From the Golden Toilet

Speaking of... what? Well, I know what I mean. Going from Queen Elizabeth in my fuzzy little brain to Dr. John Dee, I was put in mind of the chronovisor, a gadget McNeil emailed me about recently, under the heading "Forget the Golden Toilet." Perhaps I should explain the subject line of McNeil's email. Have you not heard of the famous artwork that was fashioned in the beauteous form of a golden toilet? McNeil and I used to amuse ourselves thinking of clever ways to steal the golden toilet, but then someone stole it in real life and ruined our fun. Now, according to all the newspapers, the golden toilet is back - and better than ever, I assume. But why am I telling you this? After all, McNeil has commanded me to forget the golden toilet – review the title of his email for confirmation - and think about the chronovisor instead. I’ll provide a "hyperlink" (here) so you can begin your own stupid journey of discovery about the chronovisor, a device that allows you to see back in time! Supposedly. Well, the idea behind the chronovisor put me in mind of my own big idea for seeing back in time, which involves an impossibly powerful telescope and a faraway galaxy. The narrator of Flann O’Brien’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN (or is it his hero de Selby, much quoted in footnotes?) has a related (?) notion involving an infinite series of mirrors, if I recall correctly, which the structure of this sentence throws into doubt. McNeil declared that my idea would indeed allow us to see ourselves eating lunch in high school, what a dream come true. Anyway, as our email chain became longer and longer, I kept misreading McNeil’s subject header as "From the Golden Toilet," which I finally told him. I think he said I could put that on his tombstone, but I countered that it might work better as the title of an edition of our collected letters.

My Five Skeletons

I'm sure you obsess about it all the time: how, at least once a decade and a half, I open some book of symbols or another and a mysterious card falls into my lap. Well, the last time that happened ("click" previous "hyperlink"), I went to the "website" of the mysterious organization who had placed their mysterious card in my mysterious book of mysterious symbols and interacted mysteriously with it. Are you still with me? Okay! Hang on! Remember yesterday? Remember how I "blogged" about a singing skeleton who is also a plastic toy filled up with air like a balloon? So, I "posted" that, and then I checked my electronic or "e" mail, and I had received, at exactly the same time, a promotional communication from the mysterious organization! And its subject line was "Archetype in Focus: Skeleton." WHAT! Then I calmed down and thought about it. Of course, the mysterious organization associated skeletons with October, just as I had. It was no warning from beyond! However! Let me draw your attention to the fact that my previous four "posts" - five, including this one - bear the label "skeleton." (And here I have to parenthetically state that if you exist, which you do not, and you access the "blog" by means of your phone rather than your home computing system, you don't get all the enticing extras, like skeleton labels.) I know what you're going to say now, but cool your jets, David Hume! Sure, maybe I've got skeletons on the brain! Or do I? For as a little investigation will prove, I use the label "skeleton" pretty dang loosely. Why, it could refer to the spine of a book, or to Chili's famed baby back ribs, dripping in their succulent juices. CASE CLOSED. Oh, wait! I wanted to quote this from that Colm Tóibín novel about Henry James: "a huge, obscure shape in the night, an angry, broken, pecking bird of prey, squatting in the corner, ready to take him, all black spirit, yet palpable, visibly there, hissing, come for him alone." But I don't think I can fairly pretend that this hissing bird of prey was an owl. The person suffering the unfortunate vision, which is certainly in tune with our Halloween season, is Henry James's father, whom "blog" readers may fondly recall as the man who wouldn't let tiny Henry James read a sexy book about hot corn. Wow! That made me think of something else: the book HOT CORN, with its depiction of hapless "hot corn girls" - with whose travails tiny Henry James was never allowed to familiarize himself - inspired me whilst happily I toiled on Julia Pott's show SUMMER CAMP ISLAND. I include above, at the risk of exploding the "blog," a title card from the show, manifesting that inspiration. I'm not sure who drew it. I'll ask Julia, and credit the artist in the near future! PS Julia already responded! She had plenty of time, because I finished watching von Stroheim's GREED, ha ha, before finishing this "post." I say "ha ha" yet my statement is true. The artist is Yoriyuki Ikegami.

