Missing Gods

As you know, I used to say I had stopped "blogging" but now I have stopped saying I have stopped "blogging," for reasons I have listed repeatedly for no one. Anyway, there are so many interesting things happening every day that it is almost impossible not to "blog," don't you agree? For example, I know I bought a book at Square Books... let me check my private records... yes, yes, it seems that in May of this year - almost certainly on the same day I received a new belt that caused quite a stir - I bought a book that caught my eye, a book purporting to contain a complete list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt. This is not to be confused, of course, with my DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT DEITIES, a work of a broader scope. For a while, as I can recall by way of the images that dance so merrily inside my brain, the book I bought about the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt - "COMPLETE" the cover boasted! - sat on the low-slung marble-topped side table where I keep a few books for browsing as I loll about in my favorite chair like a dissolute dandy of yore. I eventually moved the book because it was taking up too much space. I think it interfered with the old cat when he tried to use the table as a means of access to my lap. BUT WHERE DID I PUT IT? The book, I mean, not my lap. That is what I have been trying to figure out for three or four days now. The good thing is that if I ever find the book, it will give me something else to "blog" about, thereby staving off (or helping me embrace?) the abyss. Now you get it!

Not Quite Enough Marbles

So all these guys are sitting on one side a long table in masks talking to each other and the door opens and they all turn and look at the camera at the same time - that's pretty scary! I feel like I've seen this startling effect copied in later movies. I couldn't find the exact moment on the internet, but this came right afterward. It's from LA MAIN DU DIABLE (a much more apt title than the English version: CARNIVAL OF SINNERS), the latest entry in our annual Halloween film festival. Kind of a fairytale. Jacques Tourneur's dad directed it! I want to know why he was back in France directing this at about the same time his son was in America directing CAT PEOPLE - what a family! - so I'll grab that Chris Fujiwara bio of the younger Tourneur and get back to you later. So! I was walking back home from Square Books the other day when Melissa Ginsburg accosted me from the passenger window of a pickup truck! And Chris Offutt was driving. And they wanted to know whether I wanted a ride, which was funny because I was next door to my house, which they well knew, so they were being hilarious. And they pulled into the neighbor's driveway and I leaned in the window of the truck and we had a talk. And it turned out by coincidence that the newly and impulsively purchased book I had under my arm is one of Chris's favorites! Chris said he read it all as fast as he could and can't wait until enough time passes so he can read it again. It's the "Hollywood Trilogy" of Don Carpenter, three novels in one volume. I was telling Bill Boyle about it and he already knew everything because he's a big fan, too. They were out of print for a while, and Bill was tracking down the separate volumes at the library. So I just started reading the first one and to my surprise it's pretty much about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and it's narrated by Jerry Lewis. I exaggerate! The decade is wrong, for one thing. And I've only read a couple dozen pages. But one partner in the comedy duo is a crooner, and the crooner hates to rehearse and is always late, and the crooner likes comic books, and his teammate's schtick is to act like he has "not quite enough marbles rolling around in my attic," and they're embarrassed by the low-budget movies the studio forces them to make and are much more at home in their loose and highly improvisational nightclub act, which they have moved to Las Vegas... all these things apply to Martin and Lewis, though there is also a lot about these characters that does not apply to Martin and Lewis, but I'm going to ignore those parts.

Ghosts Are Real

As you know, Dr. Theresa and I can hardly be bothered to walk up the block to hear music. But this weekend we went all the way to New York City to hear music! That's right, our favorite band The Rock*A*Teens, who were playing their VERY LAST SHOW EVER according to Rock*A*Teens mastermind Chris Lopez, whom we saw in the club (Le Poisson Rouge) when we arrived early - though the next day (about which more later) he seemed more cryptic and less certain when we raked him over the coals about it. We can only hope - the world, I mean! - that the Rock*A*Teens will play again. Our trip began the day before, with drinks precisely at "Megan Abbott Time" - this time with the actual Megan Abbott! Hey, you know how I always wear my glasses way up on the top of my head? Sure, it's probably all you think about! You can see an example in the following photo by Dan Conaway.

