And the Silently Silent Silence

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

Frivolity When the Earth Is Swallowed Up

This is where I tell you about my trip to Burbank. 1. On the flight out, my seatmate had a sweet dog companion seemingly smuggled under his hoodie. I don't know about dogs. I believe this one was a boxer. But I just don't know. I can't swear to it in a court of law! The dog had one blue eye and one brown eye. It would arise from the neck hole of the hoodie and look at me with a nice expression. Sometimes, due to the angle of its owner, it looked like a human with a dog's head! When the guy got up to go to the restroom, he stuffed the dog into a duffel bag. The dog was fine. 2. Layover at the Salt Lake City airport! This story just gets better and better, doesn't it? So, a booming voice on the public address system repeatedly gave out the first, middle, and last name of a guy who had walked out on his check at an airport restaurant. It was an old-school public shaming... Cotton Mather style! I realize that by mentioning Cotton Mather, I may have confused you geographically. I don't know enough about Brigham Young to know whether he would have made an appropriate replacement in my already shaky allusion. 3. Okay, on the next airplane, a guy across the aisle was scrolling through pictures on his phone and narrating to his friend: "This is a salad bar... that's another salad bar..." Ha ha, anyway, I thought that was funny. They were looking at photos of salad bars! It's a crazy world! 4. BURBANK! Kent was in town, too, and we were both staying in the same hotel. As we rode back to the hotel from Dan Tana's, Kent spied a DeLorean pulling into traffic behind us. He was pretty stoked, I don't mind telling you! He kept saying, "It's a DeLorean! Look, it's a DeLorean! It's right behind us. The DeLorean is right behind us!" But I don't know why, I never turned around to look at the DeLorean. It was just like when Kent begged me to watch Mark McGwire break a home run record and I coldly refused. We'll never know what's wrong with me. 5. On one menu, I briefly misread "scallion" as "sea lion." 6. Kate Tsang and I spent a good part of one afternoon just wandering around in the impossibly vast Warner Brothers prop department. People were working, loading props on carts to be taken to various sets. We just stayed out of their way. No one hassled us. In fact, one man cheerfully asked if we needed anything. We said we were just looking. Then we ended up in some odd corners, such as a section containing many kinds of animals who had been subjected to taxidermy. I have never enjoyed the thought of taxidermy. But here's Kate. She notices that some of the animals are falling apart. She dates them for me to the time "when Theodore Roosevelt was shooting animals" because they were stuffed with straw... a discontinued practice, Kate gave me to understand. I was standing there thinking, like, "Wow, Kate sure knows a lot about taxidermy!" Which reminds me of something: 7. I ran into Steve Wolfhard completely unexpectedly! Somehow we got to talking about the movie THE SEA HAWK and I mentioned how much I enjoyed the monkey's performance in that film. Steve said the monkey made him sad. I got it! I feel the same way about taxidermy. I said, "Were you thinking about the monkey's home life?" And Steve said... I think I have this right... "I was thinking, 'That could have been me!'" Trying to show Steve that I was on his side about being sad concerning monkeys, I said I didn't like it when monkeys were made to ride dogs. Steve said, "Maybe the monkey likes it. Maybe he likes going fast." 8. Oh! Before I get back to the prop department, I should say that when I arrived at the gate into Warner Brothers, I was greeted by a young, groovy guard, not an irascible old guard of the type the movies have trained me to expect. So, when Kate and I entered the parking garage over near the prop department, an irascible old guard really didn't want to let us in. At last, he asked us for identification, and that's when I discovered MY DRIVER'S LICENSE WAS MISSING! I bet you didn't know you were in for thrills like this. Anyhow, it turned out the groovy young guard forgot to include it when he handed me back everything I had taken out of my pockets for him. And I didn't notice! So I'm not blaming the hipsters of today for falling down on the job! BUT! If that hardboiled old-school guard hadn't been so stereotypically irascible, I might never have been allowed to leave Burbank! I might be sitting in a small room at the Burbank airport right now! So, thank you, hateful old guard. 9. Well, I can't really describe how satisfying it was to wander around the prop department with Kate. I don't know - though I suspect there's a Warholian element - why it is so wonderful to look at, just for example, a wall full of rotary phones arranged by color, or a shelf of hundreds of miniature Statues of Liberty, or boxes and boxes of beauty products from the 40s and 50s, or the long row of toilets, of which (the toilets) I sent a photo to just one person: Ace Atkins. Kate and I stayed in the prop department so long that they were closing up. We didn't know it. We just kept trying to get out and finding nothing but locked doors. We could have been trapped forever! Who was going to help us? Not the irascible guard! He would probably think we were getting what we deserved. Then we found a different kind of door: a door that was not locked. 10. Kate and I walked a few short steps from the Warner Brothers lot to the Smoke House, where we dined with one Adam Muto. Now that I can't eat steak anymore because of wanting to stay alive, I was excited to order the chicken pot pie. You know the one! The one that Pen and I saw once! The one as big around as a manhole cover! But friends, I am here to inform you they have taken it off the menu. The server told me that one time... just one time... they had put it back on the menu for a special occasion. But that time is gone forever. We live in new times now. He was very nice, and couldn't have known he was breaking my heart. 11. Reading Seneca's NATURAL QUESTIONS while taking my blood pressure in my hotel room, I laughed when he observed, "Frivolity when the earth is swallowed up shows a lack of serious-mindedness." He was angry at Ovid for beautifully describing an apocalyptic flood but then adding the image of wolves and sheep and lions swimming around in it. "Come on, Ovid! Get real! As if!" Such seemed to be the contents of Seneca's objections. 12. Quinn took me to a place that featured on its menu something called a "Good Ass Salad." Such language! Is that how you get your kicks? Forcing someone's great-grandmother to say the words "good ass salad"? This great-grandmother I'm imagining can't silently point at the item on the menu with her quaking, palsied finger! Thoughts along these lines led me to confess to Quinn that I have been saying "ass" on the "blog" a lot lately. Quinn said, "Oh, Jack, Bart Simpson could say 'ass' in the 90s." She might not have said "Oh, Jack." 13. It was raining the morning I left for home. Kate had said just a day or two before, "It never rains here." But there it was, falling from the sky, the tears of the gods as I like to call it. At a stoplight on the way to the airport, I saw a driver sticking his hand out the window, eager to discover for himself what this thing they call a raindrop must feel like. His beaming grin indicated that he was pleased with the result!