The Money Store

1. If we know anything about Bill Boyle, it is that he suggests decadent or disturbing books to me AND he sometimes gives me something to read on an airplane. This time he recommended a decadent book and I took it upon myself to bring it on the airplane. "I don't want to tell you anything about it," said Bill. "There's a tortoise encrusted with precious jewels." Well! I knew that much from the back of the book. And if that's on the back of the book you have to wonder what else is in there. The book is AGAINST NATURE - no, that's the title - by Joris-Karl Huysmans. 2. Lee Durkee gave me a ride to Memphis. See, the closest airport is in Memphis and my flight is always so early and this time I thought I'd stay overnight closer to the airport... for convenience! But! The last time I tried that, I found my "motel by the airport" experience disenchanting. So I decided to stay somewhere "nicer." I recalled that Elvis fan Ace Atkins had once stayed at an Elvis-themed hotel in Memphis, which sounded like a diverting choice. After my no-refund advance booking (it was cheaper) I read that the place had been shut down temporarily some months ago due to an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. "Oh, I'm sure they've taken care of it," Ace assured me with the casual air of the physically fit. My room was on the second floor but somehow the ground came right up to the window anyway. So the second floor was also a ground floor. I'm not sure I'm being clear. Some grass and dirt came right up to my window, and just beyond that, the dark, forbidding woods. Woods in Memphis! With naught but a pane of glass betwixt me and them. The window reached the ground, I mean. Something could stroll right through it. It looked like "Young Goodman Brown" out there. I vaguely recall from that Elvis book I was reading that Gladys was frightened by some bushes growing outside the Presley home. Now I know how she felt. 3. Two tiny spots like dried ketchup on my nice gray jacket that I am not actually sure is gray. Is it blue? Back at home, Dr. Theresa and I dismissed these spots as "a shadow" or "a fold in the material" but now I can see in the vast hallway mirror near the swirling white staircase at the Elvis-themed hotel that they are definitely spots of uncouth ketchup. 4. Sitting in the airport reading "he had gone to those unconventional supper-parties where drunken women loosen their dresses at dessert and beat the table with their heads." (!) 5. Flight. Beastie Boys came on the iPod, amiably rhyming "cellular" and "the hell you were," which I noted to tell Jon Host on my return. 6. The airplane food was something I'd never seen before. I might call it "an open-faced breakfast pie." In the center was a slurry composed of everything you've ever had for breakfast. Some of what I think was the egg portion was colored pink for reasons I never managed to grasp. I ate it. 7. An early impression, though the book was first published in 1884, is that AGAINST NATURE advocates for Pen Ward's pet mode of existence, virtual reality: "Nature, he used to say, has had her day; she has finally and utterly exhausted the patience of sensitive observers by the revolting uniformity of her landscapes and skyscrapers. After all, what platitudinous limitations she imposes, like a tradesman specializing in a single line of business; what petty-minded restrictions, like a shopkeeper stocking one article to the exclusion of all others; what a monotonous store of meadows and trees, what a commonplace display of mountains and seas! In fact, there is not a single one of her inventions, deemed so subtle and sublime, that human ingenuity cannot manufacture." 8. A new bartender at my hotel in Burbank asked where I was from and when I told him, a guy at the other end of the bar shouted, "A lot of great writers come from Mississippi!" This is a true fact, but I must tell you from my travels that this is never the first thing a stranger will say upon hearing the word "Mississippi." And I hasten to add that Mississippi has brought endless negative reactions on itself. But it was nice to hear something milder for a change. This guy, who did not hail from the South, I should say, was not up to speed on some contemporary Mississippi writers so I pitched him Mary Miller pretty hard. 9. Went back to Dan Tana's and got the same table! Been there three times, got the same table three times. Let's call it "my table." Let's call it that! I'm scared to ever go back in case I don't get it again. 10. Reading the paper the next morning I see that our friend and former neighbor Jesmyn Ward won another National Book Award, and it felt doubly right after hearing what the nice man at the bar had said about Mississippi writers. 11. My brother sent a pic of us at Dan Tana's. As he remarks, my face is vampirically blurred, as if photography cannot quite capture it. Here we see me in the preparation stages of jotting in my famous book of jottings, no doubt about the fact that we are getting our "regular table." A rare appearance of the jotting book in action!

You may also notice that my hair is sticking up and so is my brother's. That's going to be our gimmick now: the brothers whose hair sticks up. 12. Disagreement with a bartender about Robert Walker's performance in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. 13. I went to the ADVENTURE TIME wrap party and danced with Andy Merrill. You may remember him as Brak from SPACE GHOST COAST TO COAST! As you can see below, we freaked out because Weird Al was RIGHT BEHIND US.

14. Laraine Newman and I saw Jeffrey Katzenberg in a grocery store. He's gotta eat too! We had lunch (not with Jeffrey Katzenberg). The young woman in charge of the host station spoke engagingly and learnedly to us of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare. She knew a lot about THE CHERRY ORCHARD and also a lot about actual cherries and how to grow them, and what mistakes not to make when growing cherries, and what the cherries mean in THE CHERRY ORCHARD. I mean WHY CHERRIES? This is the question she answered. Fascinating and delightful! But I don't think I'll tell you. From our outdoor table we could see a bridge that Laraine told me was featured in one of the old, original PLANET OF THE APES movies. I said that Sal Mineo played an ape in one of those and Laraine sort of doubted me! She texted famed comedian Dana Gould right then and there and he immediately confirmed it with his knowledge. Dana Gould is Laraine's version of Google! 15. As the sun was going down I walked alone in the unfamiliar part of town from whence I had parted with Laraine. I found a fancy restaurant tucked - nay, almost buried - in an unlikely location. The bartender had played Hamlet twice! 16. The next morning I went to the Starbucks where I have seen Andrea Martin and (on a separate occasion) the guy from Tenacious D who is not Jack Black. Got the last New York Times from the rack and discovered something small and green on it. Small, green, and sticky. Bright green, emerald, holding there fast, hard candy vehemently licked and rejected or a foul lozenge someone had coughed up? Anyway, I touched it. I've visited this Starbucks often enough to recognize some of the customers who have been going there for years. There's one guy who blows his nose a lot. There he was, blowing his nose! Just like old times. He's been blowing his nose in that Starbucks since at least 2012. 17. "... birds with rats' heads and vegetable tails." When I read that I was like, "Nothing as prosaic as an owl is going to be in THIS book!" But in the very next paragraph: "a patch of virgin forest packed with monkeys, owls and screech-owls"! 18. Breakfast with my brother and nephews at Musso & Frank, where they are breakfast regulars, received warmly by all. My brother adjusted the blinds like he owned the joint! 19. After breakfast, we went to what my brother called "the money store," which turned out to be a hot, cramped box specializing in old coins and old silver and smelling like old farts. My eldest nephew and I looked at some olden utensils. "Look, they have the nicest spork ever made," said my nephew. 20. Dr. Theresa called: the wind blew and a huge limb, itself "the size of a tree" crashed to the earth right outside our house. It was a calamity! Also a miscreant peed in our backyard and ran away hitching up his pants under a fiery barrage of Dr. Theresa's righteous scolding. 21. Pen and I ate at The Smokehouse. Pen audaciously ordered the "steak Sinatra" with salmon instead of steak! We pondered what Frank might have made of that. We summoned up Frank Sinatra's violent, indignant ghost. The waiter said he would have to check what sort of surcharges would be involved. "A million dollars!" Pen predicted. But the waiter came back and said that according to the kitchen, steak Sinatra with salmon instead of steak costs ONE DOLLAR LESS than steak Sinatra! Then another waiter came in bearing a chicken pot pie that astounded everyone in the room. It was as large as... a pie. Like... a whole, entire flaky pie you might see on display for its beauty and wholesomeness in a bakery case. I swear, every person at every table was marveling that such a thing as this could be a chicken pot pie. Everyone stared in wonder - and dare I say envy? - at the recipient of the flabbergasting chicken pot pie. I thought of Dr. Theresa, who loves chicken pot pie, and I thought of her again as Pen and I enjoyed wedge salads, Dr. Theresa being one of our nation's leading proponents of the wedge salad. 22. At the airport I sat right next to a guy who had a big jotting book in the exact color and style of my small jotting book! I waved my tiny version of his large jotting book at him in excited solidarity. His wife laughed merrily at my antics and did not call airport security. 23. I don't "blog" anymore.

