Sunny and Red

The book (see yesterday’s “post”) did inform me that Nelson Eddy had a bodyguard named Red Boyles, which I found hilarious for reasons requiring, I believe, no explanation. Furthermore, Jeanette MacDonald, later in life, enjoyed the company of a regular “escort” named Sunny Griffin, which is not a significantly funny name. But Sunny Griffin’s day job? Makeup man at a mortuary! I guess it is, if not funny, something... for a mortuary makeup man to go by a cheerful moniker like Sunny. But maybe I don’t know enough about mortuaries. One time Dr. Theresa and I were in a bar in Decatur, Georgia, I think, and a guy there was like... wait, his girlfriend was writing a big old grimoire by hand at another table. And this guy was like, “Did you know you can just walk in and get a job in a mortuary with no qualifications? That’s what I did!” And he was really happy about it. Now, we don’t have to take his word for everything. Then, as I recall, he said some weird stuff about remembering a photo he had seen on someone’s refrigerator of Dr. Theresa in the gloves she wore at our wedding, and something else weird about what she had done with her hair that day, which I think may have been his job? Fixing up hair at a mortuary? Or maybe I got that from an X-FILES episode. Then he said something funny about his hometown, or he said it in a funny way, which, though I can’t or won’t explain it right now, became the basis of a long-running inside joke between Dr. Theresa and myself. I hasten to add that the joke was not at the fellow’s expense, as you may be forgiven for thinking after he had made startling personal remarks about a photo of Dr. Theresa he had seen once and never forgotten, like he was Dana Andrews in LAURA, while his girlfriend scrawled evil runes in a big, black book (the latter being a detail I drew on, if loosely, for my 2016 story collection MOVIE STARS) but no, it had to do with the musical intonation he struck while saying the name of his hometown, that’s all, a very innocent bit of japery indeed. This little walk down memory lane has reminded me of a song by Bill Taft’s current band. I’ve gone to the trouble of making it the number one selection on the following very manageable 10-song playlist (for you to experience as you read this “post” over and over again) of bands featuring Bill and the cellist Brian Halloran, though another of their bands, Hubcap City, seems to have been scrubbed from the music streaming service entirely, just like Jerry Clower before it. (Hey, just to bring it full circle, which I don’t think I’m actually doing, Bill and Brian were both in our wedding! Brian played his cello as Dr. Theresa, before she was a Dr., came wafting down the aisle on the wings of love, one assumes.)

