We Shall See

Let's cover a variety of topics! We have nowhere to go. 1. I was reading the New York Times on my phone just like a teenager and I saw they have made a list of the 30 greatest living songwriters. And I raged silently to myself, "I thought I solved this problem years ago!" The problem, that is, of people making lists of things. The year was 1999. People started making lists of everything. I think it was the upcoming century that had them in a panic. They thought if they made lists of things, they could stave off the death of the universe. That's just a theory. After a decade or so, I got really sick of reading lists. So I struck! Like a mighty panther! My hilarious anti-lists would put an end to all this listmania... ha ha, remember when Ken Russell made a movie called LISZTOMANIA? I enjoy peppering my interesting observations with pointless crap like that. What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah! So I made my anti-lists, like "The 50 Greatest Things That Just Popped Into My Head" for THE BELIEVER magazine... and after PASTE did their own "Greatest Living Songwriters" (to which I admit I contributed a blurb on Chuck Berry, who was, it may amaze you to learn, alive at the time), I sent them a joke list, which they published, of "The Greatest Dead Song Writers"... I included, for example, King David from the Bible. You remember him! And then, at the top of the list of dead songwriters, I put Bob Dylan, who was alive, and still is, as of this writing, as far as I know. But I'm about to go on a walk around the neighborhood with Ace Atkins (so I was wrong about having nowhere to go, if you consider walking in a circle somewhere to go), and who knows what might happen by the time I come back to finish this "post"? I make no promises. Anyway! The exciting thing was that a USA Today interviewer told Bob Dylan that PASTE had called him the greatest dead songwriter, and he laughed! That's the main thing I wanted to say. I just wanted to remind you about the time I made Bob Dylan laugh. 2. Yesterday, I filled you in on what's going on in my nighttime book (horses are crying, natch) but I neglected to mention my daytime book, ANCIENT JEWISH MAGIC. Well, I'll tell you. Mostly it just says "In Chapter 6, we shall see" this and "In Chapter 6, we shall see" that. I've been hearing about how great Chapter 6 is going to be since the introduction! Something better happen in Chapter 6, that's all I can say. Because not much has happened so far, unless you count "more study is needed" as something. I checked the Table of Contents and Chapter 6 is the last chapter in the book. Well played, Gideon Bohak! 3. McNeil emailed me about Charles Fort. That was exciting! Nobody ever emails me about Charles Fort. McNeil called Charles Fort "Mark Twain's nutty cousin." As evidence, McNeil cites the lines that Fort sticks in about "once a page" (according to McNeil) as he catalogs various inexplicable phenomena: "In my own mind there is distinguishment between a good watchdog and the fleas on him".... "To have any opinion, one must overlook something." That's a great one! McNeil deduces imaginatively: "Fort found these on crumpled up pieces of paper in Twain's drawer" and concludes with a Fortean memory of a cloudburst he, McNeil, once witnessed, approximately 24 inches in diameter. 4. I told Ace I would give him three guesses which Elvis movie I had been watching this morning, and if he got it right I would give him a million dollars. His second guess was TICKLE ME. Anyway, now I owe Ace a million dollars. Unless... to quote Megan after she was informed of the incident, "Are you sure he just didn't want you to tickle him?"

