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.

Narrative Implications

The doctor is making me exercise, so I made myself a little exercise playlist to which I can march around like a big strong he-man. One of the selections on my playlist is "Hollywood Swinging" by Kool & the Gang. Never before have I paid such attention to the lyrics as I have while my body marches around, leaving my mind a total blank, except for the song lyrics imprinting themselves on my smooth, round brain. Imagine my astonishment when I heard Kool & the Gang singing (I may be paraphrasing a little, but I don't think so) "I remember not too long ago, I went to the theater and saw a Kool & the Gang show." I was immediately reminded of the narrative implications of the song "Truck Driving Man" ("click" here for vital details), as well as the reality-bending musical choices in the films EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, G. I. BLUES, and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN (once again, please "click" here for deeper insights).

The Smiling Accusation

Look, I've fulfilled my duty 100% by telling you about the character in THE SCARLET RUSE by John D. MacDonald who says "I look like a big goggly owl." Yes, a subsequent owl has appeared in the text, but our contract states that I am under no obligation to tell you about it. HOWEVER! It's the same character talking about owls again. This time, she is with Travis McGee's sidekick, who she says is "smiling at me like some kind of owl." She must have owls on the brain. Unlike me. NOW! Over the years, we have collected here quite a trove of owl imagery, and owls have been accused of a lot of weird things by authors of varying insight and ability, but as I search the files, I cannot find a previous example in our catalog of anyone ever thinking of an owl as smiling. I am ready to be corrected! In any case, you can see why I had to attach this footnote. We are constantly making new discoveries in the area of literary owl usage.

Glass

Back when I used to "blog," I kept sort of a running list of phrases I'd come across in the newspaper or somewhere that gave me some sort of creative insight, or so I kidded myself. One time I even typed them all up and handed them out to my thrilled grad students, back when I was "teaching." So I don't "blog" anymore, but I just ran across a new one of those phrases in the New York Times, and I don't know where else to put it, because I can't find that list anywhere. Philip Glass said,"If I am remembered for anything, it might be for the piano music, because people can play it." What does that mean? Why is it interesting to me? Well, it's none of your beeswax, really. I don't even think you exist!

Three Movies

I was sitting here listening to some Stockhausen piano music I just don't understand, and I thought, "Maybe the MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC will yield up some of its easily digestible and strangely bitter information." But I should have known better! Stockhausen has no place therein. But that made me think of this "blog," now defunct, which was, when it thrived in its way, a medium through which I often explored the twisted psychology of the MILTON CROSS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC. And that made me think of how I once wrote a book about cigarette lighters, and how after I had turned in the final manuscript I continued to learn fascinating tidbits about cigarette lighters, which I collected in an appendix here on the "blog," until the very idea of learning fascinating tidbits began to fill me with dread. Furthermore I was forced to admit, within the course of the rumination thusly recounted, that I saw two movies recently, and a small part of a third movie, all containing cigarette lighter material that I would have dropped into very precise spots in the book, if only I had encountered them in time. I no longer care about that, or anything else, but the fact that I encountered them in such a short span of time, boom, boom, boom, one right after another, left me no choice... well, of course it left me a choice, but here we are. Bill Boyle and I have been watching, independently, a number of later period Clint Eastwood movies, and discussing, through email and other digital means of communication, the ones we have seen in common. It was for this reason that I watched FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, though Bill did not, nor did Dr. Theresa, the latter having already watched it some years ago as part of her research for the doctoral dissertation whence her title springs, and I guess she got out of it everything she wanted to get. Anyhow! A young man aboard a warship lights a lighter in a way I found historically questionable. Allow me to quote Paul Fussell, yes, the same Paul Fussell quotation that I quote in my cigarette lighter book, which is called CIGARETTE LIGHTER, in which he observes that in the paranoia of imminent battle someone "igniting a cigarette on deck is likely to be suspected of disloyalty rather than stupidity." You can't go around lighting your lighter on deck! It could be a traitorous signal, or a giveaway. Then I was skipping from one channel to another and I saw part of LAND OF THE LOST, the film adaptation of that work. Now! Lest you accuse me of finding it puerile, know from previous evidence that I am capable of enjoying literally any movie ever made, and I would not deny having watched the whole thing, had that ever been the case. But I saw just a snippet. One character was using his cigarette lighter to impress the technologically impaired dwellers, covered in hair, of a mysterious dimension, yes, the aforementioned LAND OF THE LOST. Ah! It was a comical "spin" on that old trope. A trope that I bring up in the book without much in the way of concrete examples to support it. Shame! A shame that might have been alleviated somewhat by the inclusion of the example in question... an example that seemed to imply, as I did, that the gesture was well known and ripe for allusion. So! Then Dr. Theresa and I were watching THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (pictured), in which Walter Huston (not pictured) is some old millionaire. At a board meeting he produces a cigarette. A dozen hale men leap up, ready to light it for him! In film, it is a ritual more associated with sex and beauty, and I included in my book plenty of examples of phalanxes of men falling over themselves to light a woman's cigarette. But now I saw, yes! It is also about power... an insight that came, like so many, too late to do any good.