McNeil Month By Month: The Return

As you well know, and have told your children, I stopped "blogging" on April 27, 2016, the day our TV blew up. Oh, sure, I dipped in a toe from time to time, just to be sure the site wasn't hijacked by crooks selling counterfeit vitamins. And then, of course, we had our big fat worldwide crisis and I ratcheted up the "blogging" a little to keep you, the people of the world, cheerful and happy. All of this is to explain why I missed celebrating McNeil's birthday on the "blog" last year. Shamefully, all I "blogged" about in the October of 2019 was the novel DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT and a slang term that Dr. Theresa and I heard on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. What I had forgotten, specifically, was my yearly update of everything that McNeil has done since 2006. Now, in the old days, each thing that McNeil had done was accompanied by a "hyperlink," by the "clicking on" of which you could further educate yourself about McNeil. As my "blogging" came to the shocking end described above, I continued to print the facts of what McNeil did every month, but without the helpful "hyperlinks," so you just had to trust my sources. The latter sort of entry I marked with an asterisk for your convenience. And now we find ourselves a year behind in research! Did this mean extra trouble for the team? Let me answer that by saying that no amount of trouble is significant when it comes to wishing McNeil a happy birthday by telling you everything he has done since late 2006. Here then we bring you our most vigorously updated installment ever of MCNEIL MONTH BY MONTH, with two years of new material! September 2006: McNeil contends that he does not enjoy the "Little Dot" comic book. October 2006: McNeil furnishes a memorable quotation. November 2006: McNeil recalls playing Aerosmith on a jukebox. December 2006: First appearance of "McNeil's Movie Korner." January 2007: McNeil's system for winning at craps. February 2007: McNeil doesn't see what's so hard about reading a newspaper and eating a sandwich at the same time. March 2007: McNeil and I are talking about Bob Denver when HE SUDDENLY APPEARS ON TELEVISION! April 2007: Wild turkeys roam McNeil's neighborhood. May 2007: McNeil gets in touch with an Australian reporter regarding a historical chimp. June 2007: First McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival announced. July 2007: Medicine changes McNeil's taste buds. August 2007: McNeil's trees not producing apples. September 2007: McNeil pinpoints a problem with the "blog." October 2007: McNeil presents a video entitled "Jerry's pre-defecation chills." November 2007: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy. December 2007: What is McNeil's favorite movie? January 2008: McNeil explains why the wind blows. February 2008: McNeil admires the paintings of Gerhard Richter. March 2008: McNeil comes up with an idea for a Lifetime TV movie. April 2008: McNeil's shirt. May 2008: McNeil's apple tree doing better (see August 2007). June 2008: McNeil is troubled by a man who wants to make clouds in the shape of logos. July 2008: McNeil's apples are doing great. August 2008: McNeil refuses to acknowledge that Goofy wears a hat no matter what I say. September 2008: McNeil's grocery store is permanently out of his favorite margarine. October 2008: McNeil on the space elevator. November 2008: McNeil comes across an incomplete episode guide to HELLO, LARRY. December 2008: McNeil thinks the human hand should have more fingers. January 2009: McNeil discovers that gin and raisins cure arthritis. February 2009: McNeil gets a big bruise on his arm. March 2009: McNeil wants a job on a cruise ship. April 2009: McNeil attempts to rescue a wayward balloon. May 2009: McNeil visits the Frogtown Fair. June 2009: McNeil dreams he is watching an endless production number from LI'L ABNER. July 2009: McNeil sends text messages from his cell phone while watching a Frank Sinatra movie. August 2009: McNeil disagrees philosophically with a comic book cover that shows a mad scientist putting a gorilla's brain in a superhero's body. September 2009: McNeil resembles famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach. October 2009: McNeil wears a surgical mask. November 2009: McNeil reports that a bird broke the large hadron collider by dropping a bread crumb on it. December 2009: McNeil advises me to like the universe or lump it. January 2010: McNeil eats soup. February 2010: McNeil tells of the hidden civilizations living deep beneath the surface of the earth. March 2010: McNeil recalls a carpet of his youth. April 2010: McNeil starts wearing a necktie. May 2010: McNeil's DNA sample fails to yield results. June 2010: McNeil thinks up some improvements for the movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. July 2010: McNeil reads to me from I, THE JURY. August 2010: McNeil finds a hair in his crab cake. September 2010: McNeil has a cold. October 2010: McNeil sends a nine-minute clip of a nice old man speaking at a UFO banquet. November 2010: McNeil sits in his car and looks at pictures of Jennifer Jones. December 2010: McNeil fears a ball of fire in the sky. January 2011: McNeil watches DYNASTY. February 2011: McNeil sees clouds that look like guys on horseback. March 2011: McNeil composes a "still life" photograph. April 2011: McNeil is upset when I interrupt his viewing of MATCH GAME. May 2011: McNeil pines for some old curtains. June 2011: McNeil eats Lucky Charms brand breakfast cereal. July 2011: McNeil investigates the history of the Phar-Mor drugstore chain. August 2011: McNeil compares Dean Moriarty to Dean Martin. September 2011: McNeil learns a lesson about pork and beans. October 2011: McNeil finds an article describing Robert Mitchum as "Bing Crosby supersaturated with barbiturates." November 2011: McNeil did nothing in November. December 2011: McNeil discovers scientists creating rainbows in a laboratory. January 2012: McNeil impersonates Paul Lynde. February 2012: McNeil dreams of matches. March 2012: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy (see November 2007, above) used to chart the influence of Jerry Lewis on Carson McCullers. April 2012: McNeil disturbed by the art in his hotel room. May 2012: McNeil considers grave robbing. June 2012: McNeil's idea for "music television." July 2012: McNeil holds his negative feelings in check out of respect when the man who invented electric football dies. August 2012: McNeil reads me an old obituary of Charlie Callas over the phone. September 2012: McNeil concerned about T.J. Hooker's big meaty hands. October 2012: McNeil eats lunch at Target. November 2012: McNeil loves it when Bob Hope slips on a banana peel. December 2012: McNeil sees rocks that look like squirrels. January 2013: McNeil looks at an old, faded photo of a dog gazing into a Bath and Tile Emporium. February 2013: McNeil watches a video in which a hooded figure talks about "our criminal overlords." March 2013: McNeil wakes up at 6:40 in the evening, momentarily thinks it is 6:40 in the morning. April 2013: McNeil sees a singer who looks just like Bill Clinton. May 2013: McNeil is ashamed of himself for not realizing that Ida Lupino directed some episodes of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. June 2013: McNeil mails a cashew tree. July 2013: McNeil watches GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN. August 2013: McNeil recalls being rosy-cheeked. September 2013: A fairyland goes on in McNeil's head. October 2013: McNeil recalls tucking in his t-shirt. November 2013: The cover of a book McNeil buys says it is about Jerry Lewis, but on the inside the book is about Willie Stargell! December 2013: McNeil wants to visit an orgone box factory. January 2014: McNeil did nothing in January. February 2014: McNeil wonders whether Tom Franklin puts his hair in curlers. March 2014: McNeil