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!

The Bolger Assertion

Hey, the other day, the ninth episode of ACE GOES HOLLYWOOD "dropped," as you kids like to say. You say it all the time! I can just hear you now, saying it. How I hate you! Where was I? You remember ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. It's where, on the "web" site FLAMING HYDRA, I converse with Ace Atkins about his time working on the Pauly Shore film JURY DUTY. But today I was thinking not about the latest episode, but episode 6, in which Ace mentions Sammy Davis Jr. and I demand that he explain to the reader, if any, who Sammy Davis Jr. is. Ace doesn't think it's necessary. That's when I say, quote, "I told you, I work with kids that never heard of CHEERS! Which is fine. Why should they? You know what? It’s time for me to die anyway." To which Ace wisely replies, "Well, we gotta finish this first." You'll see the connection soon enough. Connection to what? Leave me alone! So, I've been reading a book about ancient Greece, but I'm not going to name it, because I'm enjoying it, but it's going to seem like I'm being peevish and critical when I say things like it seems to be written for people who have never read a book before. Like the author will interject - and this will be a paraphrase, but I wouldn't call it an exaggeration - "The ancient Greeks didn't have online banking like you and me!" Okay. Maybe she's being welcoming and chummy, and what's wrong with that? I'm the real monster here. We all know that. But late in the book she starts a sentence this way, and this is an exact quotation: "As Ray Bolger sang..." WHAT! It has the feeling, again, of being an attempt to draw in the reader cozily, conversationally, but WHAT! Not even I would start a sentence "As Ray Bolger sang..." and I've seen a lot of Ray Bolger movies. More than you have! I've seen more Ray Bolger movies than Ray Bolger ever did! And look. She's not even talking about THE WIZARD OF OZ. She's talking about something called "The Churkendoose." The Churkendoose! And here's where you smugly inform me that you know everything about the Churkendoose, and everybody knows about it, and you've thought about the Churkendoose every day of your life for as long as you can remember, and I'm the last person on earth who doesn't know about the Churkendoose. It's like the time I was so excited to see wild turkeys (of which the Churkendoose is a close relation!) and everybody got together to pee on my happiness. I'm just saying the hip kids of today aren't Ray Bolger experts. Or maybe they are! But I think maybe you're pushing them away! Hey! Remember the time I read a long, serious book about Hinduism and the author almost immediately quoted Garrison Keillor? Anyway, the Churkendoose came out as a book in 1946, and Ray Bolger croaked his way through the musical adaptation in 1947. Or, as A.I. so helpfully informed me (without me asking!), it was "first published in 2003."

Suffolk's Head

Just because I keep a big long list... look... I've told you this a million times! But just because I keep a big long list of books with owls in them doesn't mean I have to tell you EVERY time an owl appears in a single book. I am obliged to mention only one owl incident per volume. But! I could not help but notice in HENRY VI, PART 2, or 2 HENRY VI, as Oral Sumner Coad calls it, that screech owls make a second appearance. Not regular non-screeching owls, but screech owls... twice! As if one set of screech owls wasn't enough. Allow me to paraphrase or summarize Shakespeare. I'll make it hip for the kids of today! So Queen Margaret is like, okay, Suffolk, if you're so dang mad why don't you start cursing everybody? And Suffolk is like oh yeah? Wait until you see how great I am at cursing people! Then he wishes that the sweetest thing anybody ever gets to eat is bitter gall and, I don't know, that lizards will bite their asses? The book is downstairs by the bed. Hence the paraphrasing. And he hopes the only music they hear will come from snakes and screech owls. That kind of stuff. Finally, Queen Margaret is like, okay, we get it, put a sock in it! But she loves him. I hope you don't mind some spoilers. Anyway, it doesn't go well for him because one of the subsequent stage directions is (and I think this may be a quotation, not a paraphrase, or darn close to it) "Enter Queen Margaret, carrying Suffolk's head." Speaking of books with owls in them, McNeil wrote with the unhelpful suggestion that I begin a second list... one of books I've read WITHOUT owls in them. See, he was reading THE BRASS CUPCAKE by John D. MacDonald, and he checked the list, curious to know whether he might expect an owl, but found himself at a loss. Was it not on there because it didn't have an owl in it? Or did it have an owl in it but I just haven't read it? Or... did it not have an... you get it. My mind is wandering. Most importantly, McNeil reports that THE BRASS CUPCAKE confirms our observation that John D. MacDonald is afraid of women, especially their mouths. Wait! I mean his PROTAGONISTS are afraid of women and their mouths. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that all his protagonists are deathly afraid of women's mouths, just a crazy coincidence, having nothing to do with the unspeakable fears of John D. MacDonald himself. Anyway, and this is gross, so brace yourself, according to McNeil, the protagonist of THE BRASS CUPCAKE kisses a woman and her mouth is "like a soft open wound." Okay!