I Figured Out Richard and Linda

Spoilers for the new TWIN PEAKS! Spoilers or the ravings of a madman? You be the judge! But I took some Benadryl for allergies and it put me to sleep. When I awoke, I was thinking of a clue the giant gives in that show, telling our protagonist to remember the names Richard and Linda. I woke up with an anagram almost completed. And it worked better when I spelled Linda the way Lynda Barry does it. But it wasn't just right until I used the Spanish word for "and," making an anagram for "RICHARD Y LINDA" instead. And do you know what that anagram is? A signature! If you remove David Lynch's surname from "RICHARD Y LINDA" all you have left are double letters. Isn't that curious? And this show was all about doubles. Without "LYNCH," the only remaining letters are AA II RR DD. The AA means "Twin Peaks." Just look! Those are two matching mountains, with "twin peaks." Snowcapped, even! The II is "two I's" (two selves) or just the Roman numeral II, as in Twin Peaks 2. The RR is for the Double R and for Rancho Rosa, the production company/fictional subdivision. And the DD is for Dougie/Dale or the two Dales or David/Dale, or dreamer/dream (dissociative disorder?) or Directed by David... So: RICHARD Y LINDA = AA II RR DD LYNCH. One translation: "Twin Peaks 2, a Rancho Rosa production directed by David Lynch." Possibly. I apologize to the hundreds of people who have already figured this out. I tried to google it a little bit, but it's not so easy to google. This interpretation is especially hard on Mark Frost. Anyway, I'd like to say thank you to the makers of Benadryl.

Bread Shaped Like Owls

Look. As you well know, it is NOT AND HAS NEVER BEEN my responsibility to inform you of EVERY instance of an owl in any particular book. Once I tell you that a book has an owl in it, I am done, even if fourteen more owls show up later. It is really none of my business. BUT! I feel I owe you something in the case of Till Eulenspiegel, whose name means "owl mirror." Was that really enough, as I so boldly claimed? If a guy's name happens to mean "owl mirror," does that count as "an owl" for our purposes? Well, I am happy to inform you that this haunting question is no longer relevant, because I just read a chapter in which Till Eulenspiegel gets a job with a baker and starts making loaves of bread shaped like "owls and long-tailed monkeys." This drives the baker crazy for some reason. But bread shaped like owls definitely counts. In conclusion, Till Eulenspiegel easily sold the bread shaped like owls and long-tailed monkeys, nobody cared what their bread was shaped like, in fact they seemed to enjoy the novelty, I don't know why that baker got so worked up.

You Eschew Froufrou Poo Poo

I was thinking about Richard Strauss's tone poem "Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche" and realized I don't really know much about Till Eulenspiegel himself. So I started poking around and was delighted to learn that Eulenspiegel means "owl mirror." So any collection of the Till Eulenspiegel tales might be said to have an owl in it, mightn't it? Sure it might. Why, look. Here's Till Eulenspiegel's supposed gravestone and he's holding an owl and a mirror over his head in case you don't get the point. During my idle research I stumbled on the website for that certain corporate behemoth, the name of which I never utter here. And someone had reviewed a collection of Till Eulenspiegel stories like so: "It seems like the punchline of every single story has to do with Euelenspiegel defecating on or in something or someone. That's it. That's the book's running joke. I suppose if you were an illiterate German peasant sitting around a hearth fire in the 1500s, you'd find these tales of feces and bad puns hilarious, but I didn't." I was fascinated to discover this living person who is so worked up about Till Eulenspiegel. And as you can imagine, he had inadvertently composed one of those "bad reviews" that made me want to read the book more than ever. For good measure, the reviewer rubs this salt in the wounds, though I hate to repeat it so close to our nation's birthday: "Of course, since a good majority of modern Americans are probably less sophisticated than an illiterate German peasant from 400 years ago, perhaps Till Eulenspiegel is due for a comeback. Hollywood could cast Johnny Knoxville... and he could crap all over American audiences, who will double over with laughter at every fart noise." Sold! I was naturally drawn to this reviewer's other reviews, which form a kind of epistolary novel or Robert Browning poem, in which you get to know the narrator by filling in the gaps. It's like that famous intellectual essayist said in his manifesto that time, we don't need novels anymore. Did he say that? It sounds like something somebody with a manifesto would say! Before getting into his one-star judgment of Folgers Classic Medium Roast Coffee Singles Serve Bags, our reviewer indulges in this bit of throat clearing: "I am no coffee elitist. I eschew status-conscious coffee drinkers and the frou frou coffee houses they frequent in order to be seen carrying green fringed cups emblazoned with quotes from left-wing icons." I've spent some part of my life trying to make up narrators who talk just this way, but I see once again that I am unnecessary. Also recommended: the same reviewer on the moral depravity of the Frankie Avalon movie BEACH PARTY.

Catfish of Ancient Egypt

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

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

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

Wings

Last night Chris Offutt made a lot of good points about Icarus and I composed an entire "blog" "post" in my head summarizing them until I remembered I don't "blog" anymore. And anyway, maybe Chris will want to write up his own thoughts on the matter one day. In fact, I encouraged him to do so. Volubly! And when I got home, Megan Abbott had emailed me: "if I do a search through my emails with you for the word 'chicken,' dozens of emails come up! chicken foot, chicken leg, chicken comb, chickens brooding under tables, the ghost and Mr. Chicken" (pictured)... the other day Dr. Theresa said, "Hey, I thought you weren't 'blogging' anymore." And I said, "I only 'blogged' like two more times" and Dr. Theresa said "..."