Sitting in a Big Owl

Well, I ordered and received a book called THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS, of course. See, Kitty Mrosovsky often mentioned this guy Jean Seznec in her "Notes to the Translation" of THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTONY. I don't think it's the same book of his she was talking about, though. Or maybe it is. All I know is that the cover seemed to show a king and a queen sitting in a big owl. Like Pee Wee and Simone in their dinosaur! A big owl head, I should say, not like the big owl at that boy's camp for troubled billionaires. "Hmm!" I thought. "I wonder if this book has an owl in it!" Because I wasn't sure that thing was an owl. You got this queen and king in their owl head, and over here there's some devils poking a guy in the neck with a pitchfork, and down here I thought I saw a three-headed lion (with dragon scales?), but once I checked the fine print on the back cover and saw that the illustraion represented Pluto and Prosperina, it all came together, and I was like, I guess that three-headed thing is Cerberus. On either side of old Cerberus, you got a lady in a hennin playing a musical instrument. This one doesn't look too happy about it. This other one doesn't seem to mind. I believe she's gone and got herself a many-stringed instrument capable of all modes, such as Plato (not Pluto) so despised - I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a viola da gamba. Not to be confused with what we know as an everyday viola, PLEASE! Get real. But none of this rigorous analysis tells me if that's an owl they're sitting around in, or if there's an owl anywhere in the book. I thought I could cheat and check the index for Minerva. She always has an owl hanging around! What a nut! But I don't know, there are so many entries for Minerva, and I'm so tired.

Look at This Guy

I see this guy every time I "log in" to my health insurance "web" site. I don't know why but something about the stretched-out neck of his t-shirt makes me anxious.

Corn Bath Danger

Megan and I are reading the autobiography of Salvador Dali, in which a young Dali decides to take a bath in a bushel of raw corn. We talked about that a lot, and I was put in mind of the film WITNESS, which features death by corn. I think it's corn. Anyway, someone is suffocated in a silo. Megan and I discussed the dangers of grain storage, which are serious and numerous. Megan dug around (as she does) and eventually sent me this article ("click" here), which I admired for the way it really gets across the temptation of a good corn bath before plunging into the terrifying downside, and also for the name of one of its interviewees, Bodie Blissett, who was buried up to his neck in corn.

