerking, though she is shot from the waist up like Elvis to shield the audience from lewdness. Going on to THE BIG MOUTH, we realized that an unfortunate theme of our selections was "offensive Asian stereotyping," an element shared by all three movies we had watched so far (though the deadpan genius Jack Soo managed to decimate some of it in WHO'S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED?). McNeil's visit was to be a short one! We had to keep cramming movies in! The next one was MILLION DOLLAR LEGS, starring Jack Oakie and W.C. Fields. It had Ben Turpin in it! One subplot was child star Dickie Moore shooting people in the butt with arrows. You know what else it had in it? A guy who put on a goat suit and ran really fast (pictured). As you can see from the frame above, at times this goofy slapstick figure resembled a nightmare apparition from an Ingmar Bergman film. BACHELOR IN PARADISE capped things off. Some easygoing back-and-forth between Bob Hope and Lana Turner in a bar got us thinking about a key difference between Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis: Bob, as producer, tended to pick leading ladies who could really challenge him, like Lana Turner, Eva Marie Saint, Lucille Ball, Virginia Mayo, Katharine Hepburn, and so on. Jerry, as director, seemed to favor inexperienced ingenues that (maybe he was thinking) he could "mold." Obviously, there are exceptions, most notably Stella Stevens doing her best to break that mold in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and Jerry's longtime friend Janet Leigh in THREE ON A COUCH, though, come to think of it, he does stack the rest of that cast with ingenues. (Going back to before he was a director, he meets his truest equal in Shirley MacLaine in ARTISTS AND MODELS.) But I have to reluctantly agree with the Shawn Levy book when it says that THE BIG MOUTH's Susan Bay "reads her lines as if they were random strings of words." McNeil chalked it up to Bob's unsurpassed "security" as a performer (he's so secure it's almost sociopathic) and Jerry's "insecurity." We furthermore agreed that Bob's security and Jerry's insecurity are the qualities that make them such fascinating artists. Jerry's weirdly amorphous "problem," the nature of which he keeps failing to communicate to the other characters in THE BIG MOUTH, writes Chris Fujiwara, is "posed in the most general - indeed, universal - terms... a formality, a MacGuffin." McNeil says it's sexual. I leave you with this clip from MILLION DOLLAR LEGS, featuring the delightful Lyda Roberti, in which she proclaims, "I'm just a woman made of gelatin/ I have a torso like a tambourine":

Aaoogah!

Hey yeah so last night I watched ESCAPE PLAN, a Sylvester Stallone movie featuring a jaunty spotlight turn from Arnold Schwarzenegger. I swear that Schwarzenegger ended most of his conversations with Stallone with a pretty good wisecrack that sounded like a natural button - like, okay, that was a good wisecrack, we're moving on to another scene now - but then Stallone would have to tack on an extra wisecrack that was just gilding the lily, an inferior wisecrack, like Stallone had it in his contract that he always had to make the last wisecrack, like he had a guy on set to write toppers for him on the spur of the moment, like Bob Hope would have had, only this guy wasn't up to it. I feel sure my analysis would not stand up to the most basic level of scrutiny, but that's how it felt. One thing I enjoyed was when Stallone punched a guy in the gut a couple of times and the guy said "Aaoogah!" each time, like an old-time car horn: "Aaoogah! Aaoogah!" Or it may have been Stallone saying "Aaoogah! Aaoogah!" with the exertion of his punching. One of them was saying "Aaoogah! Aaoogah!" Once again, I am not sure my fleeting impressions of the moment would stand up in a court of law. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a "mad scene" more or less like Ophelia's! And I have to say he did a good job of it. He played that whole section in German. He sold it, man, and I was buying it all the way! Genius and madness glimmered in his eyes! In equal measure! And now I would like to warn you about the very major spoiler that is going to take up almost all the rest of this "post." It's about the ending. Okay. So, Stallone is about to wreak a mighty vengeance on evil warden Jim Caviezel by blowing him up. In the split second before the explosion, Jim Caviezel, realizing what is about to happen, just cocks his head to the side very slightly, like a curious little dog, and squeaks. He squeaks! An anticlimactic and fascinating choice. I could not find an "internet" image of Jim Caviezel squeaking like an interested puppy, but here is Sylvester Stallone about to set off the explosion with his gun, and someone has gone to the trouble of labeling it in yellow letters. While I am not sure I agree with his or her assessment, I admire the effort. (A late postscript! It strikes me that Schwarzenegger's "madness" - an act designed to confound an authority figure - has more to do with Hamlet's than Ophelia's.)

Chest Thumpers

Megan Abbott was right when she told me I was depressed from reading "too much chest-thumping male stuff in a row." Yet somehow I felt like going straight from the 700-page Frank Sinatra bio (and that's just the first half of his life!) into an Artie Shaw bio I've had on the shelf for years... talk about a chest-thumper! I seem to recall he was one of those geniuses who was also a big jerk. Maybe I was "leaning into it" - is that a phrase that means anything, and am I using it correctly if so? I guess it was the Ava Gardner connection between those two gentlemen that got me thinking about the Shaw book. And the Lana Turner connection to a lesser degree. And one time Frank came home and found Lana and Ava hanging out and he got so mad! So I took this Artie Shaw book off the shelf and, I don't know, it smelled weird. I read the first page. At 92, Artie Shaw recalls his very first memory: seeing a devil! Or, to be less sensationalistic, a devil-shaped shadow on the ceiling over his crib. But like I said the book smelled weird and the devil over his crib reminded me about my odor-free copy of PARANORMAL MISSISSIPPI RIVER: AN ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA, which I opened to a passage on "phantom kangaroos" sometimes "seen hopping around and occasionally behaving aggressively, in Central Illinois." Just like Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw!