takes a nap in the car. April 2014: The subject of McNeil pops up in an interview. May 2014: McNeil's emails on the "hollow earth" recalled (see February 2010, above). June 2014: McNeil looks forward to getting drunk and making insensitive remarks as I lie on my deathbed. July 2014: McNeil watches Jim and Henny Backus play themselves in DON'T MAKE WAVES. August 2014: McNeil tells about Robert Mitchum's hangover cure. September 2014: McNeil exaggerates the fate of some owls. October 2014: McNeil is incensed that a candy apple costs eight dollars at the airport. November 2014: McNeil's heart overflows with joy. December 2014: McNeil continues his 7-year chimp investigation (see May 2007, above). January 2015: McNeil listens to a conspiracy theorist who says Jimmy Carter was replaced by a series of robots. February 2015: McNeil recalls doing a report about matches in the eighth grade. March 2015: McNeil takes to bed with the flu! April 2015: McNeil and I establish an amazing psychic link. May 2015: McNeil bitterly recalls the time he brought a John Wayne movie to my apartment and we never watched it. June 2015: McNeil dreams about a bearded Dean Martin. July 2015: McNeil has a disappointing encounter with the Grand Canyon. August 2015: McNeil sees a squirrel holding a stick. September 2015: McNeil is saddened by the news of Dean Jones's death. October 2015: McNeil watches STARFLIGHT: THE PLANE THAT COULDN'T LAND. November 2015: McNeil sends video of Joe Namath making and eating a sandwich. December 2015: A coincidence of the type McNeil especially loves. January 2016: McNeil is in a grocery store and they start playing "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea" over the speakers! February 2016: McNeil watches Don Rickles eat in a bathroom. March 2016: McNeil is duly thrilled when Megan Abbott goes to see CRACKING UP on the big screen. April 2016: McNeil swallows a gnat. May 2016: McNeil recalls the details of a screenplay we wrote in our twenties. June 2016: Destruction comes to McNeil's apple tree! July 2016: McNeil spots Dabney Coleman in an I DREAM OF JEANNIE rerun. August 2016: McNeil points out that Dean Martin had granddaughters named Pepper, Montana, and Rio. September 2016: McNeil is called a "filthy troglodyte." October 2016: McNeil advises me on what to do now that ADVENTURE TIME has been canceled. "I say take it easy for a while... just pretend to write when Theresa's around and then sleep or watch movies when she leaves. Oh hell, you know how to work it," writes McNeil.* November 2016: McNeil sees an owl while walking his dog at midnight. December 2016: McNeil finds an Airbnb listing by "eccentric millionaires" for a treehouse featuring "whimsical taxidermy."* January 2017: McNeil notices that there are lots of ants in his writing.* February 2017: McNeil roots for the guy who stole a bucket full of gold flakes.* March 2017: McNeil reads an article suggesting that all the gold on Earth came from the collision of dead stars and says, "Let's go get us some of this!" seemingly suggesting a trip to outer space.* April 2017: McNeil recalls that he was washing dishes in 2015 when the thought of Gene Gene the Dancing Machine came into his head. Then he discovered that Gene Gene the Dancing Machine had just died!* May 2017: McNeil watches ISLAND IN THE SKY with his dog.* June 2017: McNeil is happy to see a movie with rotary phones and "people looking up stuff in a filing cabinet for a change."* July 2017: McNeil begins alerting me to weather situations in my area like he's my mother.* August 2017: McNeil connects heavenly signs and portents with the death of Jerry Lewis. September 2017: A critique by McNeil inspires a choice of airplane reading material. October 2017: McNeil cruelly but fairly shuts down my scheme of crossbreeding an apple with a lemon. November 2017: "Death knows my weak spot!" McNeil exclaims.* December 2017: McNeil leafs through CARIBOU TRAVELER. January 2018: McNeil catches a cold and stays in bed watching old game shows, writing from his sickbed: "Bobby Van looks so healthy...but would be dead only 5 years later... GATHER YE ROSEBUDS!"* February 2018: McNeil gives me a good idea about how to win a coupla sawbucks from likely suckers. March 2018: McNeil's complaint about sleeping: "I dream way too much."* April 2018: McNeil watches a movie in which Dean Martin claims to "make a hell of an owl stew."* May 2018: I ask McNeil what lightning is for (see January 2008) and he explains it to me.* June 2018: McNeil's mom stumbles on an old book about the comical dog Marmaduke from McNeil's younger days and is excited to deliver it to him.* July 2018: While walking his dog, McNeil sees a bone fall out of the sky. August 2018: Having made it to season five, McNeil, though a stalwart fan, watches what he considers to be the worst episode of BEWITCHED so far.* September 2018: McNeil finds one page of a history skit we did in ninth grade. October 2018: McNeil emails a still from the silent movie BILLY WHISKERS, the subject of an innocuous, decades-long inside joke. Using me as an intermediary, he also consults Ace Atkins about the little-known film version of DARKER THAN AMBER... set in Florida but filmed, as Ace explains, mostly in Germany!* November 2018: McNeil asks me whether Jack Lemmon was left handed. I don't know.* December 2018: McNeil tells me about deluxe reissues of two Paul McCartney albums I've never heard of.* January 2019: McNeil says he only ever bought one cassette tape in his life. (It was Bruce Springsteen's "The River.")* February 2019: McNeil watches IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and finds it difficult to believe a hardware store would close that long for lunch.* March 2019: McNeil tells me about a used car dealer in his town who secretly dealt drugs and would use his commercials to let people know a shipment had come in. If this guy's dog was on the hood of his car in the commercial, he was ready to deal some drugs!* April 2019: McNeil is thinking about the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.* May 2019: McNeil follows up on an email from 2015.* June 2019: Working on a secret project with McNeil. It never comes to fruition. July 2019: McNeil sees a guy in a parking lot trying unsuccessfully to fit a rolled-up rug in his car.* August 2019: McNeil cuts down his apple tree. September 2019: McNeil remarks that Brendan Gleeson should play Donald Trump... a prediction that recently came true!* October 2019: McNeil is at the dentist's office, where the muted cartoon on the television provides the caption "frightened quacking."* November 2019: McNeil is shirt shopping when he realizes that the age of some of his old shirts makes it likely that any new shirt he buys might be the last shirt he will ever need.* December 2019: McNeil watches the old Frosty the Snowman cartoon (see illustration above) and is disappointed that Frosty lets himself get trapped in the hothouse again.* January 2020: There's a new vending machine at McNeil's workplace. It dispenses "gloves, knee pads, safety vests - even socks."* February 2020: A comic book cover McNeil likes. March 2020: McNeil ponders inventing "powdered meat." April 2020: McNeil misremembers an idea we discussed in 2005. May 2020: Something McNeil and I noticed in 2014 comes up. June 2020: McNeil gets seven shots of novacaine.* July 2020: McNeil begins noticing obelisks. August 2020: McNeil goes fishing with Dean Martin in the realm of dreams. September 2020: McNeil finds an article that his grandmother clipped from a newspaper... on the back is an intriguing but incomplete item about murder among circus performers.* October 2020: McNeil tells me about a fusion reactor in France.* You know, McNeil's birthday doesn't arrive until tomorrow, but I'm going to "post" this now because I worked on it all morning, and I'm afraid it will disappear and I'll have to do it all again. Which would be an honor!