Pen Runs Over a Bottle

1. Lee was about to pull up to give me a ride to Memphis when I discovered that the button on my jacket was precariously loose. It took the desperate combined efforts of Dr. Theresa and me to thread a needle. Suddenly that infomercial I saw in January 2011 about an innovative needle with a huge eye didn't seem so damn funny anymore. Once we got the needle threaded, precious seconds ticking away, Dr. Theresa secured that button in place like a speed demon. But that wasn't the end of the troubles! This is exciting already. So! 2. When Lee and I were about halfway to Memphis, I glanced down to discover that I was wearing the wrong shoes. For you see, I had an appointment at the Magic Castle in Hollywood later in the week, thanks to my friend Kate, who is a magician, and they (the Magic Castle, not magicians in general, nor Kate in particular) have a dress code, for which reason, and with some exaltation, I had recently purchased my very first ascot. Anyway, Dr. Theresa had to mail me my shoes. Or they would have never let me into the Magic Castle! 3. The Von's across from my hotel in Burbank no longer stocks the gigantic bottles of seltzer I like. 4. I saw Kent, who happened to be visiting from his new home (well, he's been there a long time now!) in Vermont. He wasn't going to the Magic Castle with us but asked whether I had been with him at the Magic Castle years ago when a guy made a baby appear. I said I thought I would remember something like that, but now I wonder. Was I? Did I? Would I? 5. Kent told me a dream he had had the night before, which I will abbreviate to its ruin. A yellow cobra comes out of a faucet and starts fighting a rat. Then a monkey runs into the room, grabs up the cobra, and begins choking the rat with it! I suggested that the yellow cobra coming out of the faucet meant that Kent needed to pee. 6. In TENDER IS THE NIGHT (the book I brought to read on the airplane) someone's monocle falls out due to a surfeit of emotion! Like in a cartoon! 7. Kent walked by while I was talking on the phone to Dr. Theresa. "Did you tell her about my dream?" he asked. Ha ha! Sure, we kidded him, it was the top of our agenda. Dr. Theresa used to call Kent "Big City" as part of an inside joke. Now, as she decided during the very phone call being described, she's going to call him "Big Maple." Because of Vermont. He has a beard now! Because of, I assume, Vermont. As these shenanigans were taking place I was about to leave for the Magic Castle, so Kent fussily rearranged my ascot (which I had tied myself; I'm not so hot with ties, but noting the ascot loophole in the Magic Castle's dress code, I deduced that an ascot would be easier to tie than a regular necktie... and I was right! An ascot, in its raw appearance, is like a big clown tie). 8. There are some things I can't tell you about the Magic Castle but maybe one day I will. One of them involved the invisible piano player who performs there. I wish I could tell you! Another guy kept making lemons appear out of thin air. Where were those lemons coming from? It was crazy! Magic is crazy. 9. At a Holiday Inn with Julia Pott, Pen, and Kent. "It is happening again," Julia kept saying during the karaoke at the Holiday Inn, purposely and accurately invoking TWIN PEAKS. Everyone there had chosen a sad song, as if by psychic prearrangement. Pen and Julia are especially fine dancers. Kent is a great dancer too, but what I remember is Kent and me sitting at a tall two-top with our really bad drinks, watching the fluid motions of Julia and Pen under the spell of a scrawny white-haired stranger moaning a song of absent love. (Pictured, above, a higher floor of the Holiday Inn.) 10. Back at my own hotel, alone... they were shutting down the bar when I came in... as I was sipping my nightcap a couple sat down next to me, a man and a woman. "The bar is closed," said the bartender, Harvey by name. "But we're getting married tomorrow!" objected the woman. Harvey has been known to do me a favor, so I proclaimed with a flourish, "Oh, allow me to get these two some champagne!" To which the bride-to-be responded quite severely, "No." Then, after a pause, "I want a 'chard.'" So I was like, "Never mind!" She went on: "Champagne is for tomorrow." And I said, "I understand." Why was I trying to force champagne down the throat of these innocent victims? And so to bed, as Samuel Pepys would say. 11. Now we have reached Saturday, and - speaking of Samuel Pepys - a bawdy section of our tale, so be forewarned, as bawdiness was not an area in which I normally dabbled, back in the days when I "blogged." At home on the Saturday in question, Dr. Theresa was suffering the calamity of a football game day. The streets were wild, she reported, and the home team was playing a team called "something like the Cockmasters," an assertion on her part that made both of us laugh even as she said it. "Well, it's something like that," she repeated, and vowed to find out. I begged her not to enter "Cockmasters" into the search engine of the computer. Anyway, it was the Gamecocks, which Dr. Theresa said she liked even less than Cockmasters, given the actual name's association with the practice of animal cruelty. 12. Talked by phone to Megan Abbott. We spent some incredible amount of time (I will say 20 minutes) just parsing the monocle sentence from TENDER IS THE NIGHT (see #6, above): "His monocle fell out, with no whiskers to hide in - he drew himself up." Megan solved it for me. She also said I sounded sedated, like late-stage Judy Garland. From Megan that's a compliment! 13. "I'm happy talking to an idiot." - Rae Gray. 14. Saw Rae Gray and Ashly Burch and many others at a kind of sendoff before Kent returned to Vermont. Talked about books a lot with Rae and Ashly and we laughed uproariously about a number of things, as well as becoming somber and contemplative when the occasion arose. Steve Little was there and when he saw my jotting book he produced his own jotting book in solidarity! Then I admitted I had neglected to bring a pen and he seemed disappointed in me. 14. My friend had a birthday party. Hmm! I can't remember why he's always anonymous. Maybe I made him anonymous because I didn't know him that well when he started appearing on the "blog." Anyway, now he's anonymous forever and subsequently my tales of his birthday party will be shrouded in vagueness and mystery... like why were at least half a dozen cast members of VERONICA MARS there, supplemented by the equally dazzling stars of iZOMBIE and PARTY DOWN? See? Already I've said too much... let me be clear. My friend was not the creator of VERONICA MARS, whom I did meet for the first time that night, however, and who, upon learning that I reside in Mississippi, told me he had played at a club in Jackson in 1985, but he couldn't remember the name. I was pleased to correctly assume he meant a place named W.C. Don's, and to tell him the possibly true fact which I barely recalled hearing somewhere that it had burned to the ground. I played there in 1990. We just missed each other! He swiftly produced a photo of himself with a mullet in front of W.C. Don's. 15. My friend Joey, knowing me to be a huge VERONICA MARS fan, introduced me to Kristen Bell, to whom I remarked how surreal it was for me to see the residents of Neptune (the town where the show takes place) walking around, which prompted her to explain to me the concept of acting, ha ha! I'm making it sound like she thought I didn't know the difference between fiction and reality but that wasn't the case... I hope! No, she was explaining from long experience why people feel and act the way they do when they see someone who performed in something in which they (the viewer) became emotionally invested. But just for a joke (and because it was true) I pretended to conflate another actor from the show with his character, leaning in and murmuring confidentially, "Don't be alarmed, but Logan is standing right behind you." And then an incredible thing happened. Kristen Bell became Veronica Mars! Her voice and posture changed instantly, and she said in character, "That's okay, I have eyes in the back of my head." What a good sport to indulge me so! And what a dexterous display. It was something to witness, and I felt lucky to witness it. Then I ate some creamed corn. 16. The next day Pen and I were out doing stuff and we stopped on a side street. Pen said, "I'm going to park my car better." We were already on the sidewalk. Pen hopped back in his car and pulled up a few inches and immediately ran over a bottle that disintegrated into a million sprinkles of brown glass with a terrible BANG! I jumped and started laughing. We had just been discussing Groucho Marx in the car, and that's where my mind was. "I'm going to park my car better." POW! The timing was perfect. In a movie, his tire would have gone pssssssssssst, but the tire was fine. 17. "You think you're with a decent candy maker and then he starts screamin' at you," is one thing Pen said about Willy Wonka. 18. "It was often easier to give a show than to watch one." - TENDER IS THE NIGHT. 19. Sitting in the airport thinking I have nice shoes but my socks are falling down. As long as I bought an ascot, why not sock garters? 20. Also I saw a man with shoes so shiny they made me ashamed. Maybe his shoes were TOO shiny. Blindingly gleaming they were! Dr. Theresa always says she likes a leather shoe that's been broken in so it has some character. She understands me! 21. Rising to depart from the plane which had returned me to the Memphis airport, I heard a plaintive meowing behind me that made me pine for home. Why, this passenger had been traveling with her cat the whole time and I never knew.

Sorry You're Welcome and Good Morning

"Knew this would interest and depress you. Sorry you're welcome and good morning," writes Lee Durkee, enclosing a "link" to an article about monkeys riding dogs. I should "link" to the whole thing because I'm going to quote it: "Lepard has been married four times. It’s always been the monkeys and the dogs first." But that doesn't mean you have to "click" on it. The very idea depresses me so much that I don't even feel like checking to see whether this is the same monkey-and-dog impresario depicted by Anya Groner and Elizabeth Kaiser some years ago, though the mention of "neon green tassels" makes me suspect he is. On a related note, I neglected to "link" to that "boring interview" (McNeil's words!) yesterday. And as boring as it may be, it has inspired some lively email exchanges. McNeil likes this part: "Sheldon was a very good actor. He had to choke me in a scene. And he really choked me!" McNeil humorously hints that the interviewer was considering a similar tactic by this point. I like the part where Marvin Kaplan, the interviewee, recalls being stunned, vexed, astonished and amazed to discover that a man might prefer cats over dogs. He has never heard of such a thing!

