Only Vaguely Related

Well! You remember how I used to think I could read only one book at a time, and then something happened to me and I started shoving several books into my brain at one time like a monster. "This will interest you," I go on to say with the same accuracy as John Goodman in INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS: I have just now decided to categorize two of my "main books" as my "daytime book" and my "nighttime book." Bearing that in mind, I think you will enjoy "clicking" on the following "hyperlink" about how my daytime book and nighttime book, so dissimilar, as a rule, in genre and style, both mentioned Gogol withiin a 24-hour period, followed by a different daytime/nighttime pairing, similarly mismatched, that both mentioned British composer John Dowland. What times those were! I am sure you are still recovering from the shock. Well, now I am on yet another pair of daytime/nighttime books... one is, according to the back cover, "the best-known book by Cuba's most important twentieth-century novelist" and the other is (according to ITS back cover) "the fundamental study of the distinctive techniques and aesthetics of oral epic poetry." So imagine my giddiness at closing my daytime book at a mention of the "Chanson de Roland" - imagine it! - and opening my nighttime book to a mention of the "Chanson de Roland"!!! The latter shouldn't have surprised me, given the subject matter of that volume (THE SINGER OF TALES by Albert B. Lord)... in fact, the "Chanson de Roland" is mentioned on the back cover... but I don't think they told me much, if anything, about the "Chanson de Roland" at the University of South Alabama. We did read "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," which I suspect is only vaguely related, if at all. I know no one has made it this far, but I add for my own records that I started THE SINGER OF TALES because, I believe, Emily Wilson recommended it in the footnotes to her translation of THE ODYSSEY. (See also.)

Green Means Go

Hey! You know how THE ELEPHANT, a special I worked on with Kent Osborne, Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, Patrick McHale, Pendleton Ward, and many others, will premiere on Adult Swim December 19? Pretty soon! And how the next day, on HBO Max, assuming it still exists, there will be a "Behind the Elephant" special ABOUT the special? A special about a special. What will they think of next? But guess what? Whatever you guessed, you were wrong. Because if you watch THE ELEPHANT on December 19 on an old-timey TV set like an ancient caveman, you'll see Frowny 'n' Smiley! Yes, stop pinching yourselves, THAT Frowny 'n' Smiley, famous for being a thing no one remembers from back when I was on twitter. Only now they're in TV form! Like when Milhouse said ALF was in pog form. I got the green light to spread the word. I call it a show, but I'm lying. Frowny 'n' Smiley episodes are 15 seconds long. So I don't think you can comfortably call that a show. But it's something! And you're going to love it. LOVE IT! Let Frowny 'n' Smiley worm their way into your shriveled up hearts, you monsters! Learn to feel again!

The Bolger Assertion

Hey, the other day, the ninth episode of ACE GOES HOLLYWOOD "dropped," as you kids like to say. You say it all the time! I can just hear you now, saying it. How I hate you! Where was I? You remember ACE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. It's where, on the "web" site FLAMING HYDRA, I converse with Ace Atkins about his time working on the Pauly Shore film JURY DUTY. But today I was thinking not about the latest episode, but episode 6, in which Ace mentions Sammy Davis Jr. and I demand that he explain to the reader, if any, who Sammy Davis Jr. is. Ace doesn't think it's necessary. That's when I say, quote, "I told you, I work with kids that never heard of CHEERS! Which is fine. Why should they? You know what? It’s time for me to die anyway." To which Ace wisely replies, "Well, we gotta finish this first." You'll see the connection soon enough. Connection to what? Leave me alone! So, I've been reading a book about ancient Greece, but I'm not going to name it, because I'm enjoying it, but it's going to seem like I'm being peevish and critical when I say things like it seems to be written for people who have never read a book before. Like the author will interject - and this will be a paraphrase, but I wouldn't call it an exaggeration - "The ancient Greeks didn't have online banking like you and me!" Okay. Maybe she's being welcoming and chummy, and what's wrong with that? I'm the real monster here. We all know that. But late in the book she starts a sentence this way, and this is an exact quotation: "As Ray Bolger sang..." WHAT! It has the feeling, again, of being an attempt to draw in the reader cozily, conversationally, but WHAT! Not even I would start a sentence "As Ray Bolger sang..." and I've seen a lot of Ray Bolger movies. More than you have! I've seen more Ray Bolger movies than Ray Bolger ever did! And look. She's not even talking about THE WIZARD OF OZ. She's talking about something called "The Churkendoose." The Churkendoose! And here's where you smugly inform me that you know everything about the Churkendoose, and everybody knows about it, and you've thought about the Churkendoose every day of your life for as long as you can remember, and I'm the last person on earth who doesn't know about the Churkendoose. It's like the time I was so excited to see wild turkeys (of which the Churkendoose is a close relation!) and everybody got together to pee on my happiness. I'm just saying the hip kids of today aren't Ray Bolger experts. Or maybe they are! But I think maybe you're pushing them away! Hey! Remember the time I read a long, serious book about Hinduism and the author almost immediately quoted Garrison Keillor? Anyway, the Churkendoose came out as a book in 1946, and Ray Bolger croaked his way through the musical adaptation in 1947. Or, as A.I. so helpfully informed me (without me asking!), it was "first published in 2003."