Regrets

I don't have to explain myself to you! I don't even "blog" anymore. But anyway before my recent trip I was in Square Books looking for something to read on the airplane and I saw a Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald I had never noticed on the shelf before: NIGHTMARE IN PINK, and I walked right by it and didn't even pick it up because of my many, many problems with those novels, but somehow it stuck in my head. I find - and I'm sure it's some sort of compulsion - that if a book sticks in my head at Square Books, I always go back and buy it the next day. What if I miss out on something? And I went to bed that night thinking, you know, maybe NIGHTMARE IN PINK would be good to read on the airplane, even though I haven't truly enjoyed one of those novels yet, because it's really about weight and size when I'm picking out a book to read on the airplane; content hardly enters into it. And I comforted myself by thinking that no one was going to walk into Square Books overnight and buy NIGHTMARE IN PINK before I returned the next day. How bizarre that would be. But, reader, someone did. I went back and NIGHTMARE IN PINK was gone, and even though I didn't actually want to read it, and had already, the day before, bought the book I was going to read on the airplane instead, I felt cheated. Cheated by life! So in the following days, as I prepared for my trip, I would walk by the bookstore and look at the empty spot where NIGHTMARE IN PINK used to be. Okay! Upon my return, I was in Square Books one day and glanced at the shelf and NIGHTMARE IN PINK was back in stock... so I bought it! I read a little of it and put it aside because Megan and I got started on our book club book. At least my strange need to purchase this volume from a series I don't enjoy had been sated. Anyway! Last night I couldn't sleep and there was NIGHTMARE IN PINK, so I read some more of it. Yes, Travis McGee's morbid horror of being devoured by a woman was intact. "Any minute now the sticky tongue would flick out and snare me and yank me into that greedy maw." That's Travis McGee describing a woman. Now, there's a sort of woman that Travis McGee claims to like a lot, that he spends a lot of time striving to convince us he likes a lot, and, as Ace Atkins has pointed out to me, that woman "always dies." Now! I will say this for John D. MacDonald's technique, or maybe this is more about Ace's insight: wondering when the one woman Travis McGee "likes" is going to die keeps you reading. Like, "Oh no! Don't get too attached, McGee!" It introduces a distasteful (and possibly entirely external) source of suspense. So anyway, after spending some time with the woman whose "maw" terrifies him, Travis McGee goes back to the woman he claims to like and she says to him, "Wanna play owl?" And now you know why we're here: for reasons long forgotten, I keep a list ("click" here!) of every book I read that has an owl in it. After Travis McGee and his friend "play owl," and never mind what that is, I sincerely regret to inform you that they play something called "naked owl."

Chuck Dean

McNeil responded with the compelling insight that if Flavor Flav is Jerry Lewis, Chuck D is Dean Martin, the cool partner who gives his more flamboyant friend space for crazy antics but remains unaffected.

