Hammer of the Chipmunks

Well, it was too hot to walk outside yesterday, so Dr. Theresa and I headed over to the gym. Afterward, we thought we'd grab our famous favorite grilled chicken salad from Proud Larry's. But there was unexpected roadwork in our way! So we had to get back on the highway and go the long way around. Inconvenient? Maybe! But we got to drive behind this truck (pictured, above) for a while. As you can see, the company logo is a chipmunk holding a hammer. I know what you're thinking! You're thinking "That's a squirrel holding a hammer." Look, I don't blame you. I said the same thing to Dr. Theresa at the time. Perhaps you and I both have been overly influenced by the time McNeil saw a real-life squirrel brandishing a stick ("click" here for more details, or visit your local library). But when I got home, I hit the "internet" for a closer look. The back of the truck treats us only to the top half of the industrious chipmunk. (I say industrious, but he's not really holding the hammer in a useful way, in my opinion.) When you see the whole logo, it is obvious that the tail is not a squirrel's tail. But I'll tell you something else: God knows where I got the energy, but I looked at some photos of actual chipmunks, and their tails were closer to squirrel tails, if not quite as lush, than the little stub I saw on this cartoon chipmunk holding the hammer. And I said to myself, "Well," I said, "I don't think the Disney characters Chip and Dale, who are chipmunks to my way of understanding, have this kind of realistic chipmunk tail either. Maybe, then, in this way, the hammer-wielding chipmunk was influenced by great cartoon chipmunks of the past." So I scrolled through several images of Chip and Dale before I found one in which their tails were prominently displayed. I was right, at least in the sense that the tails of the unfortunate Chip and Dale appear to have been snipped off to nub length. And then I thought, "Huh, I guess the people who invented Chip and Dale were like, 'Hey, we can't give them realistic chipmunk tails. They'll look too much like rats! Besides, longer tails are harder to animate.' And so on." At this point, my spirit died inside my body and I was no longer capable of human thought.

No One Tells Me Anything

I just saw a commercial indicating, or so I thought, that there are purple M&Ms. I felt very upset because no one tells me anything. Then I looked it up and I guess you can't find a purple M&M in the bag. She is just a fanciful mascot for promotional purposes. I know this will be a "zombie" "link" one day, but on the M&M "web" site you can examine her workout routine and the advice she would give her teenage self. That's right, this M&M was once a teenager. I would have expected their life cycle to last three years at most. Oh, this really takes me back! The Hawaiian Punch FAQ upon which I doted once is just a "zombie" "link" now. Thank God, then, that I had the foresight to quote it: "Punchy has been revamped with contemporary fashion and music to appeal to modern consumers. He still has the punch! ... The long-time spokesman for Hawaiian Punch was given a more contemporary look that appeals to teens." That's my favorite kind of writing, which may clue you in about why most of my novels remain unpublished.