Utter Chaos

Few of us will ever forget where we were when I saw Dianne Wiest perform in the Samuel Beckett play HAPPY DAYS. But did you know that I was tempted to stand up at the end and shout “I loved you in COOKIE!”? As I recall, I was wearing my pink jacket, which, at the time, I thought might catch Dianne Wiest’s eye as I yelled incoherently about COOKIE during the standing ovation with spittle flying out of my mouth. Please be assured that in the end, I simply clapped like a normal person and kept my fat mouth shut. I’m just listing these details to avoid the inevitable... the inevitable being something about owls. Look. We all remember The Great Owl Drought of 2023, which lasted over three months. But other times, owls just come at a person too fast. There are too many owls! And yes, I get tired of telling you about every time I read a book with an owl in it, a habit that I began for reasons long forgotten or, more accurately, repressed. Before we go on (see how I’m still putting it off?) I should explain that the illustration for this “post,” of Peter Falk and Jerry Lewis walking on the beach, was taken from my TV in 2016, if I am supposed to trust the date stamped there by my computer. And indeed I can say with certainty that it was after April of that year, at which time our former TV blew up, because this is obviously a normal widescreen TV like everyone has now, whereas our old TV that blew up was one of those square boxes so heavy that even Ace Atkins had trouble lifting it when he came over to carry it out of our house, due to our begging and pleading. But the date stamped on this photo without my knowledge or consent... why does the government want to know the last time I watched COOKIE (2016 was not the last time I watched COOKIE)? And why am I talking about COOKIE? Because the Million Dollar Book Club is reading the memoir of Susan Seidelman, who directed that movie, along with DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN and at least two other really good ones of which I am too tired to type the titles. Anyhow! When Susan Seidelman is a kid, she and her siblings huddle up and watch late, late monster movies on TV, because they are “night owls.” As you will recall, the last night owls we mentioned were from Shakespeare, and he meant owls that literally fly around at night, which is... most owls? Right? You know what? Despite your many assumptions, I am not an owl expert. But Susan Seidelman is referring to the famous metaphorical night owls, people who thrive in the wee hours. The latter, I would say, is the most common kind of owl to run across in the Million Dollar Book Club. Previous examples of this kind of night owl (hardly a comprehensive list!) include Andy Warhol, Anna Magnini, and Yoko Ono. As I bring this interesting whatever it is to a close, I will say, look! If somebody else tells me a book has an owl in it, I usually don’t include it here. If I included every owl book that people told me about secondhand, featuring owls I didn’t witness in context with my own elderly mist-filled peepers, it would be utter chaos. Utter chaos! One time this guy Brian told me about the owl in a John Le Carré novel and it was a good (if upsetting) one, so I put it on the list. But don’t let that give you any ideas! However! McNeil read a book horribly called THE RAT ON FIRE, in which someone is as “drunk as a hoot owl,” which, fine. I’ve often wondered about where the phrase or concept comes from. I’ve seen it used in a work dating back to 1177! Which is quite a while ago. I don't think I was even born yet! But no one has ever explained to me why owls are supposed to be drunk (despite at least one owl who drank schnapps in real life). So I mentioned my puzzlement to McNeil, who immediately zapped me with an answer that struck me as satisfying. As you will recall, McNeil also explained to me why the wind blows in 2008. (I feel sure he once laid out the purpose of lightning for me as well, though I can find no textual evidence of when that happened. I do believe I wrote about it in my precious diary like the sweet little thing I am. I even recall that my mom found some tragic aesthetic or philosophical fault with McNeil's electrical reasoning. Sorry, McNeil!) Anyway, here’s what old McNeil had to say, and I quote: “Maybe because owls kind of bob their heads, and when they move on a branch they do it kind of awkwardly - one step to the right, then the other leg (or claw?) follows so it looks like their whole body is bobbing up and down. This is how they move in my imagination when I am asked by the authorities to describe the movements of owls.” PS! Embarrassingly, as I compulsively looked back over the "blog" for pointless "hyperlinks" that no one will ever "click" to add to this "post," I found one in which I had already been gently guided to a similar conclusion about drunken owls... over ten years ago! Like a jerk! Similar but not identical, I hasten to stipulate! McNeil's version holds more water... or booze! Ha ha! We're having fun now! We're finally having some fun, aren't we?

A True Story of Real Life

The other day I had to, in the words of Kool Moe Dee, "go see the doctor," but, let me emphasize, not for the reasons put forth in that work. Anyway, having recently finished off a couple of smaller books, all the books I took up subsequently are gigantic monsters, impossible to sit with in a waiting room without making an unseemly spectacle of one's self. So I plucked a manageable book from my big pile of books to pluck, and it happened to be RUN MAN RUN by Chester Himes, which I found at Skylight Books on my most recent visit to Los Angeles, California. So I started reading it while I waited to see the doctor and then, to use a well-worn phrase, I "couldn't put it down." So, last night, just near the end, there came a "replica of an owl's head" where I least expected it... on the butt of a gun! That's the end of my story.

Grits

Hey! Remember how I fretted that McNeil was never going to present us with any more of his special Bogie bits? I should have known that he had his reasons! The 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart, from which the bits were extracted, got really sad toward the end, he tells me. Then he gives us what I assume are his last few bits, and they are grim ones indeed. Grim bits, or "grits" as I call them for short. You have been warned! Writes McNeil: "I pick it up every once in a while, but it's sad when he's old before his time, and his wife is probably running around with Frank behind his back - and there's nothing he can do, really...except die." I told you it was grim! And as I have discovered for myself, after reading probably hundreds of celebrity biographies under the auspices of the Million Dollar Book Club, they all get sad toward the end. But I never learn my lesson. Hardly any celebrities get taken up bodily into Heaven like Enoch in the Bible. We should move on to happier things! Like, Adam sent Dr. Theresa and me a package of treats when we were sick. And, a week or two later, when Dr. Theresa was breaking down some cardboard boxes for recycling, she found a package of cookies in one them. A package of cookies we had overlooked somehow when we unpacked Adam's thoughtful gift. A package of cookies! Like a miracle! Is that a happy story? Because I can imagine a peevish reader, you know, Elon Musk or his teen BFF Big Balls, saying, "So what? Where's MY cookie?" Well, let's see. Speaking of the Million Dollar Book Club, we're on Kafka's diaries. So yesterday I was reading about a dream Kafka had about "a greyhound-like donkey, which was very restrained in its movements... its narrow human feet were unappealing to me because of their length and uniformity." This here donkey Kafka dreamed about had a "silvery shining breast." You know what I thought of! The supernatural creature the Padfoot, of course, a description of which provided the epigraph to my story collection MOVIE STARS. I'll save you the trouble of "clicking" on the "hyperlink": "In the neighborhood of Leeds there is the Padfoot, a weird apparition about the size of a small donkey, 'with shaggy hair and large eyes like saucers'... to see it is a prognostication of death." So we're back to death again, you're welcome. Grits!