Discussing Literature

Our friend J. was passing through town. I believe it is okay to mention him without permission on the "blog" as I am protecting his anonymity to some extent. I happened to run into him at Square Books. He was with his friend Cary, who directed a movie version of JANE EYRE that I liked a lot. J. mentioned that he and Cary were having dinner with Wright Thompson later in the evening. Well, then I went to City Grocery Bar to meet Ace Atkins and Bill Boyle, where we, uh, discussed literature. It was just after four, "Megan Abbott Time" as we call it around here. Ace left at one point and walked next door to Square Books and bought each of us a different Travis McGee novel tailor-made to our individual tastes. Square Books has sold so many books to drunk people! You sit up there at the Grocery and get excited talking about some book you love and next thing you know you're somewhere else and the old cash register is ringing. Not to say that Ace was drunk. In fact he was in more of a sipping mood. Sipping and contemplative. My own mood was somewhat different. I got home and told Dr. Theresa about J. being in town - they once bonded over the horrific experience of going to see COWBOYS AND ALIENS together, and really it has united them in a way that few can fathom - so she wanted me to bring him a little note saying how sorry she was to miss him. So I went to the restaurant with the note in my pocket but no one was there so I had no choice but to drink some more. We have reached 8:30 in the evening in our tale. Wright showed up and politely asked me whether I'd like to join the table, and I impolitely - boorishly, even - accepted the invitation. Then I babbled about JANE EYRE to the director for a million hours without managing to produce a single insight. Stuff like, "You did a great job!" At a lull in the babbling, J. said, "Hey, Jack? Did you know he directed a version of JANE EYRE?" A chuckle was enjoyed by all. Why, only that day I had seen Kaitlyn at Off Square Books and one of the books there reminded me of the sad death of Meriwether Lewis, which I started babbling about, and Kaitlyn said, "I heard it might have been murder!" And then she realized, "Oh, I think it was you who told me that." And I realized that I have only two or three topics of conversation, one of them being the sad death of Meriwether Lewis. Another is crows, as I discovered at a dinner party when everyone gently hinted that I should shut up about crows. Wow, I'm learning a lot of miserable things about myself as I type this. And yet I have no feeling that I might ever become a better person. Things reached such a state at the dinner last night, the JANE EYRE dinner, that we decided to drunk dial Jerry Lewis. I think it was Wright's idea. So Wright called Dr. Theresa to ask her to read him Jerry Lewis's phone number, which I have taped to my office wall, natch, but luckily Dr. Theresa did not pick up the phone because Dr. Theresa never picks up the phone, so we didn't call Jerry Lewis. Oh my God! That was a close one.

The Mud May Be a Form of Sincerity

"Some accuse Brahms' orchestration of being muddy. This may be a good name for a first impression of it. But if it should seem less so, he might not be saying what he thought. The mud may be a form of sincerity which demands that the heart be translated, rather than handed around through the pit. A clearer scoring might have lowered the thought." That's Charles Ives in one of his ESSAYS BEFORE A SONATA. It popped into my head after I finished a recent "post" - no, not the one about CANNONBALL RUN, the one before that. Really, it came up in an email exchange with Bill Taft about that "post." I was trying to tell him what William James said about St. Paul. I'm going to get this all wrong, but there were some historicist critics of the Bible (is that what they were?) who said that St. Paul probably just had an epileptic seizure on the Road to Damascus, not a vision... and I think William James's question was, Why should the two be mutually exclusive? He may have asked, What if the epilepsy was NECESSARY to the vision? I don't know. I guess I could look this up, but who cares? Here is some choice stuff from Bill's side of the emails: "I’ve been reading Acts of Apostles so any time Paul pops up in a piece of writing I get excited. (Ha! That sounds weird. Maybe 'more deeply engaged' is a better description of my mental state.) I read Acts as an episodic road story ('And he went through Syria and Cilicia…') mashed up with a style guide... Paul always knew his audience and used the epistolary form to great advantage. But as you point out, he could be repressed and a huge scold: 'O foolish Galatians!' What kind of a jerk addresses the recipient of a letter that way? Were he alive today, Paul would probably wind up seduced by the internet, posting obsessively in the comments sections of obscure blogs... I love Acts because everyone is having a vision of some kind that justifies future action or change. Cornelius has a vision and sends his minions to Peter who is having a vision when Cornelius's minions arrive, downstairs I think. I love that image of Peter up on a roof having a vision, while visitors knock on the door downstairs. So anyways, Peter follows his visitors to the home of Cornelius. What do they do when the get together? They tell each other about their visions. I love the repetition for some reason. These days, Cornelius and Peter would not have had visions. Rather they would have visited their therapists who would have given them an insight, which would have led to change. Maybe James's point is that positive change is good no matter what the causal agent. Having said that, I enjoy reading about visions. Acts would not be the same if Cornelius were described as having sent his men unto Peter because his shrink said that doing so would help him lose weight." Truly, this is just a fraction of Bill's entertaining thoughts about the Acts of the Apostles.

