The Short Version

You know, several days ago, McNeil and I had a pretty good thread going about James Franciscus, and in my heart I was like, "Oh, there's a rich vein of 'bloggable' material here." Then I was like, "Well, I better find a photo of James Franciscus, because no one knows who he is." Then I was like, "Gee, how am I going to explain what McNeil and I are talking about?" Then I realized that once I began explaining James Franciscus, I would have to explain a lot more things, and pretty soon I'd be explaining the universe. And then I got depressed. The short version is that McNeil got some information about a James Franciscus movie from one of his old books, but when he consulted the "internet" about it, he discovered that THERE IS NOT EVEN A SINGLE ALLUSION TO THIS MOVIE ANYWHERE ON THE "INTERNET." And then McNeil blamed Elon Musk for creating this new reality we live in, in which the James Franciscus movie McNeil wants to see has been erased from what we laughingly call "existence." We laughingly call it that! Laughingly! Anyway, the main thing is you know three things about me: I have a "daytime" book I read during the day. I have a "nighttime" book I read at night. And I have proven that every book has an owl in it. Therefore, it should come as no shock that yesterday during the day I found an owl in my daytime book and during the night I found an owl in my nighttime book. But let's dig deeper! Just like a burrowing owl! My daytime book is a Million Dollar Book Club selection by J. Hoberman, all about the avant-garde art scene in New York in the 1960s. In a footnote, I noticed a place called "The Night Owl Cafe." And I was like, "You can't hide from me in a footnote, owl!" So, at night, I'm reading... well, remember when I was reading that James Ellroy book while I took my blood pressure? And I chose it because it had a reliable-looking and charming spine? But I didn't really care for the words on the pages of the book itself? Anyway, I was in Square Books the other day and I bought the sequel (see also). So the narrator calls Richard Nixon a "foul owl on the prowl." A few pages later, someone calls our narrator a "night owl." And that reminded me of how James Ellroy seems to love the phrase "night owl." And who can blame him? I will conclude with the astonishing fact that in yesterday's reading, both my nighttime book and my daytime book namechecked the film THE CRY OF JAZZ (see also). All of which reminds me, Dr. Theresa says I'm supposed to take my blood pressure today.

Zoological Adjustments

Well, well, well. I guess you'd think I was pretty foolish if I went out and bought the first few books of Aristotle's METAPHYSICS just so I could fact-check Thomas Aquinas when he says there's an owl in it. But that's just what I did. And hold onto your hats! There's NOT an owl in it! Here's what it says in my brand spanking new (by which I mean 1933) translation of the METAPHYSICS: "just as it is with bats' eyes in respect to daylight, so it is with our mental intelligence..." That's right! It's bats! Not owls! NOW what are you saying? I bet you're saying "Money well spent!" I troubled myself to scrounge about halfheartedly on the "internet" to find out why Aquinas says owls instead of bats. And you know, I found out a couple of things, sort of. I skimmed over a scholarly article called "Power and Limits of the Human Mind: On the Arabic Reception of the Analogy of Bats and Daylight..." Look. There's more to the subtitle but I'm getting tired of typing. It's like an email I got from McNeil this morning. He was writing about the movie DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! but had the energy to type only "Dr. ... kidding" (ellipses McNeil's). And I mocked him for it! But look at me now. Anyway, if I'm reading it correctly, this guy (his name is Amos Bertolacci) says that when translating from Greek to Latin, people began subsituting "owl" for "bat." And he explains why, but I don't think I understood it. Here, I'll quote it for you: "The interpretations of the bats’ analogy in Latin philosophy and theology have a different character from the ones considered here: Latin translators from Greek made Aristotle’s text less problematic by means of zoological adjustments, i.e. by identifying Aristotle’s bats with other night animals (night ravens or owls)." Then he goes on to say that some people even substituted eagles for bats! That's just crazy. (The latter being my conclusion, not Mr. Bertolacci's.) The article led me to another "web" site containing, in full, Thomas Aquinas's critique of Averroes's gloss on Aristotle's metaphysics, where I read with my own two eyes and my own pea-sized brain Aquinas taking Averroes to task for his bat observations... leading me to conclude (and bear in mind "I ain't no doctor with a degree" to quote Aretha Franklin) that Aquinas knew very well that they were bats in the original, not owls! All of this is to come to the shocking point: for the FIRST TIME EVER, I am going to REMOVE a book from my BIG LONG LIST OF BOOKS WITH OWLS IN THEM. So long, Aristotle. You had your chance! And you blew it. To quote Bill Boyle imitating Robert De Niro in COP LAND, "YOU BLEW IT!!!!!"

Aquinas Mania!