The Mark Leyner Owl Problem

I'll tell you the truth. Despite all my big talk, I got tired of THE SOT-WEED FACTOR and switched over to E TU, BABE by Mark Leyner, which I immediately found more agreeable to my way of thinking. There was something I wanted to tell you about it, but I became discouraged because I couldn't think of a passage to quote to describe the narrator (Mark Leyner), at least not a passage I could quote without having to lie down from just thinking of how much typing it would entail. Somehow, this led me to wonder whether I had ever "blogged" about Mark Leyner before, so I did a search and found him in only one spot: my big list of books with owls in them. That's where the mystery began! Strap yourself in! You see, according to the "blog's" "design," it should be a mighty ouroboros, leading nowhere but back to itself. So, if you follow me, how could Mark Leyner's delightful GONE WITH THE MIND be on my list of books with owls in them AND YET not in some other "post" in which the owl was first catalogued properly? So I "clicked" and found that the Leyner allusion led only to a zombie "link" to my long-dead twitter account, a clear violation of "blog" policy (the reader will certainly recall when I departed social media like some kind of haughty titan, giving nary a thought to the destruction I left in my wake). Maybe I was reading GONE WITH THE MIND during the period when I claimed to have stopped "blogging." I have a lot of regrets. I'm ashamed to say Leyner's particular owl, which I have forgotten, is lost forever - at least for our purposes - if I don't suddenly get some unexpected energy and, for starters, walk across my home office, where my copy of GONE WITH THE MIND can be plainly seen from here, which isn't going to happen. Anyway! None of this is the point, because E TU, BABE doesn't have an owl in it... yet. Or maybe at all. BUT! I wanted to tell you, regarding E TU, BABE, that the narrator's favorite TV show is QUINCY, which is also Dr. Theresa's favorite TV show, which is why I wanted to tell you. Last night, I mentioned as much to her. Without context, the comment didn't really go anywhere. For you see, not only was I too lazy to type anything giving you a real idea of Leyner's narrator, Mark Leyner, I was too lazy to even describe the narrator to Dr. Theresa with the words of my mouth. Today, while I was considering all this, I flipped to the rear cover of the book and saw a "blurb" by Jay McInerney, who describes Leyner's protagonist as "a flashbulb-tanned, narcotic-nourished, steroid-swollen, priapic monster." Thanks, Jay McInerney! You did my work for me. Except for the typing. But you cut it way down! So anyway, the narrator's favorite TV show is QUINCY, and, as a result, to quote the book now, "whenever I run across a corpse, I try to take advantage of the opportunity to do a quick autopsy."

Blank

I have three gigantic books going, four if you count the audiobook of FINNEGANS WAKE. Rememeber when I fancied myself a one-book-at-a-time man? At night in bed, instead of old comic books, I now read old BUDDENBROOKS by "blog" favorite Thomas Mann. Then, of course, there's the Pessoa biography I read in bits and pieces as part of my blood pressure ritual... the doctor has me taking my blood pressure less often now, so I may never finish it. Just like Pessoa never finished his masterwork, THE BOOK OF DISQUIET. Ha ha, oh, Pessoa, you're something else. And I have a smaller book next to my favorite chair, but I don't want to talk about smaller books today. I want to talk about the 800-page monster THE SOT-WEED FACTOR by John Barth, which seems like a single joke stretched out to unimaginable lengths, something I can deeply respect. So, in THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, we find "a countenance blank as an owl's," which is fairly neutral as far as owl depictions go in figures of speech. As you know, an owl is "wise" if it's lucky, but more often it's drunk or stupid, etc., at least as far as the owl-hating literary giants of our times are concerned. "Blank," I'll take. It is at least more accurate than the "grinning" and "smiling" owls we have run across elsewhere. Please "click" on the "hyperlinks" for more owl information, or visit your local library.

Various Birds

I picked up a book called THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT by José Donoso, and I was like, hmm, can this obscene bird of night be an owl, perchance? But then I read the epigraph, which is by Henry James's dad, and he is giving his sons some life advice, including "The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters." Thanks, Dad! (I recall while typing this that some kind of weird monster bird of the psyche attacked Henry James's father in a novel by Colm Tóibín and also, presumably, in real life.) So last night I was in bed reading THE OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT and I came across "the ugly chonchón of ill omen." So I was like, "Hey, sweetie, look on your phone and tell me what a chonchón is." Dr. Theresa, who was also lying there reading, picked up her phone and looked up the chonchón. She said - and here I paraphrase freely - "It's a head that flies around by flapping its big ears like wings," which was pretty dang close to how it had been described in the book. I mean, exactly, really. "A horrible head would fly through the air, trailing a long mane of wheat-colored hair... flapping huge sinewy ears that were like bat wings." I flipped to the TRANSLATOR'S NOTE at the end of the book, in which Megan McDowell refers to the chonchón as an "owllike creature," and, as you know, that's good enough for me. Though maybe I should put an asterisk on it for now. Which reminds me! I finished that Julian Barnes novel and I didn't see any owls in it, but there were some luminous geese... I should say, "Luminous Geese," as he afforded them the dignity of proper nouns. As a person who plopped luminous owls into his second book, I took special note of the Luminous Geese. (See also.)

Domes

Last night, Dr. Theresa and I watched FORBIDDEN PLANET - her idea, not that it matters. And now she wants to watch PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES! I ventured that that one would pair well with ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, which I kept suggesting during the Halloween season, but she never quite came around on it. Looks like the winds of change are shifting, though! Just like Bob Dylan said. Sort of. But that's not why I'm here! I just wanted to say that, having been thoroughly conditioned by McNeil's obsession with decorative obelisks in movies, I could not help but note that Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) has a groovy space obelisk in his funky alien living room. You can see it in the image above, which I captured from our TV screen. The obelisk in question sits roughly at his left elbow (his left, your right!). As I cleverly remarked to Dr. Theresa, the exterior of his home resembles Devo's headquarters on Sunset Blvd. As proof, I took out my phone and showed her a photo of the latter building, because that's what we do now as a people, we see things that look like other things and then we take out our phones and find pictures to show people who maybe care and maybe don't. AND! Although you can't tell it from the image above, Dr. Morbius seems to share an interior decorator with Jerry Lewis. Oh! The appearance of Robby the Robot here reminds me of a chapter of SOUR BLUEBERRIES, the novel I deleted from the "internet" when I guess I was "going through some things." A "fictional character" (me?) brings up FORBIDDEN PLANET and another character says "It's boring. I hate it." Then he says that Robby the Robot is no B-9 from LOST IN SPACE. I, I mean, "Chet" naively asks if they aren't exactly the same, at which point, to quote the novel, "'No. Their domes are completely different,' said Jay. He started drawing their domes so Chet could compare B-9’s acceptable dome to Robby the Robot’s dome worthy only of hate." You know what, "Jay"? Last night I really enjoyed watching Robby's robot brains kind of whirling around in his head like he was the Glass Cat from the Oz series of novels. Oh, wait, that reminds me, I also wanted to tell Oz fan Laura Lippman (no monkey fan) that FORBIDDEN PLANET has a monkey in it!