Oh My Goodness

My current "nighttime book" is a Penguin paperback of the Apocryphal Gospels, translated by Simon Gathercole. I finished reading the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus goes to school at about age five. Anyway, the teacher starts to teach him the alphabet and Jesus isn't having it. He says (I paraphrase, sorry, Lord!), "Just tell me about the letter A. Then I'll see whether I think you can handle B." Naturally, the teacher does a terrible job explaining the letter A. So Jesus says (I'm quoting directly now) "Pay attention, sir, and understand the arrangement of the first letter. Notice here how it has diagonal lines and a stroke in the middle, and then you can see the alpha's lines pointing and straddling, joining together and parting, leading off and going up, circling and darting, tripartite and double-edged, of similar shape and thickness and kind, rectilinear, equilibrious, isometric and isomeric." All right! And here's the part I identified with: the teacher goes (quoting again) "Oh my goodness, my goodness, I am a befuddled wreck of a man!" which is exactly what I used to say every day when I was a teacher. Weirdly, you know what this reminds me of? So, when we were working on the ADVENTURE TIME episode "Diamonds and Lemons," which was a Minecraft tie-in, few of us knew enough about Minecraft. Taking myself as an example, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that it existed. That was it for me. So we had one member of the team (I think it was Cole Sanchez) who knew everything about Minecraft, and he gave us a crash course in its intricacies. Also, we watched people playing Minecraft on YouTube. And I remember there was one guy in particular who just played Minecraft and said "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" over and over. "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness" fifty times in a row as he played Minecraft. "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness," he said, thereby racking up millions upon millions of "views." And that's when I knew writing was dead. That was the moment! I was like "I have no future." Because you don't need to hire somebody to write down "Oh my goodness" fifty times in a row for you. Though I bet Samuel Beckett might have tried it out! We may also recall the time I read an online reviewer who was persnickety in an unintentionally amusing way, and I thought, you know, I try to write characters who talk like this all the time, but why? Here they are already existing in real life for the world to enjoy. Anyway, when Jesus is eight years old, he kills an especially mean teacher. Kills him dead! Once again, the point of contention is the alphabet. At the end of that episode, Joseph takes Jesus home and tells Mary to keep an eye on him, quote, "in case people who provoked him ended up dead." That was the first time I ever laughed out loud at any Gospel, apocryphal or otherwise. Cole teaching us about Minecraft reminds me that we had a bee expert come in and tell us all about bees on SUMMER CAMP ISLAND. But my memory is that everything we learned about bees was too depressing to use.

Form, Craft, and Influence

Hey! Remember when I was reading a translation of THE ODYSSEY by Emily Wilson? Well, I liked it so much that I thought I'd see what else she had done. And she had written a biography of Seneca! So I'm reading it. All right. You have remembered one thing. Now I need you to remember another thing. Ready? Okay! So, remember when, for some reason, I was "teaching" some graduate students in a course called "Form, Craft, and Influence," ha ha!? (Ha ha was not part of the title of the class.) Naturally, we were reading the Nick Tosches biography of Dean Martin. (Dean was the influence, not Nick Tosches, God love him anyway. But I think Nick Tosches is a bad influence unless you are actually Nick Tosches. I could say the same for Cormac McCarthy now that I am beginning to recall some of the gore-drenched prolixity I was forced to run through my eyeballs when I "taught" a couple of his excitable young imitators.) But remember how one of the students said, regarding Dean Martin, something like, "Why are we reading about this guy? He's just a jerk!" And remember how I just sat there with a dopey look on my face because... I mean... who entrusted me with a classroom, anyway? (I think it was Barry Hannah!) Well, I was thinking about that guy (the student, not Barry) as I read Emily Wilson's biography of Seneca. I was like, gee, I wonder what that guy would think about Seneca! Because Seneca has done a couple of things so far that would make Dean Martin blush. Like helping an emperor murder his mother. Yes, I think that would make Dean Martin blush.

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.)

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.

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.

Bible Belt

I have something else to say about that belt. So, it had a price tag on it, of course, and this price tag was the size and shape of a fortune cookie fortune. When I clipped off the price tag, I saw that it (the price tag, not the belt) had a Bible verse printed on the back of it! (See also, the bottle of water that had a Bible verse printed on it.) Now, the verse was a translation from what I took to be the New English Bible or such. That doesn't cut it around here! So I'm going to give it to you from the King James Version. As everyone knows, I'm a KJV stan. "Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye." What that has to do with the price of belts, I'm not sure. Well! As long as I have you here, McNeil read a book with an owl in it. I am sure you recall that McNeil has been going through his grandfather's old books. Before he found the owl, McNeil was primarily struck by the fact that the detective in the novel he is reading is, quote, "naked a whole lot in this book - just walking around in a dead guy's apartment talking to cops and reporters and whoever wanders in. Weird." The owl, he tells me, appears in the guise of a character who "grinned owlishly." Naturally, this put me in mind of the Travis McGee novel in which someone is said to be "smiling... like some kind of owl." Once again I find myself forced to state my belief that owls do not smile or grin. What else? Oh! McNeil has an idea for a comic book about a character he has created, Professor Moon Menace. I hesitate to reveal too much about Professor Moon Menace, but his name gives you a fair idea of some of his interests.