I'm sure you've been keeping up with the adventures of Jerky the Li'l Jerk, that rascally rapscallion who has stolen America's heart by telling people to go to hell. In that case, there is no need to remind you of Jerky's recent encounter with Thomas Aquinas. In order to compose that little masterpiece, I first fetched my "concise translation" of the SUMMA THEOLOGICA. Well, friends, that "concise translation" was a little TOO "concise"! Ha ha, what a fix. So I had to crawl around on the "internet" in search of the mot juste, as I call it. Then I started thinking, "Jack," I started thinking, "why don't you have a COMPLETE edition of the SUMMA THEOLOGICA in several volumes like a normal person?" So I tracked down just such a set. I made it to page three of the first volume, you will be impressed to hear. And that's where I read about "the weakness of our intelligence, 'which is dazzled by the clearest objects of nature; as the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun.'" As you can plainly see, due to my expert rendering of the punctuation, Aquinas is quoting from something there, which appears to be, based on his note, the METAPHYSICS of Aristotle. All right! That means that not only does the SUMMA THEOLOGICA have an owl in it, it borrows that owl from another work with an owl in it, a nesting phenomenon, if you will, which we have examined before, and I would include a "hyperlink" to prove it, but I'm starting to depress myself. And you! (Please "click" on this important correction.)

The Mystery of Barry Lyndon's Fart

I had fun last night watching BARRY LYNDON with Tom Franklin. Yes, that's my idea of fun, so go to hell. Speaking of going to hell! You should check out my great new comic strip. From the creator of Frowny 'n' Smiley comes Jerky the Li'l Jerk. He's the fun-loving little boy who tells people to go to hell. "Click" here for all the action you can stand. It's Jerky the Li'l Jerk! They're presented in reverse chronological order, so scroll up from the bottom, folks. You won't want to miss a single panel of America's newest sweetheart, Jerky the Li'l Jerk. Anyway, so I was thinking of all the people I've watched BARRY LYNDON with. I watched BARRY LYNDON with Pendleton Ward! (For details, "click" here.) I watched BARRY LYNDON with Lee Durkee! (For details, "click" here!) I watched BARRY LYNDON with Megan Abbott and Kent Osborne! Simultaneously! Looking back at the "post" reporting on my viewing experience with Pen, I thought, huh! I thought, gee! Didn't Pen make me stop the movie and replay a scene because he thought Barry Lyndon farted? And I couldn't convince him that Barry Lyndon didn't fart? And didn't I write this down? I thought it was on the "blog"! But after a long, humiliating search for "barry lyndon + fart" turned up nothing on the "blog" I started scanning other examples of my voluminous output, including my many, many unpublished novels. And you know where I found it? You'll never guess. You're not even here! No one is reading this. I've made my peace with that. Well, I'll tell you anyway. I did a thing for Popula where I just babbled into a digital recorder and transcribed the results, and it was there that I related the "Pen thinking that Barry Lyndon farted" tale. "Click" here for proof. How many things have I told you to "click"? Four? How many did you "click"? Zero? I guess you're busy. So, the "Barry Lyndon farting" story was especially difficult to find because for some reason I changed everybody's name when I was babbling into that recorder. I guess that was back when I valued privacy or human dignity or whatever it was we used to value around here. So I called Pen "Tex." He's from Texas in real life, though I think it was also a salute to the anarchic spirit of animation pioneer Tex Avery. For more about Barry Lyndon's farts, ask your pastor or visit your local library.