And the Silently Silent Silence

Our electricity went out on January 24 and it's still not back! I don't think it's ever coming back. That's why I am daringly "blogging" without electricity. How? Magic, I guess. Anyway, remember last time we got snowed in? We all thought it was such a lark, a real hoot, such a giggly good damn time, as Ace went out with his 4-wheel drive and brought us back 100 chicken thighs and a single onion. This time it wasn't so funny! It wasn't so damn funny this time, was it? WAS IT! (Also, my use of the past tense is misleading.) For example, Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house). I would tell you about the time Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house), but I've already told Ace and Angela and Bill and Jimmy and Megan and McNeil and my mom and Adam and Hanna and Kate and Steve and Quinn about the time Dr. Theresa and I put out a house fire (not our house), and I probably told some other people I am forgetting to mention, considering how we haven't had electricity since January 24 and I am going insane. As I jokingly (not jokingly! As Rob Schneider, so renowned for his eloquence, once put it, I was "kidding on the square") told McNeil, at least not having power gave me time to finish reading the Apocryphal Gospels. Now, McNeil had purchased that book by mail on the basis of the single story I repeated from it about young Jesus killing one of his schoolteachers, but I had to inform him that, aside from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which the latter story occurs, the only other "good one" was the Questions of Bartholomew. Bartholomew timidly stomps his foot on the devil's neck, for example! But in general I was afraid I had caused McNeil to waste his money due to my vivid descriptions of interesting things! After I sent the email, I did read another really good line, just one line, set off on its own, like a line of poetry - "and the silently silent silence" - in the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians. It hit me as Joycean! Later still, I did find the Gospel of Truth, as it was called, to be full of the kinds of mind-blowing theological wackiness that McNeil and I used to speculate about in high school as we walked around in the giant sewer pipes with our friend J. P. near the Ossie's barbecue in Mobile, Alabama. But I don't know if that one will strike McNeil the same way. Look, I've done what I can. Ossie's is where I first became acquainted with and existentially scarred by the motif of a pig wearing a chef's hat. We have to thank Ace and Angela for a lot of things during this ongoing experience, including the time they helped us not blow up (unrelated to the aforementioned house fire). Thanks to Tom and Beth Ann for the hot coffee and hot shower when we neeeded it most... so far. The list goes on. Perhaps some would prefer to remain anonymous. Most importantly, Angela gave me a head lamp that allowed me to read the Apocryphal Gospels in the dark!

Yes, I Have Noticed

As you know, every book I read has an owl in it, and one such book was MAGPIE MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz. And now another such book is the sequel, MOONFLOWER MURDERS, in which he gets to the owl right away, "a rather fine owl with its wings outstretched." I had no chance to even put down the book before the owls kept coming and finally a character said, as if taunting me personally, "Actually, you may have noticed, we've put owls everywhere." He means at the hotel he owns, the mascot of which is an owl, OR DOES HE? Authors, I am certain you will agree, have become so blatant with their owls these days, taking the fun out of it for all of us (me) who have trained themselves to find the owl in every book, thereby barely clinging to a scrap of hope for order and purpose in an otherwise bleak universe.

Dramatic Moment

At a dramatic moment in her autobiography, June Havoc describes herself as being "owl-eyed and frightened." If you know me at all, which you don't, you know why I am compelled to tell you this (see previous "hyperlink"). But it's not much, is it? So as long as I am here, it has been too long since I was upset by a TV commercial. I've seen one recently in which Charlie the Tuna, the mascot of Starkist brand tuna products, boasts of having branched out into the chicken business. He announces a chicken product which has, quote, "the look and texture" of his tuna. Often have I pondered, listening to Charlie the Tuna's pitch, how it is a selling point.

Solid Monkey Performance

I turned on TCM just as the last scene from THE SEA HAWK was playing. There was a monkey in it. I assume he was the mascot of the pirates. I haven't seen THE SEA HAWK in many decades. But Queen Elizabeth was down on the docks making a speech. When the queen appears, the monkey tips his hat, rearranges his chin strap for attractiveness and comfort in a Brando-like bit of authentic "business" with roots in the reality of the moment, then begins applauding wildly. Very natural! This monkey went to acting school! I understood the monkey: his hopes, his dreams. It was the elegant adjustment of the chin strap.