Wolves

I had nightmares about wolves the other night... and let's leave aside for a moment that the very first dreams I recall from childhood are nightmares of wolves... so naturally I was telling my ADVENTURE TIME: FIONNA AND CAKE coworkers about my nightmares of wolves, and believe me, they are always thrilled to hear my descriptions of my inner turmoil. Anyhow, Adam wisely asked whether I had read something about wolves before going to bed. I said yes! In fact, I had read an old comic book in which Dr. Doom plunges to certain death, having been attacked by a pack of wolves. Adam reacted to this news with surprise: "Dr. Doom was defeated by WOLVES? He fights the Fantastic Four!" If I paraphrase, it is only slightly. I did not get into this part, but Dr. Doom had removed his chest shield for reasons too dull to explain. I will (and did) say that he was fighting a character called the Shroud, of whom I had never heard, despite the fact that the comic book in question came out in 1976, possibly the peak of my comic-reading years. The Shroud, by the way, is a shockingly blatant Batman rip-off. Shockingly! However, that need not concern us here. It is much more important that I use the excuse of wolves to mention something loosely related. I was in Square Books the other day, poking around, and I opened up a book called THE SLAVIC MYTHS by Noah Charney and the delightfully named Svetlana Slapsak. In it, I read "Count Jan Potocki was one of Poland's most revered writers and Enlightenment intellectuals. His masterpiece, THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA..." blah, blah, blah. I knew that already. BUT! "On 23 December 1815, this brilliant, worldly man absconded with one of his mother's silver teapots, made out of it a bullet, had this silver bullet blessed by a priest and then shot himself in the head with it... because Jan Potocki believed he was a werewolf." That's something I didn't know! This revelation caused me to purchase the book. As you know, I consider standing in a bookstore and reading no better than being a sneak thief. As long as I have you here, let's tidy up some "blog" business. I see that this will be my ninth "post" in April. I have not "blogged" with such frequency since October 2020, troubled times during which, as you know, I was required to revive this most decisively defunct "blog" in order to cheer a grateful nation with my wry reflections on the foibles of humanity. I need to reemphasize here that the combo of quitting social media and forced recuperation have left me with little else to do. I told Tom Franklin, "Hey, I've been 'blogging' about those old comic books you gave me," and he was like, "I didn't know 'blogs' existed anymore." And they don't.

Good Book

There's a point to this story, maybe, if it's a story. Chelsea Hogue interviewed me about my new poetry chapbook WEIRD SKY. She brought up owls, because, as it so happens, she was a student in the very undergraduate workshop in which I started forcing students to put owls in their work. In one of my answers to Chelsea's probing questions, I mentioned that owls are considered to be bad luck in some cultures, which I had been thinking about a lot lately, because (I didn't mention this in the interview) RESERVATION DOGS is my favorite TV show in a very long time, and I had noticed that the eyes of an owl figurine were blurred out in post-production, and that some of the young Indigenous characters were obviously freaked out by the owl. And it occurred to me that I had never really looked into any negative beliefs regarding owls. Sam Shepard mentions similar Tibetan associations with the owl on the very page where I keep my big long list of books with owls in them, but I hadn't thought about that until just now. I believe my first indication that owls could be considered bad luck, I guess you'd call it, was from my friend Sarah Marine, who informed me privately that some particular of her Indigenous friends would hate to know how many owls I had collected, and would be worried for me. Is there a story coming? I don't think so anymore, if I ever really did. But after mulling over the interview with Chelsea, I decided to finally do some internet research into the matter, which is how I came upon a website that looks as if it has not been updated since the mid-90s. There, a few various Indigenous beliefs and stories about owls were listed, along with some suggested resources, such as a book called OWLS IN FOLKLORE AND NATURAL HISTORY, which was referred to encouragingly if somewhat vaguely as a "good book." So I got hold of that book, to see if I could find out more... of the dark side of owls! I have to say, it's a pretty skinny book to be so damn supposedly good, but okay. I haven't really looked at it yet. I did open it at random, to a passage by Alexander Wilson, who, if you recall from "blog" history, shared my obsession with the mysterious circumstances of his friend Meriwether Lewis's death. Sadly, Wilson's passage was all about (I paraphrase) how nutty we all are to think that owls are some kind of magical death birds. They're just birds, people! Such are Alexander Wilson's conclusions on the matter. But the main thing I meant to say is that it is sort of cheating to buy a book called OWLS IN FOLKLORE AND NATURAL HISTORY and then put it on a list of books with owls in them. It's a fait accompli! Yet here we are.