We Disagree on One Point

Hey there's a new interview with George Singleton over at the Lent Magazine. To enjoy it, "click" here. George always gives the best interviews and a new one is big news. He is hilarious and insightful. He always makes me laugh. He says stuff in here like, "Hell, I spend half my time just trying to think up names. I’m just going, 'God, I’ve used that name – Frank! Frank has shown up in a hundred short stories.'" See, that is the real scoop about writing. He says, "Well I’m not a big fan of anything I’ve written in the past because it’s kind of dead meat... I bet if I got hit in the head and forgot who I was and read those stories I’d go, 'All right, maybe they deserve to be published in a magazine.' But I’m not sure I would... There are these people out there who talk about these meals they’ve eaten years in the past, and they go, 'That was the best meal I’ve ever eaten twenty years ago in Paris.' Okay, good for you. I just say it was food, and what's the next meal?" Heed this gnomic master, young geniuses! He does come out as strongly pro-Vienna sausage, and down that one dark path to madness I cannot follow.

Gender and Humor and Gender

Dr. Theresa and I had dinner with Laraine Newman last night! We talked about THE SENTINEL, of all things, which, like us, Laraine had just seen for the first time for some reason. Much discussion of Chris Sarandon's moustache in that film. Did we also discuss GENDER AND HUMOR, the topic of our upcoming panel? MAYBE! And maybe Laraine Newman said - surprisingly? you be the judge! - that she much prefers the comic persona of Jerry Lewis to the comic persona of Lucille Ball. Laraine Newman had some sharp insights, as might be expected, on the difference between what Jerry Lewis's character and Lucille Ball's character usually wanted. But if I told you that, it would be a spoiler. All I can tell you is COME TO THE PANEL. Overby Center. 6 PM. Tomorrow. Oxford, Mississippi. I can tell you that Richard Burton didn't care for Lucille Ball, because I read it in his diary. He called her "a monster of staggering charmlessness" and that's just for starters! "There's a chance that I might have killed her," is another little thought he throws out there. He says that Joan Crawford was frightened of her! Joan Crawford! Joan Crawford? Yes, Joan Crawford! Joan Crawford. When Megan Abbott and I were reading these passages out loud at Square Books, Megan reminded me exactly how tough a woman had to be in those days to make it up the ladder the way Lucy did. Megan was seeing things from Lucy's point of view! A lot of times you had to stop in the Richard Burton diaries and think what the other person's diary might be like. Richard Burton really hated the expensive alarm clock that Frank Sinatra gave him!

Balzac

NPR hops on the ADVENTURE TIME bandwagon today in a nice little piece you can hear by "clicking" here. They compare ADVENTURE TIME to Balzac, which is something high-toned media outlets do when they want to feel comfortable about liking something... I noticed this tendency so long ago that it appears in a short story ("The Golden Pineapples") in my first book. Not to say they're wrong! They interviewed the novelist Lev Grossman as their (very insightful) literary spokesman for the piece, which is a funny coincidence, because many years ago he (sort of) put Rudy & GoGo (the kids' show I worked on in the 90s) into one of his novels. What is my strange psychic connection with Lev Grossman?