Well, I tossed back my head with glee or something and my glasses flew away into a spot from which they were seemingly irretrievable. Megan, a daintily constructed person (I once asked for and received her permission to compare her to a doll in a magazine article) slipped herself behind the banquette in our swank hotel lobby to save them. Later that night, at dinner (about which more later), an efficient and stealthy waiter suddenly appeared behind me with my glasses, which I had lost again in the identical manner. "Sir, your glasses," he said. "A theme!" I thought. "This is hot stuff! The title of my 'blog' 'post' can be 'Sir, Your Glasses.'" And so I jotted in my special book of jottings. BUT IT WAS NOT TO BE. "Ha ha," I thought. "My glasses are always flying off my head. What an intriguing character I am." Dr. Theresa and I were dining at Il Buco Alimentari, a place recommended by John T. Edge. When we arrived, the hostess said, "Oh, you requested the kitchen," and the other hostess said quickly, "No, no, no," which made me suspicious. WHO HAD REQUESTED THE KITCHEN? For we were indeed seated, as if we had requested the kitchen, at a marble counter facing just inches away from where they were cooking the food, a terrific spectacle. The exchange between hostesses made me wonder whether John T. had secretly called ahead to ensure that our dinner would be especially memorable. I have suspected as much of him before! Dr. Theresa had some octopus and then later I had some different kind of octopus. Somehow I thought of Camille's, an old spot in Atlanta, though Camille's was sometimes crummy, especially in its later years, whereas Il Buco Alimentari was glorious, but my octopus made me think of the fra diavolo at Camille's if a mighty, shining archangel had prepared it instead of a human who had given up on life. It was some exquisite octopus there at Il Buco Alimentari is what I'm getting at. And Dr. Theresa said that her own pasta course was like "black pepper and pecorino romano got married and had a beautiful offspring." And there was pork with nectarines and so many other things, things just kept coming, things that could make you cry, a snifter of green chartreuse. And now I'm going to leave the heavenly Il Buco Alimentari to indulge in some memories of shaky old Camille's. Dr. Theresa and I went to Camille's on our third date! Between our first and second date she had gotten seriously ill - not because of our first date, ha ha! I mean, like, she was in the hospital. So on the third date I thought it might do her some good to try to walk to Camille's (she was very weak). It did her no good at all! In fact it did her some harm. Which reminds me of the time long before that when I made my poor sister walk a MILE to Camille's in some uncomfortable shoes which I found out later had caused her feet to bleed like some kind of saint. Good times. Let me explain that at the time, my brother and I were both living in Atlanta, in separate places, and my sister, then a teenager, would sometimes come to visit. So on that trip she and I sat around the apartment and played hangman because I didn't have a car and I forced her to march until her feet bled... and then when it was her turn to stay with my brother, he introduced her to her hero David Byrne! David Byrne shook her hand and she swore never to wash it again. So that was a contrast. Nor did my brother force her to walk until her feet bled. OKAY! Back to the present! The next day Dr. Theresa and I were to meet Megan at the Strand bookstore, where I had never been somehow. Dr. Theresa and I were a little early, so first we ducked into a comic book store around the corner. I got a copy of Seo Kim's book CAT PERSON. It's great! Sitting on a bench waiting for Megan a few minutes later I was just laughing out loud like a lunatic. Also, I was reading CAT PERSON by Seo Kim. I was delighted to see Jesse Moynihan's FORMING on the shelf in the comic book store, both volumes. But an employee told me that the recent ADVENTURE TIME comics cowritten by Kent Osborne were sold out! He told me they sell the minute they come in - they can't keep them in the shop! Our town does not have a comic book store, so I was sad about that lost opportunity. (Later the Rock*A*Teens bass player Will Joiner showed me a picture his niece had asked him to show me. She's getting ready to start 7th grade and she was all done up in her ADVENTURE TIME finery. He said she had never been so excited as when he told her he was going to meet someone who works on ADVENTURE TIME... which is the same way I feel about the Rock*A*Teens!) Megan met us at the Strand and we went down to the occult section in the basement. Dr. Theresa immediately found me several of the kind of "true ghost story" books I like, including one with a Table of Contents that promised a chapter about "The Terrible Flying Jelly Bags." I don't know what those are yet, and I won't until the books have been delivered, but I thought "The Terrible Flying Jelly Bags" would make a great title for a "blog" "post," surpassing even "Sir, Your Glasses." BUT IT WAS NOT TO BE. Megan was trying to choose between a book by a debunker and a book by a spiritualist medium and I suggested the latter because it would be "crazier." An eavesdropping young man turned to us and in a quietly intense voice said, "Ghosts are real." As I recall it, I replied in a friendly conversational tone, "I know, I've seen 'em!" Minutes later, however, on the street (and several times throughout the remainder of our stay in New York) Megan claimed that I had said, "Of course! I've seen many!" and as I was saying it (according to Megan's version, which she demonstrated to a number of people over the next few days, as I've noted) I made a sweeping, Shakespearean gesture with my right hand. That's what she said! I don't remember it. In any case, I "out-weirded the weirdo" (as Megan put it, to which Dr. Theresa sincerely added, "I am so proud of you"). It is true that the quiet and intense young man, whose eyes glimmered with danger and insanity, was flummoxed, stunned, defeated and silenced by my solicitous response. Eventually, Megan and Dan and Dr. Theresa and I were at the Rock*A*Teens show, and I literally can't remember the last time I was so happy.