These Potato Chips Aren't Hot

Late last night when I couldn't sleep I had to leave the room for a moment so I paused the TV. Paused the TV! Such a thing was unthinkable not so very long ago, as I have often remarked to an empty room. I paused the TV because I wanted to find out who killed Jay Mohr on a rerun of LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT. It struck me that there was something immoral about my action! Amoral? Problematic. Decadent. And not because I vaguely recalled (accurately) who killed Jay Mohr from the first time I saw it. No, because I couldn't figure out whether my ability to pause the TV was giving me a "choice" or removing one. So during the after-hours LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT reruns there were commercials for things called Xeljanz and Rummikub. The former is a drug and the latter is a boardgame. I realized that "Rummikub" sounded funny only because I hadn't heard it before. That's on me, not on the blameless pastime of Rummikub! But Xeljanz sounded terrible because a focus group probably came up with it. Like, "Raise your hand if you think a medicine that starts with x and ends with z sounds 'real' enough to purchase." I thought about which letter in Xeljanz was the worst, and I decided on 'n.' Ha ha, I like to pretend someone is reading this. The n is close enough to an m that one thinks of Xeljamz, which sounds like a compilation CD of ungodly music, maybe. [It would be corporate slang for "excellent jams"! - ed.] There was also a commercial for a boardgame called Googly Eyes, which nicely ties together Rummikub and Xeljanz, because Googly Eyes requires its players to don vision-distorting eyewear. Now I ask you! Does that sound healthy or safe? Oh, I'm sure it's fine. I recalled that Dr. Theresa had opened a bag of sriracha-flavored "Kettle Brand Potato Chips." I had inquired, earlier in the evening, how they were and Dr. Theresa said, "The bag says 'HOT!' but they're not hot." And she was right. I tasted one and it reminded me of ketchup-flavored potato chips from days gone by. "Ha ha, what dunces we were in the 1970s, eating ketchup-flavored potato chips," I reckoned. And that reminded me of something called "Andy Capp's Hot Fries," which were not hot, and not fries - were, in fact, tough little girders composed of, perhaps, densely compacted corn dust or corn waste - and which had as their mascot the unpleasant Sunday comics character Andy Capp, now long forgotten. So I thought I'd scoot to the "internet" to discover the inevitable nostalgic "chat rooms" dedicated to such grisly and obsolete products. And that is how I found out that both of these things - Lay's Ketchup Flavored Potato Chips and Andy Capp's Hot Fries - are still in production to this very day. (See also.) Thank you for attending to this blistering jeremiad on the subject of contemporary society. I trust your eyebrows were in no way singed by the force of the dynamic fury I unleashed. (Full disclosure: I suddenly recall that as a lad, upon discovering the ketchup-flavored potato chips, I marveled openly at the brilliance of the inventor. And we do love ketchup on our french-fried potatoes, do we not?)

Catamount Update

"You know, there's a college football team named the Catamounts. Western Carolina University," writes McNeil. McNeil would have us believe there's a WESTERN Carolina! I hastily misread that as "West Virginia," so when I first searched for an image, I discovered that there is a catamount team in West Virginia as well, and this catamount isn't trying so hard to be "cool":

And finally, below we find the Western Carolina mascot at what a press release refers to as his "birthday party," which was attended by some other mascots ("some of his closest mascot friends" says the press release). One of these mascots is named "Ted E. Tourist." He represents a team called the Tourists! Which seems like a bad name for a team. But what bothers me most of all is this bobcat's weird - which is to say, normal - hands (also, is he wearing RINGS on his middle fingers?):

Occasional Small Consignments of Bananas

When I was in Atlanta this weekend, my sister and brother-in-law and I kept seeing a headline that had a funny yet mournful ring to it: "Chiquita Banana Dies." They really meant the woman who did the voice of the Chiquita Banana in a popular animated commercial, to which I "link" you here. Please watch it. It's the best commercial ever, a mini-opera and PSA all in one. Plus it sells bananas! You will note that the banana arrives in an ocean liner with a singular purpose: she has "come to say [that] bananas have to ripen in a certain way." All that distance! Just to say that! What a journey! What an idealist this banana is! The commercial first appeared in 1947, and the citizens of the United States - or so the executives at Chiquita Banana seemed to think - required a lot of banana education, which made me wonder when bananas first became popular in the U.S. There was some talk of googling, but I insisted I'd look it up properly in my OXFORD COMPANION TO FOOD when I got home. And I did! "During the 19th century occasional small consignments of bananas were sent by fast ships... Early varieties had not been bred for keeping qualities, so the fruit had to arrive in little more than a fortnight and was an expensive luxury. But all this began to change in the 1870s, when two American entrepreneurs began to ship bananas from the Caribbean to New Orleans, Boston, and New York." But here's the most amazing thing! "As bananas ripen they give off ethylene gas. Most fruits do this during ripening, but bananas produce an exceptionally large amount... A banana put in a lidded box with green tomatoes turns them red. It also helps a hard avocado to ripen overnight." Bananas are magic!