Of Donkeys and Robots

So I'm reading ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC and Gideon Bohak, the author, is telling of an "erotic spell" in which a charm is written on a piece of tin, to which he adds the parenthetical statement "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Let me explain. This is nothing like the Gideon Bohak I know. Well, there is a footnote in which he makes a fond, gently humorous allusion to his hometown. But the violent whimsy of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" is present nowhere else in this academic... some might say dry as burnt toast... work. Well! Gideon Bohak does favor a jaunty exclamation point in his parenthetical statements (as seen in the example already given), which might count as whimsy if you are a scholar of ancient esoterica. Before I continue exploring this thought, I want to say that I wonder what Gideon Bohak's editor thought of "it's a tin line between love and hate!" Did Gideon Bohak have to fight for it? I am developing an enhanced sense of respect for Gideon Bohak. Anyway, so, yes! In the very next paragraph we have an example of Bohak's penchant for parenthetical exclamation points. He has moved on to a spell which requires the magician (or is it the client?) to "take meat of a donkey in your mouth." I'm sorry I told you that. But I had to! Because Gideon Bohak presently adds the parenthetical statement that putting donkey meat in your mouth is "not very kosher!" Exclamation point his, I reemphasize. He goes on to examine cultural depictions of donkeys as "stupid, stubborn, and lazy," which reminded me, by way of contrast, of the other book I am reading right now, THE ILIAD, in which mules have been put forth more than once as some of the greatest animals you'd ever want to meet. They're always plowing fields faster than an ox, or pulling a big tree trunk down the side of a mountain. Those are the two things I can remember mules (in both cases, metaphorical mules) doing in THE ILIAD. Which brings me to another subject! Last night in bed, as I read THE ILIAD and Dr. Theresa worked a crossword puzzle, I suddenly shouted, "Hey! There are robots in this book!" Let's let that hang in the air for a while. Because I also want to say that I ran into Kelly Kornegay in Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of weeks ago, at the 50th anniversary party for Lemuria Books, which I didn't even tell you about, because why should you know every single thing that goes on in my life? Anyway, Kelly and I were talking about THE ILIAD, and she mentioned living in a new place where she can look out the window and see a donkey, and I got to tell her about the heroic mules of THE ILIAD. Pretty soon it got dark and Ace Atkins and I were standing in front of a stage watching 92-year-old bluesman Bobby Rush, of whom I took a photo with my very own phone and perhaps I will "post" it below. Also, there was a guy dressed as a cowboy who did some of the greatest dancing I've ever seen. He was up there all by himself dancing in his cowboy suit while opening acts played, and finally I thought, I should go dance with this guy! Let's get this party started! And Ace took a video of it, which I texted to Dr. Theresa (who had stayed home) so she could see my moves, and she immediately texted back "Have you been drinking?" And that's an interesting question but I bet you want to get back to the robots I read about in THE ILIAD last night. "They were made all of gold, but looked like living women." So you know I immediately thought of the DC comics characters the Metal Men, just as Homer intended. Furthermore, I checked Emily Wilson's endnote, and she calls them "robot women," so I'm not just coming to crazy conclusions. In fact, I think somebody installed A.I., because "They had a consciousness inside their hearts." And as I was lying there marveling about the golden robot women with consciousness in their hearts, I remembered thinking that I had noticed robots in the RAMAYANA as well. And I didn't just lie there and think about it for a change. I hauled my sorry carcass out of bed and went upstairs and found the RAMAYANA and refreshed my memory about these hydraulically powered automatons: "mechanical men, silently driven by falling water in some hidden way." And much like them, I am now running out of steam.

I Owe You Nothing

I owe you (?) the end of Dolon's tale. Come on, you know Dolon! Everybody's favorite character in THE ILIAD? The man with the polecat on his head? Yes, that Dolon! As if there could ever be another. So last night in bed I came to the conclusion of his sorry plight. Maybe you'll be happy to hear that Diomedes didn't spear him like he spears everybody else. But then I would have to tell you that for a change of pace, Diomedes just chopped Dolon's head right off! And get this: "Dolon's head, still speaking, rolled in the dust." How about that? You know what that reminded me of? Well, lots of things. So many things that I began to worry about myself. For example, I believe there is a scene in AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD wherein a decapitated head kind of goes "cha cha cha cha" and the eyes look around as if to say, "Hey! What gives?" I am not sure whether the scene in question, if it truly exists, was the wellspring whence arose an inside joke shared by Dr. Theresa and myself, where we sort of... act like a skull going "cha cha cha cha cha cha"? You had to be there. I am also put in mind, though the situation is a bit different, of Sir Everard Digby, referred to by John Aubrey as "the handsomemest man in England." Here, I will save you the trouble of "clicking": "When his heart was pluct out by the executioner (who... cryed 'Here is the heart of a traytor!') it is credibly reported, he replied, 'Thou liest!'" And then there's the execution I read about in Tudor (?) England: "When the executioner held up the head, its eyes and lips moved." Anyway, I can't stop thinking about the "polecat cap," as Emily Wilson calls it. After Diomedes chops off Dolon's head, he grabs the polecat cap and dedicates it as an offering to Athena. Just what Athena wanted!

The Toastmaster Who Wasn't There

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

Single Digits

By now you must be aware of how sullen my sister and I are when it comes to the Oscars. More accurately, at this stage of our lives, we just don't care. I say "at this stage" even though she is fourteen years younger than me. I guess she just got jaded at a much quicker rate! That is really none of my business. Anyway, for whatever reason, we have become like zombies or ghosts, helplessly replaying the actions we once undertook with (though it is impossible to recall it) enthusiasm (?). By which I mean that we still try to beat each other at guessing the Oscar winners. An empty endeavor! This year, we both achieved, if you can call it that, single digits as far as correct guesses went. But I am honor-bound to report that my sister's single digit was higher than mine. And I'll tell you why. She kept guessing FRANKENSTEIN. Every time she guessed it I would laugh and mock her with harsh sarcasm... no! I would never do that to my sister. It was mild sarcasm at most. A delicate hint of sarcasm! Almost soothing! I would be like, "Snort, snort, that's not going to win anything!" All in all, a disheartening experience. Life, I mean.

