Celebrating 20 Years of Crap

Well, yesterday I finished the fourth and final volume of OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH. It didn’t end the way I thought it would! Checked in with Jimmy, but he has only recently cracked open volume three, so I have no one to talk to. But that’s not why we’re here, is it? As sorry as I am to admit it, today marks the 20th anniversary of the "blog." What a waste of time! What a monument, indeed, to the wasting of time. Just in case you don’t want to go back and read all 6,455 previous "posts," I am going to attach "hyperlinks" to the single greatest "post" from each year. Ballots were sent to Nobel prizewinners, movie stars, and rulers of nations. Results were tabulated by an army of robots. 2006: I mash my middle finger while attempting to get the suitcase out of the trunk. 2007: I think I see a spider on the hand soap dispenser. 2008: I drop a French fry on the floor. 2009: Emily shows me her wisdom teeth. 2010: G. Gordon Liddy’s commercial for gold. 2011: Is it 2011 already? Many (ha ha!) would assume my big long list of books with owls in them to be the obvious choice here. But there’s a problem with that! Though initiated in October 2011, which date it retains, the owl list has been regularly updated ever since and so cannot be said to belong exclusively to that year. The list of books with owls in them is for all time! And all people! And all owls! No, the greatest "post" of 2011 was when I eavesdropped on a conversation about someone who displayed dinosaur bones at her wedding reception. That being said, remember when I cleverly observed that James Ellroy simply can’t resist the term "night owl"? Well, I was too busy to tell you, but last week I was reading a different James Ellroy book than the one which provoked the comment, and I have to admit this one is comparatively light on night owls. He’s exercising uncharacteristic restraint! In the 300 or so pages I’ve read so far, he does use it twice with a hyphen ("night-owl"), as an adjective. So that’s exciting. 2012: A guy pulls my teeth while telling me a story about B.B. King. 2013: A cool name for a dog. 2014: I out-crazy an authentic New York City crazy. 2015: Lawrence Welk’s sexy daughter-in-law. 2016: Scarlet fever isn’t all that. 2017: Critiquing a quip that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes to a dead alligator. 2018: A bone falls out of the sky (photographic evidence included). 2019: An omelet named after my novel has been taken off the menu. 2020: Counting wienies. 2021: We sit around the house talking about Jonathan "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Edwards. 2022: What they put on pancakes in Sweden. 2023: The New York Times throws its considerable weight behind Skippy brand peanut butter. 2024: Prayed over by a fudge manufacturer in an airport. 2025: The fork I’ve been eating with for close to sixty years is lost forever. 2026: Ending on another bummer, as seems appropriate, I leave my hat behind at my parents’ house. So many things lost. Forks, hats, omelets, time. All right! There it is, the "blog" in one neat package. See you on September 27, 2056, for the 50th anniversary. In hell! (Pictured, the hat, in 2019, at the Los Alamitos racetrack with Pendleton Ward.)

Shaft Punctuation

Well, now that the Million Dollar Book Club has finished its most recent selection - which, as Megan and I were discussing, is mostly a list of people having sex in piles of rotting garbage for art - I have returned to the final volume of OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH, in which our army of former bandits has come up against a military formation called... wait! Remember when McNeil was trying to get me to worship "The Monad"? So, they come up against a formation called "The Great Monad." Can this be a coincidence? Or does everybody just have monad fever? Anyway, these guys are completely flummoxed by the Great Monad! And nothing gets to these guys. The last time they were this upset was back when they were still bandits, about 400 pages ago, and they ran into their greatest adversary... a guy who is good at throwing rocks! I'm not kidding. Individually and as a group, these guys have triumphed over impossible odds again and again, but all of a sudden they're saying "Ow! Ow!" and falling off their horses because they met - seemingly for the first time in their lives - someone who can throw rocks. Don't worry, they eventually get the rock thrower - whose nickname is the Featherless Arrow - to come over to their side, so they can use his rock throwing powers for their own purposes. And yet not even this guy who is good at throwing rocks will be much use against the Great Monad! I'll keep you posted. So, the other night it was Dr. Theresa's birthday and we were driving around singing the theme from SHAFT. One thing we saw was a bunch of golden glinting orbs in a thicket, and then a baby raccoon emerged, and the golden glinting orbs were the eyes of its many brothers and sisters. But the point is we were driving around before that, singing the theme from SHAFT, and to my surprise, when we got to "no one understands him but his woman," Dr. Theresa belted out, with great confidence, "Joan Shaft!" And I said WHAT! Well, it turns out that for her whole life, Dr. Theresa has heard, I suppose, a comma after the phrase "no one understands him but his woman," a comma leading to a syntactically very logical end to that sentence, which would be giving the name of the woman to whom Isaac Hayes is referring, one "Joan Shaft." Dr. Theresa's theory was further bolstered by the fact that prior to the supposed introduction of "Joan Shaft," the protagonist Shaft is referred to by his surname alone. I had to burst her bubble on her birthday and inform her that there is no Joan Shaft. The backup singers are, of course, supplying us with Shaft's full name, John Shaft. Then, as a refreshing break from my mansplaining, the baby raccoon came out of the thicket. It was just like that Walt Whitman poem about the astronomer.