A Defining Gesture

Thanks to a timely tip from Megan Abbott I watched some of I'LL TAKE SWEDEN on TCM last night. But - and here's the fascinating part! - I went to bed before it came on. But then I couldn't sleep! So I got up and watched it until our old, box-shaped TV from the 1990s finally died. I'LL TAKE SWEDEN killed our TV! And then - this is true, also - I got up and had a terrible new back pain and I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror and some of my hair had turned white! I mean, I noticed a lot more white than I've noticed there before. I'LL TAKE SWEDEN! It's mostly Bob Hope walking around gracefully in many different beautiful suits, which I am sure he kept, because he was a terrible cheapskate. But I mean, he is a good walker and hand gesturer. Here (above) we see him with one hand just below his ribs, seeming to pantomime the thought, "These kids these days!" I would describe it as a defining Bob Hope gesture, though it occurs just once in the film (at least in the hour I saw last night). McNeil could confirm its essentialness and describe it better than I could. He has a knack for cataloguing these things. I remember once we were watching a movie in which Jeremy Northam played Dean Martin, and Jeremy Northam (as Dean Martin) was applauding something while holding a cigarette between two fingers, and McNeil said with delight and authority, "That's just how Dean Martin clapped!" Oh, how I wish McNeil had been here. Only he would have understood why I actually laughed a couple of times, once at a fantasy sequence in which Bob Hope's imaginary grandchildren are forced to eat a parrot, and once at some dumb wisecrack Bob Hope made while riding around with his head sticking out of the sunroof of a small Swedish vehicle.

There is one part (seen here) when he is looking at Frankie Avalon with real hatred. Like, I don't think he's acting! Or, actually, I think he turns out to be a better actor than we ever gave him credit for. Or both! He seems to be thinking, "THIS is what it's all come to? THIS? THIS FRANKIE AVALON?" Or he could be deep in character, thinking, "No way this motor-scooter riding rascal is gonna marry MY daughter!" I just can't tell. In addition, Frankie Avalon takes Tuesday Weld to a strip club on a date! For all his grousing about Bob Hope do you think this is where Mike Nichols got the idea for the scene in THE GRADUATE? Tuesday Weld is much more blasé about the strip club than Katherine Ross was, though there is identical twirling involved! However, it is not graphically portrayed in this case. The twirling in question occurs offscreen and is alluded to discreetly by Bob Hope and Tuesday Weld (see also). The strip club is called The Pink Kitten and the bouncer dresses like this:

People Alone in a Room

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

Why Music Boxes Are Creepy

A strangely frequent reason that people visit this "blog" is to search for an answer to that (apparently) eternal question "Why Are Music Boxes Creepy?" I feel bad - guilt-ridden, truthfully - because that old "post" to which they are so often directed (you'd be surprised how many times a day people want to know why music boxes are creepy) is misleading. Some kid had written in to me with the idea that "Maybe music boxes are creepy because they are a purposeless vestige of Europe's aristo-centric period." And I quoted him in that "post" much too approvingly. Of course that's NOT why music boxes are creepy. Nor is this kid's highfalutin statement true in almost any way. Music boxes, for example, aren't any more "purposeless" than anything else. I gave that kid too much of a pass! I was trying to be nice. But now, all these years later, sad people who want to know why music boxes are creepy look to me for answers (several times a day, bewilderingly) and get nothing! And that kid is six years older now, so I suppose he can handle the truth that his big theories are full of beans. People aren't watching a movie about a dark house where a music box starts to play in the dead of night and the hair rises on their arms because they are suddenly reminded of "Europe's aristo-centric period"! Sorry to be so harsh! But you, theorizing kid, are probably at least 28, I'm going to guess, whoever you were, a full-grown adult by now who can accept the facts! I suppose music boxes are creepy because they are light and tinkly, for one thing. Scary noises in literature often start out soft... the rats scratching in Lovecraft, the beating of the telltale heart in Poe ("such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton")... soft music is scary at night... whistling, like in M or THE STEPFATHER... some awful killer is always humming softy to himself as he sharpens his instruments... also, music boxes are meant to be activated by the human hand (might be thought of, in fact, as an "alarm" of sorts... did people place diamonds and gold in them for this reason? Someone else may feel free to research the matter), so if you suddenly hear one in the middle of the night, when everyone is supposed to be asleep, something is wrong... like the record player and the wind-up toys and such in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND... music is a human endeavor, and maybe the mechanism IS an unwelcome (creepy?) reminder that our works can go on without us. And of course the kid from the old "post" WAS sort of onto something... in that a music box is a form of entertainment that a ghost might find comforting. Like, "I remember these!" Yes, just the sort of sentimental object to which a poor dead ghost might be attracted... a private, lonely entertainment even in life... so personal, maybe you shouldn't be overhearing it... a box to receive a particular soul... like a coffin... and yes, it IS a voice from the past, with a limited vocabulary. It can play only one thing... over and over... like a ghost... like the obsessive thoughts of a madman... like me... like that dude in MOBY-DICK... and slowing down, little by little... I was having drinks with Lee Durkee and he mentioned how music boxes are always slowing down... Sometimes they wind down unresolved, like life. There's nothing tenser in music than the "suspended fourth"... that's where the power of the music box's creepy cousin the jack-in-the-box comes in... the relationship between suspended chords and suspense. Bach could really leave you hanging, except he always had the luxury of resolving, except when played on a music box, I guess. Lee Durkee also contended that musical selections have something to do with it. "Music boxes don't play 'Turkey in the Straw,'" he said, emphasizing the jauntiness of that hoedown. I'll have to think about that. Is it true? And in any case I suspect "Turkey in the Straw" could be creepy enough on the right music box... Is the similarly bouncy "Pop Goes the Weasel" creepy just because we've heard it on so many dilapidated jack-in-the-boxes? Or is it the disturbing foreknowledge that the weasel is bound to "pop"?... Melodies are messages... pianos play by themselves in movies... half-forgotten snatches... they're trying to tell you something... they can't quite tell it to you straight... what's creepier than an oracle? And when you open a music box, a little ballerina figurine or such often begins to twirl stiffly... we think at once of what Freud said about dolls in his essay on "The Uncanny," but I think that book is in Dr. Theresa's office at the other end of the house and I don't feel like getting up. In conclusion, I apologize to all the people who have read that lazy and erroneous previous "blog" "post" lo these many years. My intellectual cowardice is beyond appalling! Another possible answer is: music boxes aren't creepy. (Illustration: Vera Farmiga looking at a creepy music box in a scary ghost movie we went to see with Chris Offutt. I saw Vera Farmiga checking into my hotel last time I was in Burbank! Sorry I forgot to tell you. I pestered her with fawning and she was real nice about it. She was wearing a stylish hat!) PS One Kris Simmons, whom I know via twitter, has chimed in to say, ha ha! - wait, is that even a pun? Do music boxes "chime"? - "I think it's because they sound out of tune." And she's onto something I hadn't considered! What could be more ghostly than these rusty gears and teeth and coils and knobby spools... still striving, but bent and warped by senescence? I ask you! Remember Edmund Spenser's ghosts with iron teeth... An out-of-tune music box is an echo, touchingly faded and changed... like a ghost... or a reflection... am I too suggestible? But this picture of Ms. Farmiga hints at a mirror in the lid... wasn't that common in music boxes? And aren't mirrors doorways into other worlds...? We just did a whole ADVENTURE TIME episode about that! Do I need to get all GOLDEN BOUGH on you...? So music boxes have little versions of ourselves inside... or else who's looking at what in that little mirror when the music box is playing by itself...? Okay! I'll keep adding more reasons music boxes are creepy. Send your suggestions to CREEPY MUSIC BOX c/o "Writer" Oxford, MS 38655. If you don't think music boxes are creepy be sure to include NOT CREEPY MUSIC BOX on your postcard.