Advances in Boiling

Well, I'm reading another book with an owl in it but let's talk about something else first. I'm unemployed, so I can make this "post" as long as I want. So, McNeil emailed me a photograph of a physical newspaper-like object he was reading, and he said the byline belonged to Anya Groner. He wondered whether this could be the same Anya Groner I used to teach. I strained my eyes but could not discern individual letters of the font displayed in such a miniscule fashion by McNeil's photograph. Still, I could tell the article was about bears. And in my heart, I knew that Anya would love writing about bears. So I said "Yes!" before I even asked her. So then I asked her. And... "Yes!" Yes, Anya wrote the article about a bear attack (content warning: bear attack!) and sent me this "link" ("click" here) that even my old eyes could read. Check it out! Another thing McNeil and I emailed about was how I dreamed about him betting on horses and wearing a tuxedo and doing a duet with Paul Simon, in which they played saxophones as well as playing guitars and singing. McNeil contended that I was really dreaming about myself, because I used to play the saxophone and I have bet on horses... once! But I was ashamed for McNeil to think that I only used his face in order to dream about myself... though I've heard it said (haven't I?) that everyone in your dreams is really you. So! I did not mention this to McNeil at the time, but in the dream I was sitting around near a guitar and Paul Simon walked up and asked whether I played, and I was like, "No, this is my friend McNeil's guitar. He'll be back in a minute." In the dream, then, I did make a distinction between myself and McNeil, who really does play the guitar. All right! I'm reading and very much enjoying THE ELEMENTALS by Michael McDowell, whom I am happy to claim as a fellow native of Alabama. And allow me to quote: "Big Barbara complained it was hotter than a boiled owl." Now, in our previous literary encounters with owls of the boiled variety, we have observed them to be drunk (as in "stewed") most often, but also tough or sore. I do believe this is the first time we have heard of a boiled owl being "hot," but I guess a boiled owl would be hot indeed, especially right out of the pot. I should mention that the illustration for Anya's bear article is by Blair Hobbs, who also made the iconic cheese ball that illustrates my recent "blog"trospective about my work on ADVENTURE TIME.

Green Means Go

Hey! You know how THE ELEPHANT, a special I worked on with Kent Osborne, Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, Patrick McHale, Pendleton Ward, and many others, will premiere on Adult Swim December 19? Pretty soon! And how the next day, on HBO Max, assuming it still exists, there will be a "Behind the Elephant" special ABOUT the special? A special about a special. What will they think of next? But guess what? Whatever you guessed, you were wrong. Because if you watch THE ELEPHANT on December 19 on an old-timey TV set like an ancient caveman, you'll see Frowny 'n' Smiley! Yes, stop pinching yourselves, THAT Frowny 'n' Smiley, famous for being a thing no one remembers from back when I was on twitter. Only now they're in TV form! Like when Milhouse said ALF was in pog form. I got the green light to spread the word. I call it a show, but I'm lying. Frowny 'n' Smiley episodes are 15 seconds long. So I don't think you can comfortably call that a show. But it's something! And you're going to love it. LOVE IT! Let Frowny 'n' Smiley worm their way into your shriveled up hearts, you monsters! Learn to feel again!

Bowling Alleys

In the same passage from her diary of the year 1616, Anne Clifford reflects on how her husband is hanging out in bowling alleys while she is at home with a "sorrowful and heavy heart" trying to take care of serious financial matters. Bowling alleys! That's a direct quotation. Except for the exclamation point. Did you know they had bowling alleys in 1616? I'm not going to look into it. Yes, all right, you already knew they had bowling alleys in 1616, it's something they taught you in kindergarten, you think about it all the time. You're so great. You make me want to puke.

Not Cool, Medea!

