Thin, Lucent Clouds

Well, you know, we've given some attention recently to writers trying to get into the heads of dogs, literarily speaking. So it is only fair I should tell you that in THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, translated by Sophie Wilkins, Robert Musil kind of skates around writing from the POV of some horses. He admits: "It was hard to comprehend what was going on inside the animals," though he ventures to suspect they "knew nothing of love as a tangible desire, but only as a breath and a haze that sometimes veiled their vision of the world with thin, lucent clouds." You know, this reminds me of some years ago when I watched the 7-hour Soviet movie version of WAR AND PEACE and I sort of perked up when a tree started talking. I was like, "Can this really be in Tolstoy?" And to my recollection, I looked it up somewhere, and yes, that tree had some things to say, and I wrote about it extensively somewhere, but I've searched my "blog" and my files and all my many unpublished novels and my emails to McNeil, and I can't find anything I wrote about the talking tree. We might even say I'm not convinced the talking tree exists, but I don't care about things anymore, so I'm not going to make an effort to find out.

Passing Through

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

Socks Are the New Beans

Thank God for McNeil! How many times have we all said that, or at least felt it in our bones? In this instance, I am saying it regarding his relatively lonely position as an expert on the "blog." If McNeil didn't "click" on our forgotten "links" in a cold, scientific quest for knowledge, he never would have noticed - as he did just last night! - that an old one, shrouded in the impenetrable haze of the "blog's" very beginnings, had become outdated, and what once had been but an innocent "link" to a fan site for a beloved literary figure I hesitate to name, so as not to drag him into all this, had been taken over, at some point, by a saucy "internet" purveyor of sexy shenanigans I hesitate to describe. So much makes me hesitate these days! Suffice to say, the "website" in question, according to McNeil, though he did not use the following comparison, sought to do for socks what an Andy Warhol novel I read did for baked beans. Back when I made the ancient and troublesome "post," back when the "link" I provided was quite free of such carnal associations, I myself was but a blushing dewy apple-cheeked lad of a mere 43 years of age, and I could not imagine that the "internet" was such an impermanent thing, subject, as we all must be, to the ravages of time, or that devious forces - robots, most likely! - might comb the "web" for dead "links" to replace with their own sinful robot dreams of how sex probably works. Speaking of the ravages of time, three years ago, I thought of a solution to this problem, at least as it pertains to this "blog," but implementing it thoroughly would require effort, and effort is not a thing to which I am currently inclined. So what I am saying is this: just watch out, that's all. No, no, I'll get around to it. I'll fix everything! You just sit there and I'll fix it all. Don't you worry about old Jack.

How I Read Now

I take my membership in the 2-person book club very seriously, as will be confirmed when I tell you that I moved JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS into a secondary position so that I could more faithfully engage with the biography of Polly Adler. Look her up! I don't have time for your lazy ways. Having finished that Marilynne Robinson book, I now read JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS for 10 minutes a day, 5 minutes at a time, while I wait to take my blood pressure. I make it through an average of four pages a day, a pace to which the book makes itself strangely amenable. I first noticed while reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN that Thomas Mann is very interested in time - its reality and its narrative uses and representation. That's a great oversimplication. To keep going in the same simplistic direction, the only direction I know, Mann is interested in how an hour can pass like molasses, while a decade can disappear in a blink. It is for that reason, I assume, that my readings of his mammoth text, though brief and greatly separated, feel as if they are taking place in a single unending and languorous haze. It may further interest you to know that I believe I was pronouncing "Thomas Mann" correctly for most of my life, and then, recently, I started thinking I was doing it wrong, so I started pronouncing it a new way, but now, whenever I say it out loud, someone says, "Who?" and I say "Thomas Mann" and they say "Oh..." Then they look at me like that one emoji with a straight line for a mouth. (See also, the time a smart-alecky undergrad corrected my pronunciation of "whilst" in front of the whole class, even though I was saying it right and he turned out to be nothing but an ill-informed little and, as I recall it, wealthy jerk with enviable golden locks. On the other hand, what is this bitterness? I am sure he turned out to be a very nice young man and he did demonstrate considerable ability in the classroom. His single flaw, now that I really contemplate it, was his unwarranted confidence about how to pronounce "whilst." There are worse crimes! God bless you, the handsome and polished pebble in my shoe! See also, then, the time I mispronounced the name of Ashton Kutcher, and was justifiably laughed out of the classroom and made to hang my head in dirty shame.) Oh! But what I came here to say is that though (as I have reiterated countlessly) I am under no obligation to tell you about more than one owl in a book, and I have already told you about two owls in JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, old Potiphar was just sitting in his special room where he sits as the sun goes down, and behind his head as he sits in a silent, noble fashion, there is artwork representing owls, falcons, and ducks, I believe in that order, but the book is all the way downstairs, under my blood pressure machine, so I guess we'll never know.