McNeil's Li'l Bible Bits

I guess we're assuming that McNeil has abandoned that 700-hundred-page biography of Humphrey Bogart by which he erstwhile so enchantingly sprinkled our humble undertaking with gossamer fancies. As you know, he's reading the Bible now instead - specifically, the New Testament. His thoughts on the matter, while jaunty, are certainly not blasphemous! "The New Testament is a lot different after a library full of literature and UFO videos," he remarks, for example. "It's funny if you read it the right way," he goes on. Now, before you make an objection, cut McNeil some slack! You'll recall that the lofty scholar Diarmaid MacCulloch pointed out some good jokes and zingers from Jesus and friends in his massive history of Christianity. Certainly you'll recall that! And though I have nothing to back this up, because I don't care, I recall reading a Kurt Vonnegut essay, oh, about 40 years ago, in which Mr. Vonnegut praises what he considers a good joke made by Jesus. But let's get back to McNeil, according to whose observations, Jesus "barely puts up with these dumb-ass disciples he's saddled with." McNeil claims also that Jesus sighs a lot. This is my own extrapolation, but in McNeil's portrait of Jesus, the Savior comes off somewhat like Charlie Brown in the PEANUTS comics. And we all remember, don't we, that Charles Schulz was a famous Christian? I rest my case. In conclusion, I must admit that McNeil and I exchanged heated words - maybe even with some light cussing! - over my preference for the King James Version versus McNeil's special all-time fave the NIV. Who would have ever thought the Bible could cause people to fight with each other? Now I've heard everything! McNeil charmingly refers to the NIV as "The Hep Cat's Old Testament." Somehow I doubt this is the last we've heard from McNeil about the Good Book!