Of Course She Did!

The rule is that every time I read a book with an owl in it, I have to tell you about it, no matter how the book makes me feel inside. It is my sad duty to inform you that the Million Dollar Book Club is reading a biography of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. You knew it would come to this. But that's not the bad part! How can I say this without alienating all the Nelson Eddy fans who flock to the "blog"? Well, reading this book, Nelson Eddy comes off as a scary monster, despite the efforts of the author to sort of gloss over everything that seems to make Nelson Eddy so very definitely a scary, terrifying monster. And the more she glosses it over, the scarier Nelson Eddy becomes. It makes for unpleasant reading. This is the nadir of the Million Dollar Book Club. Hey! I'll briefly liven things up by mentioning that today, while I was getting ready to take my blood pressure, I read some of that Pessoa biography, and Pessoa had a friend with a "full set of gold teeth." A full set! Not just a couple. All of this guy's teeth were made of gold. Okay, now I feel better. Back to the book with the scary monster. So, a contemporary reviewer quoted in the dual biography doubts that the "night owl clientele" of the Cocoanut Grove are going to dig the restrained decorum of Jeanette MacDonald. Anyway, as I texted to Megan - I don't have my phone here, so I'll approximate my observation - "I never dreamed the most messed up people we would ever read about would be Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy." (I know you don't know who they are. Would it kill you to google something? That aside is to you, the "blog" reader.) Megan texted back that they were more messed up than Salvador Dali. I responded they were more messed up than Tennessee Williams. She texted back that they were more messed up than Errol Flynn. And so on. I'll tell you one good thing. This book caused Megan to dig out the Jeanette MacDonald paper dolls she had when she was a kid. Of course she did!

Art Chimp

Dr. Theresa and I watch many monster movies and such every October as part of our personal Halloween festivities, of which watching movies is the only component. So last night we watched REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, which I remembered parts of surprisingly well, though I have not seen it since I was a child and it aired, I assume, on "The Big Show," the WKRG afternoon weekday movie hosted by Max Goodman, a man in glasses and a suit. I sure remembered the part when people were having a nice time at a seafood restaurant with a spacious dance floor and then a monster strolls in! But what I wanted to say is that REVENGE OF THE CREATURE had a chimpanzee that painted paintings in it, a "trope," as I call it, to which I have alluded in my masterful fiction, ha ha ha. Here! I have quoted myself once, and I will do it again: "Henry knew that a lot of times people just pretended to like art so they could be cool. They would stand around and drink alcohol and eat weenies on toothpicks and make a big deal about some piece of junk that was supposed to be great art, but then it would turn out to be nothing but a knocked-over garbage can or a no-smoking sign or a spot on the floor where somebody had thrown up, which was a situation that Henry had observed in many comedy movies. Like the one where the supposedly great artist had trained a monkey to ride around on a tricycle with paint on the wheels, and that was how he had made his supposedly great art!" That's from my second book, and you shouldn't confuse the author with the character and so on. I must say the chimp came off pretty well in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE! There was no making fun of chimps OR artists. He just happened to be a chimp who painted! And it was fine! And no one was worried about it and no statement was made about whatever people usually make statements about.

A Weird Creature of the Night

Here's one of the many, many narrators of THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA: "Pliny says that elephants have been taught to dance, and that once they were found rehearsing in the moonlight." When I read that, I decided to find out more! I scurried downstairs like a disgusting little rat and nosed around in the bookcase where I knew I had seen my books by Pliny the Elder when I was looking for something else. I had just two volumes out of the huge, sloppy pile of books that make up his NATURAL HISTORY, and I was pretty sure I didn't have the one with elephants in it, and I was right. Noticing that one of my Pliny (the Elder!) books did not have a dust jacket, I recalled that I had bought it used in San Francisco, and as I strolled down the sidewalk with my purchase in hand, that's when (as recorded previously on the "blog" - "click" here, you uncaring monster!) I either spoke to Francis Ford Coppola or some guy with a beard. Then I remembered that after I walked away, I thought, "I should have gotten him to sign this Pliny the Elder book. They're both Italian!" Well, now, in what we call "the present," I'm glad I didn't, because then I would have known for sure whether or not this guy was Francis Ford Coppola, and I might have been disappointed. And humiliated! As it is, we all dwelled in what may have been a pleasant illusion, and what could be nicer? I can keep you in suspense no longer! I got hold of the Pliny volume with the elephants in it, and the reality of the anecdote was much sadder than the light tone of Potocki's narrator would have one believe. That's what I get for wanting to know things. As you can imagine, once I had book eight of the NATURAL HISTORY, in which Pliny promises to tell us all about animals - and delivers! - I skipped greedily ahead to the bird section, hoping to find some owls, which were, indeed, forthcoming. "The eagle-owl is a funereal bird, and is regarded as an extremely bad omen... it inhabits deserts and places that are not merely unfrequented, but terrifying and inaccessible; a weird creature of the night, its cry is not a musical note but a scream." Scarily put! But old Pliny gives the eagle-owl (not to be confused with an eagle) a fair shake: "I know several cases of its having perched on the houses of private persons without fatal consequences." That's a relief! Now let's get back to THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA, which, although it hasn't had a single owl in it yet (except on the cover), does have monkeys riding vicuñas, which I only mention because my list of monkeys riding dogs has so few entries, whereas I am adding to this list of books with owls in them, upon which you never "click" anymore, all the time. Look, put down your quill, I know that a vicuña is not a dog. Which reminds me. I was reading that Lord Byron poem, and there's a character called the Chamois Hunter. And I was like, hey! This guy can't find his chamois, a small, soft cloth for polishing things! That's not really what I thought. What I really thought, given my capability for contextualizing, was, huh, a chamois must be an animal. I'm 61 now and I went my whole life thinking a chamois was just a kind of rag or cloth! I never gave a thought for the poor chamois who gave up its life, I assume, so I could polish up the trophy we won for the battle of the bands in 1989, largely because my brother was one of the judges. Which reminds me. Jon Host and I once rhymed "chamois" and "clammy" in a song.