My Dream About Horses

Dang! I have to clean up my filthy office because next ADVENTURE TIME meeting, Kent will be here LIVE! I don't want him to see the kind of squalor I live in. Mostly it's shoes and wine corks and cat hair and "scrap paper" and library books about cigarette lighters and the prehistory of fire stacked on a scratched-up ottoman and a bunch of coats just thrown over the door and piles of old comic books that have fallen down and an old TWIN PEAKS soundtrack CD I use as a coaster. There, I said it! And now I see some wool hats that are almost falling off a table. And some curling-up pictures of Jerry Lewis I haven't figured out what to do with yet. (Kelly Hogan gave me this one YEARS AGO!) During the meetings, the camera on this computer is carefully angled away from the worst of the mess. Kent and I have vowed to eat Gus's fried chicken all through the meeting, much to the very apparent dismay of Ashly Burch and Adam Muto, who DON'T EVEN REALLY KNOW WHAT GUS'S FRIED CHICKEN IS. I guess they think we're just gross and probably eat chicken in a gross way that will be horrible to witness during a video conference. Or maybe it's just plain unprofessional to eat fried chicken in a business meeting! WHO CARES. Anyway, at lunch the other day with Melissa we were talking about dreams and I was saying I LIKE hearing people's dreams, counter to the popular affectation of whining that other people's dreams aren't interesting. And then I told Melissa four or five boring dreams that were probably humiliatingly revealing. What a jerk! So anyway, last night I dreamed that somebody gave me a horse for a present. I was okay with it! But I didn't know how to take care of it. So the guy who delivered the horse said he'd show me an instructional video. And the "instructional video" was just a feature length film he had spent all of his own money to write, direct, and produce, about a group of young friends who are trying to make it in show biz. Ha ha! It was a wacky comedy. There was one scene during a wedding rehearsal when across the way from the gazebo where the wedding was being rehearsed there were a bunch of horses going for a swim! And the young rowdies decided to play a trick on the guy who was taking the horses for a swim. And SOMEONE WAS ACCIDENTALLY SHOT. But luckily the victim was wearing a mascot costume and though his baseball head was mostly shot off, he was okay inside there. And I kept looking at this guy like, "When am I going to find out what to feed my horse?" AND I NEVER DID. He just packed up his stuff when the movie was over and left me with the horse. As he left he said, "Maybe you'll want to keep this press packet with a full-color pull-out poster!" And he laughed warmly like he was doing me a big favor. And now that I think of it, he resembled a serial killer.