I was giving 3 to 2 odds that there would be an owl in this book of Seneca's plays. You should've taken me up on it! So Medea is whipping up a poisonous stew and she adds, in the words of Emily Wilson's translation, "the heart of a melancholy eagle-owl." Then she does something with a screech owl I can't even tell you about. It's just too awful. That's no way to act! This reminded me of something, which turned out to be John Aubrey's paraphrase of Ovid, in which Medea tosses "the screech owl's flesh and its ill-boding wings" into her bubbling (one assumes) pot. And THAT made me want to look up the passage in my own edition of Ovid, translated by Rolfe Humphries, who gives us "a hoot-owl's wings and flesh." Then he adds "a werewolf's entrails," so that's really something. But that's not the point! As much as we all love the entrails of werewolves, the point, as any longtime "blog" reader - there are none - will know, is that hooting and screeching are two different things. So which is it? Are we to believe John Aubrey or Rolfe Humphries? I'd have to learn Latin to find out. And, as established here previously, by implication, that's not going to happen. Even though Dr. Theresa took four semesters of it as an undergraduate! None of it rubbed off. Well, I had my chance to learn things when I was young. But I was too busy watching GRAPE APE.

Frivolity When the Earth Is Swallowed Up

This is where I tell you about my trip to Burbank. 1. On the flight out, my seatmate had a sweet dog companion seemingly smuggled under his hoodie. I don't know about dogs. I believe this one was a boxer. But I just don't know. I can't swear to it in a court of law! The dog had one blue eye and one brown eye. It would arise from the neck hole of the hoodie and look at me with a nice expression. Sometimes, due to the angle of its owner, it looked like a human with a dog's head! When the guy got up to go to the restroom, he stuffed the dog into a duffel bag. The dog was fine. 2. Layover at the Salt Lake City airport! This story just gets better and better, doesn't it? So, a booming voice on the public address system repeatedly gave out the first, middle, and last name of a guy who had walked out on his check at an airport restaurant. It was an old-school public shaming... Cotton Mather style! I realize that by mentioning Cotton Mather, I may have confused you geographically. I don't know enough about Brigham Young to know whether he would have made an appropriate replacement in my already shaky allusion. 3. Okay, on the next airplane, a guy across the aisle was scrolling through pictures on his phone and narrating to his friend: "This is a salad bar... that's another salad bar..." Ha ha, anyway, I thought that was funny. They were looking at photos of salad bars! It's a crazy world! 4. BURBANK! Kent was in town, too, and we were both staying in the same hotel. As we rode back to the hotel from Dan Tana's, Kent spied a DeLorean pulling into traffic behind us. He was pretty stoked, I don't mind telling you! He kept saying, "It's a DeLorean! Look, it's a DeLorean! It's right behind us. The DeLorean is right behind us!" But I don't know why, I never turned around to look at the DeLorean. It was just like when Kent begged me to watch Mark McGwire break a home run record and I coldly refused. We'll never know what's wrong with me. 5. On one menu, I briefly misread "scallion" as "sea lion." 6. Kate Tsang and I spent a good part of one afternoon just wandering around in the impossibly vast Warner Brothers prop department. People were working, loading props on carts to be taken to various sets. We just stayed out of their way. No one hassled us. In fact, one man cheerfully asked if we needed anything. We said we were just looking. Then we ended up in some odd corners, such as a section containing many kinds of animals who had been subjected to taxidermy. I have never enjoyed the thought of taxidermy. But here's Kate. She notices that some of the animals are falling apart. She dates them for me to the time "when Theodore Roosevelt was shooting animals" because they were stuffed with straw... a discontinued practice, Kate gave me to understand. I was standing there thinking, like, "Wow, Kate sure knows a lot about taxidermy!" Which reminds me of something: 7. I ran into Steve Wolfhard completely unexpectedly! Somehow we got to talking about the movie THE SEA HAWK and I mentioned how much I enjoyed the monkey's performance in that film. Steve said the monkey made him sad. I got it! I feel the same way about taxidermy. I said, "Were you thinking about the monkey's home life?" And Steve said... I think I have this right... "I was thinking, 'That could have been me!'" Trying to show Steve that I was on his side about being sad concerning monkeys, I said I didn't like it when monkeys were made to ride dogs. Steve said, "Maybe the monkey likes it. Maybe he likes going fast." 8. Oh! Before I get back to the prop department, I should say that when I arrived at the gate into Warner Brothers, I was greeted by a young, groovy guard, not an irascible old guard of the type the movies have trained me to expect. So, when Kate and I entered the parking garage over near the prop department, an irascible old guard really didn't want to let us in. At last, he asked us for identification, and that's when I discovered MY DRIVER'S LICENSE WAS MISSING! I bet you didn't know you were in for thrills like this. Anyhow, it turned out the groovy young guard forgot to include it when he handed me back everything I had taken out of my pockets for him. And I didn't notice! So I'm not blaming the hipsters of today for falling down on the job! BUT! If that hardboiled old-school guard hadn't been so stereotypically irascible, I might never have been allowed to leave Burbank! I might be sitting in a small room at the Burbank airport right now! So, thank you, hateful old guard. 9. Well, I can't really describe how satisfying it was to wander around the prop department with Kate. I don't know - though I suspect there's a Warholian element - why it is so wonderful to look at, just for example, a wall full of rotary phones arranged by color, or a shelf of hundreds of miniature Statues of Liberty, or boxes and boxes of beauty products from the 40s and 50s, or the long row of toilets, of which (the toilets) I sent a photo to just one person: Ace Atkins. Kate and I stayed in the prop department so long that they were closing up. We didn't know it. We just kept trying to get out and finding nothing but locked doors. We could have been trapped forever! Who was going to help us? Not the irascible guard! He would probably think we were getting what we deserved. Then we found a different kind of door: a door that was not locked. 10. Kate and I walked a few short steps from the Warner Brothers lot to the Smoke House, where we dined with one Adam Muto. Now that I can't eat steak anymore because of wanting to stay alive, I was excited to order the chicken pot pie. You know the one! The one that Pen and I saw once! The one as big around as a manhole cover! But friends, I am here to inform you they have taken it off the menu. The server told me that one time... just one time... they had put it back on the menu for a special occasion. But that time is gone forever. We live in new times now. He was very nice, and couldn't have known he was breaking my heart. 11. Reading Seneca's NATURAL QUESTIONS while taking my blood pressure in my hotel room, I laughed when he observed, "Frivolity when the earth is swallowed up shows a lack of serious-mindedness." He was angry at Ovid for beautifully describing an apocalyptic flood but then adding the image of wolves and sheep and lions swimming around in it. "Come on, Ovid! Get real! As if!" Such seemed to be the contents of Seneca's objections. 12. Quinn took me to a place that featured on its menu something called a "Good Ass Salad." Such language! Is that how you get your kicks? Forcing someone's great-grandmother to say the words "good ass salad"? This great-grandmother I'm imagining can't silently point at the item on the menu with her quaking, palsied finger! Thoughts along these lines led me to confess to Quinn that I have been saying "ass" on the "blog" a lot lately. Quinn said, "Oh, Jack, Bart Simpson could say 'ass' in the 90s." She might not have said "Oh, Jack." 13. It was raining the morning I left for home. Kate had said just a day or two before, "It never rains here." But there it was, falling from the sky, the tears of the gods as I like to call it. At a stoplight on the way to the airport, I saw a driver sticking his hand out the window, eager to discover for himself what this thing they call a raindrop must feel like. His beaming grin indicated that he was pleased with the result!