McNeil Month By Month

As you know, I am not "blogging" anymore, except when I read a book with an owl in it or it is McNeil's birthday. And I haven't read any books with owls in them today - yet! - so you know what that means! Time to celebrate all things McNeil with the special TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION of our annual "blog" feature "McNeil Month By Month." That's right, you can find out everything that McNeil has done for the past decade. Simply click on any "link" to read more about what McNeil was doing during that particular month. September 2006: McNeil contends that he does not enjoy the "Little Dot" comic book. October 2006: McNeil furnishes a memorable quotation. November 2006: McNeil recalls playing Aerosmith on a jukebox. December 2006: First appearance of "McNeil's Movie Korner." January 2007: McNeil's system for winning at craps. February 2007: McNeil doesn't see what's so hard about reading a newspaper and eating a sandwich at the same time. March 2007: McNeil and I are talking about Bob Denver when HE SUDDENLY APPEARS ON TELEVISION! April 2007: Wild turkeys roam McNeil's neighborhood. May 2007: McNeil gets in touch with an Australian reporter regarding a historical chimp. June 2007: First McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival announced. July 2007: Medicine changes McNeil's taste buds. August 2007: McNeil's trees not producing apples. September 2007: McNeil pinpoints a problem with the "blog." October 2007: McNeil presents a video entitled "Jerry's pre-defecation chills." November 2007: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy. December 2007: What is McNeil's favorite movie? January 2008: McNeil explains why the wind blows. February 2008: McNeil admires the paintings of Gerhard Richter. March 2008: McNeil comes up with an idea for a Lifetime TV movie. April 2008: McNeil's shirt. May 2008: McNeil's apple tree doing better (see August 2007). June 2008: McNeil is troubled by a man who wants to make clouds in the shape of logos. July 2008: McNeil's apples are doing great. August 2008: McNeil refuses to acknowledge that Goofy wears a hat no matter what I say. September 2008: McNeil's grocery store is permanently out of his favorite margarine. October 2008: McNeil on the space elevator. November 2008: McNeil comes across an incomplete episode guide to HELLO, LARRY. December 2008: McNeil thinks the human hand should have more fingers. January 2009: McNeil discovers that gin and raisins cure arthritis. February 2009: McNeil gets a big bruise on his arm. March 2009: McNeil wants a job on a cruise ship. April 2009: McNeil attempts to rescue a wayward balloon. May 2009: McNeil visits the Frogtown Fair. June 2009: McNeil dreams he is watching an endless production number from LI'L ABNER. July 2009: McNeil sends text messages from his cell phone while watching a Frank Sinatra movie. August 2009: McNeil disagrees philosophically with a comic book cover that shows a mad scientist putting a gorilla's brain in a superhero's body. September 2009: McNeil resembles famed boxing trainer Freddie Roach. October 2009: McNeil wears a surgical mask. November 2009: McNeil reports that a bird broke the large hadron collider by dropping a bread crumb on it. December 2009: McNeil advises me to like the universe or lump it. January 2010: McNeil eats soup. February 2010: McNeil tells of the hidden civilizations living deep beneath the surface of the earth. March 2010: McNeil recalls a carpet of his youth. April 2010: McNeil starts wearing a necktie. May 2010: McNeil's DNA sample fails to yield results. June 2010: McNeil thinks up some improvements for the movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. July 2010: McNeil reads to me from I, THE JURY. August 2010: McNeil finds a hair in his crab cake. September 2010: McNeil has a cold. October 2010: McNeil sends a nine-minute clip of a nice old man speaking at a UFO banquet. November 2010: McNeil sits in his car and looks at pictures of Jennifer Jones. December 2010: McNeil fears a ball of fire in the sky. January 2011: McNeil watches DYNASTY. February 2011: McNeil sees clouds that look like guys on horseback. March 2011: McNeil composes a "still life" photograph. April 2011: McNeil is upset when I interrupt his viewing of MATCH GAME. May 2011: McNeil pines for some old curtains. June 2011: McNeil eats Lucky Charms brand breakfast cereal. July 2011: McNeil investigates the history of the Phar-Mor drugstore chain. August 2011: McNeil compares Dean Moriarty to Dean Martin. September 2011: McNeil learns a lesson about pork and beans. October 2011: McNeil finds an article describing Robert Mitchum as "Bing Crosby supersaturated with barbiturates." November 2011: McNeil did nothing in November. December 2011: McNeil discovers scientists creating rainbows in a laboratory. January 2012: McNeil impersonates Paul Lynde. February 2012: McNeil dreams of matches. March 2012: McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy (see November 2007, above) used to chart the influence of Jerry Lewis on Carson McCullers. April 2012: McNeil disturbed by the art in his hotel room. May 2012: McNeil considers grave robbing. June 2012: McNeil's idea for "music television." July 2012: McNeil holds his negative feelings in check out of respect when the man who invented electric football dies. August 2012: McNeil reads me an old obituary of Charlie Callas over the phone. September 2012: McNeil concerned about T.J. Hooker's big meaty hands. October 2012: McNeil eats lunch at Target. November 2012: McNeil loves it when Bob Hope slips on a banana peel. December 2012: McNeil sees rocks that look like squirrels. January 2013: McNeil looks at an old, faded photo of a dog gazing into a Bath and Tile Emporium. February 2013: McNeil watches a video in which a hooded figure talks about "our criminal overlords." March 2013: McNeil wakes up at 6:40 in the evening, momentarily thinks it is 6:40 in the morning. April 2013: McNeil sees a singer who looks just like Bill Clinton. May 2013: McNeil is ashamed of himself for not realizing that Ida Lupino directed some episodes of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. June 2013: McNeil mails a cashew tree. July 2013: McNeil watches GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN. August 2013: McNeil recalls being rosy-cheeked. September 2013: A fairyland goes on in McNeil's head. October 2013: McNeil recalls tucking in his t-shirt. November 2013: The cover of a book McNeil buys says it is about Jerry Lewis, but on the inside the book is about Willie Stargell! December 2013: McNeil wants to visit an orgone box factory. January 2014: McNeil did nothing in January. February 2014: McNeil wonders whether Tom Franklin puts his hair in curlers. March 2014: McNeil takes a nap in the car. April 2014: The subject of McNeil pops up in an interview. May 2014: McNeil's emails on the "hollow earth" recalled (see February 2010, above). June 2014: McNeil looks forward to getting drunk and making insensitive remarks as I lie on my deathbed. July 2014: McNeil watches Jim and Henny Backus play themselves in DON'T MAKE WAVES. August 2014: McNeil tells about Robert Mitchum's hangover cure. September 2014: McNeil exaggerates the fate of some owls. October 2014: McNeil is incensed that a candy apple costs eight dollars at the airport. November 2014: McNeil's heart overflows with joy. December 2014: McNeil continues his 7-year chimp investigation (see May 2007, above). January 2015: McNeil listens to a conspiracy theorist who says Jimmy Carter was replaced by a series of robots. February 2015: McNeil recalls doing a report about matches in the eighth grade. March 2015: McNeil takes to bed with the flu! April 2015: McNeil and I establish an amazing psychic link. May 2015: McNeil bitterly recalls the time he brought a John Wayne movie to my apartment and we never watched it. June 2015: McNeil dreams about a bearded Dean Martin. July 2015: McNeil has a disappointing encounter with the Grand Canyon. August 2015: McNeil sees a squirrel holding a stick. September 2015: McNeil is saddened by the news of Dean Jones's death. October 2015: McNeil watches STARFLIGHT: THE PLANE THAT COULDN'T LAND. November 2015: McNeil sends video of Joe Namath making and eating a sandwich. December 2015: A coincidence of the type McNeil especially loves. January 2016: McNeil is in a grocery store and they start playing "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea" over the speakers! February 2016: McNeil watches Don Rickles eat in a bathroom. March 2016: McNeil is duly thrilled when Megan Abbott goes to see CRACKING UP (pictured, above) on the big screen. April 2016: McNeil swallows a gnat. May 2016: McNeil recalls the details of a screenplay we wrote in our twenties. June 2016: Destruction comes to McNeil's apple tree! July 2016: McNeil spots Dabney Coleman in an I DREAM OF JEANNIE rerun. August 2016: McNeil points out that Dean Martin had granddaughters named Pepper, Montana, and Rio. As you know, I started keeping a physical "McNeil Log" once I stopped "blogging" so much, which is how I know that in August, McNeil also tried to help me identify this plant:

He failed. But we can in part blame Dr. Theresa's crisp and vivid photograph, which perhaps made the bud appear larger than it actually was. It was determined to be a "camellia in fruit," or a "camellia hip," not a "red pear," as McNeil had suggested. I can note here that in May, according to the physical log, McNeil told me about a friend of his father's who thought someone was, in this old fellow's words, "witching [his] place." September 2016: McNeil is called a "filthy troglodyte." October 2016: McNeil advises me on what to do now that ADVENTURE TIME has been canceled. Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, ADVENTURE TIME has been canceled. "I say take it easy for a while... just pretend to write when Theresa's around and then sleep or watch movies when she leaves. Oh hell, you know how to work it," writes McNeil.

Catfish of Ancient Egypt

Here's everything I didn't "blog" about this month. 1. "You should eat a lot of jelly: it oils up your joints." - Mom. 2. For reasons that need not concern you, Ace Atkins and I were discussing the availability of catfish in the Middle East. So when I started reading a book about ancient Egypt (THE RISE AND FALL OF ANCIENT EGYPT by Toby Wilkinson) I was delighted to find many allusions to catfish: "an ivory cylinder shows the king as a vicious Nile catfish, beating rows of prisoners with a long stick." At first I thought that was funny, even though it is not funny to beat people with a stick... I guess it was the vicious catfish that made me laugh, though the more I thought about it, the more convincingly Lovecraftian the image revealed itself to be - and besides, my grandfather taught me long ago to beware the dangerous "whiskers" of the catfish. 3. By coincidence I watched Kurosawa's RAN (based on KING LEAR) and a TV adaptation of THE DRESSER (about a production of KING LEAR) on the same day. So I went to my facsimile of Holinshed's Chronicles for the source, and was distressed to recall I have only volumes 3 and 6. See? This is the kind of crap you're missing out on now that I'm not "blogging" anymore. 4. Nor could I find my copy of KING LEAR, which made me feel like King Lear, ha ha ha, see what you're missing. (Later, by further coincidence, Lear would pop up all over this Orson Welles bio that Megan and I are reading together, though not - I think - as an official selection of the Doomed Book Club.) 5. ADVENTURE TIME meeting! We talked about Fonzie wearing glasses and Jan from THE BRADY BUNCH wearing glasses and that made Kent think of Piggy from LORD OF THE FLIES, and I said that using Piggy's glasses to start a fire was in my cigarette lighter book and Adam asked whether that counted. That got us onto the subject of "burning lenses" and Adam mentioned an "ancient death ray." I think he said, "Is that like the ancient death ray?" I said I remembered Francis Bacon advocating for the use of burning lenses as military weapons (it's in my book!) but Adam said he was talking about "Archimedes and the Siege of Syracuse." Adam knows everything! (See also.) Taking a quick glance at the "internet" I do see an unsubstantiated rumor that Archimedes built a giant mirror with which to set fire to the enemy's sails. On the same day the aforementioned discussion occurred, I read in a tweet by Chris Offutt, "I have a short story that includes a woman using a lighter to heat up a Pop Tart one bite at a time." Both of these tidbits (Archimedes, Pop Tarts) would have easily passed muster for my cigarette lighter book, had I only known about them in time. And you know, as long as we're here, the fascinating