She Uncurls Her Long, Hollow Tongue

What do Lynda Barry and Norman Mailer have in common? The aswang, that's what! Or as Norman Mailer spells it (I think) the asuang. I say "I think" because I am on page 1,017 and I can't remember where he mentions it. Four hundred pages ago? Could be! And somehow I forgot to tell you. The aswang or asuang is a vampiric creature of the Philippines and Mailer describes it in more or less traditional vampiric terms. Lynda Barry's description (in the voice of her grandmother) is much more exciting! "If you see a strange dog and it is watching you very hard and the back legs is more longer than the front legs and the tongue is sticking out - that is the aswang in the daytime! But at night she is a very beautiful woman who can cut herself in half and then she hides the bottom half. Then, look out! She can fly! The aswang crawls across the ceiling while you sleep and positions herself right over your bed. She uncurls her long, hollow tongue downward to your neck. It has a needle tip so sharp you can't feel it." That's from Barry's ONE HUNDRED DEMONS. You know how people just throw stuff in our yard, right? I blame it on drunken college students but I think all the drunken college students are home with their drunken families. (See also.) But someone threw an entire book about the Philippines in our yard this week! I haven't checked to see if the aswang is in it. The book was all rain soaked when I found it and it's probably still drying out on the porch. It's intact except that I guess the rain dissolved the glue on the paperback spine, so the cover is loose. Hmm, part of Lynda Barry's description (the creature cutting itself in half and the top half flying away) reminds me of a story from the book KWAIDAN about a creature called the Rokuro-Kubi. Its head detaches from its body and flies around: "He caught sight of the heads, - all five of them, - flitting about, and chatting as they flitted... 'Ah, that traveling priest who came to-night! - how fat all his body is! - When we have eaten him our bellies will be well filled...'" The difference is that while the aswang (according to Lynda Barry's grandmother) hides its own body, YOU have the find the Rokuro-Kubi's body and hide it: "its eyes opened monstrously; its hair stood up bristling; and its teeth gnashed... weeping tears of rage it exclaimed: 'Since my body has been moved, to rejoin it is not possible! Then I must die!'" I don't know, maybe that's true for the aswang, too; maybe that's why she hides her body. You'll have to ask an aswang next time you meet one. I'm not an aswang mindreader! All I know is that I have to finish this Norman Mailer book somehow, because the Doomed Book Club is all set to read Burt Reynolds's autobiography for the New Year. Huh, well, here's a Rokuro-Kubi with its head flying around, although most "internet" images show it stretching out its neck really long like Plastic Man!

Hypno Eyes

Well, we're smack in the middle of our 8-part Marceline arc on ADVENTURE TIME. I hope you're enjoying it! I am. I mean, it's really good! Layered. We layered it up for you. The second half commences tonight, featuring a star turn from Paul Williams. Last night we saw episodes three and four. I was there while the actors were recording episode three. Olivia Olson, who plays Marceline, was getting a cold! PLUS she had a singing audition the next day. But the part required her (as you may have seen) to give a blood-curdling scream when the Vampire King bites her neck. And she had to shout and growl and such, on top of doing the scream over and over at the top of her lungs. Not good for the human voice! But she did it. She committed! She didn't hold back. I just made the same statement three times in a row; that's called "style." Part four had this character "The Empress." (Paul Williams plays "The Hierophant" - all the vampires are named after tarot cards. Which reminds me: I have a friend who works on iZombie, and on that show last night, the main character made a little speech about the tarot card "The Empress." RIGHT AFTER THE EMPRESS APPEARED ON ADVENTURE TIME. Coincidence? Yes, entirely. Rebecca Romijn plays our Empress, which, as I've mentioned repeatedly in various formats, including life itself, means that we've got a real Brian De Palma thing going on, what with Paul Williams in there too.) I like The Empress! She has this snake that lives coiled around her neck and sometimes it slithers up, over her head, and pulls up her turban with its fangs, revealing her hypno eyes, and that's how she gets you. So watch out! Here we see her as sketched by Seo, who co-boarded and co-wrote part four with Somvilay. In the ADVENTURE TIME meeting today I'm going to ask who came up with that snake. Great snake.

River Rowdies

I don't suppose any of us will forget where we were on July 27, 2012, the day I lost dozens of "twitter followers" by live-tweeting KING RALPH. It was a massacre! Looking back, I can't blame them. How many times since then have I my own self become heavy-hearted at the excessive tweeting rate of some well-meaning wag or another? And that is why I have decided to help everybody out by putting my live-tweeting of STRIKING DISTANCE into the following handy virtual live-tweeting format, rather than clogging up everyone's "timeline" with it. I promise you all the excruciating boredom of the live-tweet experience with half the mess. Before we begin, it occurs to me that not only did Donald Barthelme invent the TV recap, he simultaneously invented the live-tweet. With preliminaries concluded, come with me as I list the things I see in STRIKING DISTANCE. A police car races toward the camera. Lightning strikes! Words say STRIKING DISTANCE!... Boots sloshing in the rain. Dr. Theresa just walked in and saw me furrowing my brow watching STRIKING DISTANCE and said, "Your seriousness is humorous."... Bruce Willis is disgraced... Bruce's dad is Frasier's dad from FRASIER! He's a cop, JUST LIKE IN FRASIER! Frasier's dad says a very Frasier's dad-like thing about Bruce's "mother's side of the family."... All his former cop friends think Bruce Willis is a "rat."... Bruce drives all crazy, like he's in a cop movie!... Frasier's dad is blasé about all the near collisions, making idle chit chat during the near-death experiences. This really IS like a FRASIER episode! Eight minutes in and we have our first action-movie fireball!... I have a feeling Frasier's dad is about to bite it. ... Ten minutes in: SECOND FIREBALL. ... Dr. Theresa says I should comment on the bad guy's driving gloves, which I totally meant to do... Cars hopping in the air like rabbits! Frasier's dad is still alive for the moment... Uh-oh. I take it back. Here's the reliable Dennis Farina as Uncle Nick? Uncle Rick? He's a cop too. ... They "caught the killer" and Bruce deduces in literally half a second they got the wrong man, just by looking at him... but the other cops don't want Bruce to rock the boat. Not even Uncle Nick or Rick! Uncle Rick/Nick's kid is jumping off a bridge! It's Bruce Willis's own cousin he ratted on! Well, there goes Cousin Jimmy. And here comes the rain. Like God himself is crying for Cousin Jimmy!... TWO YEARS LATER... It sure feels like it ha ha! ... Bruce Willis has a cat. A rat with a cat! Get it? ... Alka Seltzer... microwaving a hot towel... that's Bruce's version of breakfast! ... Now he's a boat cop. All the boat cops are standing around in their short pants. Short pants cops! ... I think Bruce Willis just dumped his crabby boss in the river as a prank. He'll never get anywhere with an attitude like that!... Bruce's name is Tom Hardy! Like the depressing novelist!... Everywhere Bruce Willis goes, other cops try to beat him up... Bruce: sensitive, weepy. The thinking man's cop!... Tom Sizemore, another cop cousin... Bruce Willis lives on a houseboat. Hey! Tom Sizemore talks about THE SIMPSONS! Tom Sizemore's brother AND mother jumped in the river. Stay away from the river, everybody. Do they want to make me suspect that Tom Sizemore is the killer? Because it's working. But it's too easy. He says ominous things like "I... I gotta meet a girl." And just when he comes back to town the killings start again. Too easy... Bruce Willis's new boat cop partner is SARAH JESSICA PARKER! She's introduced to him as a "qualified diver." I wonder if that will come into play! [It doesn't. Chekhov would be ashamed. - ed.]... Rowdies in a speedboat!... Oh, I see. Bruce Willis bends the rules and SJP is "by the book." ME: "What's that guy wearing, a neckerchief?" DR. THERESA (sounding sad about my decline): "It's a tattoo, sweetie."... Bruce Willis knocked somebody down a hole. "Down the hole!" shouted Dr. Theresa... Bruce Willis just shot three or four guys, I lost count. SJP helped him by yelling. Now he has grudging respect for her! You can see it in his eyes... I think I'll have some rye. I might miss something... Thinking, those guys Bruce shot were probably pirates, technically!... "There's an old Italian saying: 'Don't scald your tongue on another man's soup.'" Wise words, Dennis Farina. "Hey, Hardy, we're out of our patrol zone," warns by-the-book Sarah Jessica Parker. You really think Bruce Willis cares?... SJP and Bruce are dramatically acting at each other!... Aw, suddenly SJP spies Bruce behaving tenderly when he doesn't know she's looking! Maybe there's something to this gruff boat cop after all... They're really piling on the Tom Sizemore circumstantial evidence. I ain't buying it! No matter how unnervingly he giggles. Dennis Farina just had this line of dialogue: "Go up there. Go up there. GO UP THERE! Go up there."... This movie has a lot of blue language!... Andre Braugher! He's as young as a baby!... Tom Sizemore sure talks about the river a lot... SJP invites Bruce to the Policeman's Ball, which seems like a great place for him to be beaten to a pulp, which he is. Angry cops conveniently tear off his shirt, exposing him sexily. Tom Sizemore drinks heavily while a fireworks display goes off over his head. This one cop who hates Bruce the most is the guy who played the studio head in THE PLAYER.

