The Second in a Series of Reports

In Episode 521 of DARK SHADOWS a new character pops up and he's basically the devil. Anyway, a few episodes later, he says "gazebo" twice, both times with the unusual "Ga-ZAY-Bo" pronunciation. This has been the second in a series of reports on the way characters pronounce "gazebo" in DARK SHADOWS.

Never Wait to "Blog"

The other day (?) I was watching an Edward Everett Horton movie - he came up in an ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE meeting in the last week or two, but that was just a coincidence - and the character portrayed by Mr. Horton advanced his idea of... well, here's the tricky part. I didn't jot it down, nor did I prance up the stairs (this house has stairs! And I prance up them!) to "blog" about it right away, and, given that my recent secret sickliness may have jostled my old memory parts in the human brain I've got here, I don't recall exactly, but I think Mr. Horton, or the character he played, who had a mustache, I think, expressed his desire to cross an apple with a grapefruit. Naturally, I was reminded of the time I wanted to cross an apple with a lemon, and the mockery I suffered on that account from McNeil. For those too lazy to "click" here (that's all of you) I will state at least the first of McNeil's reasonable objections, and I quote: "What you will end up with is a sour apple - which already exists." Well, I know Edward Everett Horton wanted to cross something with an apple. More than once in the film (GOING HIGHBROW, I should specify) he stated his intention to invent, likewise, a "squirtless grapefruit." So I'm not sure whether it's a grapefruit he wanted to cross with an apple or if I just think that because he - by which I mean the character he played - was generally obsessed with grapefruits.

Humor

They all said McNeil was crazy! Well, me. I said it. I said McNeil was crazy when he claimed that every 1960s movie features a desk with an obelisk on it. But today I watched ONE MORE TIME, which is a 1960s movie for all practical purposes, and, as you can see from this photo I took of the television screen, it had a desk with an obelisk on it. Now, there is no Jerry Lewis scholar I trust and admire more than Chris Fujiwara, but upon the conclusion of this repeat viewing, I must say that I have come to take exception to his description of ONE MORE TIME as "lacking in humor." For example, there is an old butler who is very slow, and as the old butler slowly totters across the room with a silver platter, Sammy Davis Jr.'s moustache and sideburns turn gray, and he (Sammy Davis Jr., transformed by his interminable wait) mutters to himself in a feeble, distracted manner indicating great age. Later, in an unrelated incident, he sneezes all the icing off a cake! A second sneeze issues forth with such force that an entire roomful of people is toppled to the floor.

Stop Smoking the Disney Way

After you write a book about something you immediately forget everything about the subject you were researching and never want to hear anything about it again. That's a tidbit about writing. Okay! But once I wrote a book about cigarette lighters and just for a month or two after it came out I would run across an item that I wished I had been able to include in the book. That stopped happening quickly and also I stopped "blogging" forever, as you can see. But now - after what I assumed would be an eternal hiatus - I just read something that I wish I would've heard about in time to put in my book. Okay, in this part of the Walt Disney biography that Megan Abbott and I are reading, Walt Disney has turned kind of scary to everybody: "layout artist Ken Anderson inadvertently singed Walt's mustache while lighting a cigarette with a new lighter during a storyboard session." Disney leaps from his chair and showers Ken Anderson with invective we shan't print here. "Anderson threw away the lighter and never smoked again." There are a couple of good places in my book for that anecdote, though based on my royalty statement I'm pretty sure there's not a clamor for an extended second edition. In a poignant aside, the author Neal Gabler adds, "Anderson admitted he cried."

Julian the Apostate Emperor's Big Kissing Speech

My traveling threw up another roadblock up for my ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY reading. But now I'm dawdling over its pages again. Can't seem to make it out of the love section. Now I'm reading about what a typical guy does when he's in love, according to Burton: "to turn up his Mushatos, and curl his head, prune his pickitivant [or peaked beard]... he may be scoffed at otherwise, as Julian that Apostate Emperor was for wearing a long hirsute goatish beard, fit to make ropes with." Of course, I am only telling you this for the sake of "pickitivant." It's like when I was so taken with Burton's insistence that life is but a glucupicron (I may be paraphrasing slightly). Hmm, I can't find that anywhere on the "blog." I must have only jabbered about glucupicron on twitter. And repeatedly, I feel sure. I'm sure I overdid it. I'm sure I rubbed it in. Ah, yes, yes, I see I had the temerity to explain life being nothing but a glucupicron to Neko Case:

@NekoCase "a bitter sweet passion, honey and gall mixt together" says Robert Burton in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY

— Jack Pendarvis (@JackPendarvis) August 17, 2015

And I think I tried to convince everyone for a while that GLUCUPICRON would be a good ADVENTURE TIME episode title. I don't think my heart was in it, I mostly liked pretending it was a good idea, but I grew perversely insistent for a short while. Now to set the scene! MR. MOM was on briefly while I read THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY last night, just the section where Michael Keaton goes to the grocery store and can't figure out how to buy ham. I don't mean to brag but I think would have been able to buy ham the first time I ever even saw a grocery store. As an infant, given a little prodding, I could have bought some ham. You know, put a couple of dollars in my sticky fat little fist and encourage me to try to say "ham," or to flap my arms in that general direction. I could have gotten some ham. It's a big, big crisis for Michael Keaton, though, buying ham. It breaks him! How to buy ham? Insurmountable! I can't remember for sure, but I think Bob Hope is overwhelmed by the bounty of the modern grocery store in BACHELOR IN PARADISE, but I bet he could have bought some ham - and with a cool, collected demeanor, too. Nonchalantly! Even stunned by capitalism at its shiniest, Bob Hope could have suavely negotiated the purchase of some ham. And of course Joe Namath had no trouble with ham in HIS movie grocery store. Joe Namath knows who's boss! And it's not the ham. I recall that McNeil and I saw MR. MOM in the theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, when it came out, and no doubt we considered it a masterpiece of realism at the time, though we had both been capable of buying ham with little trouble for many years by that point. As you will recall, we prided ourselves on tucking in our t-shirts at the time. Burton goes on to relate how "Julian that Apostate Emperor" had to make a political speech apologizing for the unfashionable style of his beard. Julian opened with a self-deprecating joke about how he hated to kiss anybody anyway! ("I do not exert myself much, said he, in the giving and taking of kisses.") Because the people - the twitter mob of their time! - were saying that the emperor's kind of beard was inconvenient for kissing and made him look like an unkissable dummy. See, politics were always crazy, ha ha, what times. Truly Julian that Apostate Emperor was the Donald Trump of his day; I can't back that up.

How I Met Your Manitou

So we watched THE MANITOU for our Halloween film festival and now I am going to tell you all about THE MANITOU so don't read this if you plan to watch THE MANITOU but I don't think you want to plan to watch THE MANITOU. Tony Curtis plays a guy kind of like Zero Mostel in THE PRODUCERS except he gives psychic readings to old women and for one of them he wears a false moustache for reasons that I am not sure I understand. There was one okay part where an old woman floated down a hallway, that was a surprise. Anyway, here comes the manitou! The manitou is a "medicine man" who reincarnates himself in the most inconvenient way possible for everyone. Couldn't he just reincarnate himself the regular way? I guess not! Then a hospital room turns into outer space and they defeat the manitou by harnessing the souls of computers, because computers have souls in this movie, THE MANITOU.

McNeilileaks

Don't even pretend! I know you want to know what McNeil dreamed the other night. And luckily he emailed me about it. I'm going to cut-and-paste his email right here in our latest installment of... McNeilileaks: "Last night I had a dream that my grandfather (long dead) ordered a pack of playing cards that featured Dean Martin images (also long dead) instead of the regular pattern of 7 diamonds, for example. You know the type. My grandfather was a fan of Dino as well. Anyway, when the cards came the images were 52 frames of the same scene from unknown (to us) public domain movie with Dean Martin in a long beard, thick mustache, and black hat...standing outside a house looking straight out of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. 52 images with a slightly different turn of the head of a barely recognizable Dino. A nightmare."