Heartbroken Mope

I thought I'd un-live-tweet another movie, a Matthew Broderick movie from 1993 - by coincidence, the same year as STRIKING DISTANCE, the last movie I didn't live tweet. It's called THE NIGHT WE NEVER MET and I don't know why I picked it. Certainly not out of disrespect for Mr. Broderick, who plays the Dream Warrior (pictured) on ADVENTURE TIME. Oh, wait, I know why I picked it. I liked this capsule description provided by the satellite company: "An unlikable yuppie shares a Greenwich Village apartment with a frustrated housewife and a heartbroken mope." All right! Who could ask for more? Let's get to ersatz live-tweeting in the new-fashioned way that won't wreck your precious timeline: A guy turns off his alarm clock and puts on some... sandals? There's a glare on the TV screen, so I can't be certain about the footwear. Dirty pots filled with old beans. Matthew Broderick has a beard and mismatched curtains. Matthew Broderick talks out loud to himself, movie style! Bearded Matthew Broderick hits the town on his vespa. He saw a cute nurse and that made him happy! Annabella Sciorra, I do believe. Matthew Broderick is looking for a new apartment. Annabella Sciorra came out of the apartment building so I bet he takes the apartment. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom is peeking with a surly mien through a crack in the door. Annabella Sciorra and Christine Baranski smoke cigarettes inside a restaurant at the height of the lunchtime rush. Those were the days! Annabella Sciorra confesses her desire to take an "art class." Hey! Is that Louise Lasser? Maybe. They're setting up some weird plot, where people are moving into this apartment for two days a week...? Does that seem practical? A bunch of "yuppies" with neckties and no jackets acting all WOLF OF WALL STREET, standing on desks and making speeches and howling and pumping their fists for reasons I can't understand... EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom puts on hand lotion. The plot gets explained more. I don't understand it. Jeanne Tripplehorn! I always thought that was a cool last name. Matthew Broderick goes to see Tripplehorn (his ex?) in an "experimental play" - a form always treated with sneering contempt in movies. Take that, Samuel Beckett! I missed something. I think she was making out with a plastic snowman? Tripplehorn has a fake French accent. I mean, she's supposed to be French in the movie, though. Well, she took off her sweater in front of Matthew Broderick and that made him feel sad. Now she's singing "Alouette" in the shower! Are you kidding me? "Alouette"! She wants Matthew Broderick to put out her cigarette for her. Is it so hard to put out your cigarette in the shower? I guess it was supposed to emphasize some "character trait." Just throw it in the toilet, French Jeanne Tripplehorn! Oh boy, I didn't see this coming: some kind of unconvincing 50 SHADES OF GREY monkey business with the "yuppie" character. Wait! Was that a dream? Another alarm clock going off. It was all a dream! Back when I was teaching, we used to strongly discourage the use of alarm clocks in short stories. I guess they don't tell you that in screenwriting class. This is the second alarm clock going off in this movie. Is that Justine Bateman? It seems that Justine Bateman and the "yuppie" want very different things out of life. Annabella Sciorra is a dentist, not a nurse. Her patient is Garry Shandling! He seems sleazy. In this movie, I mean. No, Annabella Sciorra is a dental assistant but she wants to be an artist. She has a husband and tropical fish. The husband wants to move to the suburbs. Montage of people eating lunch meat? Hey, it's that guy who always plays a jerk in movies. For some reason, he's pretending to be Louise Lasser on the phone. MB works at Dean and Deluca and hates French cheese! Because of his problems with French person Jeanne Tripplehorn. It's causing work problems! What! Here's what's-her-name from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS! She and MB are on a blind date. "Is that veal?" she says. How could she know? MB is just carrying a serving dish with the lid on it. Does she have X-ray vision? Because it IS veal! She's incensed. A weird thing to cook on a first date, though. Okay! So MB and Annabella Sciorra are sharing this apartment but they never see each other. And yet methinks she's falling in love with his remnants! The "yuppies" are also sharing the apartment. They play loud music and jump around and scream like jerks. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom is married (?) to Johnny Ola from GODFATHER II! He also peeks out of crevices and makes faces. They are like a Greek chorus. Except they NEVER TALK. So they're not like a Greek chorus. Annabella Sciorra continues to be entranced by the still-unseen (by her) Matthew Broderick. He's leaving notes for her everywhere. It's actually sort of controlling and creepy, despite this mellow "blue-eyed soul" number underscoring the developments, if you want to call them that. One of the "yuppies" pees with the door open. They make pig noises and smoke cigars. Now they're screaming out of the windows and burning pizza in the oven. The guy who always plays jerks in movies lights his cigar with the burning pizza box to show what a horrible weirdo he is. Wait! Have I explained the plot? So the "yuppies" use this place a couple days a week to chillax. MB brings dates there? I guess? Annabella Sciorra uses it to explore her artistic impulses. It's a getaway from the world! All right. Okay, there was a zany mixup I barely feel like getting into, though it may become necessary later. Johnny Ola finally said something but EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom just gravely shook her silent grim head. Annabella Sciorra's husband is shown to be a philistine. The alarm on his watch goes off! Man, this screenwriter loves alarms. Dang! MB's alarm clock goes off! Fourth alarm clock! Jeanne Tripplehorn took a shower with a cowboy and a dog? She loves taking showers. I think the cowboy is feeding her a Pop Tart. MB: "I want you to do what you say you want to do, not what you do do." JT: "No, I do do what I say I do." Ha ha, oh boy. Doo doo. Maybe I should stop here. Is that Dr. John crooning a stirring ballad while the "yuppie" admires his own butt in a mirror? Poor Dr. John! Johnny Ola mugs for the camera some more through the crack of a doorway. I can't believe that Annabella Sciorra is about to do it with the "yuppie," mistaking him for MB for reasons I can't get into here because I don't really understand them. Time to feed the cats, I'm going to miss some of this movie. I hope you're not too disappointed. I came back. Johnny Ola is peeking through a doorway again. Annabella Sciorra's fingernails are painted white and the "yuppie" is climbing all over her. She's not going to put up with his boorish manner for long! Well! I was wrong! They did it. I know because his shirt is unbuttoned all the way and he says, "Man... you came to play." Gross! Johnny Ola eavesdrops on their intimacy through his doorway and checks his watch and rolls his eyes and mugs for the camera like his life depended on it. Reckonings commence. Why the hell is MB so happy all of a sudden? He's walking down the crowded NYC streets tossing an orange in the air as Motown plays. Did I miss something? He has no reason to be happy that I can recall. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom smokes and glares out of a window. I hope they paid her a lot. MB goes on a date with a character so stupid she thinks he has cooked pasta with dog in it. "Dog?" she says. "Ruff ruff ruff?" Wait! She's on the TV show NASHVILLE! She plays Deacon's doomed sister. EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND's mom speaks! She and Johnny Ola are really spewing out the dialogue. They've been holding it in so long! You can't shut them up. Dr. Theresa says soup is ready. I may miss something. Wait! Is MB going to end up with Justine Bateman? That's coming out of left field! I did not see that coming at all. Kudos... but to whom? Now Johnny Ola has finally brought a chair or stool to put by his door so when he peeps out of it and makes faces he can sit down. Wait! Is the "yuppie" the "nice guy" from SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY? Weird. He went to his "yuppie" workplace and all his coworkers ritualistically cut their neckties in half at the same time, and made pig noises...? I don't know what's going on. This soup is good, though. Hey! Christopher from THE SOPRANOS! One line. Funny shirt. And I could swear Lewis Black walks by in the background: no lines, funny shirt. Well, I could swear this movie was about to end, but things keep happening. I guess you could call it. MB just threw a drink on Jeanne Tripplehorn. Not very gentlemanly! And her character's name is "Pastel," seemingly. Ha ha, Pastel! MB goes back to talking out loud to himself, which he hasn't done since the first scene, so maybe it's a circular thing and we're finally wrapping up. They made the husband suddenly 100,000 times more awful than ever before to justify it when Annabella Sciorra inevitably leaves him for Matthew Broderick. My Justine Bateman speculation was way off base. That would have been a neat twist! MB and Annabella Sciorra meet again. They still don't know each other. Is this movie going to last forever? The "yuppie" comes in and takes off his pants in front of Matthew Broderick, a total stranger, you know, how people do. Annabella Sciorra: "I didn't mean to sleep with him, I meant to sleep with you!" Did the guy from SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY just tweak Matthew Broderick's nipple? Dr. John is singing again.

Derangement Level: Renfield

I just haven't been keeping you properly informed about the annual Halloween film festival that Dr. Theresa and I continue to enjoy. We watched the Spanish language version of DRACULA, famously shot at night on the same sets where the Bela Lugosi version was being shot during the day. I liked the woman who played Eva, the "Mina Harker" character. She made me think of Naomi Watts in MULHOLLAND DR., in that she started out seeming like a real square ingenue (like, is she PLAYING a bad actor or IS she a bad actor?) and then it's all a ruse because she shows you she really knows how to go crazy when the time comes. Then we watched OVER THE GARDEN WALL by Pat McHale and INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 and TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER. Not much to recommend TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, except this startling thing (pictured) that Nastassja Kinski sees when she looks in a mirror. It made me think of a sea monkey! And Denholm Elliott gave a supporting performance that reached Renfield levels of derangement. Next: CRIMSON PEAK, which helped ghost movies maintain a still-respectable 50% in the Halloween tally. I'm not counting TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER as a ghost movie, though there was a ghost in it. Devil movies have crept up to 20% of our Halloween movie consumption this year, a disturbing trend we'll continue to keep our eye on. The first words of CRIMSON PEAK are the same as the title of one of my old "blog" "posts" - "click" here for the thrilling revelation.