For one thing it brought Dr. Theresa and me in an emotional whirlwind back to our early days (we've been married almost 19 years!) when Hogan sang at our wedding reception and Lopez picked up a guitar for one number. For this gig, though, all these years later, a band called Ricer opened, and it was a good sign when the lead singer and guitarist announced that her favorite band was The Rock*A*Teens. Then Ricer blew us all away with crashing relentless deafening sterilizing murderous vibrations that made us feel young again. Megan described their sound as "early metal" - I think. It was impossible to hear! In a good way. "They're like Frank Sinatra!" I screamed in Megan's ear, and I believe she agreed. She got where I was coming from! Maybe. After Ricer, Megan and I went and found a photo booth at the back of the club.

The Rock*A*Teens came on and Dr. Theresa danced, sometimes with Dan and sometimes with the girl from Ricer, and sometimes both, probably. I chipped in. It was mass hysteria! Dr. Theresa screamed herself hoarse. The aftereffects are apparent to this very day! She reached up for the stage and Chris Lopez reached down and grabbed her hand. She later called it her "Courtney Cox moment" - for you youngsters, that's a Springsteen reference. The next day, the bass player Will Joiner told us that the R*A*Ts had played for TWO SOLID HOURS, 23 songs, an incredible length for a set list. Lopez crowd-surfed for the first time ever. "I didn't do it on purpose," he said, sounding apologetic. "I stumbled and somebody grabbed me." This conversation took place at a joint called "The Campbell Apartment," where Megan took us, a rococo little bar in a hidden corner of Grand Central Station. Here's a picture I found of it on the "internet."

You can see the top of the nicely-upholstered couch where Lopez and Dr. Theresa and I were sitting. But you can't see the stone lion with wings (a gryphon?) that watches over everything. The atmosphere was suitably phantasmagoric but some of the fancy drinks were tastier than others and Lopez and Dr. Theresa may have had the right idea when they switched to bourbon on the rocks.

Dr. Theresa showed off her tattoo and Lopez asked whether I had got one to match and I said teasingly, "I don't desecrate my body," to which Lopez replied "THIS body?" gesturing humorously at my body. Which reminds me. We were lucky enough to see Ward McCarthy and his dear wife Ann on this trip, our old friends, and their daughter Lily (I knew her when she was a newborn infant and now she's about to start college!) and Ward and Ann LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME as they did when I first knew them. And Chris Lopez looks EXACTLY THE SAME. Whereas I am a fat guy with a lot of white in his beard. What happened? Ward said he and the family had been rafting in some rapids recently. That's not the Ward I know! As I exclaimed to all present. "Yes, because all we did was sit in a bar and complain," said Ward. "But when I wasn't doing that, I was rafting," he added lyingly. I had reason to think of my fatness as I reclined in a marble bathtub, taking a bubble bath and reading a Travis McGee novel just as John D. MacDonald never intended. A tub so deep I could float in it. I DID float in it! This was the day after the show and I was singing everything to the tune of "Don't Destroy This Night," my favorite Rock*A*Teens song, like, "Let's get a drink/ We can sit and think/ Tub so deep/ It puts me right to sleep/ I'm in the mood/ To take pictures of my food." Such were a mere few of my hilarious parody lyrics basd on gritty real-life experiences. I'm like the Weird Al of the Rock*A*Teens! But - and may Ace Atkins forgive me for saying so - John D. MacDonald writes a lot of prose that should ONLY be read in a bubble bath. "One goodnight in a sad alto echoed in an empty corridor in my mind... I stood on a dream bridge and saw an open boat drift under the bridge on the black tide, full of a lost tumble of dead maidens..." WHAT! COME ON! Travis McGee likes to explain life to the ladies. He likes to tell women what's what. "Baby, nothing is easy... real people walk around in the foggy, foggy dew." Okay, Travis McGee! That little speech runs about a page. (Ha ha, look who's talking!) By page 142 two women have literally purred at him - PURRED AT HIM, NOT METAPHORICALLY - because he's so awesome at giving them a squeeze if you know what I mean. Maybe one woman specifically purring in gratitude for his manliness every 71 pages isn't too many, I don't know, what do you think, don't tell me, I don't care. But he's trying to avenge the death of a pal and get his mitts on some weird gold statues so I'm still reading it so sue me. After drinks with some Rock*A*Teens at Grand Central Station it was off to Laura Lippman and David Simon's place with Dan and Megan for a really special evening of conversation and cheese. I am talking about a cheese called burrata, which I guess I am the last to know about because everybody was looking at it and saying, "Hm, the burrata, oh, the burrata," like it was a normal thing. But it was so much more than a normal thing! Plus Laura had thoughtfully prepared some Southern specialties to make us Southerners (she has Georgia roots of her own!) feel at home. Because guess who else was there? That's right, Roy Blount Jr.! "She introduced us to her donkey," Roy said when I asked him to tell us about the time he met Flannery O'Connor. "Funerals are a good thing to be funny after," he said later, on another subject. At one point Megan said "Everything important looks simple," and I wrote it down because I go around writing down things Megan says. Like, a day or two before that, she said in defense of Frank Sinatra, "He couldn't control his overwhelming emotions, that's the worst you could say about him," and then she laughed really forcefully ("merrily," we decided) at the audacity of her own pronouncement. Ha ha ha! At Le Poisson Rouge I wrote down something Dan said but I'll tell you the truth, I'm not sure I can read it. It's dark in there! It's dark and drunk in there. I think it says, "The promise isn't better than the thing." And I think it had to do with how fantastically he had vowed to dance with Dr. Theresa - a promise he easily kept! I have a lot more material here... I mean a LOT more... a whole riff on SNOWPIERCER for example (I think I call Tilda Swinton the Peter Sellers of our time) but even I have my limits. OR DO I?