movie WOMAN ON THE RUN has an important lighter in it... I think I can tell you this without spoiling anything (probably not): it neatly marks the beginning of each of the movie's three acts (possibly). 6. A ribald jest from McNeil about Jerry Lewis. A series of them, really. Or one long ribald jest that is carried out and elaborated upon over a number of emails. McNeil's final (?) message on the subject concludes, "Ahhhh. I'm making myself laugh in a parking lot, which makes this all the more wrong." 7. I don't remember much liking the movie HEARTBURN when it came out, but I saw a documentary about Nora Ephron not too long ago and thought if I ever came across HEARTBURN again I'd give it a try - what, 40 years later? Dear God! And I did. And Yakov Smirnoff is in it! Now, it's not Mike Nichols's fault that this one book I read stacked him up as the pinnacle of hip culture against the supposed rancid decadence of Bob Hope, but just remember: Mike Nichols put Yakov Smirnoff in a movie and Bob never did (though I wouldn't be surprised if he were on a Bob Hope TV special, to be fair [He was. - ed.]).

8. Jerry Lewis allusion in TREES LOUNGE. 9. Stopped by Square Books. Katelyn failed to sell me a book she likes, but utterly convinced me to give APOCALYPTO a chance. 10. Watched PINOCCHIO. a. Jiminy Cricket has human feet and toenails, human teeth! Disturbing. b. That fish wants to kiss everyone and everything. c. Jiminy Cricket is consistently sexually aroused by human representations (dolls) of his size. d. Even as a kid I didn't understand why being a wooden boy wasn't good enough. What's all this crap about being a "real boy"? 11. King Lear (see above) vows "to be a comrade with the wolf and owl" (just like Dracula! - though he doesn't say that, of course) and you know what that means!

People Alone in a Room

I don't suppose any of you will ever forget late 2013, when I read in that Norman Mailer biography that Norman Mailer thought the Twist was "evil." Well, some of that leaked into his CIA novel, I tell you. Now, you should never, ever confuse the narrator with the author, but I'm reading this part where the narrator is at a party on the eve of Kennedy's election and everyone is doing the Twist: "I thought it was strange in the extreme that the dancers did not hold each other but stood apart and rotated their hips like people alone in a room leering into a mirror." Ha ha, Norman Mailer really hated the Twist! (See also, the time Lyndon Johnson was doing the Twist and fell on somebody.)

A Daisy on the Point Sent Jack to Rest

Megan Abbott sent me some pix from a Frank Sinatra exhibit. We were supposed to go see it last time I was in NYC but we did so many other things I guess old Frank slipped through the cracks. Megan sent me a picture of this poster (above) but it was sideways and I couldn't figure out how to straighten it up for you, so I nabbed this version off the "internet" instead. So many questions! Why is Frank saying, "It's a daisy"? What's a daisy? I mean, I know what a daisy is. My first thought was of Kerouac, who wrote a movie (which I've never seen) called PULL MY DAISY. Are daisies a beatnik thing? Is Frank being "hip"? We could also ask why Frank is riding Ursula Andress like a horse and Anita Ekberg is riding Dean Martin like a horse. A lot to unpack there, thematically! And why Frank is holding his hat where it is. But daisies. Kerouac loved Sinatra, of course. He went to see him perform. He recorded himself reading his vampire novel while a Sinatra LP played in the background. I don't think Kerouac has anything to do with this movie poster. Nor does De La Soul, though, if I recall correctly, daisies are an important recurring symbol in their work. You know what I'm getting at: any excuse to bring out my three-volume GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG. I spent so much money on it! And oh boy! There are a dozen different meanings for "daisy" as a noun, PLUS there's an adjective definition and TWO different ways of using daisy as an adverb! And there are 14 or 15 different compound slang expressions beginning with "daisy," including four separate meanings for "daisy chain." I think I'll be here all day. Hey! This has nothing to do with the movie poster anymore - or does it? - but a "daisy" can mean "a perfect blow." Two nice examples are given, one from a newspaper report of a turn-of-the-(last)-century boxing match: "Murphy got most of the punishment, but bided his time until an opening offered in the 9th round, when a 'daisy' on the point sent Jack to rest." Beautiful! And dialogue from a 1916 short-story collection called LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS: "First time I ever knew you pop a daisy on yer brother, though." Well, I've stopped thinking about the movie poster now. I'm going to study all these meanings of "daisy" and related slang words and I'll probably get back to you later.