Can't think of his name. But boy does he hate Bruce Willis. ... SJP pours Bruce's booze down the sink. She doesn't even know him! That's presumptuous. She hasn't even seen him drunk. I don't even think he's BEEN drunk in this movie (?), though the angriest cop calls him a "lush" once. ... Bruce Willis's cat watches as Bruce and SJP express themselves with an intimacy that is usually reserved for the conjugal bower. The cat seems bored. But POV suggests a creepy killer is probably watching too! ... Ha ha, now SJP and Bruce are chasing a car, but they're in a boat! This doesn't seem practical. THIRD FIREBALL. One hour, seven minutes in. ... It is suddenly revealed that Sarah Jessica Parker's character has a daughter... NAMED SARAH. ... Bruce just had the hoary old line, "I don't know how high up this goes." Dennis Farina: "He's been under surveillance for three weeks." Guy from The Player: "CLOSE surveillance?" Ha ha ha, I don't know why that exchange made me laugh so hard. I guess it was the way the guy said "CLOSE surveillance?" But it's clear that SJP has been spying on Bruce! NOW who's the rat? "Thank you very much, detective, you may step down," says Andre Braugher in that super sarcastic way that only Andre Braugher can deliver! He's not thanking the detective at all! Bruce Willis's cat is hungry. "Go catch a rat," says Bruce Willis to his cat. Ironic!... Somebody's "dead in the water." Literally! I can't tell who it is, even though Bruce is saying "NOOOOOOO!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!" But then again I thought that pirate's tattoo was a neckerchief. ... Bruce Willis thinks Tom Sizemore is the killer. I guess he's not so smart after all. Well! The killer is Cousin Jimmy! He ain't dead! I think Cousin Jimmy is the guy who was in MURPHY BROWN. The killer is the dude from MURPHY BROWN! I think. A guy from MURPHY BROWN killed a guy from FRASIER! What's the world coming to? "Are you too proud to drink with a dead man?" - Cousin Jimmy. I'm going to start saying that at bars. That guy's hair! The guy from MURPHY BROWN. He seriously looks worse than Donald Trump. Plus he's a psychotic murderer. Oh, wait! Dennis Farina killed Frasier's dad. So never mind. Ha ha, SJP just stuck out her foot and tripped the guy from MURPHY BROWN. Boat chase! Foot chase! We're back on the bridge. "You'll never beat me!" screams the guy from MURPHY BROWN at Bruce Willis. So I wonder who's going to win! Underwater fight! Lots of bubbles when you're fighting underwater. ... The angriest cop admits he was wrong. Bruce Willis punches him. SJP runs up. They smooch. Flowers on a grave. We see SJP's alleged daughter for the first time. They're all at the cemetery together like a regular family. THE END.