We Shall See

Let's cover a variety of topics! We have nowhere to go. 1. I was reading the New York Times on my phone just like a teenager and I saw they have made a list of the 30 greatest living songwriters. And I raged silently to myself, "I thought I solved this problem years ago!" The problem, that is, of people making lists of things. The year was 1999. People started making lists of everything. I think it was the upcoming century that had them in a panic. They thought if they made lists of things, they could stave off the death of the universe. That's just a theory. After a decade or so, I got really sick of reading lists. So I struck! Like a mighty panther! My hilarious anti-lists would put an end to all this listmania... ha ha, remember when Ken Russell made a movie called LISZTOMANIA? I enjoy peppering my interesting observations with pointless crap like that. What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah! So I made my anti-lists, like "The 50 Greatest Things That Just Popped Into My Head" for THE BELIEVER magazine... and after PASTE did their own "Greatest Living Songwriters" (to which I admit I contributed a blurb on Chuck Berry, who was, it may amaze you to learn, alive at the time), I sent them a joke list, which they published, of "The Greatest Dead Song Writers"... I included, for example, King David from the Bible. You remember him! And then, at the top of the list of dead songwriters, I put Bob Dylan, who was alive, and still is, as of this writing, as far as I know. But I'm about to go on a walk around the neighborhood with Ace Atkins (so I was wrong about having nowhere to go, if you consider walking in a circle somewhere to go), and who knows what might happen by the time I come back to finish this "post"? I make no promises. Anyway! The exciting thing was that a USA Today interviewer told Bob Dylan that PASTE had called him the greatest dead songwriter, and he laughed! That's the main thing I wanted to say. I just wanted to remind you about the time I made Bob Dylan laugh. 2. Yesterday, I filled you in on what's going on in my nighttime book (horses are crying, natch) but I neglected to mention my daytime book, ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC. Well, I'll tell you. Mostly it just says "In Chapter 6, we shall see" this and "In Chapter 6, we shall see" that. I've been hearing about how great Chapter 6 is going to be since the introduction! Something better happen in Chapter 6, that's all I can say. Because not much has happened so far, unless you count "more study is needed" as something. I checked the Table of Contents and Chapter 6 is the last chapter in the book. Well played, Gideon Bohak! 3. McNeil emailed me about Charles Fort. That was exciting! Nobody ever emails me about Charles Fort. McNeil called Charles Fort "Mark Twain's nutty cousin." As evidence, McNeil cites the lines that Fort sticks in about "once a page" (according to McNeil) as he catalogs various inexplicable phenomena: "In my own mind there is distinguishment between a good watchdog and the fleas on him".... "To have any opinion, one must overlook something." That's a great one! McNeil deduces imaginatively: "Fort found these on crumpled up pieces of paper in Twain's drawer" and concludes with a Fortean memory of a cloudburst he, McNeil, once witnessed, approximately 24 inches in diameter. 4. I told Ace I would give him three guesses which Elvis movie I had been watching this morning, and if he got it right I would give him a million dollars. His second guess was TICKLE ME. Anyway, now I owe Ace a million dollars. Unless... to quote Megan after she was informed of the incident, "Are you sure he just didn't want you to tickle him?"