Even Their Virtues Were Being Burned Away

Glum chat with my sister about the Oscars. Neither of us is feeling it. How will I crush and utterly defeat my little sister in our annual Oscar prediction battle under these pitiful circumstances? I never really enjoy the Oscars. I can't go to your "Oscar party." Watching the Oscars is something that should be done alone, a shameful duty, like pooping. Even Dr. Theresa, who PROMISED to stick by me "for better and for worse" goes in the other room at some (early) point. She usually ends up watching a Steven Seagal movie (for example) while I continue torturing myself. Sensible, I call her! Pre-Oscar depression is a serious disease that afflicts millions of idiots each year. But this is the first year in memory I almost don't feel like watching the Oscars at all, not even out of dull habit. Can I blame the Family Guy, who is hosting the show? I kind of want to. But then again, I don't "like" to see Billy Crystal scampering around and capering about and pulling funny faces like a sad old fool either. When I'm watching the Oscars I'm cringing all the time and looking away in keen embarrassment as they do their little skits and weep openly. I feel sorry for those millionaires! So am I anticipating the frustration I expect to feel when the Family Guy thinks he is making me cringe on purpose? And yet at heart he is nothing but a Billy Crystal. AND HE KNOWS IT! Maybe that's what bugs me: that he thinks "knowing it" makes it better. Is that what he thinks? I have no insights into the workings of his mind. Okay, I do feel pretty safe in saying that he secretly thinks things like this all the time while he looks in the mirror: "At heart I am just an old-fashioned song-and-dance man!" or some equally horrific thought. And maybe he will turn out to be the greatest Oscars host ever. Hmm. That puts me in mind of the revelation that concludes Flannery O'Connor's story "Revelation": Mrs. Turpin sees "a vast swinging bridge" leading to heaven "through a field of living fire," with "battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs" on it. And behind them, some respectable people are going to heaven too, "Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away." I think what Flannery O'Connor was trying to say is that the worst Oscar host ever and the best Oscar host ever WILL BE IDENTICAL. So is it the repressive desublimation getting me down? Do I want a host who is sincerely bad instead of "ironically" bad? Should I speak to a psychiatrist? Where am I?

Earth Squirrel Wins

"Look, I'm busy," you say. "I don't have all day to sit around reading every 'post' you ever wrote about corn. I'm no purist! I'm just a guy or gal on the go and the pressures of my job are enormous. If I could read just one thing you 'blogged' about corn, what would it be?" First of all, let me say that is the trouble with this modern world! But okay. I suppose the third runner-up would be my discovery of the curious predominance of corn flakes in the index of Hal Needham's autobiography. And then of course no one can deny the excitement of reading about the corn they eat on Venus and Mars! What could possibly top that? No, not the erotic celebrity kernel-flinging of the glamorous Julie Christie. Sure, that is a good guess, but not everything is about action and thrills and eating corn in outer space with big Hollywood movie stars all the time! It may surprise you to learn that we have to "come back down to earth" - ha ha! - to enjoy the simple pleasures of the time Dr. "M." saw a squirrel eating corn on the cob. No sir, it just doesn't get any better than that. Now there's something to ponder while you sit in your skyscrapers worrying about your briefcases at your big business meetings: that adorable little squirrel just nibbling away without a care in the world! I wonder about the last time that cheeky little fellow had to put on a fancy "necktie" and meet someone in a conference room. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh my. Although the other day a particularly wiry and patchy squirrel came right up the front walk and onto the porch with disquieting urgency of purpose and leapt onto the screen door and glared at me malevolently with a large, black acorn jammed into its mouth and that wasn't adorable. It was ominous and terrifying. I looked into its eyes and the abyss stared back.

Commotion Notion

Hey, you know what else THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE reminds me of? That's right! Jerry Lewis. But what doesn't remind me of Jerry Lewis? Of the impish Cousin Lymon, McCullers writes, "When he walked into the room there was always a quick feeling of tension, because with this busybody about there was never any telling what might descend on you, or what might suddenly be brought to happen in the room. People are never so free with themselves and so recklessly glad as when there is some possibility of commotion or calamity ahead." For further insight, reacquaint yourself with McNeil's Theory of Potential Energy.

Through the Galaxies and Back

Walked down to Off Square Books and, as promised, picked up the new issue of VANITY FAIR featuring James Wolcott's salute to Jerry Lewis. Good stuff, though much of it will be familiar to the seasoned Jerry fan. I'm not complaining! Gigot (!) and Emmett Kelly make an appearance, so who can ask for more? Wolcott has words of appreciation for Jerry's book DEAN & ME ("crackling" he calls it) and best of all there's this little nugget that Jerry once dropped on Mel Torme: "You have driven your theatrical prowess through the galaxies and back" (see also). An excellent insight: "When he isn't 'on,' he's the opposite of off; his presence intensifies with an increase of dark matter, transmitting scary-dad authority even when trussed up and immobile..."