Chandelier Hat

I was kissing everybody on the cheek. Everybody in town! I kissed Bill Taft on the cheek. "Punk rock!" he exclaimed in response. (I finally understood the time Barry Mills kissed everybody in New York City, did I ever tell you about that? I think he wrote a song about it that went "Come here, girl, I'm gonna kiss you/ Hey there, boy, I'll kiss you too") Indulge me. Or don't. I'm just trying to remember why I was so happy for the past few days. This "blog" now works as my substitute memory. You're free to go. Bill and Caroline and Will came to town. Look! Bill Boyle took this picture of Bill and Will playing at the Powerhouse while Caroline sits ready to spring to the poetry podium and read some poetry. Caroline read some poems about the time the awful tornado tore through Cabbagetown. And guess what? Shana came all the way from Atlanta just to hear it. And guess what else! Last time Shana visited we were sitting on the balcony of City Grocery Bar and she started getting a million texts because THAT WAS THE NIGHT THE AWFUL TORNADO TORE THROUGH CABBAGETOWN.

Shana came back for some of that emotion recollected in tranquility you always hear about. Here's Caroline laying down some poetry on the people, photo by Kevin from the Isom Center. Caroline! A benevolent being who appears whenever she is needed! Whether you know it or not! Why, she appeared in Ohio (was it Ohio?) in a hotel room with Bill Taft and Kelly Hogan and me and the band They Might Be Giants. Did I know Caroline at all? In any case, my extensive knowledge of THE BRADY BUNCH (much to the annoyance of They Might Be Giants, as Caroline and I choose to remember it) stuck in her mind and led Caroline, eventually, to get me my first job that a human adult would have. And she has led me from milestone to milestone ever since... introducing me to Dr. Theresa, for example, as I have repeated several times. IT BEARS REPEATING. (Late addendum: I just now recalled - I think - that the very first time I met Caroline, she was Kelly Hogan's next-door neighbor and Kelly and I were out in the gravelly yard drinking wine from her grandmother's red Jell-O glasses; Caroline and her boyfriend were returning - why do I remember this? - from some unwanted and socially enforced visit to a gimmicky restaurant owned by some reactionary Georgia politician, can that be true?) The night before the music and poetry show, Dr. Theresa and I took Bill and Will and Caroline out to dinner and the restaurant was dark and everybody was holding up the menus to their eyes and moving the atmospheric candle around because we're all old now and Caroline had the idea for a chandelier that is also a hat. Or a hat that is also a chandelier? It sounded like a great idea at the time. Before the Powerhouse show Bill and Will played on the Thacker Mountain Radio show, our live local weekly fun fest. Introducing one song, Bill said that when he read Hamlet as a youngster he thought Hamlet was a real cool guy, but now that he's a dad, he really understands Claudius! "A middle-aged man trying to get things done," Bill said, but not exactly. Bill said it better. I sat next to Melissa Ginsburg! SHE HAD JUST SOLD HER FIRST NOVEL THAT VERY DAY. It's a thriller! I think this is okay to "announce." I think everybody knows. Melissa can write poetry AND thrillers! An enchantress she is! She liked Bill so much she wanted me to make her a mix tape of the awesome Atlanta music of my callow young adulthood. Okay, I was in my 30s. I was a late bloomer for callow young adulthood. Melissa and I slipped out and had a drink to celebrate. A twin celebration! Because also on that very same day I had sent off my cigarette lighter book to my editor.

Finished! Until I get notes. NO MORE THINKING ABOUT CIGARETTE LIGHTERS ALL DAY EVERY DAY. After the poetry and music it was back to City Grocery Bar. Shana came along with her friend Kerri, who has an extremely detailed tattoo of Burt Reynolds on her arm! Needless to say, we became fast friends. The next morning I was sitting with Bill and Will at Big Bad Breakfast and Jill, who runs the place, came up to say hello, and there was a nice "Bill and Will this is Jill" moment. Then Shana and Kerri popped in! Will's macaroni and cheese looked so good they had to get a couple of side orders. Kerri told me about how she developed her first-ever crush, and it was Burt Reynolds,

and it happened when she was four years old and saw SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. Then she had a dream, the first dream she can ever remember having, and in the dream Burt Reynolds kidnapped her in the car from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. But it was pleasant! In the dream. Sadly, Bill and Will had to hit the road (Caroline had vanished like a dewdrop - yes, let's say dewdrop! - early in the morning) but Shana and Kerri were up for anything! I took them across the parking lot to that used book stall I like. Below is a "selfie" of Shana and Kerri. Shana found an old red-and-white checked cookbook with a recipe for "Cinnamon Prunes"! And the previous owner had left little scraps of papers in the book with notes written on them.