A Satisfying Ululation

I was meeting Ace Atkins, Bill Boyle, and Tom Franklin at the City Grocery Bar at 4:02 PM, or as it is known around here, "Megan Abbott Time." But I was early so I stopped in Square Books and killed some time by taking the Flann O'Brien novel AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS off the shelf and idly leafing through it in a comfortable chair like a common thief of ideas. Now, you must remember that I read AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS back in that hazy time before I noticed that every book I read has an owl in it and must therefore be catalogued for the people of the future. So! Someone asks the legendary Irish hero Finn MacCool about what might be the sweetest music he has ever heard, and he rattles off a list of dozens of answers, many of which made me laugh, like "the whining of small otters in nettle-beds at evening... A satisfying ululation is the contending of a river with the sea." And somewhere in there was "the low warble of water-owls in Loch Barra." And I sat there for some time muttering it aloud so I wouldn't forget: "the low warble of water-owls, the low warble of water-owls." I don't know why I didn't ask for a pen and a scrap of paper. But when I got home I wanted to recall some of the other phrases too, so I got out my yellowed, falling-apart paperback of AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS and it was then that I also noticed, for the first time, Finn's tribute to "the long-eared bush-owl," which had somehow escaped me in the afternoon. At the end of his long list of pleasant sounds, Finn's friend says, "Relate further for us," and Finn replies, "It is true that I will not." Ha ha! (Pictured, the fanciful Ziphius, or water-owl, with a friend.)

I, Jerk

In case it wasn't clear, I - not Eric Stoltz! - was the jerk in those three hazy memories of Eric Stoltz I offered you yesterday. 1) In the "Darryl Strawberry Incident," I butted in without knowing what I was talking about. 2) In the case of the "Sound of Music joke" my overweening pretensions were suitably shellacked. 3) When Eric Stoltz rejected the shirt he was just "telling it like it is" so we could save the shirt for some idiot who would actually wear such a piece of trash.

Dreaming About Capitalism

Dozed off watching more of BACHELOR IN PARADISE... had hazy thoughts about capitalism... Bob Hope and Lana Turner in parallel aisles of a supermarket, moving the same way at the same speed, but unaware of one another, cut off from true connection by a bright wall of goods... looked like Godard to me... or was it Jacques Tati... Hey, remember that other time a Bob Hope movie reminded me of Godard? Ha ha ha oh boy gee life is pointless. Woke up and watched some more. Look at this neat bar Bob has in his house. Then he donned an ascot and gave a talk to a ladies' garden club about how to make their marriages sexy.