The Costco Experience

Here's a picture Ace took when we went to Memphis today. He called out of the blue and off we went. On the way we talked about John D. MacDonald some. I thought I had detected a single similarity between MacDonald and Charles Willeford, two extremely different writers. But I noticed that they are both willing to stop their plots in what I find to be a really pleasant way, and just dally over some other subject for a whole chapter or two, say: not what you expect necessarily from a "crime novel." I asked Ace - who was a newspaperman in Florida, you know - whether he thought it had anything to do with the fact that MacDonald and Willeford are both considered "Florida writers," as stylistically different as they are. Ace gave me a good history lesson on Florida crime writing and the particular idiosyncrasies of John D. MacDonald, and the ride to Memphis whizzed by. Ace was going there to speak at a branch of the Memphis Public Library. When we pulled in I could not help but notice that people were selling barbecue from a tent in the library parking lot. Because we were in Memphis! So I let Ace go in to "speak" and had some barbecue instead. I was drawn to the welcome sight of baloney. Not your thin Oscar Mayer-style slices. Nice thick honest rounds of real baloney, my friends. And they put two on a sandwich, as I now know from experience. I finished my sandwich - a real bargain at $3! - and was about to walk into the library when I overheard the library security guard say to a bystander, "The slaw is exceptional." I asked if he were referring to the slaw they put on the barbecue sandwiches in the library parking lot and he said yes and I quite agreed with him. So I said that I was almost tempted to go back and try the smoked sausage. He revealed that he had first had a smoked sausage and then gone back for the baloney! So we bonded over that. So did I go back and have a smoked sausage sandwich? It is really none of your beeswax. THAT KIND OF PERSONAL DECISION IS BETWEEN ME AND THE LIBRARY SECURITY GUARD. I saw no signage, so I asked the barbecue guys whether they had a restaurant and the main guy said, "No, we ride around." Then he said that his regular spot is on the corner of Winchester and Elvis Presley Boulevard. Go visit! And tell 'em "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot sent you. Finally I went in the library and was very pleasantly surprised to find that Ace's fellow speakers included Scott Phillips and Jedidiah Ayres. We were able to catch up a little bit. Then Ace and I had some Gus's Fried Chicken (SIDE NOTE! When Kent sent me the photo to use in my "Kent Eating Chicken" "post" I promised in return to take him to Gus's next time he visits... and he told me he has already been, of course! He has even been to a second secret Tennessee chicken location that John T. Edge told him about! You can't get ahead of Kent Osborne when it comes to chicken). Over chicken, thinking back on the speaking engagement I had just enjoyed, I speculated that our friend Scott was the first person to use the phrase "a pile of genitals" in the Memphis Public Library and Ace responded, "I THINK NOT." Then Ace said, "Have you ever had the Costco experience?" I had to answer in the negative. Turned out, Ace had to go to Costco and renew his membership and buy one million items from Costco. It also turns out the "Costco experience" is pretty much the same as the "grocery store experience." BUT! Then I passed a whole stack of kayaks in the Costco. Kayaks stacked to the skies! And Ace said, "You know they also sell coffins at Costco." He wasn't kidding! They really do. But the final part of the Costco experience is that when you leave they kind of frisk you! Well, they go through your stuff like you're smuggling uranium. There's your Costco experience. We drove back to town and dropped off the frozen stuff and one of Ace's kids hit me with a light saber. (PS Ace's kids are the best! I am recalling the incident with fondness and good humor!) "Chicken, kayaks and coffins," Dr. Theresa said, summing up my own summary of my day. It sounded like the title of a memoir! Maybe of the founder of Costco! When Ace brought me home we found Dr. Theresa and Megan there. They had just finished watching the old live-action Disney chiller THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, inspired by Jimmy's thesis defense, in which he cited it, and they were still a little freaked out by the apparently traumatic alternate endings with which the DVD had come supplied. So I gave Megan her first ever belt of rye. A 13-year-old rye! Oh, this day has been coming.

Deep Monkey Background

Lee Durkee has really gone down the old rabbit hole, or should I say monkey hole (no, no one should ever say monkey hole), researching the monkey riding a dog he saw during the Cincinnati Bengals half-time show. He went back and reviewed the footage, and found that the monkey was herding sheep, to Lee's consternation. Now, at the Christmas party the other night, much debate was had over whether dogs are generally saddled when monkeys ride them. So of course Lee found a whole "web" site dedicated to selling dog-sized saddles, presumably for monkeys, or, I suppose, for any creature small and wily enough to ride a dog (note: further inspection of the source material reveals that "Cowdog Saddles" disappointingly just sells regular saddles, you know, for horses - though their logo is a dog wearing a saddle - so the mystery remains). Most impressive was Lee's thorough background check, relayed in several emails, of the actual monkey from the half-time show, whose name is Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey. I suppose my favorite story about Whiplash is the time he got fired as a taco mascot and replaced with some dude (pictured). Personal highlights from the news release: "'He really brought people together, and he was somewhat iconic. When people saw Whiplash, they really did think Taco John’s, and that's everything you want your icons to do... There were limitations,' she says of working with an animal. 'TJ DJ can be more interactive with our food, whereas with Whiplash, he couldn't touch the food.'... The TJ DJ concept will also lend a synergy to the chain's advertising that wasn't possible with Whiplash, Middleton says. New television commercials will feature TJ DJ traveling the country in his van." I'm not doing justice to Lee's extensive investigation, which permeated his mind to such a degree that he came up with a maniacal plan to put on an all-monkey production of MacBeth. He doesn't think Whiplash has the chops for the lead role, though. "I think Whiplash, due to the years of chronic neck pain [long story - ed.], would make a great and emphatic MacDuff ('All my pretty chickens dead, in one fell swoop?')," Lee writes. At first Lee wanted to let the monkeys chatter and provide the Shakespeare in subtitles, but I think I talked him into feeding them peanut butter to get their mouths really going and then dubbing in the dialog later. Lee concludes his Whiplash studies with a sad "post" from 2008 he found on a Buddhist "blog," in which the Buddhist is upset because other Buddhists have been criticizing him ("bullying" is the word he uses!) for his love of Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey.