Always a bonus! Shana and Bill and Caroline are the kind of friends that are FRIENDS FOR LIFE, even though I never keep in touch with anybody because I'm the worst. I mean, you see them, and all the love in your heart comes flooding out. I'm not leaving Will out! We never hung out with him quite as much, though he is fine and good and endlessly creative and interesting and someone we love knowing. He keeps his own counsel. Or maybe we do! Somebody's keeping it somewhere. SIDENOTE: I realize that I romanticize the past. My friends are unbelievably tough people who weathered unbelievably tough times. END SIDENOTE. Will walked through the woods near Faulkner's house holding a bowl of lima beans from the Oxford Canteen and made up a funny story we almost believed about a bear being attracted by the aroma. I found this used book:

As you can see, the front and back covers must have come off at some point, so they are held in place by silver tape. But other than that, the book is in fine condition. It has that severe polite formality I so enjoy: "When the President fell into the arms of Detective Geary he coolly asked: 'Am I shot?'" Geary unbuttoned the President's vest, and, seeing blood, replied: 'I fear you are, Mr. President.'" The book is, as the title page promises, "Superbly Illustrated." Here are some lovely photos of Mrs. McKinley, the former Ida Saxton. Now I'm not saying she's any Frances Cleveland! But in the bottom right photo, doesn't she look like Gaby Hoffman's character on GIRLS?

And of course the book is filled with fascinating, uh, what's the word for it? When you reveal stuff without meaning to, like a Browning character? For example, the bodyguards pay no attention to the actual assassin because they are busy checking out an "Italian, whose dark, shaggy brows and black mustache caused the professional protectors to regard him with suspicion." Talk about profiling! Eyebrow profiling! And see where that gets you. After the books, Shana and Kerri and I went to The End of All Music, which they were more than taken with. They were ecstatic! They kept saying, "We should move here!" Lots of people say that. Dr. Theresa and I used to say it. I'd be happy if Bill and Caroline and Will and Shana and Kerri moved here. But then what? You have to ask yourself. What happens to the magic? And just yesterday the dopes who can do such things suddenly dumped our fine, progressive university chancellor for their own shady reasons. What if Shana and Kerri and Bill and Caroline and Will come back and have to search for us in a dystopian wasteland?

What's It About

I'm supposed to give a talk at the Savannah College of Art and Design in a couple of months. I guess it was a few weeks ago they asked me what my talk was going to be about and I was like, oh, gee, huh, what, it has to be "about" something? Around the same time they kept asking me for a head shot. I don't have a head shot, not one I like. I was looking at this photo of Jerry Lewis I used on a previous "post" and thinking wouldn't it be funny to send that in for a head shot and that's when I had an actual epiphany, probably my very first. And I wrote them and said my talk would be about WHY I LOVE JERRY LEWIS and they were polite enough to say, hmm, okay. So I've been watching some Jerry Lewis movies again. Yesterday I was watching THE KING OF COMEDY and I noticed a metal sculpture (maybe?) hanging on the wall of Jerry's apartment and for two seconds I entertained myself with the thought that maybe it was the same artwork he banged his head on in CRACKING UP. I'm sure it's not, despite McNeil's contention that the carpet in CRACKING UP is the same carpet from THE PATSY, only "with 20 years of wear on it" and my CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE that Jerry wears the same bathrobe in THE FAMILY JEWELS and THE BIG MOUTH. I'll tell you one thing: Fantasy Jerry (the one who exists in De Niro's head in KING OF COMEDY) has a lot of acrylic furniture in his office, just the kind I saw when I went to Beverly Hills for that auction of Bob Hope's personal items. Also, I started thinking I'd like to dress like Rupert Pupkin in everyday life, though he'd also make a good Halloween costume. I seem to remember that De Niro bought Rupert's suit right off a mannequin in the window of a store. Where did I read that? I want to say he even based Rupert's hair and moustache on that mannequin. Like, he looked at the mannequin and said, "That's Rupert Pupkin!" (See also.) I think I read that somewhere. Don't worry, none of this will be in my talk.