Deciduous

"Do you exist?" Ace Atkins asked McNeil to his face the other night, settling a question - we hope! - that has persistently plagued the "blog." McNeil affirmed that he does indeed exist. Barry B., who was also in town for my birthday, reported that, back in Atlanta, Phil recently remarked again upon his disbelief in McNeil - RECENTLY! - which seems incredible, given that Phil once sent McNeil something in the mail. Did he think he was mailing something to a ghost? Oh, how we stubbornly ignore the evidence in front of our eyes. While he was in town McNeil inspected the cashew tree he mailed me for my birthday, speaking of mail. I have to say, it's looking kind of sickly. I think often of the song "Grandfather's Clock," which is about some old dude who dies when his clock stops ticking (or his clock stops ticking when he dies) and I worry about keeping the birthday cashew tree alive on similar principles of sympathetic magic. But I draw some consolation from SIBLEY'S GUIDE TO TREES, which I've been coveting at Square Books, and which my sister and brother-in-law kindly got me for my birthday (yes, they were also in town! As you will see, everyone was in town. It was really nice! And though I kept saying NO PRESENTS, people gave me stuff, perhaps most startlingly Bill Griffith, who strode across Snackbar with a machete [for me]. "Like ADVENTURE TIME, get it?" he said). For example, I read about deciduous trees in the introduction, and took some comfort from looking at the sickly tree and thinking, "Oh! It's deciduous, that's all. Yes, that's what a deciduous tree must look like." Sometimes we can deceive ourselves with our fancy book-learning, maybe! As far as I can tell, this kind of straight-up cashew tree doesn't generally grow in the United States, though trees in "the cashew family" (including various pistachios) do. "Many species in the family exude a blackish resin from broken twigs and develop blackish spots on the leaves." Check! "Many species in the cashew family... have toxic oils in their leaves and stems." Gosh! Poison ivy and poison oak are related to the cashew. Gee! Yesterday I was thankfully able to point out to McNeil a few new, tender shoots on the cashew tree, nestled among the blackening and withering leaves. But we're not here to talk about trees! I'm sure the main thing you'd like to know is whether we had another "McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival" while McNeil was here. We did not. And yet a peculiar mini-film-festival did occur. Dr. Theresa and Leslie (who was also in town: see?) were idly flipping around the movie channels for something to watch when they came across THREE FUGITIVES, that Martin Short/Nick Nolte team-up that everyone was probably waiting for once upon a time. Some quality of the film - Dr. Theresa and Leslie referred to it as "flatness" - they found compelling and numbing. I came in after they had already succumbed to the flatfooted vibe it exerted. McNeil came in to find all three of us staring dumbly at THREE FUGITIVES. Martin Short is an an unwilling bank robber who needs money for his moppet of a daughter who has LOST THE ABILITY TO SPEAK. "Charlie Chaplin has a lot to answer for," I said at one point. (I think it was a long shot of the Little Girl Who Couldn't Talk alone at the very end of a park bench, her hands folded in her lap, and Martin Short was really pushing the wet-eyed, gulping sad clown thing, to use Bruce Handy's definition of the term, which is looser than mine.) Late in the film Dr. Theresa and Leslie came out of the coma-like trances into which THREE FUGITIVES had lulled them for a segment in which Martin Short is forced to pretend to be a pregnant woman, Nick Nolte "her" concerned husband and the little girl is transformed into the "couple's" little boy. The academic portions of their brains kicked into overdrive at the sight of the gruff loner Nolte learning to be a "true man" by performing the role of the "man." Perhaps he, without changing his physical appearance, was in the most elaborate "drag" of all! The next day (or was it the day after?) in the post-celebration haze, a groggy Dr. Theresa and Leslie felt they "needed" another movie exhibiting the same "flatness" as THREE FUGITIVES, and charged me with finding one that was just beginning on one of the movie channels, which is how we came by chance to FEDS, a buddy comedy starring Rebecca De Mornay and Mary Gross (pictured) as would-be FBI agents. Once again I was moved to say, "Charlie Chaplin has a lot to answer for," but I can't remember why. Besides, the real phantoms hanging over both THREE FUGITIVES and FEDS were Martin and Lewis, of course. Martin Short (who often impersonates Lewis) and Mary Gross are the child-like ids (Mary Gross in a gun shop sticks a pistol in the front of her pants and does a strange, wiggling Jerry-like dance) while De Mornay and Nolte are the loners, the smooth operators, who learn to allow themselves to become dependent on their "weaker" counterparts. (And, as McNeil pointed out during the cross-dressing sequence of THREE FUGITIVES, Jerry often took the "female" role, appearing, for example, in remakes of THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR and NOTHING SACRED in the parts originally played by Ginger Rogers and Carole Lombard.) Ha ha ha, I know nobody is reading this! McNeil (who came over in time to catch almost all of FEDS) wondered whether there was a sequel, a FEDS 2, and though it seemed obvious that no one had scrambled for a follow-up buddy comedy from Mary Gross and Rebecca De Mornay, McNeil checked his iPhone, just to make sure. And of course there was no FEDS 2. Yet a sequence that played over the final credits seemed to promise just that. The ridiculous optimism we need in order to continue living! Leslie argued with force and clarity that both THREE FUGITIVES and FEDS were about the fact that we become the roles we perform. Then some great monster in the scheduling department saw to it that CONTINENTAL DIVIDE came on right after FEDS. What a double feature! As no one felt capable of movement, we sat through CONTINENTAL DIVIDE - marking the second time I have seen it in four months, a preposterous circumstance I never would have believed had some Cassandra informed me of it in advance. Yet Leslie, who had never seen it, championed CONTINENTAL DIVIDE for a long spell, repeating "I don't see why this movie is 'bad,'" at a number of points. Well into the second act she spoke of its charms convincingly, citing, for instance, the cinematography that made everything in Chicago look like "old Polaroids," and exclaiming when Blair Brown busted up the shotguns of some eagle poachers against a rock that it was just the kind of thing she (Leslie) always fantasized about doing. But soon, beaten down by the movie's numerous willful missteps, she gave up, finally concluding that CONTINENTAL DIVIDE seemed like a movie that was stitched together entirely of scenes that had been edited out of some other movie. McNeil pointed out that it aspired to the condition of the "screwball comedy," yet lacked that genre's essential ingredient: unnatural speed. The director, he thought, could have improved the movie a lot simply by getting everyone to talk faster. Thwarted by a misguided allegiance to so-called "realism"! Hey, I don't want you to think we only watched movies. Leslie also went through an old community cookbook reading recipe titles and we'd make up songs about them - or, more accurately, imagine who might have recorded a song with such a name, like "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie" (Bob Dylan) and "Baptist Pound Cake" (Leonard Cohen; "Baptist Pound Cake" being a sexy, taboo metaphor - some woman takes pity on Leonard Cohen and feeds him "Baptist Pound Cake" in "the alley behind the church.") In summation: 1) Sometimes we can deceive ourselves with our fancy book-learning. 2) We stubbornly ignore the evidence in front of us. 3) We become the roles we perform. 4) Ridiculous optimism is required for the merest survival. These seem like terrible birthday lessons! So why was everything so much fun?