Warm Last Night

It was strangely warm last night. Here we are on the balcony of the City Grocery Bar: Dr. Theresa, Bill Boyle, Megan Abbott, me (creeping around in the background as usual), and Ace Atkins. We were there to mark various milestones. One of the happiest is Bill's debut novel GRAVESEND, which is finally out in physical form. We all got one. You should get one too! GRAVESEND by William Boyle. Look for it wherever fine books are sold, and tell 'em "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot sent you! Ace and Bill rightly smoked big fat cigars to celebrate. It took us a while to nab a spot on the balcony: at first it was occupied completely by an Elaine Stritch convention! Ha ha, they didn't really look exactly like Elaine Stritch circa Stephen Sondheim's COMPANY, but a distinct "Ladies Who Lunch" vibe was coming off the balcony. The first time Dr. Theresa and Ace went to scope out the situation, one of the Elaine Stritches grabbed the lone empty chair on the balcony and pulled it slowly toward herself with forbidding proprietary certitude. Much in the spirit of the feisty Elaine Stritch! Before stepping over to the bar I bought so many books at Square Books I don't even want to tell you. (Look: you can see the overstuffed, wrinkled brown paper bag of books right there on the table.) My eye fell upon George Singleton's recent story collection STRAY DECORUM, for example, and what could I do but get it, especially after the one-two punch of that great interview with George in LENT MAGAZINE? But what sealed the deal was opening it at random and seeing my new favorite short-story title. George also came up with my former favorite short-story title, "This Itches, Y'all." And here is the new winner: "I Think I Have What Sharon's Got."

I Cheated

I guess it took me long enough to finish J R by William Gaddis. Never mind why! But I got to the end and I was like, "Huh, there was no owl in it, that's weird, because every book has an owl in it." Reading J R was like swimming in an exhilarating icy rushing river of dialogue but you know the words went whirling by so fast maybe I missed a few. So I cheated and did a "Google Book Search" of it and yes indeed, I had missed an allusion to "Woody Owl," by which Gaddis seemed to mean "Woodsy Owl," the 1970s anti-pollution mascot. So okay so J R has an owl in it. So I feel better.

Dirty Elephant

"Hey, look what's on!" cried Dr. Theresa from the other room. This was a couple days ago. It was THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW. The orchestra was playing "Baby Elephant Walk" and out came somebody in an elephant costume, pretending to play a trombone. "It's dirty and raggedy," Dr. Theresa accurately observed of said elephant. Its large, disconcerting eyebrows flopped with menace as it shuffled around. When the dirty elephant turned to go, its gross ratty tail could be seen dangling down like a dead thing, plus it had a second tail, like a rabbit's tail, like the costumer was confused, like they were still working on it, like the costumer was kneeling down there at the elephant's tail with pins in his or her mouth when a stagehand desperately yelled to the elephant, "You're on!" - a red tail (!) that Dr. Theresa described as a "pom-pom," that was one messed-up elephant they had there. (See also.)