Juvenile Possum

I was sitting up at the City Grocery Bar the other day, drinking and reading THE DECAMERON. And I was like, "THE DECAMERON really reminds me of Faulkner!" Maybe because I was in the middle of the town square of Oxford, Mississippi, and drinking. But also because this character was a horse-trader and he spouted off a whole page of dialogue about his feelings for this woman, and when the woman responds only with silence he spouts off another page of dialogue in what he imagines is HER voice, and that sounds like Faulkner, doesn't it? And then Jonathan Franzen walked into the bar. And I said, "Hi, I'm Jack. Jon Langford was in town this weekend and he told me to say hello if I saw you." And Jonathan Franzen said, "I know, he told me. I know about your Emmy." Ha ha! That was a funny thing to hear upon meeting Jonathan Franzen. Reader, I balked! Is that the correct word for what I did? I don't know. I was discomfited. Is that a thing? I couldn't think of what to say. I said, "Oh!" But that reminds me. When Langford was in town a bunch of us went to lunch with him and he started talking about his affection for the soap opera ALL MY CHILDREN, and especially a character named "Janet From Another Planet." And she was an evil twin, and sometimes tormented her sister's husband by pretending to be her sister. It was generally agreed around the table that a husband would be able to tell his own wife from her sister, twins or no. But I remarked that ALL MY CHILDREN was just indulging in a tradition going back at least as far as THE DECAMERON. In THE DECAMERON, men are always fooling women (or the other way round) by just putting on somebody else's cloak and creeping into a bedroom when it's dark. Finally, when I was flying back from California, the iPod played Bob Dylan doing a version of the old love-and-murder ballad "Frankie and Johnny" while I was reading THE DECAMERON, and I was like, this song is just like THE DECAMERON! (Photo by Kent Osborne. He said he was going to get a "candid shot" but he made me wash my hands a second time so he could get it... that's not candid!) So when I left City Grocery night was falling. My only job was to pick up the cat food on the back porch before a possum came along after dark and got into it. And when I got home there was already a possum eating leftovers! I shooed it away. It was a likable possum. It had been coming around a lot. Dr. Theresa saw a "juvenile possum" (her phrase) that had been struck by a car on our side street the other day, and I fear it was the same possum. And now the floodgates of memory have opened!

I remember that when I was trying desperately to meet Matt Weiner after the Emmys, this guy (pictured) was walking with Matt Weiner and Harry Crane and he seemed more approachable so I kind of poached him from the group and I was like, hey, remember in THIS IS THE END when your head pokes through the door and then a demon gets you? And he was like, yes. And then I reminded him of some Sonic commercials I had seen him in, and then I asked him wasn't he in CAKEY: THE CAKE FROM OUTER SPACE? which surprised him. Anyway, he was nice as I recited his own credits to him Chris Farley-style and Matt Weiner sprinted into the distance, along with all his hopes and dreams, maybe, or mine, who knows?

The Existence of Robert Walden

Hey but I know you remember last year's Halloween Film Festival when a movie called THE VAMPIRE nearly destroyed us. It wasn't even about a legit vampire. It was about a guy who took pills made of bats! And it wasn't very good. And it was called THE VAMPIRE. So WHERE WAS THE VAMPIRE? It took the wind out of our sails. We didn't think we could go on! Why am I forcing myself to relive this? Well, this year's Halloween Film Festival, by contrast, has been going pretty great! BUT. Then there was this thing we watched called AUDREY ROSE. I guess it started out okay, with an eerily dreamy car crash. But then in the middle it turned into MIRACLE ON 34th STREET. Remember that? That's the movie where there's a trial that hinges on proving that Santa Claus exists. That's not a horror movie! And in the middle of AUDREY ROSE it suddenly turns into a courtroom drama about the existence of the immortal soul! HUH? And how it travels from body to body. And therefore you can't really be convicted of kidnapping somebody if she happens to have your dead kid's soul living inside her. WHAT! And everybody in the courtroom sits around nodding gravely like, "Hmm, makes a lot of sense when you think about it, I guess we should let this guy kidnap whoever he wants." MIRACLE ON 34th STREET handles this kind of implausible legal whimsy quietly and even believably. Here your jaw just drops. And you also realize that now you are watching a flimsy courtroom drama with a million holes in it instead of a horror movie. The defense lawyer arguing in favor of the human soul (!) is played by Robert Walden, the existence of whom the "blog" has proven before. And saintly soft-spoken spiritual weirdo kidnapper Anthony Hopkins sits there having long documentary-style flashbacks (I think) to religious rituals in India, where, throughout the movie, he has been sort of humbly yet obnoxiously bragging about living for a while and it made him so great and quietly humble and everything (it was at this point that Dr. Theresa realized we had been suckered into watching some kind of proselytizing religious movie for our Halloween Film Festival), and the movie suddenly cuts from the stock footage of India to the star of our movie, a little girl, inexplicably marching in a circle with some other little girls around a giant snowman in a schoolyard in New York or wherever the hell they are.

I mean a GIANT snowman! I'm not sure I can get across how big this snowman is, I mean, this is a towering snowman. (This "blog" "post" I found on the "internet" - "click" here - rightly compares it to THE WICKER MAN, which went through my mind too. [I should also include a "link" to this more appreciative though still skeptical analysis of the film.]) Then they put a crown on the giant snowman and set it on fire. Here you can see the girl being hypnotized by the flames because of her crazy soul and all. It made me think of the "burning the witch" segment in Fellini's AMARCORD (pictured), which I believe (if I recall correctly)

symbolizes the same thing the snowman seems to symbolize in AUDREY ROSE: the end of winter's tyranny. And then that made me think of the awesome beginning of Fellini's CASANOVA (below).

Which probably has something to do with fecundity, and so might be related to the coming of spring, I have no idea what I'm talking about, isn't that what's going on in THE WICKER MAN too, somebody help me, I just want to take my mind off of AUDREY ROSE. Then Fellini's CASANOVA made me think of THE LAST TYCOON, the movie version of THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON, which kind of nicely captures the scene from the novel of the intoxicating vision of the girls floating on the big head through the backlot after an earthquake. That's an intoxicating vision it would be almost impossible to ruin.