Remember to Have the Marble Scratched

Something Natasha Allegri just tweeted ("SILKY CHICKENS" read the entirety of her tweet) made me think of some phrases from ABSALOM, ABSALOM!: "a cloud of chickens" and many pages later "a cloudy swirl of chickens." I had an actual vision of William Faulkner standing in his yard watching somebody (Estelle? Would she feed the chickens?) feeding the chickens, and thinking, "Wow! Those chickens are like a cloud. That is like a cloud of chickens." Old Faulkner! He is Shakespeare one minute and Beckett the next. "... all of a sudden it's all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while they dont even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter." Just twenty or so pages later here he is on the same subject (mortality) describing a man's whole life in a succinct deadpan that anticipates Beckett's later innovations: "Yes. One day he was not. Then he was. Then he was not." You know, I almost thought this book had an owl in it, like every other book, but it was "huge fowl," my eyes tricked me, "the trees along the road not rising soaring as trees should but squatting like huge fowl." I have high hopes for an owl, though: there has already been a metaphorical bat ("He was the light-blinded bat-like image of his own torment" - ouch!) and as we have seen in DRACULA and as we have seen in JANE EYRE, bats and owls are cheeks by jowls - ha ha! that's a little rhyme I just made up - in your fancier literature. In conclusion, I am glad Faulkner did not have to bring ABSALOM, ABSALOM! to a fiction-writing workshop nor attend much college at all. "Hey, so this guy's dad is talking to him on the porch for like 25 pages? And then out of nowhere the dad goes into the voice of this other dude he never met? And like gives a whole long complicated monologue from the point of view of GOD in this other guy's voice he never even met?" And Faulkner would have been like, "Yeah?" That part made me think of Barry Hannah's story "Nicodemus Bluff" when the narrator's father "when he played chess, became the personality of a woman, a lady of the court born in the eighteenth century... The woman would 'invest' Dad and he would win at chess with her character, not his own man's person at all... The chess game, as it went on, changed him more and more into a woman, a crafty woman."

Things About Kings

Whoa! I was just over at Square Books, stumbling around the new release table, and I saw that Peter Ackroyd has already written another book about kings! It is a sequel to his last book about kings. What are you doing to me, Peter Ackroyd? You know I can only take so many books about kings over such-and-such a period of time. On the paperback table I saw this book I keep meaning to tell you about. I've never seen anything but the cover, front and back. It's by some local twins who are also old ladies. On the cover, the old lady twins are dressed up as queens, with crowns and scepters and red capes. One old lady is seated, pulling back her royal cape to reveal that she is wearing sneakers such as a youthful person might don! Her identical sister appears to sneak up behind her, threatening with real malice to bash in her head with her scepter! That is the cover of the book. The back cover claims - and why should I doubt it? - that the olden sisters once bet William Faulkner a prized marble that he could not tell them apart. In conclusion, let's talk about the history book about kings I am reading right now. I forgot about this: I was reading in bed last night about one Count Gondomar (!) who liked the ladies and, as a contemporary wrote, "would cast out his golden Balls to catch them," ha ha! I read that aloud to Dr. Theresa and laughed uproariously like a real jerk. I was purposely misinterpreting "golden Balls" to humorous effect, for which I humbly beg your pardon. Let me further relate that just as I predicted, doublets appear with regularity. A prince's attendant runs up, "rustling and panting in his ruff and doublet."