McNeilileaks

It has been a while, as I don't "blog" anymore, but we just got in some "McNeilileaks," which is where I leak the private contents of McNeil's email. McNeil sent along the above comic book cover, commenting, "I'm not sure why I think it's hilarious. Adam's pose?" As for me, I think it's the line, "You're holding up the war," which sounds like the title of a 60s comedy. YOU'RE HOLDING UP THE WAR, if it existed, would star Robert Morse, Ernie Kovacs, Tony Curtis, and Paula Prentiss, or so I decided last night as I lay in bed unable to sleep.

The "Gotta Light" Guy

I think I've been in denial about this. You know, I wrote a book about cigarette lighters and it came out early in 2016 and then I forgot everything about cigarette lighters and no longer cared. But once in a great while, something would come to my attention that I wished I had been able to include in my cigarette lighter book. So somehow I watched all of the new TWIN PEAKS and managed to repress the knowledge that my cigarette lighter book is sort of incomplete without that show's "Gotta Light" Guy. I even know where I would have put him: right after the paragraph about Jerry Lewis and the atomic bomb. I don't "blog" anymore except when it becomes necessary, as in the half-correction of this grave omission.

Kinda Scary

I half-watched some of a Frank Capra movie on TCM last night and I'm not gonna say it reminded me of David Lynch, even though it did, but I am aware that everything reminds me of David Lynch now because I just watched a lot of David Lynch.

(Megan Abbott did point out the IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE quality of the recent TWIN PEAKS finale.) But the title of the Capra movie I half-watched is A HOLE IN THE HEAD, which isn't comforting, is it? So Frank Sinatra and his little son are trying to sleep and Carolyn Jones suddenly appears in their window, dancing in her swimsuit and long gloves. It was supposed to be funny! But it struck me as eerie. Once again, this is all my own fault. Then Carolyn Jones shows up with a whole apple in her mouth and strikes a Laura Palmer pose:

The way Sinatra expresses affection for his son is to say he's gonna sock him or punch him or "flatten" him. He's consistently violent in his love imagery, but we never think he's really gonna flatten his son. At one point he says wistfully, "He's a funny kid, you know? I could beat him up, anything, leave him someplace, and I bet he'd still love me. Kinda scary." KINDA!

The background (and foreground) is filled with strange, silent animals, for which I choose this monkey that blows bubbles as representative. The monkey that blows bubbles is next to a photo of Eleanor Parker's husband and son, whom she matter-of-factly describes drowning together before her eyes. Frank Sinatra's little boy is immediately taken with Eleanor Parker because (I think it's obvious) she is like his dead mother come back to life.

She catches the little boy staring at her because she reminds him so much of his dead mother (I believe is the subtext) and gives him a sultry wink as he peeps at her from behind a porcelain dog. Oh, and Dub Taylor works the desk at Frank Sinatra's hotel, where they use the same kind of keychains you get at the Great Northern.

You know, I really have more screen shots than I know what to do with. You should see the ones I'm skipping. There was this disturbingly infantile character (below), a very poor man's Jerry Lewis, who, in his father's words, "runs to the toilet" whenever there's a customer in the store (the same father, Edward G. Robinson, who complains about his "underwear crawling up" on him, a complaint I do not recall hearing expressed so bluntly - or indeed at all - in any other 50s movies; does he say "crawling" or "creeping"? Does it matter?) and you know how much Jerry Lewis reminds me of David Lynch, even though this is not Jerry Lewis, just a tulpa.

I hardly know what to end with.

Well, here's a guy in a white dinner jacket with a pistol on a diving board. Moments later he will pretend to shoot himself in the head with a blank for a laugh, but I don't think that's where the title comes from.

The Original Skeeky Kid

Megan Abbott and I have been reading lots of books about movie people together. We read some books about Orson Welles, then we read about Walt Disney, then Bunuel's autobiography (first recommended to me by Bill Taft), which, to my astonishment, did not have an owl in it, though there were rats and spiders and one or two bats and hair growing out of cracked-open tombs. And those were just his childhood memories! As you know, I don't "blog" anymore unless I read a book with an owl in it, and that brings us to MY SIDE by Ruth Gordon, which Megan and I are reading now, in which a certain Miss Jerome is described as a "five-foot, brown-haired, brown-eyed, parchment-skinned ninety-pound replica of a hoot owl." And that's Ruth Gordon just getting warmed up! I'll tell you one mysterious word she likes to employ: "skeeky." Even Megan, who loves to do research (remember when she found out all about "friendship clubs"?), had trouble tracking down examples. I looked in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG, VOL. 3, P-Z, and found only "skeek," with examples drawn from the early twenty-first century, which seems to be directly opposed to the way Ruth Gordon uses "skeeky." Skeekiness, in Ruth Gordon's usage, is a condition to be desired. The only helpful example Megan could find comes from a magazine short story from 1915: "he spilled a line of bunk about her being the only and original skeeky kid." This fits nicely within the time period that Ruth Gordon is writing about when she uses "skeeky." So! Now that I've got you here and I read a book with an owl in it, I can tell you about an unrelated matter that has been on my mind. I watched the Welles version of THE TRIAL, and it pretty much ended with - SPOILER! - Anthony Perkins alone on a desolate shore with a lit bundle of dynamite. And that reminded me of PIERROT LE FOU, which also ended with its isolated protagonist standing in a lonely spot with a lit bundle of dynamite. And then BANG! Is this a genre? I think I need to find a third example before I can say it's a genre. Oh! While I was watching THE TRIAL, Megan happened to tweet - not knowing that I was watching THE TRIAL - that it was Jeanne Moreau's birthday. And then there she was in THE TRIAL! Jeanne Moreau, I mean. And there I was not knowing it was her birthday. And just about the first line she has in THE TRIAL is, "If you're stuck for something to say, try happy birthday." Isn't that a weird coincidence? Well, I thought it was a weird coincidence. Okay, I'll see you next time I read a book with an owl in it!