But THE LAST TYCOON misses so much about the novel. Would you like me to tell you what? OKAY! For example, in the movie, whiz-kid studio exec Robert De Niro explains to a huffy "literary writer" exactly what a movie story is, and that's fine, but De Niro squirms and darts around and leaps about and gesticulates so much while he does it! Really laying it on thick. Whereas in the book, his character (Monroe Stahr) makes the exact same speech, but oh so still and simply... it's better. It's spellbinding! In the novel. A real centerpiece. And there's another big problem with THE LAST TYCOON, which I generally like. But let's not get into that. I do remember reading in Tony Curtis's autobiography about how handsome and fit he was in THE LAST TYCOON and it made Ray Milland and Robert Mitchum so jealous because Tony Curtis was walking around being such a fine hot specimen of manhood, according to Tony Curtis. I find it hard to imagine Mitchum giving a crap. BUT I'M GETTING OFF TRACK. Maybe I'm just avoiding AUDREY ROSE. A long time ago the "blog" used to tally up all the guys we saw in movies with cigarette holders, I can't remember why. Anyway we stopped that nonsense. But the prosecuting attorney in AUDREY ROSE, who hates reincarnation, is played by the stalwart John Hillerman (pictured), and he sits in judge's chambers puffing away on a cigarette through a cigarette holder. The man was born to use a cigarette holder.

I'll say that for him. The movie has a chance to redeem itself (maybe) at the end, when Anthony Hopkins tosses a chair through a two-way mirror (don't ask), a kind of neat effect that perfectly sets up (for reasons we shan't go into) a cathartic solution to all the troubled kid's terrible problems. (Robert Wise, who directed AUDREY ROSE, also co-directed CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, a much superior horror movie that's not quite a horror movie about parents who don't understand what their child is going through. But he didn't luck out twice with the child actors, I'll tell you that! Though I hate to cast aspersions upon a child actor. So we won't get into that.) BUT! And here is a BIG SPOILER. Instead of fulfilling the perfectly set-up catharsis that was right there in the filmmakers' hands, the kid just flat-out lies down and dies. The kid dies! Boom. She's dead. They killed the kid. No more kid. The kid's just lying there dead. No catharsis for you! And then there's a long solemn epistolary voice-over from her mother (!) about how that all worked out pretty well because her kid's ashes were sent to India (with her creepily beatific stalker Anthony Hopkins!) so maybe the whole reincarnation thing will go better next time. That's looking on the old bright side, I guess.

Jerry Epiphany #2

Just before an ADVENTURE TIME meeting the other day I was conversing with my twitter friend Brian about a talk show Jerry Lewis had in the 80s, cashing in on his role from THE KING OF COMEDY. He told Suzanne Somers (pictured) she had "pizzazz," or so I remembered.

I thought Kent Osborne's brother Mark had introduced that clip to me on a privately circulated VHS tape of oddities, but Kent didn't remember that. During the meeting he found Jerry's talk show on youtube and watched it and started cringing. Meanwhile, although (because?) from my end of the video conference I could only hear the audio and see the reactive cringing, I was cringing FOR Kent, or for Jerry, I couldn't tell which, they were inseparable. And I had an epiphany. All of my epiphanies are about Jerry Lewis. Yes, as I've observed, Jerry anticipated Andy Kaufman, and now that I think about it, Jerry's first act, when he was little more than a kid, was lip-syncing to records, mirroring exactly the first performance by Andy Kaufman on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. (Tony Clifton = Buddy Love?) As J. Hoberman observed, Jerry "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." So he can razor in on the phoniness of show biz satirically while living without qualms the actual life of a show biz phony. That old Fitzgerald thing about the rare ability to hold two opposed ideas in your mind at the same time, blah blah blah. Or as Megan Abbott said in an interview I did with her, "the unconscious and conscious are always this close... I’m putting my fingers together very closely... just this close always and always brushing up against each other constantly. And so we often are thrown into ourselves in ways that are alarming and we often have to see things about ourselves because we can’t completely hide from the unconscious." Jerry's 80s talk show was not art (was it?) but it crystalizes what Manohla Dargis said about Jerry disturbing "all those nice people in all their fancy clothes." Meaning us! So why, for me, Jerry is more powerful an artist than, say, the comedy team (how they'd probably chafe at that old-fashioned term) Tim and Eric, or any other contemporary practitioner of "anti-comedy" (I guess we call it) is that Jerry is doing what they do, but HONESTLY and not ironically. At heart it's helpless and noble. That was the epiphany.

I watched a documentary about Divine, who on some basic level was as non-ironic as Jerry Lewis. For Jerry Lewis and Divine, show biz is a joyous religion in the service of a dark god, ha ha, how dramatic. Jerry Lewis is the father of Divine. There are minor similarities too: each, while young, created an overwhelming and brilliant persona that became a kind of consuming trap. Patterns of paternal fracture and rapprochement. I don't know. Maybe Jerry (who cross-dresses kind of touchingly - like late-period Divine - in THREE ON A COUCH) has a drag queen's instinct (lip-syncing!) for novelty, exaggeration, nostalgia, luxury, disguise and self-creation. And like Divine maybe he's suspicious of (guilty about?) revering some of those things and so turns them on their head. It occurs to me that Jerry has spent most of his life in a form of drag - like Pee Wee Herman! why can't I stop typing? - and maybe like Paul Reubens's some of Jerry's "bad" behavior can be attributed to the emotional violence required to break out of its strictures. Drag as freedom, drag as constraint. Can we call Suzanne Somers hunched over on roller skates a kind of enforced "drag"? Maybe I should think this out. But I don't think I shall. Somebody else on twitter was complaining that he can't watch Jerry because Jerry is "needy." All performers are needy. The glorious thing about Jerry and Divine is that they don't cover it up. They revel in it and they make us face it. Now we're all super smart and in on the big joke. Only when we watch them are our reactions are visceral and true.