Awful Stuff

Content warning! This "post" will have some gory junk in it, mostly compliments of Mr. William Shakespeare, with some help from Tom Wolfe. Okay! First of all, I am finally reading that paperback of HENRY VI, Part 1 I got at Square Books. All right! Pin a medal on me. Oh! Before you pin a medal on me, I was casually glancing through the "blog" for previous Henry VI tidbits, and I found one that says his favorite activity was sleeping. I get it! I really do. But I want to talk about this guy Talbot. A pal of his gets mortally wounded and Talbot asks him, "One of thy eyes and thy cheek's side struck off?" Which is a funny thing to ask a person in that position. Like, what's the guy supposed to say, am I right? Come on! Get it together, Talbot! You know, it's the same thing that happens to Chuck Yeager at the end of THE RIGHT STUFF, both the movie and the book. I mean to say that his face catches on fire after he ejects from his plummeting aircraft. Don't worry, folks, unlike Talbot's friend Salisbury, he's fine! But a detail they leave out of the movie is that after he hits the ground, the kid who finds him vomits all over the place because old Chuck's not looking so good. I wonder why they left that out of the movie! Getting back to Talbot, he's real upset, you see, about how dirty they've done his pal. He's mad in particular at Joan of Arc and her buddy the Dauphin, and he vows to get 'em! Get 'em good! "Your hearts I'll stamp out with my horse's heels and make a quagmire of your mingled brains." Holy cow! Mingled brains! He's going to mingle their brains all up! What! It's going to be brain soup when he gets through with them! Just horrible, as promised. Well, the guy is upset, like I was telling you. Later, though, a French lady calls Talbot a "weak and writhled shrimp." Ha ha! Writhled! Ouch! Ooh la la! Zut alors! Anyway, okay, Shakespeare, you've got me hooked! What's up next with this crazy crew of lovable lunkheads?