All Over the Place

Late in DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN, the narrator tries to start a farm with a mad balloonist and his heavily mustachioed wife, but they discover that the property is run-down and there are "owls all over the place." So it's a book with an owl in it is what I'm saying. "Mad balloonist," while accurate, is maybe too specific. He's a generalized crackpot: "Suppose I take this ludicrous little radish and blow it up to enormous size with telluric blasts... Well? Like a balloon! Ah? And suppose I make a hundred thousand of them... a hundred thousand radishes! More and more voluminous!... And each year as many as I please... Five hundred thousand... enormous radishes!... As big as pears!... As big as pumpkins!... Radishes such as nobody has ever seen!... Why, it's automatic... I eliminate the small radish... I wipe small radishes off the face of the earth!... I corner the market, I erect a monopoly! All your measly undersized vegetables are finished! Unthinkable! Through! All these baubles! These small-fry! No more tiny bunches! No more piddling shipments! If they keep, it's only by a miracle... It's wasteful, my friend... anachronistic... shameful!... Enormous radishes, that's what I want to see! And here's our slogan: The future belongs to the radish... my radish... And what's going to stand in my way?... My market? The whole world!... Is my radish nutritious? Tremendously! Radish flour is fifty percent more nutritious than the other kind..." Yeah, that little speech goes on for three or four pages. The ellipses (and exclamation points) are Céline's. Now try to imagine about 600 pages of that and you've got some idea of reading DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN.

Reed Richards

GIANT came on TV late last night and I watched the whole thing. It's long! But you can't stop watching it. Everybody remembers James Dean from the first part of the movie when he's dressed up like a cowboy, all those iconic poses. But you can't beat James Dean in the second part of the movie, with the old-age makeup! They give him exaggeratedly white temples like Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four. He sits inside a dark restaurant at night during a thunderstorm and wears his sunglasses (pictured)! This is the James Dean I would like to emulate, fashion-wise. Check out the flower in his lapel. Later he stands outside during the storm with the rain coming down on him still wearing his sunglasses and miraculously smoking a drenched cigarette in his rumpled brown suit with the yellow flower in the lapel (a yellow rose of Texas?) and John Waters moustache and old-age makeup and Reed Richards hair. This frame from the movie doesn't give you a real good sense of what I'm talking about but I don't care, that's your problem. A few minutes later (the same night in movie time) his hair is completely white, by the way. Was it turned white by romantic disappointment? Did the rain supposedly wash out the dye? Was that supposed to be dye? I can't believe it was a continuity mistake. It's too... GIANT. Maybe I missed something. I usually miss something. Anyway, his hair turns white.

Gender and Humor and Gender

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

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up: Dunkel Edition!

Hello, friends, and welcome once again to All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up, the only place on the "internet" that combines entertainment with the entertainment all-stars! Let's get things started with our first juicy tidbit! Okay! Halfway through that newish movie of ON THE ROAD, up pops Peggy from MAD MEN in the thankless role (in the movie, the book, and life itself perhaps) of Galetea Dunkel. When we first see her she's on the phone to Sal Paradise, complaining, "These people are mad! They're mad!" And I wanted Sal to reply, "Would you describe them as... MAD MEN?" But he didn't. (See also.) Bewilderingly, the movie did not include the scene from the novel in which Sal looks through the window of a Buick dealership and sees Jerry Colonna (pictured). Buddy Ebsen is in THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON, by the way. I wonder if he ever sat around on the set of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES bragging about how he was in Fitzgerald's final, unfinished masterpiece. Probably not. He seemed too nice to brag. But hey let's talk about something else. That movie I don't like (though it's rude to say as much) keeps coming on TV all the time. Now I have seen the part where the younger woman gives the older man (who wrote and directed the movie) a "mix tape" of "classical music" and he walks around listening to it and looking at buildings and then writes her letters about it which are quoted from at length in his voice-over narration while she sprawls out dreamily in a moony daze, grinning in a helpless rictus of joy as her shining eyes caress his profound and touching words, such as, "When I listened to the overture you sent, I suddenly realized I had hands... AND LEGS!" And in defiance of Billy Wilder's famous rule, we see exactly what he is narrating as he narrates it: the man who wrote and directed the movie staring at his own hands in childlike wonder as he listens to his "classical music." He also says, "I echo your sentiment about the Beethoven: Whoa." I know what he's doing there. With false modesty he is undercutting his sense of grandeur to seem real cool or something. I do it on this "blog" ALL THE TIME. Wait, this movie I claim to hate just made me realize it's myself I hate most of all. So let's talk about something else! McNeil sent me a 25-minute youtube clip (see also) because Johnny Carson's name appears on a marquee at 5:08, and I understand that! And McNeil understands that I understand that. The marquee is for one of Carson's early hosting gigs, a game show called "Do You Trust Your Wife?" That may bring us back to the oppression under which women like Galetea Dunkel labored, I don't know, sure, let's say it does. It's a MIKE HAMMER TV show, and I was surprised at the opening when Mike Hammer turned toward the camera to reveal that he is played by Darren McGavin, who is far too zany and lovable to play Mike Hammer. In an email, McNeil agreed. "They try to play the whole thing like a comedy it seems to me," he said, making a few more observations on various subjects before concluding, "what a fairy land goes on in my head." Mike Hammer drops his napkin on the floor of a restaurant to get a surreptitious look at a suspect, which is just about broad and cornball enough for the real Mike Hammer to do, but not in the vaudeville style McGavin does it. The suspect closely resembles Wimpy from the Popeye comic strip. He fiddles with his derby and makes funny faces. In conclusion, I guess nothing is good enough for me. That's it for today's All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up! Until next time, keep "reaching" for the "stars"! And go to hell.