Living

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

River Rowdies

I don't suppose any of us will forget where we were on July 27, 2012, the day I lost dozens of "twitter followers" by live-tweeting KING RALPH. It was a massacre! Looking back, I can't blame them. How many times since then have I my own self become heavy-hearted at the excessive tweeting rate of some well-meaning wag or another? And that is why I have decided to help everybody out by putting my live-tweeting of STRIKING DISTANCE into the following handy virtual live-tweeting format, rather than clogging up everyone's "timeline" with it. I promise you all the excruciating boredom of the live-tweet experience with half the mess. Before we begin, it occurs to me that not only did Donald Barthelme invent the TV recap, he simultaneously invented the live-tweet. With preliminaries concluded, come with me as I list the things I see in STRIKING DISTANCE. A police car races toward the camera. Lightning strikes! Words say STRIKING DISTANCE!... Boots sloshing in the rain. Dr. Theresa just walked in and saw me furrowing my brow watching STRIKING DISTANCE and said, "Your seriousness is humorous."... Bruce Willis is disgraced... Bruce's dad is Frasier's dad from FRASIER! He's a cop, JUST LIKE IN FRASIER! Frasier's dad says a very Frasier's dad-like thing about Bruce's "mother's side of the family."... All his former cop friends think Bruce Willis is a "rat."... Bruce drives all crazy, like he's in a cop movie!... Frasier's dad is blasé about all the near collisions, making idle chit chat during the near-death experiences. This really IS like a FRASIER episode! Eight minutes in and we have our first action-movie fireball!... I have a feeling Frasier's dad is about to bite it. ... Ten minutes in: SECOND FIREBALL. ... Dr. Theresa says I should comment on the bad guy's driving gloves, which I totally meant to do... Cars hopping in the air like rabbits! Frasier's dad is still alive for the moment... Uh-oh. I take it back. Here's the reliable Dennis Farina as Uncle Nick? Uncle Rick? He's a cop too. ... They "caught the killer" and Bruce deduces in literally half a second they got the wrong man, just by looking at him... but the other cops don't want Bruce to rock the boat. Not even Uncle Nick or Rick! Uncle Rick/Nick's kid is jumping off a bridge! It's Bruce Willis's own cousin he ratted on! Well, there goes Cousin Jimmy. And here comes the rain. Like God himself is crying for Cousin Jimmy!... TWO YEARS LATER... It sure feels like it ha ha! ... Bruce Willis has a cat. A rat with a cat! Get it? ... Alka Seltzer... microwaving a hot towel... that's Bruce's version of breakfast! ... Now he's a boat cop. All the boat cops are standing around in their short pants. Short pants cops! ... I think Bruce Willis just dumped his crabby boss in the river as a prank. He'll never get anywhere with an attitude like that!... Bruce's name is Tom Hardy! Like the depressing novelist!... Everywhere Bruce Willis goes, other cops try to beat him up... Bruce: sensitive, weepy. The thinking man's cop!... Tom Sizemore, another cop cousin... Bruce Willis lives on a houseboat. Hey! Tom Sizemore talks about THE SIMPSONS! Tom Sizemore's brother AND mother jumped in the river. Stay away from the river, everybody. Do they want to make me suspect that Tom Sizemore is the killer? Because it's working. But it's too easy. He says ominous things like "I... I gotta meet a girl." And just when he comes back to town the killings start again. Too easy... Bruce Willis's new boat cop partner is SARAH JESSICA PARKER! She's introduced to him as a "qualified diver." I wonder if that will come into play! [It doesn't. Chekhov would be ashamed. - ed.]... Rowdies in a speedboat!... Oh, I see. Bruce Willis bends the rules and SJP is "by the book." ME: "What's that guy wearing, a neckerchief?" DR. THERESA (sounding sad about my decline): "It's a tattoo, sweetie."... Bruce Willis knocked somebody down a hole. "Down the hole!" shouted Dr. Theresa... Bruce Willis just shot three or four guys, I lost count. SJP helped him by yelling. Now he has grudging respect for her! You can see it in his eyes... I think I'll have some rye. I might miss something... Thinking, those guys Bruce shot were probably pirates, technically!... "There's an old Italian saying: 'Don't scald your tongue on another man's soup.'" Wise words, Dennis Farina. "Hey, Hardy, we're out of our patrol zone," warns by-the-book Sarah Jessica Parker. You really think Bruce Willis cares?... SJP and Bruce are dramatically acting at each other!... Aw, suddenly SJP spies Bruce behaving tenderly when he doesn't know she's looking! Maybe there's something to this gruff boat cop after all... They're really piling on the Tom Sizemore circumstantial evidence. I ain't buying it! No matter how unnervingly he giggles. Dennis Farina just had this line of dialogue: "Go up there. Go up there. GO UP THERE! Go up there."... This movie has a lot of blue language!... Andre Braugher! He's as young as a baby!... Tom Sizemore sure talks about the river a lot... SJP invites Bruce to the Policeman's Ball, which seems like a great place for him to be beaten to a pulp, which he is. Angry cops conveniently tear off his shirt, exposing him sexily. Tom Sizemore drinks heavily while a fireworks display goes off over his head. This one cop who hates Bruce the most is the guy who played the studio head in THE PLAYER.