Graveyard Ramada

Dr. Theresa and I took a little trip up the Natchez Trace. We came upon the grave of the famed explorer Meriwether Lewis. The wording on the stone reads in part, "His melancholy death occurred where this monument now stands and under which rest his mortal remains." The other markers around are kind of hazy about what happened to Lewis, but if you go into the little cabin they have set up nearby and look at the objects displayed, you'll find a book with laminated pages, glued to a shelf. It's a copy of an eyewitness account of Lewis's death, and it is TERRIBLE (prior to the excerpt I am going to present here, Lewis has apparently shot himself twice), so don't read this: Lewis says to his host, Mrs. Grinder, "'Dear madam, look at my wounds.' She asked him what made him do so? He replied, 'If I had not done it somebody else would.'... He attempted to cut his throat, but was prevented. Some of the neighbors were called in. He frequently cried out, 'Oh how hard it is to die, I am so strong.'" This happened earlier: "About dark two or three other men rode up and called for lodging. Mr. Lewis immediately drew a brace of pistols, stepped towards them and challenged them to fight a duel. They not liking this salutation, rode on to the next house, five miles. This alarmed Mrs. Grinder. Supper, however, was ready in a few minutes." Nobody knows what really happened. But "click" here for a "web" site that lists several theories and quotes from many contemporary documents. Some hours after visiting Lewis's grave, Dr. Theresa and I happened to pull into a Ramada Inn that is adjacent to a weathered old graveyard. No, not adjacent, that's too mild. The old graveyard seems to be PART of the Ramada Inn. There's no fence or anything. You just park your car inches away from a tombstone. THIS IS THE PLACE FOR US, we thought.