Neighborly Times at the Old Homestead

Out there in the yard in a pink neon t-shirt and seersucker shorts - DON'T ASK! - (the latter of which I later ascertained to be improperly fastened - again, DON'T ASK!) and white socks pulled way up befitting the rube that I am and blue felt slippers watering my cashew tree (which is fairly thriving! thanks for asking!) when a nice dude in a fine hat and moustahce and sunglasses walked up to inquire what kind of tree I was watering and to tell me about a little magnolia he's trying to get going in his own yard. Pleasant times, though I'm going to start thinking about what I wear out in the yard.

Snooty Ectoplasm

Dr. Theresa and Chris Offutt and I went to see the scary ghost movie about the real-life scary ghost-bustin' power couple Ed and Lorraine Warren. So when I got home I decided to check out the New York Times archives to see whether real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren ever got in there for their scary ghost-bustin' power. The earliest relevant article I found was from November 21, 1972, and it starts like this: "The shimmering, opalescent figure of a United States cavalry soldier of the eighteen-thirties - with full uniform, boots, a handlebar mustache and a musket in his ectoplasmic hand - is causing an uproar at the United States Military Academy at West Point." There's no bustin', though: in fact, the article kind of almost BLAMES old Ed and Lorraine for the ghost! I can't "link" to it because it is in a part of the archive you have to pay to unlock (unless you have a subscription). I did find a readily accessible - if much shorter - version for you ("click" here) in the Palm Beach Post from a few days later... but as you will see, the editors of the Palm Beach Post changed the New York Times's original report so that the ghost soldier has a "floating hand" rather than an "ectoplasmic hand." I guess they thought "ectoplasmic" was too snooty! Somehow "opalescent" got a pass.

A Few Bats

Common Sword-nosed Bat, Sooty Moustached Bat, Naked-rumped Tomb Bat, Hammer-headed Fruit Bat, Greater Ghost Bat, Hairy Slit-faced Bat, Little Japanese Horseshoe Bat, Hairy Little Fruit Bat, Velvety Fruit-eating Bat, Golden Bat, Visored Bat, Wrinkle-faced Bat, Smoky Thumbless Bat, Little Goblin Bat, Cinnamon Dog-faced Bat, Painted Bat, Pallid Bat, Great Evening Bat, Hoary Bat, Shaggy Bat, Sombre Bat, Mourning Bat, Slender Yellow Bat, Tiny Yellow Bat, Greenish Yellow Bat, Little Yellow Bat, Least Yellow Bat - these are just a few of the hundreds of bats from MAMMALS OF THE WORLD: A CHECKLIST.