Crying Horses

Last night in THE ILIAD, these horses started crying. These were some upset horses, I tell you! "Hot tears flowed from their weeping eyelids to the earth." And such. I thought "Surely Emily Wilson will give us a footnote - or an endnote, to be precise! - about these weeping horses." But why did I want to be precise in the middle of that sentence? That's the real question. Precision is always a mistake. Anyway, I did check and she provides a note about how the horses' heads are bending so low in grief that their glorious manes get dirty dragging the ground, but nothing about their red hot tears of woe. Now, bear in mind, these are magic, immortal horses, so they have different standards than the common horse you rode to work today. I'm kind of slow with THE ILIAD because I get in bed at night and everyone immediately starts stabbing each other. In the book, I mean. I'm like, "Wow, these guys never stop stabbing. They love it!" And pretty soon I'd rather be asleep. Poor me! I'm as sad as a horse sometimes.

Constant Taras Bulba Updates

Remember when I live-tweeted KING RALPH? Well, your good friend Elon Musk certainly put an end to all that, didn't he? Now I just text Ace Atkins my descriptions of movies. :(

McNeil Absolved of Blasphemy

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

Allow Me to Explain

Here is something Witold Gombrowicz writes in his diary: "A man on a horse is as weird as a rat riding a rooster, a chicken riding a camel, a monkey riding a cow, or a dog riding a buffalo." Got it? All right. Now. Surely you are familiar with the 19 mighty "blog"trospectives that form the pillars of our great work for humankind. Some of them are updated frequently... I think of the one on sandwiches, the one on movies, and, especially, of our big long list of books with owls in them. Others languish. Hardly ever do I have occasion to make a new entry in "Feeding a Possum." Another one that lies there withered and forgotten, much like its author, me, is "Monkeys Riding Dogs." You may ask yourself, "Does Gombrowicz mention monkeys riding dogs?" No. But monkeys and dogs are pretty close together in that sentence. And if he had kept thinking about it, he would have made it to monkeys riding dogs. Why he distinguishes between a rooster and a chicken rather than, say, having a rat riding a parrot or an owl riding a camel, is a question for a future date.

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.

Book Junk

In the New York Times they are always grilling people like "What books are on your bedside table?" I have a stack of books on the bedside table but I don't think the New York Times could figure out anything about me by inventorying them. I mainly use them as a kind of pedestal. And then there's a book on top, which is whatever book I currently read in bed. But the ones underneath it have been sitting there for so long that as far as I know they may have fused into a single volume. But! Something interesting happened the other day when I started reading the giant big huge enormous big large big dragon book by Joe Hill. I found that THE PENGUIN BOOK OF SPIRITUAL VERSE, which has long capped the mighty pedestal of books, was too small and flimsy to serve as proper direct support for the hulking dragon book. "Where the hell am I going to put this book of spiritual verse?" I said to myself blasphemously. This story just gets better and better. Well, I moved it to the little table that sits alongside my favorite chair. And that provoked me to do something I haven't done in years, I guess: open it up. And what do you think I saw? An owl? You're right! And it was in a poem I've read before... haven't I? "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake. And yes, of course, I've read it before. But I guess I haven't read it in at least 14 years, as William Blake has not until now featured in my long list of books with owls in them, begun all that time ago. Or... could it be I just never finished reading this poem before? It's longer than I remembered! My memory of it gives out pretty early, with "A Horse misusd upon the Road/ Calls to Heaven for Human blood"... I feel like every time I get to that part, I kind of sit there and nod thoughtfully for a while... and then do I shut the book? Anyhow, it turns out that a little later on we have "The Owl that calls upon the Night/ Speaks the Unbelievers fright"... a line that does not sound familiar to me at all. I'll tell you something else strange! Are you excited? And have I actually told you anything strange? Well, I noticed for the first time that this Penguin paperback is signed by its editor, Kaveh Akbar. Maybe that's not strange. I don't know why, but I never thought of a Penguin paperback being signed... maybe because the author is almost always dead. Also, I bought it new at Square Books, on an ordinary shelf, not specially marked... and I do always think of Penguin paperbacks as something like... cans of Vienna sausage? I don't expect the person who shepherded those Vienna sausages through the process to sign the can! Although, if someone personally selected each sausage, and nudged them all perfectly and snugly together, which would be analagous to Kaveh Akbar's fine work here... I am too tired to follow this line of thought. In a final bit of book news, the City of Oxford, Mississippi, has, for mysterious reasons, suddenly rescheduled its Christmas parade! The Christmas parade will now occur at roughly the same location and time as my event with Ace tomorrow night! I guess we'll finally find out who's more popular: Ace Atkins or Santa Claus.

