McNeil Absolved of Blasphemy

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

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

Welcome to the newest recurring "blog" feature since... I don't know when. Since before the TV blew up and I quit "blogging" because I was so dispirited by the blowing up of the TV set? That's right, you're just in time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits"! Was McNeilileaks our last recurring feature? It was very topical whenever that was... you know, the leaks era of history. When we'd cram "leaks" together with some word to make some other word. Most recurring "blog" features justly wither on the vine, like "Bookmarkin'! with Jack Pendarvis" and the unlamented "Today's Weather." But we here at the "blog" believe that "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" has a dandy future indeed. In part, that's because McNeil, "inspired," I guess we'll call it, by the Million Dollar Book Club, is reading a 700-page celebrity bio of his own choosing. Because I am all tied up with all the various books to which I have committed myself, some of which I haven't even told you about, and find myself unable to join him in the endeavor (in fact, the bio is one I never read, and finally sold to Off Square Books during a long period of unemployment) McNeil has promised to pass along juicy morsels about the life of Humphrey Bogart as he absorbs them into his mighty brain. And he has given me permission to pass them on to you! Before we get started, I should say that I'm nervous about starting a recurring feature right now. It could be a lot of typing for nothing! Let me explain. The other day, a big old water pipe exploded - much like the TV of yore - under our house (the TV was not under our house) and some guys from the water company came by and dug up our yard. One of them took his shovel and severed a cable "linking" us to the "internet," much like the plow cuts the worm in William Blake's famous aphorism. Anyway, this same guy with the wayward shovel "fixed" the problem, but now the "internet" quits working at random times and AT&T, the worst company in the world, makes it nearly impossible to ask a human to come out to the house and look at what's going on. They just don't care! So all these carefully chosen words may vanish as I type them into the abyss. All right! That being said, we're already three bogie bits behind. Let's get started! BOGIE BIT 1: McNeil summarizes Bogart in his prep school days: "perennially bored, few friends, never cracked a book, oddly naive and vulnerable." BOGIE BIT 2: "During the depression, Bogart and his then wife had to move to some shabby apartment along the East River. One of their neighbors was a comedy writer who used to place his meal in a bag, shake it up, and then dump it out on a plate before eating it. No reason given why." As you may well imagine, the latter detail provided some grist for the usual hilarious email antics of McNeil and myself, as I fancifully pictured the comedy writer placing bread, ham, and cheese in the bag and shaking it up and presto, out comes a ham sandwich! Oh, what fun. McNeil replied that he was imagining mashed potatoes and gravy in a bag. Then he remarked, memorably, "Everything was a salad to this guy." I think that's a direct McNeil quotation, though I admit I am not double-checking. BOGIE BIT 3: Young Bogart used to sit in an arcade and play chess against all comers for a dollar a game! I might be forgetting something, but I believe those are all your bogie bits for the moment. Goodbye for now from all of us at "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits."

Here We Are

Well, I stopped "blogging," of course, but I also quit social media, so now I have nothing to do. And occasionally, McNeil will email me about something that reminds me of something else, and you know what? That's a "blog" "post." So it just comes out. Like gravy! That's an ODD COUPLE allusion. Remember in the movie when Oscar tells Felix that he (Oscar) thinks gravy just "comes when you cook the meat"? Oh, Oscar! But that's not why we're here. McNeil sent me a "link" to a news report about a guy who has a silver alien ball from outer space. I'm not going to "link" to it, for valid reasons! But you can easily find out more about the silver alien ball from outer space by googling the guy's name, Jim Marlin, and the word "ball." Or "sphere." The funniest part of the article was "'As I was laying on my back on the floor, I was just mindlessly rubbing my feet on this sphere while I was talking to a friend,' Marlin said." McNeil noted the strangeness in his email, writing, "He was just rubbing the sphere with his foot, like any other Saturday night." Well! The exciting thing was that the article also mentions another family with an alien ball... and I have "blogged" about this other alien ball in the past, thanks to a tip from Lee Durkee. Doubling down on the excitement, McNeil missed that other alien ball when I "blogged" about it in 2015, so it was all new to him! He was like a wide-eyed child in a field of flowers.