Black Marble

It is St. David's Day and by coincidence I am reading a little about the brave people of Wales right now in FOUNDATION by Peter Ackroyd. In this part, Edward I wants to take over Wales. He claims kinship with King Arthur, the problem being that Arthur is often considered Welsh, and "It was rumored that he was not dead, only resting, and that he would come again to destroy the enemies of the Welsh." So anyway Edward dug up a couple of people he said were Arthur and Guinevere. "The corpses of Arthur and Guinevere, if such they were, were wrapped in silk by Edward and his queen before being placed in a tomb of black marble. Their skulls were retained for public display. They were definitely dead." Hey, I don't know anything about St. David. Later today I promise to look him up in my waterlogged set of BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS and I'll tell you all about him!

Jazz Ghost

You know what Frank Kermode said about Shakespeare: "To be able to devote one’s life to art without forgetting that art is frivolous is a tremendous achievement of personal character." And what about when John Ashbery said that poetry is good because of its impracticality? Plus how can we forget the Maine antiques dealer who said, "I think I’m more and more attracted to things that aren’t worth anything"? Let me add a composer I really like, Thomas Adès, who says in a book of interviews, "I have to make gratuitous things... which the philosophers can't explain." He says a lot of other aphoristic things, too! He's very aphoristic. I'd tell you more except I am teaching this book to my grad students next semester and I want to leave some surprises for them. Well, he says some things about Mahler I don't agree with at all, but he does praise Mahler when Mahler "embraces and celebrates the futility of his life and his music." I can get behind that! And then he says (still about Mahler) "good for him. Grand failures are preferable to sneaky successes, aren't they?" And that makes me think of something I have said on the "blog." I can't tell you more! We're reading DRACULA and WUTHERING HEIGHTS in my grad class too. And GLINDA OF OZ, which I haven't yet read, but I'm getting behind Laura Lippman's interpretation, so I am sure it will be a success. I was going to make them read THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ but the ending depressed me too much. (Spoilers here, nearly a century old, but still.) The Glass Cat with awesome brains like pink marbles is forced to exchange them for transparent brains. She becomes "humble" - ugh! - and boring, which in the world of the book is supposed to be a good thing. We all know it's not so. Well, I mean it's good to be humble, of course, but you don't have to be boring about it, and DO try to stop people from switching out your brains on a whim if at all possible. I am quite disturbed, also, by the political system of Oz. Magic is outlawed! You might think my ideas to be conservative. Am I against government regulation? Well, I guess so in this case! Only a certain few government-licensed employees of the state are allowed to practice magic in Oz. If magic spells are the guns of Oz, then Ozma has repealed the second amendment. On the other hand, if you think of magic as free speech (that's probably more like it - I guess!), then I am a true liberal, and Ozma is a censor. The Patchwork Girl never did become "terrifyingly amoral" in my opinion, as Lippman promised. The closest she came was saying that she would gladly "kill a dozen useless butterflies" to help her friend. That was scary! But I guess "punk rock" is the best definition of her in my book. Finally, I should tell you that our annual Halloween film festival ended with a movie called TORMENTED, all about a jazz pianist practicing for Carnegie Hall (!) who accidentally (sort of, not really) lets his girlfriend ("Wow! Look at that brassiere!" exclaimed Dr. Theresa) fall off a lighthouse and then she's dead and a ghost! I particularly loved the scheming beatnik in TORMENTED and kept wondering where I had seen him before. Turns out that many years later he was the bartender ghost in THE SHINING! I learned that from imdb.

You Can See 'Em Work

"So they opened the door and entered the house, where a little light-brown donkey, dressed in a blue apron and a blue cap, was engaged in dusting the furniture with a blue cloth. On a shelf over the window sat a great blue owl with a blue sunbonnet on her head, blinking her big round eyes at the visitors." It should come as no surprise that THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ is a book with an owl in it. But I guess my favorite character is the Glass Cat, a cat made of glass, with these pink marbles, I suppose, in her glass head, and she's really proud of them because they're her brains, and she works this phrase into every conversation: "Have you noticed my pink brains? You can see 'em work."