McNeil's Heart

Another email from McNeil. This time he wanted me to know that Trump has "gone full Peter Beter!!!" (punctuation McNeil's), a phrase ("full Peter Beter") that will mean nothing to those of you who have not studied the "blog" for at least a decade, unless you have the stamina or intellectual energy to "click" on one or two "links," which statistics show is unlikely. Anyway, I found it hard to swallow McNeil's claim that the aforementioned elected official believes President Biden to have been replaced during some part of his administration by a robot or clone, so McNeil forwarded a news report showing that indeed Trump had retweeted (or whatever they call it in our strange new times; bleep blorp?) something to that effect. To quote McNeil more extensively: "my heart leaps up! He has gone full Peter Beter!!!" McNeil's heart, it should be noted, is leaping up ironically, if I may interpret, assuming I understand irony correctly, which I don't. So I replied to McNeil's email something clever like "We're living the dream." Maybe the word I'm looking for is sarcasm. I believe McNeil is alluding to Wordsworth, by the way, whose heart famously leapt all over the damn place when he beheld a rainbow in the sky. Good for Wordsworth! It must be nice.

Just Think

This is not what I came here to tell you, but THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES has owls in it: "But just think of those summer nights! The owls whimpering, the night moaning, and when it all got too spooky we both got into my bed so we could go on talking." But no, I came here to say that I watched a Tim Holt western called THUNDERING HOOFS, and... well, first let me say something about these Tim Holt westerns. They're just great. The average runtime is about 65 minutes, I guess, and they all have the same plot. There's some kind of corrupt businessman or official who is messing around with the welfare of goodhearted townspeople, and here comes a stranger, Tim Holt, riding in to save the day. At some point, though, the bad guys twist it around so it looks like Tim Holt is in charge of their rotten scheme! So he gets locked up or ostracized or what-have-you, and things look pretty bleak for a minute, but it's okay, because he figures out how to expose the jerks and be celebrated as the hero he truly is. It's an incredibly comforting formula, and reminds me of some of Julia Pott's observations about the basic template of romantic comedy, but I put all of her thoughts on the subject into one of my unpublished novels, so I won't repeat them, not because I think anything will ever happen with any of my unpublished novels, but just because it seems exhausting to type it all up again. Or even to think about it! The main point is that I mused wisely to myself, regarding THUNDERING HOOFS, "'Hoofs' looks very wrong to me. I always thought it was 'hooves!'" So then I opened up Kafka's diaries, and in the next passage I read, the translator Ross Benjamin used "hoofs"!!!! So, boy, that was something. So I was like, I guess Tim Holt and Ross Benjamin know what the hell they're talking about, I'll leave this matter in their capable hoofs. BUT THEN! I told McNeil all about it, because he had just emailed me to relate his own uncanny coincidence. Oh, you'd like to hear about it too? Okay! You twisted my arm. Ouch! So, McNeil happened to idly pick up his novelization of the Dean Martin vehicle WHO'S GOT THE ACTION? and read a couple of pages. Wait! I must add that McNeil scrupulously clarified that the book may have been a novelization OR maybe the movie was based on a novel with, in its original printing, another title, and then they changed the title of the novel to tie it in with the movie. Nobody knows for sure! Because, like me, McNeil no longer cares to look things up. It's presumptuous of me to say that. Maybe he still likes to look things up. Anyway, he picked up the book on April 11 of this year... then, by chance, a few days later, he picked up an old notebook (a very old notebook) and learned that he had recorded a showing of WHO'S GOT THE ACTION? on... are you ready?... April 11, 1983!!!! You can pick your jaw up off the floor now. Anyway, though, the point is that McNeil issued a statement that he had never once in his young life seen "hoofs" used and he found the very thought of it unacceptable. And I was like, to McNeil, "Now that I've discussed this with you, I won't have to 'blog' about it!" Which, as you can see, was a dirty lie.

Divisive Concepts!