Milk For Burt

Dr. Theresa always says that when the moustache is absent you know it's going to be a serious Burt Reynolds movie. And such was the case with HUSTLE, though Burt's first line is a misleadingly innocuous and wholesome request for a glass of milk. But HUSTLE was rough stuff! Eddie Albert - Oliver Douglas of GREEN ACRES fame - plays a sleazy, murderous lawyer (though I do want his yachting outfit, seen above), but the casting gets weirder than that. Includes Fred Willard, old-timey comic (and mortal enemy of Robert Goulet's son-in-law) Jack Carter, and (spoiler alert) in a last-minute surprise of the downer kind for which the 1970s are famous (though you can guess it from the beginning, as we did, from the way Burt stares longingly at the picture calendar of Rome on his dirty office wall - "He's never getting to Rome!" Dr. Theresa and I both cried simultaneously), the guy who played Freddie Krueger, typecast already, typecast before the fact, the eternally typecast Freddie Krueger, ladies and gentlemen. Incorporates some of the weirder visual effects of SUPERDAD while anticipating Paul Schrader's HARDCORE. A possible inspiration for the Robin Williams episode of the TV series HOMICIDE. I guess I am saying if you like SUPERDAD, HARDCORE, and HOMICIDE, check out HUSTLE! That's a blurb. Chock full of MOBY-DICK allusions!

Four Mistakes

Hey on one of these here movie channels the movie GABLE AND LOMBARD is coming on. It came out in 1976 and I don't suppose I have thought of it since then, when everybody was saying it was one of the worst atrocities known to man. So it starts with a sepia-toned photo of the real Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, which is the first mistake, because who wants to think of the real Clark Gable when you are about to get James Brolin instead? (I like Jill Clayburgh so I am not saying anything bad about her.) But then the photo of the real Gable and Lombard dissolves to a photo of James Brolin and Jill Clayburgh holding the same pose. Second mistake! Because now we can see that they don't look anything like Gable and Lombard, not that they have to, but then why rub our noses in it? And the movie isn't even 10 seconds old yet and we the audience are plagued by doubt. And I was thinking "Also maybe I don't want to watch this because it has a sad ending that everybody already knows." And then they START with the sad ending! Third mistake. Fourth mistake, James Brolin is walking around looking like he smells bad cheese for real, this is either him being Clark Gable or him being sad or him being sad Clark Gable. We are one minute in. (See also.) PS What is going on in this still? I guess I'll find out, God help me.

Darkroom Smooches with Lonesome Ray Barone

Last night I was walking down the hall past the bedroom and Dr. Theresa called out to ask what I was doing and I said "I am about to watch Lorelai Gilmore make out with Ray Barone" and Dr. Theresa made a helpless, involuntary noise like aaoooeeewwwhhheehhhwwww and I said "I didn't make it happen, it's not my fault!" Poor Ray is so lonely. (Look at this picture! He looks almost psychotically lonely! No wonder Lorelai is so blurry and concerned in the background.) He made an unwanted advance! He suddenly smooched her in the darkroom. Lorelai politely recoiled. It reminded me of what Mr. Ward once said about Lauren Graham's character on the shoe factory show. To quote my own "blog," which is my new thing, Mr. Ward said, "Every man she meets falls in love with her. A poor man loves her and a rich man loves her and a schoolteacher loves her." And now a down-in-the-dumps photographer who had stopped believing in love loves her! So there you go. Plus the schoolteacher still happens to love her, the schoolteacher of whom Elizabeth once observed in an email entitled "parenthood is blech": "Lorelai's little boyfriend looks like a young lady with a mustache (goatee) glued on. I think because of how wimpy he acts. Although of course I don't think ladies are wimpy."

Owls and Moustaches

I was up at Square Books earlier today, manfully resisting - for the nonce! - the impulse to buy a $50 book with an owl on the cover. I heard a voice: "Owls are very fashionable." It was Lyn. I was surprised and - may I confess it? - alarmed by the news. After all, I am a pioneer in a particular branch of owl studies, and I was not completely comfortable with the thought of hipsters jumping willy-nilly on the owl bandwagon. Lyn explained that she buys many of the gifts for Square Books (that is, she orders the items for the store that are not books); she has noticed an uptick in available owl merchandise. "Lots of owls," she said, predicting what novelties we'll see in the stores this holiday season. "Owls and moustaches." (See also.) You heard it here first.