Sitting

I've been sitting on this for a while. Yes, yes, checking my records, I see that on August 2 of this year, I became fascinated by wombats for a couple of hours. As a result, I "tweeted" on the subject, to which someone responded with the fact that Dante Gabriel Rossetti (pictured) kept wombats as pets. Naturally, I scurried around the "internet," seeking corroboration, which I found immediately, via a scholarly article, which quoted a poem about wombats by Mr. Rossetti. In the poem, Mr. Rossetti compares wombats favorably with owls and bats (two creatures often linked in literature, as we have seen, though seldom in the company of wombats). As you well know, I no longer "blog," although I am required by state law to maintain my famous list of books with owls in them. However! The article had no footnotes, as I recall, and now I am much too tired to check. So I have no way of knowing if the wombat poem (which appeared in a letter) was ever published, either in a book of Rossetti's poetry or in a book of his correspondence, or whether the author of the article was just rummaging around in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's things, looking for wombat information, a quest to which his life is no doubt devoted.

A Tale of Two Cheeseburgers

Well, my friend Kate came to town and somebody told her about Handy Andy, which she wanted to try in the interest of local authenticity. Naturally, I suggested my favorite, the double cheeseburger. To Kate's sorrow, she discovered that the delivery service offered only a limited menu, not including the double cheeseburger, from Handy Andy. I am happy to tell you that Kate ordered two everyday, regular, single-patty cheeseburgers from Handy Andy and constructed her own double cheeseburger, Frankenstein-style! I have never been prouder to know someone.

You Won't Care

Here's something you won't care about! It all started when I saw a little bit of the Frank Sinatra movie TONY ROME on TV. I noted that Nancy Sinatra (Frank's daughter, of course) sang the theme song, in which mothers are advised to "lock your daughters in" because "Tony Rome is out and about." And she IS the daughter (as previously stated) of the person of whom she is singing... himself a danger to daughters! Of whom she is one! Of his! The second thing I noticed as the movie began is that Tony Rome lived on his boat in Florida, just like Travis McGee. Given these two facts (were there two facts?) I struck up a conversation with Ace Atkins on the subject. Was Tony Rome a big Travis McGee rip-off? Such was the question that came to my mind. Ace said I should read the paperback of the first Tony Rome novel as homework and tell him. So he found a copy on the "internet" (the edition pictured above), purchased it, and dropped it contact-free (given our troubled times) on our front porch, where it sat for over 24 hours before I realized it was there. About two pages in, I made a startling discovery. Now! We're getting to the part you really won't care about, which I believe I put most succinctly in an email to my friend McNeil: "Travis McGee's boat is named The Busted Flush because he won it in a poker game with a busted flush. Tony Rome's boat is named The Straight Pass because he won it in a dice game with six straight passes in a row." Now, I naturally googled "tony rome" + "travis mcgee" + "busted flush" + "straight pass," which combo netted just seven results, some of which were duplicate texts, leading me to conclude that only three people, maximum, in the history of the world, have ever expressed proper outrage over the matter. [They didn't express outrage. - ed.] All right, are you ready for the kicker? Then Ace dropped the bombshell on me that the first Tony Rome novel appeared FOUR YEARS BEFORE the first Travis McGee novel. It is Travis McGee who is the rip-off! If a rip-off exists. Which I believe I have proven conclusively it most certainly does. Hello? Is anyone there?

Chicken in the Air

I was watching TO CATCH A THIEF, and there were Cary Grant and Grace Kelly eating chicken and drinking beer. Naturally, I was like, I must email Kent right away! Kent loves eating chicken and drinking beer! I entitled the resulting email "Chicken and Beer," which reminded me that Kent had eaten in the Atlanta airport once, having stumbled upon his ideal restaurant there, a restaurant delightfully named "Chicken and Beer." I did not report on the matter at the time because I had given up "blogging" forever. Kent emailed back that he had recently fried chicken for himself for the first time, with pleasant results. Now, for the record, I must say that Grace Kelly appears to be eating a sandwich, not chicken. Maybe it is a chicken sandwich! We can only hope. I can't recall if the type of sandwich was specified. Cary Grant really appears to go to town on his chicken, but when he is done, and tosses the remains into the picnic basket, I can't say that it looks as if he has really had much chicken at all. In fact, I was appalled at the amount of chicken he appeared to be wasting! Then he starts smooching it up with Grace Kelly, and kind of leans her backwards over the open picnic basket, and I could only imagine that her hair was getting on the chicken. Perhaps I was focusing on the wrong thing. In conclusion, I happened to be emailing my friend Megan about TO CATCH A THIEF and, in response, she brought up, independently, of all scenes, not knowing of my recent correspondence on the matter, the chicken scene! Chicken is in the air. And in the hair!