Well, Dr. Theresa tells me that the Mississippi legislature, which theoretically represents us and all the other people of Mississippi, has passed a bill banning the teaching of "divisive concepts." ("Click" here for a news article you can read about it.) Now what, you may ask, is a divisive concept? I'll tell you what the Mississippi legislature appears to think, with just a few examples, hardly comprehensive: Do you find it sobering that a Black person couldn't attend the University of Mississippi until 1962? And people got shot and died over it? Divisive! Do you think it was a bit excessive when Oscar Wilde was thrown into prison and sentenced to hard labor for being gay? Divisive! Did you ever say something like "Women should be paid the same as men for doing the same job"? Divisive! Do you like the Billie Holiday song that goes "Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose, so the Bible said and it still is news"? Divisive! Do you consider it none of your damn beeswax to sit in judgment over how someone else defines their own identity? Divisive! How about the inscription on the Statue of Liberty? Divisive! And, you know, keep going from there, it's all up to you! Because guess what? Part of the bill says that students can inform on their teachers like little squirmy cheese-eating rats for anything that makes them feel all confused inside like trembling fledglings, if such should be their unfortunate nature. I paraphrase slightly, while mixing animal metaphors, or similes. So, in short, I would say, based on contextual evidence, that the Mississippi legislature is afraid that Mississippi has become too "woke," a word they love to slop around for effect. They think, it seems, that "woke" is the first word that springs to people's minds about Mississippi, and by golly they're going to put a stop to it. Like, people around the world are saying, "I'd love to go to Mississippi, but it's just too 'woke' for me." Anyway, if the Mississippi legislature is reading this, I just want to let them know that no one has ever, ever, ever said that. Now let's move on to another divisive concept: art! I'm going to have a piece in an art show. Divisive? You bet your ass! Because I'm not an artist. OR AM I? Divisive! Sorry, I can't stop thinking about the Mississippi legislature. Maybe it's a mistake to combine these two subjects in a single "post," but I actually think it's okay because nobody reads this "blog." The gallery asked the artists to promote the show, which was all I intended to do in this "post," and then I got the text from Dr. Theresa and my brain exploded. To be precise, the gallery asked us to promote the show on "social media," when you know perfectly well I quit social media a while back and became the acknowledged hero of our crummy times. You may "click" here for details about the art show, which will also feature some nice people who have been mentioned on the "blog" in the past: Andy Ristaino, Lyle Partridge, Pendleton Ward, Pat McHale, and Rebecca Sugar. And many others. Fifty in all, I think, so maybe there are some others who have been mentioned on the "blog" as well, but my old eyes are tired of seeing and my heart is being squashed under the big uncaring butt of the Mississippi legislature. Ha ha, sorry, gallery, how's this for a promo? I love you!

Beside You All the Time

I'm back! You didn't know I was gone. And in fact, I was never gone. I've been right here beside you all the time, my darling. With Covid! That's right, I finally became part of the hottest trend from five years ago, the signature disease of our special rotten times. A hint of it flutters still about my weakened flesh as I type these heartfelt words. I am sorry it delayed me from telling you about my dream project. For years, I wanted to interview Ace Atkins about his rosy days of golden youth working on the Pauly Shore film JURY DUTY. As you may confirm by "clicking" here, the first installment is already in the can!

A Rough 217 Months

I am sure you are aware of my halfhearted efforts to scrub old offsite zombie "links" from the "blog," especially after McNeil's discovery that a few ne'er-do-wells have replaced dead "links" to elsewhere on the "web" with their dirty, dirty sex thoughts. Well, I believe I have made it through scrubbing maybe three months of roughly 217. And multiply that by the innumerable stupid yet innocent "links" I saw fit to scatter heedlessly like so much chicken feed. So today I was grudgingly "clicking" on some ancient, mostly broken "links" I provided like a real jerk lacking foresight in 2007, and I actually found one that still worked. Rare, I must say! I had no memory of it. But it was a dancing, singing skeleton which afforded me some pleasure, a mild form of pleasure in which you may mildly share by "clicking" here. I guess I am just adding a future zombie "link" for my disappointed executors to deal with. Well, it seemed like a nice way to kick off Halloween month, anyway. Enjoy, if you are able, the singing skeleton and its seeming (and ironic [?]) knack for "internet" survival! I love you, singing skeleton!

Le Bits de Boyer

Don't worry, your mind isn't freaking out on you! We're preempting "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" for some bits about ginchy French heartthrob Charles Boyer. Our tale begins with some of McNeil's li'l bogie bits. He was telling me how after the Boyer/Bacall movie CONFIDENTIAL AGENT turned out to be a dud, they went back and... well, let's see. I need to consult McNeil's email. They "had Hawks/Bogart/Bacall and a few others get together and film several new scenes to punch up The Big Sleep even more to give Bacall more 'ooompf.'" McNeil goes on to explain that "ooompf" is his own paraphrasing of whatever they were giving Bacall more of, not that she needed it. So he was telling me this and I was like, WHAT! I just recorded CONFIDENTIAL AGENT from a TCM showing, because Dr. Theresa and I had enjoyed Charles Boyer so much in a recent viewing of CLUNY BROWN, which I had also recorded off of TCM. And then McNeil came back at me saying THAT was weird because he had recently conducted a small, informal poll about the handsomeness of Charles Boyer. I don't wish to venture into McNeil's private life, but suffice to say, in McNeil's words, "a man has to know where he stands!!!" (Triple exclamation points are McNeil's.) One will no doubt be reminded of the time that Dr. Theresa blew my mind by saying that she might well prefer the charms of Fredric March over those of Gary Cooper. That was eight years ago and I still don't believe it. I think about it every night as I toss and turn in bed!