Can't think of his name. But boy does he hate Bruce Willis. ... SJP pours Bruce's booze down the sink. She doesn't even know him! That's presumptuous. She hasn't even seen him drunk. I don't even think he's BEEN drunk in this movie (?), though the angriest cop calls him a "lush" once. ... Bruce Willis's cat watches as Bruce and SJP express themselves with an intimacy that is usually reserved for the conjugal bower. The cat seems bored. But POV suggests a creepy killer is probably watching too! ... Ha ha, now SJP and Bruce are chasing a car, but they're in a boat! This doesn't seem practical. THIRD FIREBALL. One hour, seven minutes in. ... It is suddenly revealed that Sarah Jessica Parker's character has a daughter... NAMED SARAH. ... Bruce just had the hoary old line, "I don't know how high up this goes." Dennis Farina: "He's been under surveillance for three weeks." Guy from The Player: "CLOSE surveillance?" Ha ha ha, I don't know why that exchange made me laugh so hard. I guess it was the way the guy said "CLOSE surveillance?" But it's clear that SJP has been spying on Bruce! NOW who's the rat? "Thank you very much, detective, you may step down," says Andre Braugher in that super sarcastic way that only Andre Braugher can deliver! He's not thanking the detective at all! Bruce Willis's cat is hungry. "Go catch a rat," says Bruce Willis to his cat. Ironic!... Somebody's "dead in the water." Literally! I can't tell who it is, even though Bruce is saying "NOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!" But then again I thought that pirate's tattoo was a neckerchief. ... Bruce Willis thinks Tom Sizemore is the killer. I guess he's not so smart after all. Well! The killer is Cousin Jimmy! He ain't dead! I think Cousin Jimmy is the guy who was in MURPHY BROWN. The killer is the dude from MURPHY BROWN! I think. A guy from MURPHY BROWN killed a guy from FRASIER! What's the world coming to? "Are you too proud to drink with a dead man?" - Cousin Jimmy. I'm going to start saying that at bars. That guy's hair! The guy from MURPHY BROWN. He seriously looks worse than Donald Trump. Plus he's a psychotic murderer. Oh, wait! Dennis Farina killed Frasier's dad. So never mind. Ha ha, SJP just stuck out her foot and tripped the guy from MURPHY BROWN. Boat chase! Foot chase! We're back on the bridge. "You'll never beat me!" screams the guy from MURPHY BROWN at Bruce Willis. So I wonder who's going to win! Underwater fight! Lots of bubbles when you're fighting underwater. ... The angriest cop admits he was wrong. Bruce Willis punches him. SJP runs up. They smooch. Flowers on a grave. We see SJP's alleged daughter for the first time. They're all at the cemetery together like a regular family. THE END.

Literary Matters

I hate to tell you this but it is time for "Literary Matters" again. I am going to jazz them up by using ROMAN NUMERALS this time! It won't help. I'll also give each section a title. Oh boy! I. I HATE BOOKS. I walked into Square Books and started griping to Cody and Slade about books. Oh how I hate them! Such was the content of my monologue. They knew where I was coming from! They humored me. They egged me on! Think about it from their point of view! Surrounded by books all day! Detestable books! Was I joking? Hmm. Sometimes I just walk into a bookstore and get overwhelmed. "Do I want to contribute to THIS?" I shouted, gesturing wildly at all the books. I forgot to eat today. II. SMALL, DECORATIVE BOOKS. Then Katelyn arrived for work and she was in a good mood! It was cloudy and cooler out, which contributed to her upbeat outlook. At first she was a calming presence. But then we discussed the trend - is it a trend? - of small, decorative books. There was one by the register about the size of a postcard. It's by Hemingway. It's about camping. I picked it up and I swear it was six pages long. With huge letters! Who is buying these six-page books? "We sell a lot of them," I was told about this particular item. And there I was, getting enraged by life again! But Katelyn showed me a small, decorative book about rats. It was about 100 pages and could reasonably be called a book. It was pleasant to see and hold. My breathing steadied. Katelyn said that Carla had been really excited about it, but then she started reading it (Carla did) and became downcast with the dawning realization that the book was anti-rat. III. FAILED SERVICE DOG. At some point, Katelyn used the phrase "failed service dog" which I thought might be a good title for something. Maybe the magazine that Katelyn and I decided to start. It is a magazine in the form of a bar of soap! I know you think it won't work but we figured it out. IV. SPEAKING OF MAGAZINES. Katelyn has just had her very first short story published. It's in the literary magazine COLUMBIA. That's a good one! I bought a copy. You can get your own at Off Square Books. V. ANJELICA HUSTON. I went upstairs and sat in a chair and looked to see if Anjelica Huston's autobiography had Jerry Lewis in the index. You are aware of this compulsion of mine, I trust. But there was no index! My forthcoming nonfiction cigarette lighter book has an index, pal! (Hmm, it might be a small, decorative book.) And does it have Jerry Lewis in it? Look for yourself:

Well, I flipped through Anjelica Huston's autobiography and it seemed to have some pretty good stories in it but I felt about it the way I felt about Martin Short's autobiography: I would look through it in a bookstore but I don't think I would buy it. And reader, I didn't. VI. THE CHAIRS OF SQUARE BOOKS. My favorite chair at Square Books has the unfortunate liability of being almost in the path to the bathroom. When you sit in my favorite chair you cannot help but notice how many scoundrels are misusing Square Books just for the toilets it thoughtfully provides. I'm watching you, miscreants! And yet who am I to talk, blithely stealing Anjelica Huston's memories? Pendleton Ward has his own favorite chair at Square Books. Last time he came to town he fantasized about having a gold chain installed around it, and a sign indicating that it was reserved for his personal use. Why, he could sit in that chair thinking and dozing and drawing and writing all day! I've seen him do it! VII. A MOUTH THAT IS KISSED. Still reading THE DECAMERON. I pick it up and put it down. There's lots of stuff like "the merchant and the lady slept together in a very small bed; because of this, something happened that was not intended to happen by either one of them" - ha ha! But wherefore do I ha ha? Because that same story ended with a touching moral: "A mouth that is kissed loses no flavor, but, like the moon, is renewed." I thought that was pretty. Maybe I didn't entirely get it. In the next chapter, everyone is having "a good laugh" over those very words! Maybe it's a hilarious joke.

Disillusioned Artiste

I watched CAREER and McNeil was right, of course. I loved it! Thick, chewy melodrama. Just my speed. Here we see Anthony Franciosa caring more about his cucumber facial than Shirley MacLaine's serious problems. The day I learned to do "screen grabs" was a blot on the universe. So the night before last I flipped to TCM and they were showing a marathon of Les Blank's documentaries. I watched one about garlic. It made me really hungry! Although the part where they cook some blue-eyed baby pigs depressed me, which is good because I'm sort of on a diet because I need to fit into John T. Edge's plaid tuxedo jacket soon. Why? None of your beeswax, that's why. But I was like: "Bill Boyle is coming over tomorrow. I'll make something with lots of garlic!" And I did. I made puttanesca sauce and I was really nervous because Bill is Italian and what if he scoffed? But Bill didn't scoff. Bill's not a scoffer. I use lemon, which I'm not sure is a traditional ingredient, so I went crazy and kept adding other stuff to drown out the lemon so maybe Bill wouldn't notice the lemon, which maybe defeated the purpose, I don't know, it turned out fine, get off my case, man. The point is Bill came over to watch TOO LATE BLUES, one of the few Cassavetes movies he hadn't seen, and which I recorded off of TCM a while back. It made me think of CAREER. Well, they both had a certain post-beat feel, a "disillusioned artiste" vibe.

There were bits of CAREER that made me think of INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and BARTON FINK but there's no way the Coen Brothers ever watched CAREER, is there? We know Scorsese watched TOO LATE BLUES. Bill and I could tell! And everybody wore black suits with skinny black ties and argued about paying the diner owner, so maybe Quentin Tarantino watched it too. Who cares? Seriously. You're not alone: I bore myself. I honestly have nothing interesting to say but I took so many screen grabs of CAREER, so here we are. There's Shirley MacLaine saying, "Sam? What a lovely name. I like that name. The first man I ever completely destroyed was named Sam." She drinks a lot in this movie! Just look how she sits at the bar:

Fried Gloves

Something else I read in this Altman book: Robert Altman had a special pair of gloves he prized highly. Paul Newman fried them as a "practical joke" and had them served to Altman for lunch! Altman brooded about it for years.

Softballs in Chicago Are Huge

My friend Judge writes in to report that softballs in Chicago are huge! Sixteen inches around. "It's like catching a globe," she says. On the plus side: "You don't need a glove & it makes good players bad & bad players bad - equalizer." But mostly I think she hates it!

Black Gloves, White Vermouth

I know what Hogan is talking about! For the first time in my life I know what Hogan is talking about. I got to the part of BACHELOR IN PARADISE that mentions cornflowers and vermouth. Well, a lot of it mentions vermouth. But would you want to read a novel that doesn't mention vermouth? Anyway, a girl is listening to a dance band and declares the music to be "Cornflowers," by which she means corny. She's the same girl of whom Caspary writes, "She kept on the black gloves while sipping white vermouth." If your novel doesn't have that sentence in it, I don't want to hear about it!

Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis

Hello dear friends and welcome once more to "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis," helping YOU pick the right bookmark for the right book since 2007. You will be thrilled to hear that I finally decided what to read next: THE GO-BETWEEN by L.P. Hartley. For a bookmark I happened to snatch up the first thing handy, a sturdy cardboard tag that had been attached to some gloves Dr. Theresa gave me for Christmas. Friends, it works like a charm! A dull gold in color, with black print, it proclaims LAUER GLOVES to be "FINE GLOVES FOR MEN." Beneath that comes the company slogan, italicized AND in quotation marks: "ON HAND SINCE 1908" - ha ha! I added the "ha ha." Haven't read much of THE GO-BETWEEN yet, but it promises to have plenty of characters who wear "FINE GLOVES FOR MEN." And if it doesn't take place in 1908, it is pretty dang close. Even the color matches the mood of the book, yes, the muted gold of memory. All this, mark it! - ha ha, "mark it" - with no conscious effort. Heed, then: I allowed the bookmark to CHOOSE ME. There is a Jungian impulse at work when we choose our bookmarks properly, friends, or maybe I am saying we need to be like that old zen dude I told you about one time when we are picking our bookmarks. May your new year be filled with appropriate bookmarks.