Midflight

Tonight is the 40th anniversary party for Square Books, so it is highly appropriate that even though I do not "blog" anymore, a chance occurrence yesterday, related to that august institution previously named, brings me here to confirm, by compulsive necessity, my controversial theory that every book has an owl in it. So it happened that Bill Boyle and Megan Abbott and I were crowding up the landing on the stairs at Square Books, huddled as we were over a volume that Megan had plucked from a display for our delectation. "I am in this book, telling the story of a ghostly encounter," Megan said, or words to that effect. Naturally, Bill and I were startled and delighted! "Quickly, quickly, let us move in all haste up the stairs, retaining this book in our possession for further study," I exclaimed. My cheerful plan was accepted by all. For you see, I had spied Richard Howorth entering his benevolent domain, and I did not wish for him to glance upward and conceive of me as a person who would in any manner impede the traffic that wends its merry way up and down the hallowed stairs of Square Books, the establishment of which we celebrate, yea, this very eve. Megan, Bill, and I settled ourselves, therefore, in the conveniently situated coffee section of the shop and in just such a spot it was confirmed, as might well be expected, that indeed Megan, a person of notable honesty already, was telling the truth, as is her wont. Yes, yes, there she was, appearing as a character in someone else's book! And on the same page, "a spooky owl in midflight." (See also.)

The Golden Rule

As is well documented, I don't "blog" anymore unless I stumble across something I should have put in my cigarette lighter book but didn't know about in time. So! Megan Abbott and I are reading a Hollywood memoir by Shirley MacLaine, and she tells about how Dean Martin "would light a cigarette with his solid gold lighter, blow out the flame, and toss the gold lighter from the window as if it was a used match." So! This naturally reminded me of something I DID put in my cigarette lighter book: the time Hal Needham maliciously tossed his friend's gold cigarette lighter from the window of a speeding car as a joke. If only I had known about Dean's habit. What a study in contrasts Dino and Needham would have made! As MacLaine notes, someone always retrieved Dean's lighter for him, whereas (Shirley MacLaine does not note this part; how could she?) the lighter of Needham's friend was seemingly lost forever. So Needham's act is more "punk rock" (I guess? Jon Langford once told me that being "punk rock" does not necessarily call for unmannerly behavior) while Dean's is ironic (maybe? I have no idea what I'm talking about. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't know about this in time to put it in the book). But I think we can agree that Dean is on firmer ground morally. I'm glad that's settled.

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.

George Plimpton's T-Shirt

You know two things about me. 1. I love John Aubrey. 2. Every book I read has an owl in it. So it will not alarm you to discover that I am reading JOHN AUBREY: MY OWN LIFE, the wonderful biographical reconstruction - mostly in his own words - by Ruth Scurr, and it has an owl in it. We have had owls from Aubrey before. But in this case he makes friends with Francis Potter, who is "haunted" by Ovid's "barbarous Medea, mixing her witch's brew: roots, juices, flowers, seeds, stones, the screech owl's flesh and its ill-boding wings. He sees her, hair all unbound and blown about as she dances round..." (See also.) All of which gives Potter the idea of inventing the blood transfusion with chickens. Naturally! Aubrey helps out. Hey, as long as I've got you here, I was at Off Square Books a few nights ago, listening to a guy talk about his memoir. Once he and George Plimpton were out looking for what I believe this fellow called "the elusive burrowing owls of New Mexico." George Plimpton whipped off his t-shirt and tossed it into the air, where it attracted a large gathering of curious bats. Plimpton conjectured that the bats believed his t-shirt to be a delicious giant moth. I assume all this is in the book, or why did he bring it up? So I am putting his book on my list of books with owls in them.