The Tall Tree

Last night there was either a small chaperoned gathering for a church youth group that spontaneously exploded into a dance party or a cruelly enforced dance party that devolved into a grueling fiction workshop. Details are hazy. According to Dr. Theresa, my knee hurts because I "tried to do some kind of limbo move." We analyzed my seminal text: "He saw a tall tree and thought, That's a tall tree." It was either a keening lament for the state of modern fiction or a celebration of the written word, no one could tell. Story "The Tall Tree" reprinted by permission of the Yalobusha Review. Dessert of bittersweet chocolate, bacon and marshmallows provided by Sarah, who told us that alligators eat marshmallows, is that what she said? I am retaining an image of someone standing at the end of a pier, tossing marshmallows into the hellish maw of a grateful, smiling alligator. Sarah's uncle once appeared on a Fox News program because of his sighting of the Honey Island Swamp Monster, so she should know. (See also.) Dance-fuel pork shoulder provided by Stan's, the finest purveyor of pork in all the land. Here is a "yelp" review explaining some of the greatness that is Stan's. Remember Stan's for all your pork needs! And Kool & the Gang's "Open Sesame" for your dancing requirements, the genie's repeated command for "everybody" to "get down" lending itself to the "enforced dance party" theory. Shazam! (PS How can "Open Sesame" get 36 "dislikes" on youtube? As one youtube commenter notes with admirably plainspoken bewilderment: "36 people don't want to get down with the genie.")

It Wasn't a Dream

Don't you wish there were a movie called THE NAKED FACE? And what if it starred your favorite acting team? That's right: Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, and Art Carney! And like any movie starring Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, and Art Carney, our theoretical movie should have come out in 1985 - often known as "The Year of Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, and Art Carney." Dear friends, it's not a dream. It's real! I watched it last night when I couldn't sleep. Well, some of it. I should state right away that the title is misleading: Roger Moore's face is not naked at all. In fact, in many scenes he wears glasses as large as Louis Jordan's in SWAMP THING. Maybe they're the same glasses! And maybe my brain was a little hazy in the wee hours when I flipped on THE NAKED FACE, but I could swear it features an assassin who turns his wheelchair into a motorcycle, just like those Transformers all you kids love! Next there was a scene of Rod Steiger ranting and screaming the way he does sometimes. He was ACTING. He was a ranting, screaming police detective with his eyes popping out of his head, and his partner was Elliott Gould, which was a surprise. Elliott Gould just stood there against a wall in that laid-back, slightly slack-jawed way of his while Rod Steiger stomped around looking for any remaining bits of scenery to devour. I'll tell you one thing I learned last night: Roger Moore, Elliott Gould, and Rod Steiger went to very different acting schools. You should see them together. It's like watching three entirely different movies at once! What a bargain. So some other dudes are trying to kill Roger Moore and he runs into his little bedroom and props a chair under the doorknob! It seemed so quaint, and not at all like James Bond. The killers were thwarted by the doorknob, which they kept rattling in vain. Next Rod Steiger comes back to investigate and this time he decides to whisper. He's still very tense, but he just whispers everything for a change of pace. Like, "I really think my character would whisper everything in this scene." And the director was like, "Whatever you say, Rod Steiger." Then Rod Steiger goes to a diner with Elliott Gould and whispers some more but Elliott Gould gets on his nerves and all of a sudden he's screaming again. What a roller coaster ride! And all this time I'm thinking, "Must make it to Art Carney... Must make it to Art Carney..." He was third-billed in the capsule description after all. But friends, I didn't make it to Art Carney. It gradually seemed preferable to lie in bed staring at the ceiling and contemplating the terrible abyss, which is exactly what I did. The end.