McNeil All Hepped Up

McNeil is all hepped up about Brain Boy. How do I know? I received this message from him: "Oh boy!!! I'm all hepped up about Brain Boy... According to Wikipedia 'Brain Boy' was just his nickname (hahaha..as if his parents would actually name him that) and he never had any kind of costume - though he looks straight out of BOTTLE ROCKET." I would only add to McNeil's reflections that Brain Boy got his powers when his father was killed by an electrical tower. That's rough!

John Waters Kissed My Wife

John Waters just kissed Dr. Theresa on the lips. Thanks to her, I got to talk to him tonight. I asked him about Norman Mailer (they were dear friends!) and Jerry Lewis ("He was probably a monster!"). As far as Lewis goes, Mr. Waters likes the Tashlin movies best. And he said that Jerry, in the old movies, looks incredibly like a "modern-day Brooklyn hipster." That's what John Waters said!

TEN MOST AMAZING MOMENTS OF THE YEAR!

10. I heard a LIFE AFFIRMING story on NPR about a kid who POOPED ON A FRANKENSTEIN! 9. I watched the INCREDIBLE movie ESCAPE PLAN! 8. I had an AWESOME gun pointed in my face! 7. Hips were thrust lasciviously at me by an ASTONISHINGLY ENORMOUS inflatable Batman! 6. I read part of a book where Sterling Hayden gets WILDLY ENRAGED when someone describes the hull of his boat incorrectly! 5. I LEANED CASUALLY on the Wienermobile! 4. I read on wikipedia about owls spitting out mouse bones in CRAZY COOL pellet form! 3. I watched a guy PAINSTAKINGLY retype THE SOUND AND THE FURY! 2. I saw part of the movie starring Joey from FRIENDS and a guy in a chimp suit! 1. I read about a SEXY GHOST!

Poignant and Gross

I made Kent Osborne watch that clip of Jerry Lewis and Kent didn't like the way Jerry was jumping all over Bob Hope. I liked that part! I think it is accurate to say that Kent disapproved in general of Jerry's attitude and behavior. I told Kent, "The young have to take down the old!" I think that's what I said. Something like that. Which is funny, because I'm old. I was thinking (I was wrong) that Bob Hope was born in the late nineteenth century in England (it was actually 1903) - practically a Victorian! - and here's Jerry, a child of the jazz age! A child of New Jersey! And that's why it's so poignant and gross when Bob and Jerry at a later date are commiserating about the supposed bad eggs among the hip youth of the late 1960s. By that point Bob and Jerry have bitterly merged into a single generation! It's sad. (Of course Bob would be the one who was actually a young rake during the jazz age. Anyway, what's the jazz age?) And then that made me realize that when I was a kid I knew at least three people (more than three, but three I remember well) who were born in the nineteenth century. That's weird! But it's not so weird. But it's weird. Anyway, I'm old. So I fell asleep and dreamed I had signed up for some seedy traveling act that got locals (like me) to compete in footraces against mangy old retired circus animals. The guy ahead of me raced a lion. He made it 1.9 seconds before the lion outran him, which everyone said was good. I fainted (in my dream!) before I found out what animal I was supposed to race, and people were trying unsuccessfully to pry open my eyes.