Santa's Face

I'm cooking a goose for Christmas. Believe it or not we don't really have any goose-cooking supplies around here. So I went out today. First I stopped by The End of All Music to see Bill Boyle, whom you can usually find behind the counter on a Sunday. I saw that the new arrivals bin was stocked with interesting things and Bill said that many of them were the abandoned records of a mutual friend (should I reveal his name? It's probably nobody's beeswax!) who's moving out of town. Speaking of none of your beeswax, I had an email from my old pal Abby Greenbaum, full of juicy music biz gossip about big-name country stars. But I can't tell you any of it! I can only give you some of the last part of the email: "The next day I hung out at Santa's Pub and, in honor of Christmas, did tarot readings for my roadie friends. Have you ever been to Santa's Pub? It is a triple wide trailer in South Nashville that is also a bar. Beers cost $2, and Santa's face is painted on the outside." But back to the goose! I was grousing to Bill that I really shouldn't buy any LPs because I had to spend my money on goose supplies, and Bill insisted on buying my stack of records for me. (Pictured above, one of them.) How often do you walk into a place and the guy working there buys your stuff for you? Talk about Christmas cheer! Speaking of which, I couldn't find any cooking twine at the grocery store so this guy who works there walked back behind the mysterious doors of the meat department and came back with a length of cooking twine for me. "Just stick that in your pocket," he said. Dang! I forgot to tell you that after I saw Bill I stopped for a bite to eat at Big Bad Breakfast, where, to my alarm, the Food Network had set up and was shooting something. I sat at the counter, not too far from an intensely glowing young couple they were interviewing. ("Random customers, I don't think they're from here," my server told me.) The Food Network had forced these clean-cut sweethearts to order a Pylon apiece. Now, these trim and fresh-faced matinee idols looked as if they'd barely be able to finish half a Pylon between them. Have I told you about the Pylon? It's named for the Faulkner novel, natch. It's a waffle with lots of stuff on top. Slaw and chopped-up hot dogs and chili and oyster crackers and hot peppers and I can't remember what all. Mustard, for instance. The Pylon cures your hangover. Now, this rosy-cheeked ingenue and her all-American beau have never had a hangover in their tender lives, I avow. But they cautiously approached their Pylons in the spirit of good sportsmanship. The funny part was that the interviewer would ask them things like, "Why do you think this place is named 'Big Bad Breakfast'?" "I don't know," was their reasonable answer. (It is named for Larry Brown's book BIG BAD LOVE, but how are they supposed to know that?) "What do you think is the origin of the Pylon?" asked the interviewer. "I don't know," the young woman said.

Monster Face

Our Halloween film festival continued with MACABRE... uh... Dr. Theresa and I are both big William Castle fans and advocates, but MACABRE was sort of like THE ROOM of horror movies...? Maybe that comparison holds up...? I'd have to watch them both again back to back, which I'm not. So it was on to THE HAUNTED STRANGLER, all Boris Karloff and insane asylums. The monster face in that one reminded Dr. Theresa of her own scary Helena Bonham Carter impression (from Kenneth Branagh's FRANKENSTEIN) which she has stopped doing over the years thanks to my constant begging. Naturally, we wanted to see another Boris Karloff insane asylum movie after that, so we watched BEDLAM (pictured). It was a philosophical, theological horror movie! And maybe not a horror movie. Maybe it was a philosophy movie. But it had just enough Halloween stuff in it.

A Squirrel Holding a Stick

I guess you wonder where I've been. Well, friends, you might just say I've been everywhere... and nowhere. For you see... what? You didn't notice I was gone? That hurts! In any case, the pleasant occasion of my absence was the 4th Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. My apologies, as I am sure you have these details memorized, but more than three years intervened between the first and second annual festivals, and more than four and a half years between the second and the third. So it may stun you beyond repair to learn that less than a year has gone by since the previous McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival and this one. Let's see, that makes for an average of one Annual McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival every two years, yes, we're finally catching up. No sooner had McNeil rolled into town than we cranked up THE BAD NEWS BEARS (original version). We started with it because one of us, I won't say which (it was McNeil) fell asleep five minutes into it during the last festival. Next: THE WILD AFFAIR, a Nancy Kwan vehicle I learned about ("click" here to learn likewise) from "She Blogged By Night."