Cold Gloves

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

Winking Mannequins of Yore

Hey there used to be a sitcom called THAT GIRL and all my life I have been pronouncing the title like this: "THAT girl," but last night I heard the recorded voice of Marlo Thomas, the star of THAT GIRL, in an interstitial piece on TCM and she said it like this: "that GIRL," and it was like my whole life had been a sham. And that was all I was going to tell you today. Except that to my recollection she flew a kite with her own picture on it in the opening credits of THAT GIRL, which seems like a weird thing to do. And that was all I was going to tell you today. But when I looked for a photo to illustrate this "post" I found this image (above) of Marlo Thomas as "THAT GIRL" biting her glove and my brain asked me wasn't that the scene from the opening credits where she looks at a mannequin in a store window and it winks at her? So even though I was going to base this whole "post" on my feeble memory that everyone loves so much I went ahead and looked on the "youtube" and found the opening credits and YES she does fly a kite with her own picture on it and YES a department store mannequin is winking at her only GET THIS. She sees HERSELF in place of the department store mannequin. SHE SEES HERSELF AS A DEPARTMENT STORE MANNEQUIN. And that was all I was going to tell you today. But then I remembered that my friend Ward sent me the shabby, awkward opening to THE NEW ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW the other day, struck and depressed as he was by it. "Andy's expression looks like he's already given up" on the show - IN THE OPENING CREDITS! - noted Ward in the accompanying email. "Click" here to confirm. I would only add that the theme song sounds sort of like the regular ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW theme song played backwards, some sort of failed network attempt at mass brainwashing, probably. Oh wait and I also wanted to tell you that the THAT GIRL theme song starts out like this: "Diamonds, daisies, snowflakes, THAT GIRL. Chestnuts, rainbows, springtime, it's [is? - ed.] THAT GIRL!"

McNeil's First Flocking

Email from McNeil: "Hey....I was catching up on the blog today and I noticed this great tidbit. You mention flocking!... I told you about how I ended up seeing the episode of Adventure Time at my sister's house Christmas Eve, right? The nephews came upstairs and roused me out of an easy chair in the bonus room. [bonus room? - ed.] Okay. Only 15 minutes earlier all the kids were up there watching TV, and I went up and fell into the chair to catch some needed shut eye. But the TV was turned all the way up. And about a minute after I got there all the kids left. And I was too lazy to get up and get the remote so I lay there with my feet up and my lithe body all curled up on the easy chair with some show called 'Victorious' on at full volume. It's a show about 11th graders who dress all cool... anyway, this was the Christmas episode, and near the end the brunette girl walks into the house where the blonde girl and the clueless sandy-haired guy are standing next to the tree AND a big machine. Brunette: (pulling off a glove) What are you two doing? Blonde: (matter of fact) Flocking. Brunette: (incredulous) I'm sorry? Guy: We're going to flock the tree. It's what you call it when you spray the tree with some scent. [? -ed.] Blonde: Okay Sandy-haired Guy, ready to flock? Guy: You bet. ... Amazing coincidence, no? That's the first time I had ever heard of flocking."

The Ichthyologist: Modern-Day Undercover Procopius?

As you will recall from reading the New York Times with me every day, their gossip columnist ONLY writes about celebrities eating fish. They should make up a new name for her. Like, right now they call her "The Nocturnalist" but they should change it to "The Ichthyologist!" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Because of the fish. Sure, Martha Stewart feeds her a Jordan almond in today's installment. BUT! She also sees John McEnroe eating "Alaskan black cod" in a parking garage. For real! "Click" here if you don't believe me. But don't "click"! Because then you will have to read about a fancy gala where rich people dress up like rich hoboes or something, with "motorcycle evening gloves," whatever those are, and someone walks by and exclaims, "Glam in the gutter!" to The Ichthyologist. Ugh! Somebody really says that! They are hanging around in a parking garage for irony! They're having fun pretending to be partially poor! Like, only their gloves are poor. I don't know, part of me thinks that The Ichthyologist is secretly thinking "ugh" along with me like some modern-day Procopius but it's all just too subtle for me I guess.

A Very Nice Brown Hat

More thoughts on MONEY FROM HOME 1) Yes, he does ride a horse backwards, but at no point does Jerry Lewis brandish a bloody knife - or even come close to brandishing a bloody knife! - as seen in the bizarre Belgian movie poster. 2) I want a suit like Dean Martin wears at the beginning of the movie. It's blue pinstripe. Also, a luxurious, rich indigo shirt. I asked Dr. Theresa to name the color of the tie, and she said "golden." I don't know, it may be paler. Plus a very nice brown hat. 3) Jerry Lewis's blue jacket is not too shabby, either. Light and dark blue, alternating, with a bright yellow (almost saffron?) ascot. 4) Who is Marjie Millar (pictured)? I have no idea. A cutie pie, but other than that I have no idea. At one point she wears a white-and-green dress with white gloves and white beaded purse that would perfectly suit Dr. Theresa. We discussed it.

No Slop on Aquaman

I like things that exist. I am always like, "I am glad you exist, thing!" The cittern FAQ is a great example. Here is another one: this guy's place where he reviews superhero action figures. I found out about it through our "fave" Aquaman "blog," natch! Says the reviewer, "I can’t find any slop on Aquaman. Everything from his face to his feet is painted very well. The skin is a nice tan, with a great matte finish, and the hair is sandy blonde with a very nice wash... the black shorts are a flat matte, so the contrast between the gold shirt, black shorts, and green pants comes off very well... the only reason he is not a 10 is because I would prefer an orange shirt and darker green pants and gloves." Also (because Aquaman's arch-nemesis comes in the same box): "Getting two enemies in one pack allows battles to occur immediately upon opening them. I really didn’t think Black Manta would interest me too much, but because of his rubbery coating I just don’t want to put him down."