For McNeil Only

This one is just for McNeil. The rest of you (there are two of you, I think) can skip it. But I happened to find out by accident that Jerry Lewis and Public Enemy were going to be on THE TONIGHT SHOW last night. I contacted McNeil right away. He loves Jerry Lewis and Public Enemy. But I found that McNeil was going to be unable to watch the show. So he asked me to file a report. Here is that report. Jerry entered, looking frail but game, as the Roots played him on with the Beastie Boys hit "Hey Ladies" - the significance of which to Jerry we have remarked upon before. When he arrived at his seat he noticed to his apparent consternation that his necktie was hanging out of his jacket. "WAAAAAH! I thought it was my tongue," said Jerry, which got a big laugh. Then he appeared to tuck his necktie into his pants... on purpose? I couldn't tell. Of course, the great thing about Jerry is that so often YOU JUST CAN'T TELL. Maybe tucking your necktie into your pants is an old show biz trick. Jimmy Fallon started reciting scenes from THE NUTTY PROFESSOR to Jerry Lewis, which was nicely intended, but odd. I will paraphrase from memory. Jimmy Fallon was like, "And you go to the gym and lift weights but then you drop the weights without letting go of them and they stretch out your arms like six feet long. But it's not over. Because then you're in bed that night and your feet are itching and a hand comes out and scratches your foot, and it's your hand because your arms were stretched out really long." It reminded me of that old SNL sketch with Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney. Jerry took it well. Well, no, at some point he cut off Jimmy Fallon's rambling by handing him what was apparently a shocking and obscene note. I don't know what happened there. It was mysterious. Then Jimmy Fallon started describing a scene from THE ERRAND BOY, the famous pantomime to music behind the executive's desk. They showed a clip of it and Jerry said, "When I write, I think in terms of music," which is something Barry Hannah used to say, more or less. Then Jimmy Fallon tried to get him to do a bit in which he and Jerry Lewis would "talk" to each other by lip-syncing to the instrumental music of the Roots. Jerry was confused at first. I suppose he was thinking about how dumb the idea was, how many weeks it had taken him to conceive, design, rehearse, shoot and edit that ERRAND BOY set piece, but he went ahead and tried. You could see the wheels turning and it was nice. The Roots played some music and Jimmy Fallon flapped his gums but Jerry introduced some hand gestures to good effect and really tried to engage with Jimmy Fallon... to push the bit into going somewhere. It didn't. Then Jerry told a dirty joke about a parrot. Public Enemy came out and did their song "Public Enemy #1." I half expected Flavor Flav to give a shout-out to Jerry Lewis in his introductory verse. He didn't, but I see some similarities there, especially in verbal mannerisms, but some of the physicality too. I'm not suggesting direct influence, of course, just expressionistic instincts in common. Think of Flavor Flav's "Cold Lamping": "We got Magnum Brown, Shooshki Palooshki/ Supercalafragahestikalagoothki/ You could put that in your don't know what you said book/ Took-look-yuk-duk-wuk." More Jerryish lyrics would be tough to find. Especially "Shooshki Palooshki." Or "You're eating dirt because you like eating dirt from the graveyard/ You put gravy on it." Can't you just hear Jerry yelling "You put GRAVY on it!"? And when Flavor raps about "chocolate, strawberry, sarsaparilla" who can help but recall Jerry's rhapsody on strawberry milkshakes from THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR? What? Everybody? Okay.

Diablo

Well, Megan Abbott is getting ready to hightail it back to New York City, from whence she came. During her brief time here as writer-in-residence, there have been several "movie nights," not all of them chronicled by your humble chronicler - indeed, not all of them attended by him. The first featured Hal Needham's HOOPER, starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Field. For our very last "movie night" we decided to do something different: Hal Needham's SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Field. "I'm trying to see whose pants are tighter," Megan remarked of our two leads. When Jerry Reed's character said, "I got to get some go-go juice and put some groceries down my neck," it reminded me of something Dean Moriarty might say, leading me to a brief and instantly concluded reflection on the relationship between beatnik and CB radio culture. Ace brought over Coors beer (an important factor in the plot, as I am sure you recall) and "diablo sandwiches," one of which Jackie Gleason orders at a pivotal point in the movie. Now, according to Ace, no one knows what a diablo sandwich really is. Ace has scoured the "internet" and found it to be full of lies, grandiose claims, and errors on the subject. He even telephoned the original restaurant from the movie - the "Old Hickory House" (as Dr. Theresa recalled last night, she used to go there for biscuits and gravy with her dad) - and confirmed that they had never sold anything called a "diablo sandwich." Ace therefore reconstructed the diablo sandwich through a careful study of the frames in which Jackie Gleason terrifyingly devours his "diablo sandwich." There is a picture that Megan took of Dr. Theresa and Ace and Bill and me standing in her kitchen over the fixings for our diablo sandwiches but I can't use it here... it is too depressing, emphasizing as it does Megan's absence from the frame (there's another one of Ace and Megan toasting with cans of Coors, but that hasn't hit my inbox yet). So instead I will find a photo of Hank Worden, whom I noticed in a SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT cameo for the first time last night. Cameo! It was a blip. Less than two seconds, I'd guess. I want to say it was a tribute to a certain scene in RED RIVER, substituting horn-blasting semis for rearing horses, though I don't know whether I'm making up that scene in my head, and now that I think of it, I don't know that Hank Worden was in RED RIVER. I do know that he was in everything from THE SEARCHERS to TWIN PEAKS (which is why he is talking to David Lynch in that photo). Interestingly (?) - how I abuse that word! - his appearance in TWIN PEAKS combines his dialogue from THE SEARCHERS with the thumbs-up gesture he flashes in SMOKEY IN THE BANDIT (doesn't he?). I have given you so much to think about.