The Quiet Wisdom of Billy Ray Cyrus

Is Billy Ray Cyrus the moral center of the David Lynch movie MULHOLLAND DR.? Ha ha ha, of course not, what are you, stupid or something? But I don't know. So we were going to watch SON OF DRACULA. During last year's Halloween film festival we watched DRACULA'S DAUGHTER with Megan Abbott, so it seemed like the right thing to do. But we couldn't find our Dracula box set anywhere! Can it be that we left it at Megan's temporary apartment from when she temporarily lived here? I GUESS WE'LL NEVER KNOW. As we were trying to think of a substitute, my eye fell on MULHOLLAND DR. and, perhaps influenced by Megan Abbott's and Bill Boyle's recent twittering of tweets on the subject, I asked Dr. Theresa whether it might be ruled an appropriate Halloween movie. After some balking, she acquiesced. So Billy Ray Cyrus is discovered in bed with Justin Theroux's wife and he (Billy Ray Cyrus) says three things (I may be paraphrasing): "Just forget you ever saw it; it's better that way." Gnomic! "He's probably upset, Lorraine." Compassionate! "That ain't no way to treat your wife, no matter what she's done." Chivalric! Then he ruins my theory by popping up in another scene and running his mouth again. That's the problem with theories. But hey! That Bill Boyle. The other day there was some kind of special ice cream truck in town and everybody in town was lined up to get the special ice cream. I was fuming at the sight of a (let me stereotype for a moment) "cool grandma" "aging Vermont hippie" type whose t-shirt LITERALLY HAD THE WORDS "LEADERSHIP" AND "EMPOWERMENT" ON IT just blithely breaking in line ahead of me. And then this fully grown man, fully possessed of all his adult faculties, but HOLDING A BALLOON, blundered out of somewhere yelling, "Mama! Mama!" and he was yelling at her. And then he ordered her to call him on his telephone when she was up near the front of the line and he would come back and join her for a cool delicious ice cream treat! And he just strolled away with his balloon to do whatever the hell he wanted to do besides stand in line. About this time Bill Boyle showed up holding his wonderful little son. And we chatted for a minute and by various winks and nods I was trying to make it clear that Bill and his boy could break in line if they wanted to. I was being the worst kind of hypocrite! But Bill said to his son, "Come on, let's go to the back." And there they went to the back of the line! Bill is teaching that boy right. So anyway I got him some ice cream as a surprise. The son, I mean, though Bill may have taken a couple of bites. Now! Watching MULHOLLAND DR. this time I noticed another way that David Lynch and Jerry Lewis are alike. MULHOLLAND DR. has the most inauthentic "Hollywood audition scene" of any movie outside THE ERRAND BOY and THE PATSY: just some lip-syncing (Jerry's first act!) presented in a ridiculously stylized way in which (using another favorite Jerry ploy) the camera pulls back to reveal that "reality" is a movie set. And I realized that both Mr. Lewis and Mr. Lynch represent a complete rejection, or anarchic subversion, or faux-naïf evisceration of business realities that they perfectly know and loathe.

My Cloak of Blue

Hey! This is real boring. But you know how I can't settle on anything to read right now. When I was cleaning my office recently - ha ha! I told you this was boring, and we're just getting started! - I found where I had hidden (and forgotten) the galley of a Frank Sinatra bio that came out a couple years ago, I guess. I hid it because my sister was visiting and I was giving her the hardcover for Christmas (I think)... hmm... and for some reason that doesn't make total sense, I guess I thought I needed to hide the galley from her... Well, I started reading it, and I'm not enjoying it very much... seems to me the author is trying to be Nick Tosches, but he comes off more like "a little boy lost in a big man's shirt," to quote Elvis Costello... lots of phony hepcat lingo and street talk in a loosey-goosey "novelistic" style, peppered with the occasional "classical allusion"... ugh. I mean, ugh unless you're Nick Tosches. (Hey, remember when I made that guy read a Nick Tosches book and he hated it? So I guess it serves me right.) BUT! Megan Abbott really liked this Frank Sinatra book, the one I can't get into, and she has never steered me wrong about anything, ever, and let's remember I am just in a bad mood all the time, for which I blame Errol Flynn and his depressing autobiography. I haven't recovered! Megan put her finger on the problem in an email this morning: "I think you've been reading too much chest-thumping male stuff in a row! You need to mix in something feminine, and sly!" So now that I have made excuses for the Frank bio, and introduced a reliable source who very much enjoyed it, I think it is okay to say it is bumming me out, and by bringing it out into the open I have allowed myself to tell you that it has an owl in it, well, young Frank is said to have a "night-owl disposition" and that's really all it takes for me, it totally counts, so this book can go on my obsessive list of books I happen to read that have owls in them and I don't feel bad about my mental health at all, thanks for asking. An owl is not a chicken, but they are both birds, so here is a Sinatra-based chicken from an old Warner Bros. cartoon. (Between typing that sentence and this one, I read some more of the Frank Sinatra bio. The author says that Tommy Dorsey had "a deliciously corny nickname, the Sentimental Gentleman of Swing." But I recalled that earlier in the book he refers to "a soupy, utterly forgettable Frank Loesser ballad," which he then quotes with snotty intent: "Here comes the night, my cloak of blue." I mean, what's wrong with that? What makes one of those things "deliciously corny" and the other "soupy" and "utterly forgettable" [you'll note I didn't forget it]? But of course I know that being a writer means making such blithely arbitrary distinctions hundreds of times per page. So you can see what kind of rotten mood I'm in.)