Doom and So On

I was chatting with Megan this morning through the medium of email about a Mark Rothko book I picked up at Square Books the other day. Its subject is the paintings he did on paper rather than canvas, and it features many vivid color-plate reproductions. Rothko is quoted in the introductory essay, of course, often saying the kind of stuff that Megan and I are partial to, as I am sure you will recall ("click" here) from the time we got all in a tizzy over something Bellini said about opera. I'll give you a couple of examples! 1. "I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on." 2. "If a thing is worth doing once, it is worth doing over and over again." End of examples. Moving on to other artistic matters, a lot of these old comic books that Tom Franklin brought over are horror comics, a genre I read a little bit of as a kid, but not too much, after a story in either HOUSE OF MYSTERY or HOUSE OF SECRETS (I think) about a guy who turned out to have goat legs shook me up pretty bad. Which brings up something I've noticed... these old comic books, and not just the horror ones, either, really do have an awful lot of the devil in them, just like the Sunday school teachers used to say! I was wrong to scoff! But I'm sure you've guessed what I'm getting at. So, I was reading this one THE WITCHING HOUR last night, and there's a story in it about "coffin inspectors," which I didn't know was a job. You can learn a lot from the old comic books that Tom Franklin gives you! The coffin inspectors are marching along in the first panel, singing a song that goes like this (and, once again, I quote): "OOHOOHHOOO OH, HO! OH, HO! WHEN THE MOON IS GIBBOUS AND THE OWL CRIES FOUL... THEN WE'LL DIG AND SHARE THE WEALTH OF THOSE WHO NO LONGER DRINK... THE RED, RED WINE... OF LIIIIIIIIIFE!!!" I can't say that's much of a song, but it does have an owl in it. Yes, there are eight I's in LIIIIIIIIFE, I counted them several times in the interest of accuracy. Oh, and I get it now, they're graverobbers. Why, there's no such thing as a coffin inspector after all! In my defense, Ace and Angela came over last night for a special screening of Dr. Theresa's favorite TV show, QUINCY, M. E., and afterward, tuckered out from all the Quincy enjoyment, I did no more than glance at the first panel (after reading a previous story in the same issue, which I had trouble following, about the devil attacking a Swiss town - it ended as abruptly as SIMON OF THE DESERT! [which also featured the devil]) just enough to notice the owl before succumbing to slumber with a Quincy-like smile on my cherubic face. In conclusion, I don't mean to brag, but TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED does have more owls in it, just as I predicted. If the numbers hold up, there should be an owl every 4.5 pages. One more thing. Goat legs (see above) make me think of a line that Dr. Theresa and I are always quoting to one another. It comes from one of those "true stories of the paranormal" shows. They were interviewing a couple of guys from Texas, I think, who saw a creature in the woods with "the head of a goat and the body of a jacked-up man." That's it. We say it a lot. Try it out at home! "The head of a goat and the body of a jacked-up man."

The Sleep of Swamp Thing

Someone (I hesitate to say who or why, though the details are interesting!) kindly made a present to me of the complete SWAMP THING comic books by Alan Moore. So, I was going through those, and what do you know? Jason Blood came to town. You may know him better as the superhero/demon called, fittingly enough, "The Demon." Well, first thing he does is stop at the local freaky magic occult shop and pick up a copy of Goya's "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" to hang on the wall in his bachelor pad. (Sometimes translated as "The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters"... either way, whatever it is is producing monsters.) So I'm squinting at this piece of art as represented in this here comic book... let me tell you something. I stopped reading comic books when they still cost 25 cents. Now, later on, in the 1980s, for example, when these SWAMP THING comics by Alan Moore came out, well, they really started cramming a lot of visual information on a page. Too much, I say. It's kind of taxing! So I'm squinting at this postage-stamp-sized fragment of "The Sleep of Reason" on this chaotic field of shape and color and I'm like, that's an owl, right? Because, if so, that's very important to me. So I had to look up the real thing on the "internet" just to make sure, and then I looked back at the comic book panel for comparison, and yes, okay, that was an owl I was looking at.

I Don't Want to Be Here

Let's get this over with. So, Dr. Theresa and I were watching the horror movie THE FUNHOUSE as part of our yearly Halloween thing we do. I noticed that a cigarette lighter was used as a clue in an interesting way, which really pissed me off. That's right, I use coarse language now, and I use it freely. I knew that the vital cigarette lighter clue meant that I would have to laboriously append a new entry to my index of things I (sort of) regret leaving out of my cigarette lighter book, which no one cares about, except maybe Ace Atkins, who texted yesterday to inquire whether he might borrow a gruesome detail from it in the service of his new work. But let us travel back in time, to our viewing of THE FUNHOUSE, and how my shriveled heart gave a hint of shuddering back to life as I thought about my entire section on matchbooks as clues. So interesting, I smugly mused, to see a cigarette lighter used in a matchbook way here in this film THE FUNHOUSE. I could tell everyone a thing or two about how unusual that is. Then I remembered, hey! The epigraph of the book is about a cigarette lighter as a clue, big deal, Godard even says (in the epigraph) how damn famous it is, that billions of people will remember it. (It's the cigarette lighter from STRANGERS ON A TRAIN... a false, planted clue, which would be an interesting distinction if I cared about anything anymore. You could say, for one thing, that in both cases [THE FUNHOUSE and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN], the lighter benefits the villain, whereas the matchbook is usually valuable to the detective or "good guy"... how I hate myself!) What's so special about this damn cigarette lighter from THE FUNHOUSE? Well, it appeared to be a white Bic, which, as Megan Abbott pointed out to me during the research phase of my book, is thought by some to be bad luck, which superstition ended up in the book, and I guess this lighter would have made a good addition to that section, as it (as hinted parenthetically above) alerts the murderous monster to the presence of the hapless teens, but then again, maybe the lighter was pale yellow. This was weeks ago. Days ago? It was the 19th. I'm so tired of looking things up.