Loyal Gravies

It's in either Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 of ANCIENT EVENINGS that we get more plural "gravies" (sweat is described like so: "something loyal came out of the gravies of his flesh" [!]) and more "sweetmeats." Hey, I was looking around for sweetmeats on wikipedia and came across this terrible and utterly useless sentence: "Confections include sweet foods, sweetmeats, digestive aids that are sweet, elaborate creations, and something amusing and frivolous." Wikipedia! Who writes this stuff? Better check the old WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, UNABRIDGED, SECOND EDITION from 1974, under sweetmeat. "1. any sweet food or delicacy prepared with sugar or honey, as a cake, confection, preserve, etc.; specifically, a candy, candied fruit, etc. 2. a mollusk, the slipper shell. [Dial.] 3. a varnish used on patent leather."

Multiple Gravies

I am going to tell you something gross. As you know from reading this "blog," (ha ha, you don't read this "blog"!) Norman Mailer is obsessed with poop (look who's talking). I guess last time I started reading ANCIENT EVENINGS I accidentally skipped the prologue, because right away in the prologue here is what we get (I warned you it is gross): "My bowels quaked with oceanic disruption, ready to jettison whole fats, sweetmeats and gravies of the old pleasure-soaked flesh." I ran into Jimmy at Square Books today and tried to quote that to him. "Multiple gravies!" replied Jimmy. "That shall be the title of the 'post'!" I announced. Before, I was going to call it "Gross, Norman Mailer." When Jimmy came in off the balcony into the bookstore and I spotted him, I was sitting there in the little coffee section leafing through some essays by William S. Burroughs. I read about a time that Burroughs met up with Beckett. Burroughs was advised to bring his own whiskey "as [Beckett] would proffer none." Burroughs told Beckett about some flying foxes he had seen at a zoo and Beckett didn't seem to care much. Burroughs goes on, in the essay, to express a preference for Proust over Beckett, which surprised me. I think he put it this way: "That Proust is a snob humanizes him." I thought that was a gracious and interesting way to read Proust. I started thinking about that interview I did for Jimmy's magazine, late in the evening when I began to claim that Proust was mean to cats, and that was why I had stopped reading the second volume of his big book halfway through. As soon as I got home, it occurred to me that I had only ever heard of Proust being mean to cats from one person: my friend Jim Whorton. I didn't wish to besmirch Proust posthumously! So I emailed Jim for more details and told Jimmy to hold off on quoting me. Jim Whorton wrote back, "I think I did tell you that, because someone told me that once. But I have since tried (even since telling you that) to verify it and have not been able to. I hope it isn't true, but this friend (her name is Melanie) was emphatic about it. Oh, I hope it isn't true. Starting today I am never again going to repeat gossip." It is kind of like how unreasonably sure I used to be that Nixon enjoyed Campari and soda above all other drinks. Anyhow, I told Jimmy he could still quote me in the interview as long as he used Whorton's email as a footnote. But he didn't - a wise decision as I am very transparent and of course would have kept reading the second volume had I really been digging it, putting terrible accusations about cats out of my mind. Which reminded me: I had JUNKY by William S. Burroughs on my recommendation shelf at Square Books, and his narrator (who is William S. Burroughs, pretty apparently) is REALLY mean to a cat in that book! Spurred on by my discovery that he preferred Proust to Beckett, I snatched JUNKY off the shelf and replaced it with Lynda Barry. Then Jimmy and I walked among the books and talked about which books we had read and which ones we hadn't. He told me about a sentence in A PASSAGE TO INDIA that had really helped him when he decided to quit the football team in high school. "I'm going to tell my dad this!" he thought. And he did. He told his dad, "There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart." His dad, rather like Beckett hearing about the flying foxes at the zoo, was not impressed.