"Blog"trospective 17: Cigarette Lighter Appendix

My previous "blog"trospective, which covered the 20th century, wore me out. But last night I was watching an old episode of THE SIMPSONS, a flashback to the birth of Bart, and Bart's first act on the earth was to set fire to Homer's necktie with a lighter. And that's when I knew I needed, at long last, to manufacture a new "blog"trospective, a storehouse for everything I would have put somewhere in my cigarette lighter book if only it weren't too late to add anything to my cigarette lighter book. Here is that short but growing list: amazing, but who cares---ancient death ray of Archimedes---Aniston, Jennifer; burns a leprechaun's nose with a car cigarette lighter---Aykroyd, Dan; lights a whole pack of smokes with a blowtorch---Brown, Larry; spends four pages on the lighting of a cigarette---Chevalier, Maurice; fails to light a cigarette lighter---cigarettes and monocles in the early work of Lubitsch---Columbo borrows a lighter; a comically long flame shoots out---COUPLE OF COMEDIANS, A (novel by Don Carpenter)---Cummings, Robert; sets off a sprinkler system by holding a match under it---Dahl, Arlene; burns John Payne's hand with a lighter---Disney, Walt; makes a grown man cry and throw away his new lighter---Eastwood, Clint; mangles his cigarette in his lighter, a la Jerry Lewis---Eastwood, Clint; needs a light---Felix from THE ODD COUPLE mangles a cigarette---Fitzgerald, Barry; uses a small, unidentified cigarette-making (?) machine---Fitzhugh, Louise; lights Janet Gaynor's cigarette---five-foot-tall cigarette lighter---flint and steel of circumstances---Ghost Rider himself sets off a sprinkler system the way a lighter often does in popular entertainment---"Gotta Light" Guy from TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, The---Grant, U. S.; witnesses tobacco smuggling, corn husk cigarettes---guy gets lost inside his own cigarette lighter, a---guy shoots the ends off two cigarettes with a single bullet, a---heating Pop Tarts one bite at a time---Hope, Bob; cracks wise about lighters---Lewis, Jerry; can't find his lighter---lighter as clue---lighting a cigar with a burning house---lighting of cigarette as an accommodation to power---Mailer, Norman; narrator of overcome by the solemnity of a cigarette lighter---man scares panther with cigarette lighter---Martin, Dean; tosses his gold cigarette lighter out the window---musical cigarette lighter in FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY---newborn Bart Simpson sets fire to his father's necktie with a lighter (see above)---Northam, Jeremy; lighter of won't work at crucial moment---Novak, Kim; requests a light by means of Jack Lemmon's already-lit cigarette---O'Brien, Edmond; flirts using cigarette lighter---Powell, William; offered numerous lights simultaneously---Pryor, Richard; yells "Flick my Bic!" (was that the advertising slogan for the Bic pen or the Bic lighter? In any case, see "link" for rationale)---Quaid, Dennis; uses lighter to set off fire alarm---Russell, Kurt; blows an alien's mind with his lighter---STAR WARS robot gives a "thumbs up" with its built-in lighter---Stritch, Elaine; fills a cigarette lighter with secret booze---structurally significant lighter---Tati, Jacques; tosses lighter out of car window---undetermined pun based on the name of fire historian Stephen J. Pyne---use of lighter as spy communication---use of lighter to impress cavemen---Wallach, Eli; uses an imaginary cigarette lighter---what not to do with a lighter on the deck of a warship---woman asks for a cigarette; men come skittering from every direction, a---woman dressed as a cigarette lighter frolics behind Miley Cyrus, a. I'm forgetting something.

The Trembling Ghosts

"The trembling ghosts with sad amazed mood,/ Chattring their yron teeth, and staring wide/ With stonie eyes; and all the hellish brood/ Of feends infernall flockt on eury side..." That's some ghosts in hell being afraid of NIGHT (kind of terrifyingly described as "O thou most auncient Grandmother of all"), who is riding her chariot - or "charet" as Edmund Spenser calls it - ha ha! Get a dictionary, Edmund Spenser! - through hell... "Their mournefull charet, fild with rusty blood." I won't lie to you, THE FAERIE QUEENE is giving me the heebie jeebies. Even Sisyphus with his rock and "thirstie Tantalus hong by the chin" and Tityus, who "fed a vulture on his maw" (!) "Leaue off their worke, vnmindfull of their smart,/ To gaze on them..." So that's gotta be pretty intense! A sight so unusual it makes you temporarily forget that a vulture is feasting on your maw! And I haven't even told you about the very beginning, when the dude chops off a monster's head and the monster's babies start drinking blood out of the neck hole. I think I'm remembering that correctly. I guess what freaks me out the most is that the ghosts have iron teeth. Anyway, who writes this stuff?

I Knew That You Knew

Saw a movie called HOW SWEET IT IS! on TCM yesterday. Was it "good"? No! It is already slipping from my brain. But how I wish I had known about it in time for the most recent McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival. It has a psychedelic theme song and credits featuring creepy mannequins, and there's another psychedelic song during a montage, which (as you can see) the artists helpfully entitled "Montage." Some of the lyrics to "Montage" go like this: "I knew that you knew that I knew that you knew that I knew that you knew that I knew that you knew that I knew that you knew." And... "I didn't feel like Batman anymore/ I hit my bloody elbow on the door... The pimple on my neck began to hurt/ and suddenly I wished I'd changed my shirt." In conclusion, I am sure you recall Laura Lippman's wise words, as relevant today as when she first uttered them: "Freeze frame as everyone literally jumps for joy. Now that's how you end a movie." I am delighted to report that the makers of HOW SWEET IT IS! end their movie in that very way.

New Fashion Icon

I'm going to start dressing like this guy. Not John Garfield, the other guy! I'm quite taken with his stubby necktie.

He Makes Coffins

Look, it's Mary Miller and me at Tom Franklin's big annual birthday party. Mary kept saying how nice my hair looked so Lizzie took this picture. I don't know. Does my hair look that nice here? I am doubtful. Doesn't it look like a hairpiece? I kept explaining to Mary that whatever had happened to my hair that she was so taken with was just because I was sweating so much. It was hot! We live in Mississippi. Moments after this photo was taken, Tom Franklin shaved my head entirely... AGAIN. That's becoming a birthday tradition too, I guess. I was just complaining to Dr. Theresa that Tom left too much hair on my neck. "He did a better job than last time," she said. I don't think she cares! As my friend Brian pointed out on twitter, I now look "like the lifer in the yard [he'd] go to for advice as a new inmate." But I deleted my bald "selfie"

because I wanted to pretend not to be a vainglorious fool. I was just reading about vainglory in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. He's against it. Okay, here. HERE'S A TRUE HISTORY FACT. Last time Tom shaved my head, JFK's granddaughter was present! I saw her the next day in the town square and she tried to engage me in conversation but I couldn't recall who she was. I thought maybe she was a former student who wanted to talk about grades or something! Gross! So I dismissed her curtly! Later I realized my mistake but nothing could be done. Well that's what I get for being a huge jerk all the time. I tweeted that last night and deleted it too. I also tweeted about the guy who, right after Tom shaved my head, handed me his business card and yelled, "I MAKE COFFINS!" Well, let's see, I saw Semmes at the party and he said he was recently sitting with Bob Rafelson (!) on Rafelson's balcony and telling him about how I forced Dr. Theresa to watch the movie HEAD while we were dating and it didn't go over too well and then they tried to call me, but the number Semmes had for me was out of service. So that's the story about the time I didn't get a phone call from Bob Rafelson.

And I had a funny talk with Cynthia Joyce about how movie sex scenes were edited in the 70s. She said she was watching Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway going at it in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and couldn't figure out what anything was. "Is that a hairy knee?" she found herself asking during one shot.