Sandwich and Alexander

As you know, I have given up "blogging" entirely. However, something has occurred which requires immediate comment. You no doubt recall with a bittersweet admixture of reverence and nostalgia the time I noticed the importance of sandwiches to Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. Having recently rewatched the same director's FANNY AND ALEXANDER, I was stunned to discover that it features even more sandwiches than SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. The exciting prospect of studying the entire Bergman oeuvre from the perspective of sandwiches presents itself. In FANNY AND ALEXANDER, an unusually lenient wife orders up "two cheese sandwiches" for herself and her happy, adulterous husband. Soon, the eponymous children are offered "a molasses sandwich," which the subtitles have in the singular. I will have to learn Swedish for a more complete examination. Moments later, for example, the children are asked to put down the "sandwiches," plural. One may imagine that half of a molasses sandwich is enough for any child. Perhaps the single molasses sandwich was divided in two, becoming, for all practical purposes, two sandwiches. While "half a sandwich" is a traditional unit of sandwich measurement, it is not difficult to picture two halves of the same sandwich, being consumed by two separate people, as "sandwiches." A mystery! I am put in mind of the J.J. Special, a favorite order from Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta. It was a patty melt of sorts, divided into four sections, each held together by a fancy toothpick. At some point, the J.J. Special was changed, and it came to the table cut in half, appallingly like any ordinary sandwich. It took a long time to get used to the new configuration. I should also mention that the J.J. Special might have been the name of the entire order (which came with onion rings AND fries), and not merely the name of the sandwich (see Dr. Frankenstein and his monster). We may further examine two sandwiches of unspecified ingredients in FANNY AND ALEXANDER. The cruel and austere bishop asks for "a sandwich and a glass of milk," while the happy adulterer is promised "a beer and a sandwich" to be served in bed by his indulgent wife. Can it be that a sandwich is the one food that pairs well with either milk or beer? I have put no thought into the question. But surely we may draw many conclusions from the beverage choices of these two very different characters. In conclusion, sandwiches for the happy adulterous Swedish man form somewhat of a framing device in FANNY AND ALEXANDER, as they appear near the beginning and near the end of the film. One might say, then, that the film itself is a sandwich.

Action Northam

Spoiler alert for the movie MIMIC, which Dr. Theresa and I were watching last night: when noted action hero Jeremy Northam needs to light his lighter to blow up all the monster bugs, it won't work, and he is forced to strike a spark by using an ice pick against a metal grate. Now! As you may know, I am somewhat like the Ancient Mariner, though my predicament is different. I am forced to roam the earth, noticing things I should have put in my cigarette lighter book but didn't. This scene would have fit comfortably into one of the sections in which I mention sparks being struck by unusual methods OR in my reflection on lighters that won't work at crucial moments in popular culture.