A Piece of Glass, a Redwood Tree

So Kelly Hogan put the funky theme song to the kids show VEGETABLE SOUP on her twitter the other day ("click" here to hear it). And that made me think of this other show I used to watch as a kid. It was called MAKE A WISH, and as you can discover by "clicking" here, the host, constantly checking his guitar frets, advises in the opening theme, "a piece of glass, a redwood tree, anything you wanna be, that's what you're gonna be!" That's really the way we thought then. And just to prove his point, he flies away! (See also.) And now I am remembering how another calm, psychedelic kids show theme ("click" here) freaked me out a little bit with its insistence that "the world's a big blue marble when you see it from out there." OUT WHERE? WHERE AM I? THE ENDLESS ABYSS? And then kids are knocking a marble around. Hey, that's the EARTH! It's NOTHING! It could just disappear at any moment! Or some smaller planet could crash into it and knock it out of the solar system! Like a marble! Which was not the point at all. Speaking of no point, I know you are not "clicking" on these "links" and I forgive you. "Blogspot" has now given me the capability to see how many times people have "clicked" on any particular "link" and NO ONE HAS EVER LOOKED AT THIS "POST" about how President William McKinley used to throw a napkin over his wife's face whenever she had a seizure at a state dinner! For shame!

The Award For Best Carpet

I have been flooded with telegrams demanding a full report on the 2nd Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. Let me put your anxious minds at rest. The festival began as promised with THE VILLAIN, followed by THE ERRAND BOY, a screener of A SERIOUS MAN, THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE, HOME FROM THE HILL (filmed in part right here in Oxford, including a scene inside City Grocery when it was a grocery store), LET IT RIDE, and MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE. (I think the occasion demands some new, non-random illustrations.) Well, THE VILLAIN got things off to an abominable start, even though it featured cameos by "blog" objects of curiosity Foster Brooks and Ruth Buzzi. The term "thankless role" was invented for Ann-Margret, whose job in the film is to try gamely, though with evident exhaustion and diminishing returns, to get some simulacrum of a human response from her main acting partner Arnold Schwarzenegger. On the plus side, if you still have any doubts that Jerry Lewis is a genius, watch THE VILLAIN and then watch THE ERRAND BOY. Both films become, at some point, a series of independent vignettes. THE VILLAIN will help you appreciate the imagination with which Jerry sets up and shoots each standalone gag in THE ERRAND BOY. Even the ones that don't quite work are eminently bizarre, ambitious, and personal, as opposed to the flat anonymity of the former film. While there was no pervasive theme to this year's festival, such as "Psychiatrists and Turtlenecks," you can already sense to your great delight that there were small connections from one film to the next, and you are so excited that I am about to tell you what they were. For example, THE ERRAND BOY and A SERIOUS MAN both included the word "tsuris" in their scripts. THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE and HOME FROM THE HILL, while the production values and levels of awareness could not have been more different, were heavy on the Freud. In the former, there's a (SPOILER ALERT) long, cylindrical, threatening (partially bulbous?) one-eyed creature who gets his eye shot out! Okay? In HOME FROM THE HILL, George Hamilton and George Peppard love walking around with their shirts unbuttoned almost to their navels, a fashion statement repeated three decades later in LET IT RIDE by David Johansen of the New York Dolls, who plays "Loony." A prominent bit player goes for a similar look. At one point in LET IT RIDE, Richard Dreyfuss breaks the fourth wall, looks straight into the camera, and says (I think) "Am I having a great day or what?" This, of course, is a technique pioneered by MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE star Bob Hope, such utterances most often occurring under potentially salacious circumstances, as indeed is the case in LET IT RIDE. I can hear you asking, "But what about carpet? We know how much McNeil loves good carpet in his movies." Yes, we should start giving out an award for Best Carpet. We'll call it the Carpie. This year's Carpie goes to A SERIOUS MAN. "Love that carpet," McNeil said while watching the film. He had some exactly like it when he was a kid. "I used to roll marbles on the flat part," he reported.

Still Life With Oatmeal

Phil calls this picture "Mardi Gras in Atlanta." We call it "Still Life With Oatmeal" because of how classy we are. Here's what I get from Phil's original title and the picture itself: Phil is sad because he's not at a real Mardi Gras celebration today (which is Mardi Gras). So he tried livening up his oatmeal with a side of Hubig's New Orleans Style Pies. Good effort, Phil! We hope it worked. But we suspect that pathos was the general effect. But maybe we're wrong! We hope so! The pies probably didn't hurt! Here's what Phil has to say about the pies: "Hubig's pies are super-sweet, super-lardy fried pies. You pop 'em in the microwave for about half a minute til their innards are molten, and they come out amazingly delicious. The sugary glaze makes at least three of my molars hurt every time I eat one." "Click" here to take a tour of the Hubig's pie factory. And if that's not enough factory action to suit you, don't forget the corncob pipe factory and the marble factory. Happy Mardi Gras!