A Rat Who Owns a Pizza Shop

Now that I am working on ADVENTURE TIME I watch a lot of Cartoon Network and as a consequence I see a lot of Chuck E. Cheese commercials. Most of the time Chuck E. Cheese - a rat who owns a pizza shop - is going nuts and having a wonderful time with all the kids. But there is this one commercial where Chuck E. Cheese locks the place up (I think) and sits in the dark in a certain way - a "folksy" way, maybe? With one knee propped up in front of him? - and talks directly to the viewer, really soberly and quietly, about his "philosophy." Anyway it gives me the creeps. Remember when the guy who owned Men's Warehouse used to rant like a lunatic in his commercials? That was years ago, before you were born. Eventually the marketing department told him to calm down and from then on he whispered huskily until they fired him. Hey I just remembered when I went to freshman orientation in college and made friends with a girl named Lynn who worked at Chuck E. Cheese, and after orientation she took me over there for a free slice of pizza and I thought, "Wow! Life will never get any better than this!"

If You Know Me At All

You know I have been spending all of my spare time looking up Walter Tetley and the guy who did the voice of the Lucky Charms leprechaun on the "internet." And why wouldn't I? That's how I found "The Walter Tetley Web Page." "Click" here for "Chamber of My Mind," the section that details, in part, a camping trip the author of "The Walter Tetley Web Page" enjoyed. "Click" here for details of a six-page letter the author of "The Walter Tetley Web Page" received from Chris Allen, the woman who did the voice of the cartoon character Hoppity Hooper. "I started writing when I was about nine years old," she says, adding this charming detail: "I wrote cowboy stories and mad love stories which I knew nothing about..........I kept writing away.........just for my own fulfillment..........until much later I started receiving payment for some of these things. I did comedy material........" (These startlingly extended ellipses may be Allen's, though the author of "The Walter Tetley Web Page" deploys them elsewhere, so I kind of think they're his.) She goes on to tell about writing for Bob Hope. "This first job was.........with four other MEN COMEDY WRITERS who were tops in the field, who looked at me like I had rocks in my head........I mean.........how dare this girl.......still in school..........try to compete with four top MALE writers?" The "internet" has everything! I checked the Behemoth Who Will Never Be Named Here for its usual fascinatingly inane customer comments, this time on the biography of Walter Tetley. I liked this one for some reason: "I purchased this book to find out more about Walter who is my 2nd cousin, once removed, ie we share the same great great grandfather." The "internet" has lots of ideas about why Walter Tetley was an adult who never achieved puberty, some more horrific than others. Check out his wikipedia page and see how quickly you can spot the most horrible rumor, or don't. Don't. To take your mind off it, here's an ecstatic review of the autobiography of the guy who did the voice of the Lucky Charms leprechaun. Headline? "A MAGICALLY DELICIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ACTOR." And wait! Here is a news story about him conceived and written in an incredibly annoying way. Sample: "The Lucky Charms leprechaun is not Irish. Someone get my shillelagh!" Ugh. The leprechaun is quoted as saying, "I never got free cereal. But they gave me lots of green money." Also: "I had the luck of the Irish to get that part." I'm confused. Speaking of things that are on the "internet," a student in my scary story class was looking for a particular work of H.P. Lovecraft and came across the homepage of a guy who bills himself as "vampire, poet, fire breather." I mentioned as much in class. "And sword swallower," the student reminded me. Megan Abbott (who is reading at Off Square Books tomorrow!) sent me the imdb bio page for a model named Jinx Falkenberg (pictured), which, according to Megan, "somehow seems to encompass the change in the culture in the last 75 years," up to and including HOARDERS! McNeil wrote to tell me that there's a lunch box museum in Columbus, Georgia, the "web" site of which - as I discovered - is crushingly disappointing. "Click" on the history of The Lunch Box Museum and you will see that there is no history of The Lunch Box Museum. Okay, I think that's everything on the "internet."