Jerry 101

I just heard that Jerry Lewis passed away. Dr. Theresa and my pal Phil Oppenheim alerted me simultaneously. I feel terrible! I am going to try to update an old "post" that had ninety introductions to Jerry Lewis for the curious. I am going to try to find eleven things to add so I can call it "Jerry 101." [As a work meeting was coming up as this "post" was being typed, several, though not all, of the hastily retrieved final additions may be of a lesser quality. - ed.] 1. How is Edgar Allan Poe like Jerry Lewis? 2. For that matter, what would Kierkegaard say about Jerry Lewis? 3. Bob Dylan got "deeply into" Jerry Lewis. 4. Jerry was a hero to Richard Pryor. 5. Jerry shares expressionistic instincts with iconic rappers. 6. He made Orson Welles laugh. 7. Freudian aspects of Jerry. 8. He played a gig with Thelonious Monk. 9. A trusted method of immersing yourself in Jerryness. 10. Don't believe me? Take it from bestselling novelist Laura Lippman! 11. Don't believe Laura Lippman? Perhaps famed method actor Edward Norton is more to your taste. [See also - ed.] 12. Consider Jerry Lewis as the forefather of David Lynch. 13. So can it be a coincidence that Lynch was cast in a part originally written for Jerry Lewis? (See also.) 14. As muse to hardboiled Don Carpenter. 15. Jerry's spectacular use of color. 16. Jerry is the inventor of anti-comedy, his aesthetic also appropriated by the cinematic underground. 17. Read the great Jerry monograph by Chris Fujiwara. 18. Jerry a hero to Michael Palin of the Monty Python comedy troupe. 19. Jerry an inspiration for the British version of THE OFFICE that everyone used to love so much. 20. Jerry makes me think of the French painter Henri Rosseau. 21. Do you think Jerry is redundant? No, he is "unfolding redundancy." Joke's on you! 22. Do you like Godard? Well, Godard based some of his scenes on Jerry Lewis scenes. Like this and that. 23. Some maintain that 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY would have been better with Jerry in it. 24. Speaking of which, was Jerry an influence on Boorman's groundbreaking POINT BLANK? I don't know, but he should have starred in it. 25. How about that prescient scene in THE BELLBOY that anticipates Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY? Or the possibly relevant fact that Jerry directed parts of THE KING OF COMEDY? 26. The Cinderfella dance! 27. Jerry frequently appears in THE BELIEVER magazine, if that's your cup of tea. 28. I intuit a connection between Jerry and J.D. Salinger. 29. And supposedly Salinger considered Jerry to direct the movie version of CATCHER IN THE RYE, maybe. I said maybe! 30. Jerry's influence on GOODFELLAS. 31. Jerry Lewis is part of Philip K. Dick's mystic vision of the entire universe. 32. You should watch lots of Jerry Lewis so you can practice the fun habit of saying things like Jerry Lewis. 33. Even nature itself aspires to sound like Jerry Lewis. 34. Jerry Lewis is a good singer. 35. Maybe you identify with Jerry's world-weary attitude. 36. He hung out in a diner with Marilyn Monroe. 37. Blair Hobbs detects an aesthetic kinship between Jerry and the photographer William Eggleston. 38. Jerry was an inspiration to Bruce Springsteen. 39. Think of Jerry as a poet. 40. Need a dissertation topic? How about "Medical Ethics in the Films of Jerry Lewis"? 41. In a hilarious practical joke, Jerry ruined Dick van Dyke's meeting with the queen! 42. Jerry was instrumental in getting the great Stan Laurel his honorary Oscar. 43. Jerry is handsome! 44. Maybe you are a "conspiracy theory buff." Well, for real the CIA tampered with one of Jerry's movies. 45. Maybe you're an animal lover. Well, Jerry bought a hearing aid for his dog. 46. Jerry is subversive! 47. Quentin Tarantino + Jerry Lewis = True Love 4ever. 48. (Maybe because he anticipated one of Tarantino's more radical and disruptive narrative decisions by 40 years.) 49. Does he irritate you and make you uncomfortable? MAYBE THAT'S JUST WHAT JERRY WANTS! 50. For example, he once stuck his nose in Frank Sinatra's eye. 51. And took some of the starch out of Tony Curtis by flicking ashes on his jacket. 52. Jerry is complicated. He "both depicts and manifests inadvertent disclosure." - J. Hoberman. 53. Jerry's influence on the Beastie Boys. 54. Jerry appears in works by acknowledged comic geniuses John Hodgman and Michael Kupperman. 55. But perhaps you prefer authors from Mississippi, a chunk of land with a notable literary history. If so, you should be aware that Tom Franklin and Frederick Barthelme have put Jerry Lewis in their well-regarded "Mississippi" novels. 56. So has Don DeLillo, though he is not from Mississippi, nor are his novels set there. 57. ARE you a historian, by the way? Then consider Jerry's breakup with Dean in its implications as "a national trauma." 58. Francis Ford Coppola cites Jerry as an influence. 59. Which reminds me: I recently read an interview that Scorsese did with Lewis in which he (Scorsese) cites THE LADIES MAN as an influence. I always assumed the scene in question was drawn from SATYRICON. But SATYRICON came out after THE LADIES MAN, so maybe SATYRICON was influenced by Jerry too! I just now decided that, while typing this. 60. Jerry's darker side a fruitful subject for literary speculation. 61. Speaking of which, John Waters said Jerry Lewis was "probably a monster!" Can there be a higher compliment? 62. Although (see previous "link") John Waters went on to praise his taste in costuming. So that subject is worth contemplation. 63. Though, intriguingly, to Waters's original hypothesis, Jerry repeatedly acknowledges the collusion of the innocent with the monstrous, especially within a single individual. (See also.) 64. Jerry's art provides some of the same challenges and rewards as Sun Ra's. 65. Jerry envisioned hosting Queen Elizabeth, Jimmy Hoffa and Helen Keller on a talk show. I still want to write that play. 66. Fascinating undercurrents to his on- and off-screen chemistry with Dean Martin. 67. I wrote a pretty good article about him once if you can find it. 68. And this "post" is all right. 69. Try to solve Jerry's universal problem. 70. The complex transparency of Jerry's genius can be profitably compared to Brian Wilson's. 71. Jerry reveals the intrinsic flaws in the very notion of successful human communication. 72. Maybe that's why he's constantly "rewriting his own being." 73. But before he rewrote himself too much, here's a 13-minute clip of young Jerry at his brashest and most engaging. 74. Jerry's anarchic devouring of the hand that feeds him. 75. Maybe you are from the "dance world." Did you know that many highbrow choreographers turn to Jerry Lewis for inspiration? 76. Similarities between Jerry and the great Italian giallo director Mario Bava, if that's your thing. 77. Jerry is a model of tact and restraint compared to the makers of Jason Bateman movies. 78. As Jerry is, so you will be. As you are, so once was he. 79. Jerry, like Elvis, was a target of snobbery and classism. 80. I mean, even when he ended the Oscar broadcast EARLY, the powers-that-be still despised him. He gets under "the man's" skin. 81. For example, when everybody in "the establishment" was dumping on Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE, Jerry was one of the first to proclaim its greatness. 82. Did he inspire a character in a Wes Anderson movie? Probably not. But I think he inspired a character in a Noah Baumbach movie. 83. Touchstone for towering cartoonists Lynda Barry and Gilbert Hernandez. 84. Jerry deemed a subject worthy of the Savannah College of Art and Design. 85. Jerry cut short his formal education and set out to educate himself. 86. Jonathan Rosenbaum knows a lot about movies and he loves Jerry Lewis. 87. Tough-to-please James Wolcott likewise. 88. Camille Paglia seems happy about Jerry Lewis. 89. Even comedians who resist his influence must grapple with his legacy. 90. Jerry blurs assumptions about gender. 91. Hey, Sandra Bullock likes Jerry Lewis. 92. And John Sayles says "he did it all," though he was likely just being polite. 93. Jerry helps redeem the troubling "monkey riding dogs" trope. 94. Jerry advances clowning from sadness to rage. 95. Jerry's singing provides ballast in one of those ubiquitous "peak TV" shows that no one can get enough of. 96. Just the thought of Jerry Lewis makes someone laugh alone in a parking lot. 97. Jerry makes comedy of our basic existential choice. 98. See my AV Club interview on Jerry Lewis's literary influence, I guess. 99. Jerry of sufficient interest to narrowly escape being drunk-dialed by Cary Fukunaga. 100. Noted author Megan Abbott finds that watching Jerry is "akin to psychosexual quicksand"! 101. Appropriately at this moment, Jerry Lewis distracts me from James Joyce's elegiac short story, "The Dead," supplanting death with life!