Saps

Laura Lippman has written down some good, insightful thoughts for you to read about James M. Cain's MILDRED PIERCE (different than the earlier Slate magazine essay of hers on the same subject, which you can find after a few "clicks" here). Here's a sample sentence: "The not-so-secret dirty little secret of hard-boiled fiction is that it’s awash in sentiment; those tough guys, for all their intelligence, can be the biggest suckers of all." See, that is close to something I have been pointing out to my hardboiled fiction class... so often your hardboiled protagonist (especially in a traditional detective novel) NEEDS to be a sap for the story to work. How often does the detective with an ill-advised soft spot end up working for a client who has no money? How often does the client who starts the book betray the detective's tender trust? I will tell you: EVERY TIME! I mean, how often does our hero fall hopelessly in love with a photograph (Sughrue in THE LAST GOOD KISS) or painting (McPherson in LAURA) of an alluring young woman who is presumably deceased? Forget sentimentality! Half the time we're practically wallowing in gothic romance. Hardboiled fiction is as full of ghosts and castles and raging thunderstorms that reflect the wildness in the characters' hearts (see MILDRED PIERCE!) and vampires as anything. Isn't Veda a vampire? Doesn't she blossom as her once-vibrant host is reduced to a shapeless, worn-down shadow, "a panting, dumpy little thing in a black dress"? Lippman's point is about the comparative lack of sentimentality in Cain (as opposed to Chandler, for example), a true observation, but even tough, practical Mildred is a sap where Veda is concerned. (Bled dry! Fed upon! "Sapped"! Vampire!) And I guess Captain Ahab is a sap for Moby-Dick. Can't you see what literature is trying to tell us? We're all a bunch of saps!

The King's Speech

Our friend Joey brought over a screener of THE KING'S SPEECH and it is about the king's speech. And during the ENTIRETY of the king's speech, which is about fighting Germany, they play rather triumphantly the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony - I am almost 100% certain that is the piece of music I heard - and how German can you get? So that's pretty weird isn't it? I can't be the first person who has noticed this, but if you think I'm going to take the time to google it you are crazy. On the plus side, the movie made me dig out my LP on which Kelly Hogan sings "Love Alone" while my friend from Hubcap City plays guitar. That is a song all about how "love, love alone caused King Edward to leave his throne," which functions as a subplot of the film. In real life, of course, it is all more complicated, and everything is awful, but let's not worry about that right now. PS Doesn't Beethoven transcend nationality, and wasn't he all about Universal Brotherhood, and didn't the British use the opening motif of his 5th symphony as a symbol for victory, and couldn't the second movement of the 7th have some similar significance of which I am unaware, so shouldn't I just stop having brilliant insights?

Hardboiled Chicken Dinners

Dr. Theresa told me and Laura Lippman told me and Megan Abbott told me too: now I'm finally reading MILDRED PIERCE for myself and finding out how great it is. But NOBODY told me that it would make me hungry for chicken all the time. Yes, even more so than I, THE JURY, this is the novel by a hardboiled author that is most concerned with the deliciousness of a chicken dinner - and Cain could really teach Spillane a thing or two on getting it across. Hey, doesn't "hardboiled" look better without a hyphen? My dictionary discourages me, but Megan Abbott encourages me. Even when I run across the word in a novel by Chandler or Cain there's a hyphen, but nowhere in Megan's insightful academic study THE STREET WAS MINE: WHITE MASCULINITY IN HARDBOILED FICTION AND FILM NOIR is there a hyphen (to the person who "recalled" that book and made me bring it back to the library yesterday: Phooey!). I say Megan is right. Hard-boiled eggs need a hyphen; hardboiled yeggs do not.

Help Wanted

"The French have Jerry Lewis." That's how an article about Sylvia Plath (!) begins in today's New York Times. Ha ha ha! Ho Ho ho! Shut up! I told you to shut up about this, New York Times. You need an editor there whose only job is to search out and delete that hoary "insight." I'm available!