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?

Artist's Statement

Hey! Tomorrow is the big gallery show opening in Alhambra, California, so check it out! I think I forgot to mention it's ADVENTURE TIME and FIONNA AND CAKE themed, featuring works by more than 50 artists associated with those shows. My piece is called “100 Adventure Time Characters from Memory, Made with Covid.” I call it that because of all the Covid I had when I drew it with magic markers in a sketch pad that Dr. Theresa bought to cheer me up. Now, I was afraid maybe I had shortchanged the lucky buyer, if any, because, despite the ambitious title I had prematurely scrawled on the paper, I didn’t count the characters as I was drawing them, and then, after I had drawn them, I found them impossible to count. Until! Some weeks later, I struck upon the notion of identifying them all by name. Somehow, and I know how, but I’m too tired to tell you, a list of names was a much easier thing for me to count. So I’m happy to reveal that I overachieved, at least quantitatively: there are 106 Adventure Time characters in my drawing. A couple of them were driving me nuts because I couldn’t figure out, once I had recovered from my feverish agitation and actually examined what I had drawn for the first time, who the hell they were supposed to be. I worried maybe I had made some of them up in a delirium. But I thought about it all night and decided that one was a Gumball Guardian (I had forgotten they have noses) and one was the King of Ooo (I had forgotten a couple of his identifying marks, plus I had him in Princess Bubblegum’s crown, which, in my defense, he did wear for a while). Adam said I should sponsor a contest and see if anyone could guess them all. But who was a guy who was good at guessing? Oedipus? Well, he was until he wasn’t. Anyway, not even Oedipus at the height of his guessing powers could have figured some of my drawings out (Pen, for example, thought Chips and Ice Cream were Hot Dog Knights), so I’m going to tell you who I drew, in (once you see the "art") not a really helpful order: Cinnamon Bun, Hunson Abadeer, The Bear Who Liked Finn, Starchy, Tree Trunks’s Alien Husband, Little Dude, One of the Villagers from “The Visitor,” Shoko, Mr. Cupcake, Billy, Abracadaniel, Party Pat, The Comet, The Squirrel from “Up a Tree,” The Cosmic Owl, Bartram, Gridface Princess, Martin, Ice King, Y5, Banana Guard, Patience St. Pym, Flame King, The White Lion Who Became the Vampire King, Abraham Lincoln, Jermaine, Chips, Ice Cream, Lemongrab, Lady Rainicorn, Gumball Guardian, Shelby and his little brother Kent, Big Destiny, Marshmallow Kid, Blank-Eyed Girl, Peppermint Butler, Breezy, Scorcher, Simon, Original Gunter, Ice Thing, Ricardio, Mannish Man, Wildberry Princess, The Squirrel Who Hates Jake, Glob, Grod, Grob (we can assume that Gob is behind them, but I can’t in good conscience count that) Fionna, Mr. Pig, Shermy, Huntress Wizard, Snail, Sleeping Old Man (Prismo’s Physical Form), Tiffany, Princess Cookie, Finn, Joshua, Choose Goose, Toast Princess, Cherry Cream Soda, Flambeau, The Empress, Slime Princess, The Crabbit, Farmworld Finn, Betty, Toronto, Wooby Woo, Dream Warrior, Lumpy Space Princess, Lumpy Space Prince, Tree Trunks, Uncle Gumbald, An Ant, Crunchy, Glass Boy, Magic Man, Leaf Man, Banana Man, King of Ooo, TV, Wyatt, Bubble, BMO, Skeleton (from the Ble offices? Or maybe that’s a guy from the Deadworlds), Jake, Gunter (classic penguin version), Embryo Princess, Rattleballs, Mr. Fox, The Music Hole, Lemonhope, Prismo, Hot Dog Princess, Dream Bird Woman, Owl from “Up a Tree,” Loafy, James Baxter the Horse, Gingerbread Muto, Minerva, Bufo, Morty Rogers, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum. In retrospect, perhaps my biggest mistake was thinking until very recently (today!) that The Empress had one eye in the middle of her forehead like a Cyclops (though I knew better at one point). I could lie and tell you I was trying to draw Blaine from “Wizard City,” but I would only be hurting myself.