"Blog"trospective 18: The Anatomy of Melancholy

As promised, though I have "stopped 'blogging,'" I have returned to you just long enough to boast about finishing all 977 pages of THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. That includes the first appendix, "The Conclusion of the Author to the Reader" (reworked by Burton for his introduction and left out of most subsequent editions), but not the second appendix, in which Burton's birthdate is deduced through astrological data. It only took me something like a year. I won't rehash my many excuses, no, I won't say how big and bulky the 1927 edition is and how I couldn't carry it on airplanes. I won't point out the good, long run I had of reading it before I was interrupted. But - before we get to the main body of this, the final "blog"trospective, I will tell you what I learned from THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY since the last time I saw you. 1. Compared to Blind Alfred Reed, Robert Burton is kind of progressive. He (Burton) gives us (as is his wont) several pages of quotations from ancient scholars enumerating what is supposedly wrong with women. But then he has to admit, "And that which I have said (to speak truth) no more concerns them than men, though women be more frequently named in this Tract; (to apologize once for all) I am neither partial against them, or therefore bitter... If any man take exception at my words, let him alter the name, read him for her, and 'tis all one in effect." 2. "Eating the egg of a night-owl causeth abstemiousness, according to Iarcha the Indian gymnosophist." Burton is speaking of sexual or romantic abstemiousness, though the idea that an owl's egg can cure alcoholism somehow made it to the United States, as reported previously on the "blog." Another of the "absurd remedies" for love mentioned by Burton is the wearing of "Characteristical Images," such as "the seal of a woman with disheveled hair." 3. "Gentle youths" are advised to "Let not the Doves outpass your murmurings... or oyster kissings," which would seem to imply that oysters are good kissers, as good at kissing as doves are at murmuring. I did very little research into the matter. We all know that oysters are supposed to be an aphrodisiac, so why shouldn't they be good kissers? I also recall that prostitutes were called "oysters" and "monkeys" in Burton's time, and though I doubt that's what is meant here, it does make me realize I took at least one of Burton's allusions to monkeys too literally. 4. After one victory, Caesar's soldiers sang a song that went, "Citizens, look to your wives, we bring you a bald adulterer." Gee, what a nice song. I learned of it in Burton's section on the sexual prowess of bald men (pictured). 5. Speaking of which, I learned the word "cornute," which, had I thought about it for a second, I would have known meant to put the horns on, or cuckold, but I didn't think at all, no, I just looked it up in my old dictionary. 6. Lots more owls in these final pages. At least half a dozen. In the passage urging young women not to marry old men, Burton tells how Sophocles, "a very old man, as cold as January, a bed-fellow of bones... doted yet upon Archippe a young Courtesan" and quotes an old poem: "Night-crows on tombs, owl sits on carcass dead,/ So lies a wench with Sophocles in bed." Ha ha, take that, Sophocles! 7. "As a dam of water stopped in one place breaks out into another, so doth superstition." This seems to anticipate Freud! Does it? I don't know. I think of Dr. Theresa's favorite phrase, "the return of the repressed." 8. He calls the goddess Venus "as common as a barber's chair." Was that a familiar insult at the time? Anyway, it's kind of snappy, if rude. 9. Burton says that people can be obsessive on one subject but otherwise fully functional: "they are like comets, round in all places but only where they blaze." A nice phrase! 10. Well, Burton has thought a lot about religious tolerance and I can't say he's for it. He does think burning people at the stake might be a little extreme, sometimes: "We have frequently such Prophets and dreamers amongst us, whom we persecute with fire... I think the most compendious cure for some of them at least, had been in Bedlam. But enough of this." 12. Yet at the same time he doesn't care for hellfire preachers, "nothing but gall and horror, and a mad noise, they make all their auditors desperate, many are wounded by this means, and they commonly that are most devout and precise." 13. "A Tuscan Sooth-sayer, as Paterculus tells the story, perceiving himself and Fulvius Flaccus his dear friend, now both carried to prison by Opimius, and in despair of pardon, seeing the young man weep, said, do as I do; and with that knockt out his brains against the door-cheek, as he was entering into Prison, and so desperately died." Well, that's a terrible story, sorry! But I can't help liking the phrase "knockt out his brains against the door-cheek." It's vivid! 14. Here's Burton's version of that Bible verse I like: "I am like a Pelican in the wilderness, an Owl because of thine indignation." Ha ha! No, I don't know why that's funny. 15. "... the more they search and read Scriptures, or divine Treatises, the more they puzzle themselves, as a bird in a net, the more they are intangled and precipitated into this preposterous gulf." I know how they feel! 16. I learned the word "Mormoluches," which seems to mean "hobgoblins." And now take my arm as we stroll through THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY as summarized previously on this "blog": against vainglory---aliens (two green children who fell from Heaven)---alkermes---Aquinas beats a talking brass man to pieces with a hammer (1927 footnote)---architectural talent of bees, the---Artemidorus the Grammarian loses his wits by the unexpected sight of a crocodile---bats and owls hover in melancholy darkness over a shady bower---Burton critical of, yet defiant about, his own work---company of young men and maids cursed to sing for a year without stopping---compares the profession of a physician unfavorably to that of a hangman---contains numerous owls---cucubuth---cultivating a taste for exquisite sauces is an impediment to happiness---Cupid and Death exchange arrows---delusion of live frogs in belly---dizzards---emperor who was bad at kissing, the---February a peak time for werewolves---fairies walk about in little coats---fairybabes of tombs and graves---fiery urine---glucupicron---invention of the ball---led (by a 1927 footnote to Burton) to Godwin's LIVES OF THE NECROMANCERS---man gets gas from a concoction meant to increase his libido, a---man with a fear of peeing cured by being told the town is on fire, a---mice sleeping under the snow, as fat as butter---parable of a mule and an ass---people cured of various ailments by falling on their heads---pickitivant---Pied Piper story presented as fact, the---possible roots of "willy-nilly"---trees fall in love. In closing I ask you to recall the previous seventeen "blog"trospectives: 1. Tom Franklin. 2. Phil Oppenheim. 3. Movies. 4. The Moon. 5. Sandwiches. 6. The United States. 7. The Beach Boys. 8. Arnold Stang. 9. Books With Owls In Them. 10. Gelatin. 11. Monkeys Riding Dogs. 12. Kent Osborne Eating Chicken. 13. What Happened When Megan Abbott Lived In Oxford, Mississippi. 14. Graveyards. 15. Feeding a Possum. 16. The Twentieth Century. 17. Stuff I Left Out of the Book I Wrote About Cigarette Lighters. If you "click" on them all, and then "click" on every "link" within them, and every "link" within every "link," you will have discovered my own anatomy of my own melancholy. "The world shall end like a Comedy, and we shall meet at last in Heaven, and live in bliss together; or else in conclusion, fade away into nothing." Okay, so long, see you on McNeil's birthday.