Alarming Woman in a Cemetery

Megan Abbott came back to town - for just one night, alas! - to talk about her excellent new novel THE FEVER. I did a little Q&A thing with her at Square Books and encouraged her to tell the story about when she, as a child, saw two drunken old salts perched together on a New England gravestone, yelling imprecations at those who would disturb the dead, and one of them had a big, vivid, and fresh wound on his neck. After the event, Jimmy, who was present, said the story reminded him of the time Barry Hannah "saw a naked woman on a gravestone and it scared him." I told Jimmy I was unfamiliar with the story. He said it was in an essay he had sent me. I remembered the essay, but I did not remember the naked woman on the gravestone, a strange thing not to remember. I remembered some things about writing from the essay. Here's a slice I have cut and pasted for you with little skill:

Later, on the same subject, Barry observes, "The well-groomed square will often outwrite the professional hippie, and I have witnessed the unsettling fact that fine novels come from men and women with so little personality they are not even annoying." There is a Roger Miller song called "Squares Make the World Go 'Round" that is concerned with a similar subject, in which Miller posits that "Government things can't be made do/ By hipsters wearing rope-soled shoes." But what of the naked woman on the old tombstone? Jimmy sent me the essay after a Good Idea Club that had gone especially late, and I was probably asleep and/or intoxicated when I read it. My poor eyes must have missed the section that began "That summer I met an alarming woman in a cemetery..." Rereading it, or reading it for the first time, I see that she is sitting on a grave, but she does have her clothes on. Later there is some partial disrobing. The cemetery is next to a reservoir where UFOs are said, by a neighbor, to land to "take on water."

Aerosol Valve

I'm on page 478 of this John Wayne biography, and on that page I found what I feel sure will be this book's most surprising sentence: "Wayne was living in a large ranch house with a couple of hippie girls he had picked up hitchhiking on the drive to New Mexico." Trust me, nothing in the previous 477 pages prepares you for that sentence. A few pages earlier I had been introduced to "Robert Abplanalp, the Nixon crony who had gotten rich by inventing the aerosol valve." It's funny to think of the Nixon crony who invented the aerosol valve, but most of all it's great because Abplanalp is almost a palindrome and sounds like a last name Jerry Lewis might try to say in a movie. Finally, I have learned that John Wayne wanted to make a movie with Doris Day (many of whose records he owned) and spent the evening after he won his Oscar getting drunk with Richard Burton, who lost. "Very drunk but, in his foul-mouthed way, quite affable," Burton pronounced. Ha ha, what do you have to do to get Richard Burton to call you "very drunk"?

He Made Us Nervous

You know what else we saw at the Amory Railroad Festival? This bounce house with a giant Batman on the front of it. It was an unlicensed Batman, or so Jimmy speculated, because there was a Spider-Man painted on the bounce house too, and they belong to different corporations. The bouncing inside the bounce house caused Batman to thrust his hips obscenely at the festival crowd. "You have to go in through his legs," Jimmy observed. Megan titled this photo "He Made Us Nervous." Walking back to the car we heard the screams of the people on the wildly careening carnival rides. "They're strong screams, full-throated, from the diaphragm," said Megan, a connoisseur of screams.

I Didn't "Blog" About Judd Nelson Today

Last 3 AM when I couldn't sleep I watched, oh, I don't know, the last hour or so of the Judd Nelson movie FROM THE HIP, and boy it seemed urgent to "blog" about it for a while there.

Night Sauce

Hey remember when my dad said that a person who "eats chicken and crabs will eat anything"? Anthony Bourdain agrees with him, at least about chickens. "Chickens are dirty." That's just about the nicest thing Anthony Bourdain says about chickens in KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL. And don't forget Werner Herzog, who accused chickens of "bottomless stupidity... fiendish stupidity" and a number of worse and grosser things, horrific things. I like KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL because Bourdain introduces us to people like "the doomed-looking night saucier." I'm not sure we'll get any more of him than that description, but as Mercutio said, "'Tis enough, 'twill serve." Is that what he said? I can't leave you without mentioning Kent Osborne... because Kent LOVES chicken! Ha ha what a country. Just the other day Kent was passing by what used to be the Diamond Club, where he tended bar in his youth. Ward McCarthy and I went there once and we were like, "What is up with these crazy kids." We said it with a period, not a question mark. That was 20 years ago, I guess, but our hearts had already withered. Well, Kent discovered that somebody has turned the once-hip Diamond Club into a "Buffalo Wild Wings" establishment, and I can't say Kent seemed sad about it.

Still Breezy

They're showing Clint Eastwood's 1973 groovy free spirit movie BREEZY again. Breezy is strolling along a pier in her bellbottoms, eating cotton candy. Breezy!