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.

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.

Everybody's Talking

Last night Dr. Theresa and I were watching a TV show which, despite taking place in our up-to-date modern times, had a plot point about Alexander the Great's horse, then I got in bed and read a book by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis instead of an old comic book, and the narrator mentioned Alexander the Great's horse, then I decided it was no big deal because everybody is always talking about Alexander the Great's horse.

Out of the Murk

Well, I've had this copy of MERCIER AND CAMIER on the shelf for 20 years, at least, I bet, without opening it. Probably more like 30! Did I read in a Samuel Beckett biography that he didn't like it much? I don't know. Maybe not. Something kept me away from it. I don't know what. It was on just the shelf where I thought it might be, though. The pages are brown with age. A sticker on the front tells me I bought it used at A Cappella Books. Six dollars! Which seems like a lot. The back cover claims that it is "the first paperback edition" of the work. I knew an owl would be too on the nose, and I was right. I did not find an owl. For a while, the dual protagonists... and that's how I ended up reading it. Tom Franklin texted me, asking about novels with "dual protagonists" (of which he has written a couple himself). That's how MERCIER AND CAMIER popped into my old noggin. Anyhow, Mercier and Camier are stumbling around in the dark for a long time, out in the middle of nowhere, perfect place for an owl... too perfect. "Strange animals loom, giant horses and cows, out of the murk do you but raise your head." Then, on the next-to-last page, as if to taunt me, "We did not meet many animals, said Camier."

That Upon Which I Was Sitting

I was sitting on something for secret reasons that no longer require sitting. Forget about those reasons, for they are defunct. The important thing is that I fished out my COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED WORKS OF LEWIS CARROLL some months ago... it is still over there, in my home office, sitting forlorn atop a box of Daily Racing Forms from 1956 (long story, or maybe no story); I need to reshelve it. But that is not what I came here to tell you! Those months ago, when I fished it out for my secret reasons, I opened ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND with fateful randomness to a passage I had somehow never noticed before, in which we are informed via poem that "the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie." If you do not understand why I am telling you this, I advise you to spend the next several years studying this "blog."

A Man of Song

McNeil was telling me about a journal he has kept for decades and I begged to read it but he said no. Finally, he let me see a sliver from 2003, when I telephoned to inform him about a Bob Hope LP I had purchased. Even though Bob was wearing an ascot on the cover, according to McNeil's journal, I had absolutely no memory of the conversation or the recording. McNeil jostled my memory, and kept jostling it, until the record came dimly back into what I laughingly call my mind. I promised to look for it! For, you see, back in 2003, I had read McNeil the liner notes over the phone, and he wanted to hear them again, now, in our present day. Here's the problem! When we moved into this house, I just threw stuff all over the place. The records are not in any order. Anyway, I finally tracked it down, and I guess the portentousness had amused me, a lot of stuff like, "jokes and comedy are not the whole of Bob Hope. It must also be added that he is a man of song." But! That's not why I called you here today. While McNeil was going through an old box, he found a pack of his grandfather's cigarettes. "Half the smokes are still there!" McNeil boasted. I was most impressed by the brand name... Spud Imperial. I've never heard such a bewitching combination of words. I noticed the word "SAFETY" on the side of the pack (though I seem to have cut it off above), and a little rooting around on the "internet" led me to some magazine ads for Spud Imperial. "They're not a remedy," one warned, in case that was what you thought! I don't "blog" anymore, but when I saw the brand name Spud Imperial, I knew at once that an exception had to be made.