So It Begins

"Ze hunt... eez my life." With those words we first meet the cowboy-hat-and-sunglasses-wearing, big-cigar-smoking Russian werewolf hunter - you heard me! - played by Ace Atkins - you heard me!!! in NIGHT OF THE LOUP GAROU, the most recent screening in our yearly Halloween film festival. That's right, our friend Ace, who is not Russian (he's from Alabama!) plays a Russian werewolf hunter in a movie. A bunch of local folks got together and made it a few years ago. I think it has been sitting on our mantel since Ace brought it over along with a George Lazenby movie on December 21, 2010. WHY DID WE WAIT SO LONG? Well, did I mention that Ace plays a Russian werewolf hunter? That is not accurate! He is a regular Russian hunter. But not TOO regular! He never uses a gun. He makes it fair. "Their claws..." he says, and then, holding up his Crocodile-Dundee-style knife: "My claws." That was Dr. Theresa's favorite line in the whole movie. I think my favorite thing Ace said was, "I keel everythink... I drink their blood." Hey, don't think for a second I am giving Ace a hard time! First of all, you may remember when I ribbed even the late Katharine Hepburn about her Russian accent. And Ace commits! I think we've talked about this before. Commitment, I mean. Ace is in that part 100%. I know I've told you about the sitcom actor I met a few times who used to watch reruns of himself on the sitcom "227" and get angry with his younger self and hang his head in shame - SHAME! - because he thought he was above it all and didn't "commit." That sitcom actor told me with rue and regret in his voice to always commit! "Commit!" he said. And it's good advice. Ace - I'll say it again! - commits. When you are playing a Russian werewolf hunter that is your only choice, and a good lesson to think about. Ace had one line that Dr. Theresa and I debated a little. At first I thought he said, "It is time to rock and roll. Nighty, Mickey Mouse." See, they were leaving the cabin to hunt for the werewolf, and they were leaving behind the earnest werewolf expert who only wanted to understand the werewolf, not kill it! So I thought he was saying "Good night" to that guy in a dismissive way, because Ace - I mean, the Russian werewolf hunter! - said the latter sentence with growling menace right in the guy's face: "Nighty, Mickey Mouse." Dr. Theresa contended that he was using "Mickey Mouse" as a verb: "It is time to rock and roll, not to Mickey Mouse." I briefly conjectured that he was calling the guy a "naughty Mickey Mouse," but I did not really think that, that may have been a little joke I made. Of course we concluded that Dr. Theresa's interpretation was the correct one. And we are all aware of "Mickey Mouse" as an adjective. I looked it up this morning in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG and Mickey Mouse gets practically a whole page to himself, including an entry for "Mickey Mouse in the house, and Donald Duck don't give a ****" (hint: it rhymes!). And indeed we see one entry for "Mickey Mouse" as a verb, meaning "to fool around, to botch," quoting a primary source from 1969: "It don't pay to mickeymouse me." Ace also gets to say the archetypal movie line, "So it begins." But somebody steps on that line! Oh, man, that's not a line that should be stepped on, I don't want to tell you how to make your movie. There's even a childhood flashback that reveals how Ace started smoking cigars - uh, I mean, how his character did, but I think it was probably similar. The movie has some interesting lore about the loup garou, a Cajun form of werewolf, such as that you hang up a colander for protection! Because the loup garou cannot help but stop and count the holes in a colander. I tried to confirm this with my collection of CAJUN AND CREOLE FOLKTALES I picked up at Square Books a while back, but this delightful dual-language oral compendium has an index that is so scholarly as to be almost useless, organized according to an "international classification" system you probably only know about if you have a PhD in folklore. I found that folktale "E423.1.1(b)," for example - filed alphabetically under "E" (!) is about a "Ghostly dog opaque and insubstantial." Huh. Not close enough. Directly under that was "E423.3.5. Revenant as owl." And you know what that means. So I could hardly resist taking a peek. And in the academic introduction to that story we are informed that "the traditional concept of a werewolf" falls under the classification of "motif D113.1.1" and that it "applies to many other were-animals, including were-owls." Were-owls! But there were no D113.1.1 stories in the index. Ha ha! This is the point (it should have come earlier!) where I always start laughing because I know I am going to keep typing and typing and no one will keep reading and I just don't care. Anyhow, I thankfully (ha ha!) remembered my PARANORMAL MISSISSIPPI RIVER: AN ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA, and was able to confirm that the loup garou is obsessed with counting holes. This volume referred to a more general "sieve," not a "colander." The loup garou is also afraid of frogs! Which led to my favorite line - other than any of Ace's - in the movie, when a police officer laments that the earnest werewolf expert doesn't have a gun and the earnest werewolf expert says with the earnestness that characterizes him: "All I need's a frog." The movie, in fact, reaches an admirable pinnacle of dementia in the montage showing the earnest werewolf expert strapping cheese graters to his arms, a colander on his head, a frog in a jar around his neck and, I am pretty sure, capping things off with a flour-sifter codpiece.