Bevy

I am happy to be guest-editing the June issue of GRAVY, the magazine of the Southern Foodways Alliance. The theme is "food and crime" and you can expect contributions from a bevy of "blog" "faves": Abigail Greenbaum! Bill Boyle! Ace Atkins! Laura Lippman! Chris Offutt! Natasha Allegri! Jason Polan! Michael Kupperman! Kelly Hogan! McNeil! Also in June, after a long dry spell, short stories I wrote will appear in two magazines: "An Oyster Named Dan" in LUCKY PEACH and "Pinkeye" in PLEIADES. June! June is going to be big and filled with gravy.

Offhand Cat Remark Causes Outbreak of Euphoria

In the New York Times, there is an offhand remark from one of the Coen Brothers that their next movie will be "all about a cat." This could be one of their famous lies that they famously enjoy lying about all the time so famously. On the other hand, with my recently completed cat book "in the bag" (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! But don't put cats in a bag, that's horrible) it might just be that I'm in tune with the zeitgeist in a big way and ready to ride this oncoming cat gravy train as it roars down the track all the way into big money town USA. Now to quit my job. So long, suckers!

See?

I told you. Dang! The NY Times scoops me again. The writer even mentions Bewitched, My Favorite Martian, and I Dream of Jeannie near the end, as I sort of did. (Also, my reference to camp was intended to bring DARK SHADOWS to mind; she mentions it explicitly. Finally, we both used the term ghost busters, though she made it one word.) I swear I didn't see the article before I wrote the previous "post." Could the coincidence be... supernatural??? You know how the "blog" has eerie powers that no one can understand. In any case, I still want to hear from Dr. "M.," who has surfaced recently only to complain about William Hurt's neck. Television viewers need you more than ever, Dr. "M."! And I didn't entirely buy the NY Times writer's answers, which were nearly as pat as my earlier thoughts on werewolves (no offense! The article was interesting and enjoyable). I brought up this whole supernatural TV problem to Theresa the other night, and though she is getting a Ph.D. in American studies from Emory, she was rather stumped. "It's more than just cashing in on LOST," she said. "But it's hard to say when we're this close to it." Theresa would like to wait a couple of years before jumping to any conclusions. (Her chapter on Patty Hearst, on the other hand, is becoming deeper and richer every day, the story having had time to percolate or brew or steep or something in the cultural imagination.) I feel that I should DOUBLE SWEAR as to the coincidence. I have been thinking of "blogging" something about this, McNeil's daughter's question spurred it, and only then did I see the exact same idea THIS VERY DAY in the Times. Good gravy!

What Phil Is Reading

Phil Oppenheim has written to ask, "Am I correct in assuming that the Nutt Auditorium was named in honor of the Fire Chief Cash U. Nutt (the fellow on the right, of course)?" We thank him for our most obscure "blog" reference since "I'm Dickens, He's Fenster," as well as the accompanying illustration of said Nutt. Phil goes on to ask: "Is the Decatur Book Festival really as great as you crack it up to be? I’ve never been, and am interested in seeing The Kinkster and Chris Raschka." Go, Phil, we say. Go! Phil concludes: "I bet our reading lists no longer coincide. We went to Vancouver a couple of weeks back, and I’ve been (slowly) reading Stephen Leacock, who is pretty ******* hilarious (in my opinion); also, I’ve been reading the Three Line Novels of Felix Feneon (one the NYRB reprints). What about you? I looked for some Grace Paley stuff on your recommendation at the (newly moved) Atlanta Book Exchange, but they were plumb out of them (or is it 'plum'?)." Once again, we see that the "blog" is our nation's most reliable cultural arbiter. We used to say that if the "blog" could only convince one single person to read Grace Paley and go to the Decatur Book Festival it would have done its job. So now it has done its job and everything from here on out is gravy. Useless gravy.

A Sandwich To Remember

Would you like to eat the greatest sandwich in the world? Why of course you would! Well, then, I recommend the "Big Easy" at the Ajax Diner in Oxford, MS. It is chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, butterbeans, pickles, and something that may be green - I'm going to go out on a limb and say chopped cabbage, or maybe I was imagining that part. But let me make it clear that NONE of those other ingredients I just listed are side items. They are ON THE SANDWICH. Butterbeans... ON THE SANDWICH. Mashed potatoes... ON THE SANDWICH. EVERYTHING I listed is ON THE SANDWICH. And it's not too messy because it is put together with sweet love and consideration. With all due respect to Savage Pizza's marinated chicken sub, which will always hold a place in my heart, the two sandwiches are not even in the same universe.

The Light in the Bedroom

The overhead light fixture in the bedroom may be dangling unsafely. Theresa sees wires. Good gravy! What is going on around this dump?