A Sinister Role For Flavius Mithridates

Hey you know how in every single place you look on the "internet" it says that Pico della Mirandola wrote something called ORATION ON THE DIGNITY OF MAN that everybody is so jazzed up about? Well, according to this guy who translated this book of Pico's 900 theses that I have here, that title "first appeared ten years after Pico's death in a corrupt German reprint of his collected works." And this here guy is pretty upset about how everybody loves that fake title so much! But do you think the "internet" cares? Here's another funny part: "In the section of the text devoted to the Platonists, we find eight theses attributed to 'Adeland the Arab,' who Pico claimed was Plotinus's fellow student in Egypt under Ammonius Saccas... Both external and internal evidence, however, clearly show that Adeland the Arab was Adelard of Bath, the twelfth-century Englishman!" (You know I appreciate a learned scholar who is not afraid of exclamation points.) But the best part is right after that: "Here again there are reasons to suspect a sinister role for Flavius Mithridates, whose reputation in the Renaissance as something of a con man was apparently well deserved. Pico's involvement with this colorful figure - who liked to style himself as Pico's would-be but scorned lover - constitutes one of the strangest personal stories of the period, although it is one that is far from being completely understood." I know, I know! Now you are thinking of John Dee and Edward Kelley, right? And the time the angel told them to swap wives? Or maybe you are thinking of Paracelsus, and how he would "vanish under cover of night" when the heat was on, running around all drunk with his big sword and being a genius. Those were the days! There are not enough drunken, sword-brandishing geniuses anymore! We don't even have any young Rip Torns around to hit our Norman Mailers in the heads with hammers, or any Norman Mailers to bite other partygoers on the neck. John Dee had plenty of Pico and Paracelsus in his library, you better believe it, until that mob trashed his house that time, I can't remember why, I guess they were mad about something.

Thickafog

I was thinking about the time Garrison Keillor wrote that snotty, harrumphing review of Mark Twain's autobiography, volume one, for the New York Times Book Review. Is that something that happened? My memory reports to me that it might be. I think he thought it was too big and crazy or something, too much stuff. Was that it? Who cares? I was sitting in the coffee section at Square Books today, waiting to give a former student some worthless advice. As I am sure you recall, the coffee section is right next to the "literary non-fiction" section, where my eye was captured by the bright green spine of the SECOND volume of Mark Twain's autobiography, which appeared - on the basis of the spine alone! - to be as large and crazy and stuffed with ramblings as Garrison Keillor accused the first of being. Well, I was a little early for my appointment, and sitting there all alone, so I hoisted the volume off the shelf and immediately opened it to some worthwhile and interesting things. And then I started thinking, maybe there is a lot of use a fella can get out of a big, crazy book with too much stuff in it if he approaches it the right way and doesn't just come at it harrumphing. One passage I happened to find was about Mark Twain's appreciation for a fan letter that a cowboy had written to Helen Keller. Twain found that the grammatical errors, misspellings, and other supposed infelicities were exactly what made the letter great. Twain writes: "when the heart speaks it has no use for the conventions; it can rise above them, and the result is LITERATURE, and not to be called by any less dignified name... the productions of the unschooled mind get even an added grace and power out of fresh and free and lawless grammar and orthography." I've thought about this a lot over the years, and how it applies to literary fiction. In one article (in an issue of a magazine I can't find in the usual teetering piles around here, but here's a short excerpt I located in the depths of the "internet"), I wrote: "Certainly a lot of aesthetic energy and meticulous handiwork has been expended by various literary geniuses trying to write convincingly the way a dumb person would write. I blame Mark Twain. 'Dumb person' isn't fair. The truth can be said, but only inelegantly: Great writers love to try to write the way a person who can't write writes." Oh, it's most often done badly. You can "click" here (though, God, why would you?) to read a New York Times Book review by me, in which I lambast a guy (so who am I to huff and puff at Garrison Keillor?) for putting the word "disingenuous" in his character's mouth in a way I considered (and still do) "cheating." Anita Loos and Peter De Vries, when they are doing this sort of thing, never cheat, which is why they are so great. But what's even better is just the real thing, as I was reminded repeatedly when I used to frequent the surprisingly vast self-published UFO book section of the university library. You know, Larry King's tweets are another example of something that could not be improved by a sly and knowing artiste, editor, or publishing executive. They are impervious to parody! (Please see this urgent caveat.) Remember when Jasper Johns said you should look at his paintings the same way you look at a radiator? Now I am going to change the subject. It pains me to tell you I could not finish reading Errol Flynn's autobiography for the Doomed Book Club, even though Megan Abbott promised me that the last line is "worthy of Cain": "The second half-century looms up, but I don't feel the night coming on." Pretty good! And in a series of polished tweets, Megan put forth a compelling Freudian analysis of Mr. Flynn. But there are so many parts of the book that seem cruel to me and are hard to enjoy, and I was getting depressed reading it, and I love his movies so much. Flynn writes about his love of the sea a lot, so I thought I'd pick up WANDERER by Sterling Hayden (pictured) as a kind of substitute. I remember it as being briny. I'm sure you'll recall many years ago when I read the first sentence: "The black pit of oblivion opens like a giant clamshell." Okay! Now I've read a few more of the sentences: "I mount the ladder and ease myself on deck. Thickafog. Horns louder all around. Gray-green morning world with topmasts indistinct and the long proud sweep of the maindeck jutting east... My back aches; sign of tension. Gulls stand inert atop stumps of wooden piling." I was like, "Thickafog! What is this, JAMES JOYCE?" In a good way. I remember McNeil read this a couple of years ago maybe, and liked it. The last memoirist I compared to James Joyce was Adrienne Barbeau. And I'll do it again.