Here is a photo from "She Blogged By Night" showing Vidal Sassoon cutting Nancy Kwan's hair for the movie. I am sure you recall how badly Ms. Kwan was treated by a film in the first MMKFF. She was thanklessly blown up! So we wanted to make up for that by watching a movie in which she is treated in a kindlier way. Although she is at least not blown up in THE WILD AFFAIR, her character is treated almost as shamefully by the seemingly endless parade of sleazes she encounters. Kwan holds the movie together, though, and the article from "She Blogged By Night" argues for her agency. Still, it seems to us that Nancy Kwan can't catch a break. Then we watched CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT and Paul Schrader's BLUE COLLAR. Here's something that McNeil noticed: earlier in the day I had made an incongruous reference to the character "Mr. Bentley" (pictured) from the TV show THE JEFFERSONS.

In BLUE COLLAR, a TV is tuned to that show and the characters are discussing, by name, none other than Mr. Bentley! Plus, a scene from THE BAD NEWS BEARS had reminded me of a similar scene from CATCH-22, a fact upon which I remarked at the time. In BLUE COLLAR, Ed Begley Jr. is seen reading a paperback of CATCH-22! Make of these astounding coincidences what you will. McNeil also observed that both Richard Pryor in BLUE COLLAR and Bob Hope in our previous feature, CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT, boasted of having "a new technique": Pryor's for bowling, Hope's for kissing. We came very close to a direct Hope reference when Richard Pryor angrily imagines what he might do as a union rep: fly up to Palm Springs on a private jet and play golf with Gerald Ford. Why didn't he say "Bob Hope" instead? But he didn't. And there's nothing we can do about it. McNeil had me pause BLUE COLLAR so that he could expound at some length upon his admiration for the curtains Richard Pryor's character had in his living room. As you well know, the curtains in movies are one of McNeil's main concerns. My nonfiction cigarette lighter book, which has already been typeset, makes reference to close to a hundred movies and TV episodes, I think. I wish I had rewatched BLUE COLLAR sooner, because I would have certainly included the euphemism that Pryor yells at his union rep: "You can flick my Bic!" Richard Pryor comes up quite a bit in my book, and one sad and terrible fact I know from all my research is that Pryor used a Bic when he set himself on fire. But let us turn from thoughts of tragedy: I believe it was between BLUE COLLAR and Robert Altman's QUINTET that McNeil and I looked out the window and saw a squirrel holding a stick. An unusual sight! The squirrel seemed to be holding the stick with some intent. McNeil compared it to the scene in 2001 when the ape-people learn to use weapons. But the squirrel did not have a sufficient attention span, and soon abandoned the stick without putting it to any use. "He almost had it," I said.

"So many dogs eating so many dudes," I idly remarked during QUINTET. McNeil and I agreed that the dystopian snowscape would have benefitted greatly had Jerry Lewis driven through in a ice cream truck, hollering, "I can't sell this stuff!" But he didn't. And now it is my sad duty to report that this is the very first McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival not to include a Jerry Lewis movie. Pathetic! And now a digression. Ha ha! This whole thing has been a digression. But we took a break from watching movies and walked up to the City Grocery Bar, which has undergone a recent facelift. For one thing, the men's room is no longer just a hellish trough. I kind of miss the hellish trough! The new men's room is sparkling and elegant, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Owner John Currence tells me that he rescued the piece of sheetrock that has Kent Osborne's still-pristine drawing of his cat on it from the old men's room wall. He plans to frame it and put it in a shadowbox on a wall of the bar! Now, if you drink at the Grocery often enough, you might get your name and usual drink on a brass plaque on the bar one day. And the occasion of our break from the film festival was that Ace Atkins and I have been accorded that honor as part of the general refurbishment. Now. For reasons I cannot recall, McNeil had requested that I get my hands on a copy of the Elvis movie LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE for this year's festival. When the subject came up at the bar, Ace - an Elvis expert - began an excellent discourse on the film's place in the Elvis canon, up to and including the provenance of the dog in it! (In addition to the actual dog, LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE is the movie notorious for making Elvis dance with a man in a dog costume.) Naturally, Ace was invited to join us for the showing - a rare and welcome intrusion into the insular world of the McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. Plus he brought Popeye's fried chicken! So our last three films - QUINTET, THE PALM BEACH STORY, and LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE - all use dogs in striking ways. The last two - THE PALM BEACH STORY and LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE - also costar Rudy Vallee. So that's weird. I had a bunch of other stuff to say, but aren't you tired? I guess this year's theme was... dogs?