Remember the Marble King

You know how sometimes one thing will remind you of another thing? Well, that last "post" reminded me of TWO things: the ochre quarry and the Marble King marble factory where they make the marbles. I wonder if we will ever understand the mysteries of the human mind! Probably not! (Look! Just like the corncob pipe factory, the marble factory has an interesting "web" site. Order your marbles and corncob pipes today! You'll be a modern day Huckleberry Finn. And tell 'em "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot sent you.)

Decorative Glass Balls

I feel one of those especially long and especially meaningless "posts" coming on! And this one is all about decorative glass balls. So I'm going to call it "Decorative Glass Balls." Tonight I had great fun reading about 5 DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON in ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, the 12-pound Mario Bava book by Tim Lucas. But I was startled to discover that when Lucas described - in his "Summary" section - the scene I "blogged" about recently, he used the following sentence: "Their fistfight upsets a decorative display of glass balls." Recall if you will my own words: "a bunch of decorative glass balls." Pretty close! If I saw it in a student paper, it might give me pause. Yet here I am on the other end of the stick, knowing that my use of "decorative glass balls" was entirely honorable (I had not read the summary beforehand, not wishing to spoil the movie for myself), and realizing that when it comes to decorative glass balls, there is only one phrase that really sums it up, apparently, and that phrase is "decorative glass balls." Lucas - in his "Commentary" section - calls the scene "perhaps the film's most inspired feat of design and storyboarding ... Bava made the decision to view the fracas through a grating, thus splitting up our view of the action into dozens of tiny squares." Lucas goes on to describe how the fight sends "countless glass balls of all sizes spilling across a series of different colored floors, so that a screen full of squares literally explodes into a screen full of circles." This confirmed for me the idea ("click" on the movie title above for more details - ha ha!) of the scene's Jerry Lewisian aspect, especially as it relates to one gag from CRACKING UP. The "fantastic modern house" (Lucas's term) of 5 DOLLS is a Lewisian space. (I'm going to start using the word "Lewisian" all the time! Wheeeeee!) In his book on Lewis, Shawn Levy writes about CRACKING UP's "modernist decor (sleek patent leather sofas, monochromatic rooms, absurd kinetic art) ... hilariously explored in the psychiatrist's office, [the floor of which] is so heavily waxed that Jerry can't cross the room without destroying it ... when he ends the bit by spilling an entire bag of peanut M&M's all over the roan-colored floor, the sequence achieves a tactility exceedingly rare in cinema." So I'm sure you see the connection! And will agree that I am not an insane person! Now, remember, Levy is no pushover. In fact, in the very next paragraph, he calls CRACKING UP "a weak entry on even Jerry's checkered resume." Well! Two things are bothering me right now - three if you count the fact that I'm "blogging" about this. First, I am forced realize that those objects I have been remembering as marbles (i.e., small glass balls) in CRACKING UP were actually peanut M&M's! Second, I learn from Lucas (in a paragraph not reproduced here) that the final resting place of Bava's decorative glass balls is not technically a murder scene, as I call it in my recent "post." But to be fair, I assumed it was a murder made to look like something else. So I guess you can say that only one thing is really bothering me: my human fallibility. Everything I believe and observe is wrong! I guess I'm going to have to get used to it. But at least this clears up the matter of the "Decorative Glass Balls" and I think we can all rest easy tonight and for many nights to come. (Top, some of the actual "decorative glass balls" from 5 DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON. Bottom, from the same film, some of the mod variety of furniture that McNeil likes to see in a movie.)

To Tide You Over

The "blog's" recent paucity of illustrations has been the subject of an overwhelming public outcry - okay, a single, brief note from Verdell, who writes, "While words are no doubt the beef in the blog, even the most succulent marbled ribeye needs an accompaniment, such as a baked potato or a crisp iceberg wedge drizzled with blue cheese crumbles." Point taken, Verdell. This should tide you over.

Marbles!

From "Blog" Buddy Jason Headley comes the following video of the Marble King marble factory in Paden City, West Virginia, his hometown, where they make the marbles (the Marble King is not to be confused with the Ring King Junior):

Memorable Blue Shag

But I feel I must mention, just to be fair, that THE WRECKING CREW, for all its many faults, did contain a memorably vivid blue shag carpet with matching walls of a marble-like stone. McNeil was pleased. The effect on one's eyes was not unlike assault.