For McNeil Only

This one is just for McNeil. The rest of you (there are two of you, I think) can skip it. But I happened to find out by accident that Jerry Lewis and Public Enemy were going to be on THE TONIGHT SHOW last night. I contacted McNeil right away. He loves Jerry Lewis and Public Enemy. But I found that McNeil was going to be unable to watch the show. So he asked me to file a report. Here is that report. Jerry entered, looking frail but game, as the Roots played him on with the Beastie Boys hit "Hey Ladies" - the significance of which to Jerry we have remarked upon before. When he arrived at his seat he noticed to his apparent consternation that his necktie was hanging out of his jacket. "WAAAAAH! I thought it was my tongue," said Jerry, which got a big laugh. Then he appeared to tuck his necktie into his pants... on purpose? I couldn't tell. Of course, the great thing about Jerry is that so often YOU JUST CAN'T TELL. Maybe tucking your necktie into your pants is an old show biz trick. Jimmy Fallon started reciting scenes from THE NUTTY PROFESSOR to Jerry Lewis, which was nicely intended, but odd. I will paraphrase from memory. Jimmy Fallon was like, "And you go to the gym and lift weights but then you drop the weights without letting go of them and they stretch out your arms like six feet long. But it's not over. Because then you're in bed that night and your feet are itching and a hand comes out and scratches your foot, and it's your hand because your arms were stretched out really long." It reminded me of that old SNL sketch with Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney. Jerry took it well. Well, no, at some point he cut off Jimmy Fallon's rambling by handing him what was apparently a shocking and obscene note. I don't know what happened there. It was mysterious. Then Jimmy Fallon started describing a scene from THE ERRAND BOY, the famous pantomime to music behind the executive's desk. They showed a clip of it and Jerry said, "When I write, I think in terms of music," which is something Barry Hannah used to say, more or less. Then Jimmy Fallon tried to get him to do a bit in which he and Jerry Lewis would "talk" to each other by lip-syncing to the instrumental music of the Roots. Jerry was confused at first. I suppose he was thinking about how dumb the idea was, how many weeks it had taken him to conceive, design, rehearse, shoot and edit that ERRAND BOY set piece, but he went ahead and tried. You could see the wheels turning and it was nice. The Roots played some music and Jimmy Fallon flapped his gums but Jerry introduced some hand gestures to good effect and really tried to engage with Jimmy Fallon... to push the bit into going somewhere. It didn't. Then Jerry told a dirty joke about a parrot. Public Enemy came out and did their song "Public Enemy #1." I half expected Flavor Flav to give a shout-out to Jerry Lewis in his introductory verse. He didn't, but I see some similarities there, especially in verbal mannerisms, but some of the physicality too. I'm not suggesting direct influence, of course, just expressionistic instincts in common. Think of Flavor Flav's "Cold Lamping": "We got Magnum Brown, Shooshki Palooshki/ Supercalafragahestikalagoothki/ You could put that in your don't know what you said book/ Took-look-yuk-duk-wuk." More Jerryish lyrics would be tough to find. Especially "Shooshki Palooshki." Or "You're eating dirt because you like eating dirt from the graveyard/ You put gravy on it." Can't you just hear Jerry yelling "You put GRAVY on it!"? And when Flavor raps about "chocolate, strawberry, sarsaparilla" who can help but recall Jerry's rhapsody on strawberry milkshakes from THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR? What? Everybody? Okay.

A Sinister Role For Flavius Mithridates

Hey you know how in every single place you look on the "internet" it says that Pico della Mirandola wrote something called ORATION ON THE DIGNITY OF MAN that everybody is so jazzed up about? Well, according to this guy who translated this book of Pico's 900 theses that I have here, that title "first appeared ten years after Pico's death in a corrupt German reprint of his collected works." And this here guy is pretty upset about how everybody loves that fake title so much! But do you think the "internet" cares? Here's another funny part: "In the section of the text devoted to the Platonists, we find eight theses attributed to 'Adeland the Arab,' who Pico claimed was Plotinus's fellow student in Egypt under Ammonius Saccas... Both external and internal evidence, however, clearly show that Adeland the Arab was Adelard of Bath, the twelfth-century Englishman!" (You know I appreciate a learned scholar who is not afraid of exclamation points.) But the best part is right after that: "Here again there are reasons to suspect a sinister role for Flavius Mithridates, whose reputation in the Renaissance as something of a con man was apparently well deserved. Pico's involvement with this colorful figure - who liked to style himself as Pico's would-be but scorned lover - constitutes one of the strangest personal stories of the period, although it is one that is far from being completely understood." I know, I know! Now you are thinking of John Dee and Edward Kelley, right? And the time the angel told them to swap wives? Or maybe you are thinking of Paracelsus, and how he would "vanish under cover of night" when the heat was on, running around all drunk with his big sword and being a genius. Those were the days! There are not enough drunken, sword-brandishing geniuses anymore! We don't even have any young Rip Torns around to hit our Norman Mailers in the heads with hammers, or any Norman Mailers to bite other partygoers on the neck. John Dee had plenty of Pico and Paracelsus in his library, you better believe it, until that mob trashed his house that time, I can't remember why, I guess they were mad about something.

Alarming Woman in a Cemetery

Megan Abbott came back to town - for just one night, alas! - to talk about her excellent new novel THE FEVER. I did a little Q&A thing with her at Square Books and encouraged her to tell the story about when she, as a child, saw two drunken old salts perched together on a New England gravestone, yelling imprecations at those who would disturb the dead, and one of them had a big, vivid, and fresh wound on his neck. After the event, Jimmy, who was present, said the story reminded him of the time Barry Hannah "saw a naked woman on a gravestone and it scared him." I told Jimmy I was unfamiliar with the story. He said it was in an essay he had sent me. I remembered the essay, but I did not remember the naked woman on the gravestone, a strange thing not to remember. I remembered some things about writing from the essay. Here's a slice I have cut and pasted for you with little skill:

Later, on the same subject, Barry observes, "The well-groomed square will often outwrite the professional hippie, and I have witnessed the unsettling fact that fine novels come from men and women with so little personality they are not even annoying." There is a Roger Miller song called "Squares Make the World Go 'Round" that is concerned with a similar subject, in which Miller posits that "Government things can't be made do/ By hipsters wearing rope-soled shoes." But what of the naked woman on the old tombstone? Jimmy sent me the essay after a Good Idea Club that had gone especially late, and I was probably asleep and/or intoxicated when I read it. My poor eyes must have missed the section that began "That summer I met an alarming woman in a cemetery..." Rereading it, or reading it for the first time, I see that she is sitting on a grave, but she does have her clothes on. Later there is some partial disrobing. The cemetery is next to a reservoir where UFOs are said, by a neighbor, to land to "take on water."

Basic Instinct

A nice-sized crowd showed up this evening to watch Tim Youd type the final three pages of THE SOUND AND THE FURY. I got there way early, before anybody besides the staff, so I got to see Tim carry his Underwood and desk to the side porch of Rowan Oak in preparation. A little spider of a color I have never seen before - at least on a spider - started climbing on the page. I'd say it was a fluorescent green spider. "Neon," said the photographer. Then she snapped a picture of it. Bill Griffith swatted a mosquito that had perched on my neck. "I've saved your life!" he yelled. "And not for the first time!" The yard filled up. Lizzie was there. "I read the wikipedia page on BASIC INSTINCT yesterday," she said. I asked why. "Because I didn't want to watch the movie," Lizzie explained. It made sense! She said her favorite movie was something called TEEN WITCH. When Tim Youd finished typing THE SOUND AND THE FURY everybody clapped. He held up the two pages. (He types the whole novel on one page, over and over itself until it's pretty much a black rectangle, with a safety page underneath it to soak up the ink when the first page inevitably tears.) "He tore that page UP!" I screamed in a kind of ecstasy. "You sound like a sports announcer," said my friend Amy. And you know, I FELT like a sports announcer. Here's an old photo from another event entirely, but it shows you how Lizzie feels whenever she runs into me.