Dear Stinkpot

Ace Atkins and I went to Memphis yesterday to have adventures such as eating chicken. Ace had a peculiar book catalog in his truck. He got it in the mail. The publisher's specialty is "Books only you would like," as Ace put it to me. There is, for example, a biography of Bob Hope's sidekick Jerry Colonna. The catalog description is brief: "Written by Jerry Colonna's son!" it exclaims, and that's all. Here's another catalog description in its entirety: "Acting exercises from the voice of Yogi Bear!" For an autobiography of some guy: "He was more than the voice of Lucky Charms cereal!" Lots of exclamation points in the copy, but none for THE DAY THE STARS STOOD STILL. It's the "memoir of Logan Fleming, top wax artist" from the Movieland Wax Museum. The cover shows Mr. Fleming, I guess, in a kind of Ingmar Bergman shot, half of his face obscured by what I believe to be an eyeless wax figure of Richard Widmark. EYELESS! Is that supposed to be Richard Widmark? I don't know. But he sure is eyeless. So that's a book cover. THE FAMILY AFFAIR COOKBOOK is by the woman who played Cissy on the sitcom FAMILY AFFAIR. Didn't she perish under tragic circumstances? That was the schoolyard rumor! I see in microscopic print on the cover, "Foreword by Dawn Wells." She was Mary Ann on GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, you idiots. I'm sorry I called you an idiot, because here's a bio of someone of whom not even I have heard: WALTER TETLEY: FOR CORN'S SAKE. Ha ha! That's some subtitle! The subtitle of Gary Burghoff's autobiography promises an unusual format: MY LIFE IN POEMS AND SONGS. A volume of letters from vivacious silent screen beauty Louise Brooks is called DEAR STINKPOT. "See, that's where an editor could have stepped in," Ace suggested. You really do not want to call any book DEAR STINKPOT, but especially a book of letters from Louise Brooks, even if she liked to call people stinkpot, I really have no idea. Titles are iffy. Eddie Cantor's daughter wrote two books: DON'T WEAR SILVER IN WINTER and STOP THE WORLD! I WANT TO TELL SOMEONE OFF! Walter R. Deasy, "owner of the carousel in Los Angeles's Griffith Park" calls his memoir THE MERRY-GO-ROUND IS WORN. I know how it feels. The subtitle is AN ANTIQUE MAN FINDS LOVE ON AN ANTIQUE CAROUSEL. Here, I really should "link" to the publisher. The least I could do is try to sell a few books for them. I deactivated my facebook account so I am going to have to "post" pix of me eating chicken here from now on, and I apologize in advance. Hey, I went over to John T. Edge's last night and he measured my head, never you mind why, and there is a picture of that floating around, too, and sure, it will show up here sooner or later, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry for everything forever.

"I Am Only Billy Hunt"

Robert Hughes died. I read his history of Australia THE FATAL SHORE a long time ago and the thing I recall most is the brave ingenuity of the convicts' escape attempts. Here's one that sticks in my head for its ironic (I guess) and tragicomic (maybe) qualities: "One prisoner, a former actor named William Hunt, 'who in his younger days had belonged to a company of strolling mountebanks,' disguised himself as an enormous 'boomer' or male kangaroo. He nearly got across to Forestier's Peninsula before two picket-guards, thinking he really was a kangaroo, spotted him and gave chase, leveling their muskets. 'Don't shoot, I am only Billy Hunt,' the nervous marsupial squeaked, to their consternation." The chuckle dies in the throat. It's a sad story, really, when you consider how terrible life was and the crazy brilliance of the idea and the hard work that must have gone into creating such a realistic kangaroo suit in complete secrecy, and the acting skills Billy Hunt put into so very convincingly becoming that kangaroo. Yes, I'm pretty sure there's some irony there: the excellence of his disguise his undoing! Now that Mr. Hughes is dead, I'm not sure I should have quoted that dialogue tag "the nervous marsupial squeaked," which is not my favorite kind of dialogue tag, but there it is.

Revenge

Watched REVENGE again. Yeah. I don't know. I think she is running out of people to get revenge on. If you think I am kidding, sorry, but I am just telling it like it is - like the makers of Argo brand canned peaches! That's the actual structure: she gets revenge on a new person every week. This time she got revenge by locking somebody in a storage unit for a couple of hours. For real. As revenge goes, it seemed pretty mild. I don't know. PS Don't forget Argo sweet peas! And tell 'em "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot sent you! (Pictured, "Bloggy" the "Blog" Mascot.)