How's the Owl Today

A long time ago, probably in a meeting for ADVENTURE TIME: DISTANT LANDS, Adam mentioned the movie WINTER'S TALE (not to be confused with the Shakespeare play with a very similar title)... I believe that all Adam said by way of assessment was (and this may not be an exact quotation) "It's a weird movie." I couldn't tell if he meant it in a good way, a bad way, or was just stating a fact. But that movie has been in the back of my head for some time. I believe I remarked to Adam that my friend Caroline was wild about the novel upon which the movie was based. I seem to recall that she read it more than once. Again, the facts may not back me up on that. It's just what I have sitting here in my brain. So I watched a little bit of it last night. For reasons unknown, I was like, "It's time!" I got distracted for about two seconds and I looked up and Colin Farrell had made friends with a magic horse? I was like... "What did I miss?" But the main thing I wanted to say is that Russell Crowe goes to a restaurant and orders a pan-fried owl. Now, I can't add WINTER'S TALE to my long list of books with owls in them, because I don't know whether anyone orders an owl for dinner in the book or if it was just a whimsy of the screenwriter. Let me emphasize that the restaurant in the movie did not serve owl, which fact led Russell Crowe to murder the waiter, as one does. So, it's a universe where you can make friends with a magic horse, but you can't go to a restaurant for a nice plate of owl. Such reflections reminded me of the books I have read in which owls are eaten by people... COMING INTO THE COUNTRY by John McPhee and THE WOMAN WARRIOR by Maxine Hong Kingston. I reflected, further, on the use of owl eggs as folk medicine, as reported by Burton in his ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY... a practice which apparently spread to the new world ("click" for details), if it wasn't here already. Maybe I've read other books in which owls or owl eggs are consumed, but I can't remember them right now (see the subject of my failing mind, above), and the whole subject appalls me, frankly. I'm sorry I brought it up. This is why I don't "blog" anymore. PS Here is a sobering postcript indeed. As I was meaninglessly searching for the hyperlinks with which to festoon this surely unread "post," a passing mention led me to recall that my second book, YOUR BODY IS CHANGING, features a political banquet at which owl is served. Weirdly, I was trying to remember the title of that particular short story last night (I still can't remember it), for what I believed were unrelated reasons. I guess my brain was trying to tell me something. Nice try, brain!

Martha Raye Agonistes

As I humorously tweeted earlier today, "Watching a Doris Day movie last night, there was a song lyric 'see the clown falling down, it's the best show in town' and I thought what town is this? They need more options in this town!" Now, if I'm going to be honest, it's clear from context that the singers are referring to the whole circus, not just the clown falling down, when they claim "it's the best show in town." Still, the lyric, which is by no less a genius than Lorenz Hart, if the credits are to be believed, lends itself to humorous misinterpretation, and so I stand by my tweet. On the other hand, the song is performed during a parade that has, like, a dozen snow-white horses outfitted with Pegasus wings, and (unrelated to the horses) the most convincing ape makeup and pantomime I have seen outside of Kubrick's 2001. Also, they have a caged Martha Raye in a bright red lion costume. Now, leaving aside the fact that the plot centers around a rundown circus that is about to go broke - in which case, maybe cut back on the elaborate horse costumes - I have to admit this "show" looks pretty great, maybe it is the best show in town, what the hell do I know?

Twelve Superb Horses

For some reason I am reading six books at a time during the pandemic. In the past, I guess I've read two books at a time, but mostly one book at a time. I am reading slowly... so slowly that maybe I have actually stopped reading at least two of the books I think I am reading, without knowing it. But none of this means that I have stopped noticing when books have owls in them, which is constantly. For example, I just learned from LAKOTA AMERICA by Pekka Hämäläinen that Red Cloud "paid twelve superb horses for the right to marry his first wife, Pretty Owl."