The Long Pole

I am sure you recall when the Doomed Book Club read the autobiography of Mack Sennett. What? You don't? It's kind of hazy for me, too. In case you are interested, which you are not, the TCM "blog" has a nice introduction to Mack Sennett's oeuvre, which is a word I enjoy typing. So many vowels! Here is the way the author sums up the subtlety of the man's style: "if you hold a long pole horizontally, it will wallop people in the head." Ah! But he goes on: "if you do the same joke over and over for 10 minutes, it becomes something superlative." As you know, that is also my theory of writing (substitute "200 pages" for "10 minutes"), but sadly the publishing industry does not agree with me. Fools! Finally, if you read carefully, which I know you love to do, you will see that the author (without using our pet term) argues for silent film comedy as a major vehicle for repressive desublimation. So that's always loads of fun! Wow, it's like I've taken everything you don't care about and put it into one "post." You're welcome! (Pictured, my author photo.)

Aliens and Vikings and Dragons, Oh My

I saw the first fifteen minutes of a movie last night. I would like to tell you about it. There is this alien played by the guy who took the title role in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. And he lands on earth in the time of the Vikings! The Vikings are represented by John Hurt (!) who is an old Viking having a sword fight with his daughter (!!). He wants his daughter to marry some mean Viking and his daughter is like, "No way!" which is why they are having the sword fight, which we join in medias res. The old John Hurt Viking father chops his daughter's arm during the sword fight and then he is like, "I'm sorry! Let me get a sponge." As he is tending to his daughter's wound with a sponge, the mean Viking walks in and announces he has captured the alien. They have the alien tied up outside, and later, when the daughter Viking walks by with a bucket of water (in my hazy memory it is a bucket of water; people in these kinds of movies are always walking around carrying buckets of water from place to place) she glances at the alien and you can tell where that's going! Under interrogation, the alien reveals that he is on earth to FIGHT DRAGONS! As Annette Hanshaw used to say, "That's all."

What's In Today's New York Times?

In today's New York Times, we read about Werner Herzog's emotional involvement with a vain albino turkey. There is also the time a book made him so upset that he took it out and buried it. As a bonus, I found a pleasingly stiff phrase of the kind that delights me. It was a description of a performer named Lady Gaga (a hazy abstraction of whom I am far too old to have any substantial knowledge) "writhing atop a piano and pyrotechnics bursting from her costume."

The Feature Formerly Known As "The FBIL's Annotation Korner"

Welcome once more dear friends to the Feature Formerly Known as "The FBIL's Annotation Korner." Today, the NBIL, in response to the "blog's" recent focus on "dance crazes," alerts us to a current "dance craze" called "the Fishstick," which is, as the NBIL puts it, "apparently all the rage with the youtube crowd right now." The NBIL provides examples (here and here). Its currency would explain why I know nothing about it. For example, I was talking to McNeil the other day and he started going on about "that space alien picture, you know, the guy who says he took a picture of a space alien that was peeking in his window." I said, "I should put that on the 'blog." "Nah, everybody knows about it already," McNeil replied. "I don't know about it," I said. "It's ALL OVER THE INTERNET!" McNeil bellowed. (Pictured, the hazy photograph in question.) The NBIL concludes by saying, "Incidentally, 'Tighten Up' (the song of choice for Fishstickers) always makes me think of Homer Simpson and his one man band." This brings up another important subject. Remember how I was whining because nobody gets my clever Paul Harvey and "The Rest of the Story" references? Well, I was watching a "Simpsons" rerun last night in which Grandpa Simpson was listening to the radio. Paul Harvey (voiced by Harry Shearer) said, "And that little boy who nobody liked grew up to be... Roy Cohn. And now you know... THE REST OF THE STORY." It made me happy. But here is the sad part. Kent Osborne and I have a trick by which we know that our phone conversations have gone on too long and it is time to hang up. It's when we start quoting "Simpsons" lines back and forth to one another. Well, in the past few days, I've just started doing the very same thing on the "blog." Does it mean that OUR long one-sided conversation is almost over? Is it the death knell of the "blog"? Also, what is a "knell"?