Lots of Fun

We had lots of fun in Chattanooga. The bookstore is very nice, go check it out! After the reading, Theresa and I walked up the street to see a movie. We haven't been out to a movie in a while, so that was exciting. The film had been billed in respectable newspapers as a sleek, stylish entertainment, a cinematic bonbon tossed off with elegant insouciance by a master director. But watch out! Those descriptions are a trick! If you translate them out of reviewer-ese, they mean, "Eh." On the plus side, we were early, so I got to watch Theresa play Ms. Pac-Man in the lobby. She was on fire, I'm telling you! On fire! She was eating up those little marbles and when the monsters started chasing her, she was like, "Who cares? Oh yeah, monster, come and get me!" And then she'd turn around and make those monsters into frowning blue ghosts and she'd eat them like popcorn. Oh, yeah! If you are a monster, you don't want a piece of Theresa. She'll get you. She's a Ms. Pac-Man wizard, a champ. Well, anyway, it was quite a night.

Dr. "M.'s" TV Korner: Dr. "M." "Loses" It!

Ha ha! We put "loses" in "quotation marks" because this "post" deals with the TV show entitled LOST. Also, it is kind of a pun, as we believe that Dr. "M.," usually so lucid in her LOST interpretations, has "lost" her "marbles"! Or perhaps that is too "harsh"! But judge for yourself, with this week's edition of Dr. "M.'s" TV Korner. (Note: As usual, we have heavily edited Dr. "M.'s" remarks to prevent "spoilers" for persons who have not yet had a chance to see the most recent episode of LOST). And now, we turn things over to Dr. "M.," who writes: "Is it just me or does LOST get better and better? Those writers really heeded our impassioned cries for 'more answers, more answers'! Now we are being bombarded with such information--I can barely keep up. But what I do know after the episode on Wednesday night is [here Dr. "M." includes some information that we are pretty sure we found out earlier this season, but just to be safe we are editing it out. However, this is the first sign that something is not quite right with Dr. "M.'s" analysis.] The other question that was raised: Juliette--evil??? Of course not, people! [Here again, we must differ with Dr. "M." First of all, is that really how you spell that name? Second of all, didn't Dr. "M." see the last scene? Not to give anything away, but we believe that the scene had "evil" written all over it.] As a lone vigilante [Dr. "M." continues with another dubious characterization], she is now determined more than ever to get off that island ...no matter what it takes. She must, must, must get back to her ********** ******** *** *******--remember how she impregnated her sister? (Not the old-fashioned way, you sickos out there!) But this will mean leaving Jack behind and having to miss out on hot *** with Matthew Fox. Boo hoo for her, I say! But don't despair--maybe she will get in one good romp before her flight home. We can only hope!" Dr. "M." then adds cryptically, "On another topic, have you seen THE SECRET? One word--don't." This is Dr. "M.'s" second mention of said "Secret," a subject about which we are woefully uninformed. We can only hope that Dr. "M." will begin to file reports under the rubric Dr. "M.'s" Secret Korner. Coming soon, we suspect!

Cracking Up

Two or more years ago, at about three in the morning, I saw the beginning of the Jerry Lewis movie CRACKING UP on one of my many premium cable channels, I don't mean to brag. There was a part when Jerry slipped on some marbles. It was hilarious! Another part showed one of Jerry's ancestors trying to escape from the Bastille (or somewhere. Anyhow, I recall it as a French setting). He made a dummy of himself, much like Clint Eastwood in ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ. Through a series of merry mix-ups, it was Jerry's DUMMY who ended up escaping! Well, I fell asleep, through no fault of Jerry's, and missed the rest of the movie (a scene from which illustrates this particular "blog" entry. I am simultaneously terrified and thrilled that I might therefore be sued by Jerry Lewis!). I kept checking the cable listings every day for months, wondering when they would rerun it so I could see the whole thing. It's a rare Jerry movie, which enjoyed only a limited US release. Well, now Jeff McNeil has found a copy on Ebay, and he's kindly mailing it to me as we speak! This is the kind of spirit and camaraderie that can keep "blogging" alive! Mr. McNeil was also the first to respond to my request for cutting-and-pasting material, the lifeblood of any good "blog." He writes: "I watched the opening few seconds of Cracking Up and noticed that the carpet is the same color as the carpet in The Patsy. It could, in fact be the very same carpet, for it looked as if it had 20 years of wear on it..." Rest assured, this intriguing hypothesis will soon be confirmed or denied by the forensics team here at "Blog" Central, and you, my loyal readers, will be the first to learn the result!