Of Course She Did!

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

McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits

It's Dr. Theresa's birthday! And you know what that means, of course: it's time for "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits," the regular "blog" feature where McNeil reads a 700-page biography of Humphrey Bogart and gives us the scoop straight from his brain into our eager eye holes. Those who enjoyed the story of how Bogart gave a bellhop a nickel tip will be excited to learn that he tips a masseur in this one. But I've already said too much! Here, I'm just going to cut and paste the email I got from McNeil and my job is done. "THE BIG SLEEP was completed in January 1945. In late January 1945, Bacall was scheduled to be in NY for a publicity tour for the opening of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. Because the divorce between Bogie and Mayo had not quite been finalized, the studio didn’t want Bogie anywhere near Bacall. That didn’t happen. Bogie took the Super Chief to NY before her and waited on Bacall to get there (as soon as I typed Super Chief a train flew by the window of the doctor’s office I happen to be sitting in). He checked into the Gotham Hotel. The studio found out and sent a man named Stevens from their NY office to be with him 24/7 – to watch him and 'give him whatever he wants.' One night Bogie was particularly stressed and he and Stevens went to '21', where Bogie had a sandwich and a couple of drinks. Back at the hotel Bogie had a few more drinks. He still felt tense and told Stevens he wanted a massage. Warners had a masseur on the payroll so Stevens rang him up. Twenty minutes later Bogart was getting his massage – along with a couple more drinks he had ordered from room service. When the massage was over, Bogie took, as Stevens recounts, 'The fastest shower I have ever seen a man take. Less than forty-five seconds. No soap, nothing.' Bogie grabbed a towel and finished another drink and wondered where the hell that guy was with his massage. When Stevens told him he had just had the massage, Bogie became irate and demanded he come back and give him a real massage. The masseur lived in Brooklyn, but got on the subway with his table and came back and gave Bogie an hour-long massage. In the meantime, he and Stevens had ordered a steak dinner, which Bogie did not touch, choosing instead to drink more. After the massage Bogie demanded Stevens make a reservation at El Morocco, then Bogie demanded he change the reservation to the Stork Club, then he changed his mind and had Stevens make a reservation at Toots Shor’s. Five minutes later, Bogie took a nap. Sometime around ten pm (it’s only 10!!!) Bogie wakes up and needs another massage…Stevens called the masseur again, in Brooklyn, and told him to take a cab this time and Warners would pay for it. The guy came from Brooklyn for a third time and gave Bogie a brutal massage, which Bogie cursed and drank through. When it was done, Bogie was finally happy, and gave the masseur a $60 tip." You know what? That's the end of McNeil's email, but I decided to come back after all. I wanted to say that I thought I would certainly have a "blog" "hyperlink" to provide about the Super Chief, as I recalled with 88% guaranteed mental accuracy that Vic, the hero of the Doomed Book Club classic THE HUCKSTERS, had a romantic encounter or two on the very same Super Chief. But after combing the "blog" to the fullest extent of my superhuman abilities, I uncovered no evidence that I am not just living in a beautiful dream.

A Thing I Noticed

It was exactly one week ago today that I viewed the Elvis movie G.I. BLUES, and I noticed something about it that reminded me of other things I had noticed about other things. And if there is one thing you know about me, it is that when I notice something that reminds me of something else I previously noticed, I have to tell you about it. And by "you," I mean nobody. But then some things happened that are none of your beeswax, and I didn't get a chance to reflect upon the matter further... UNTIL NOW! I am sure you will recall how I told you that in the Clint Eastwood vehicle EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, they play a diegetic song, the chorus of which mentions Clint Eastwood (the actor, not the character he portrays in the film). More aligned with our current subject (as you shall soon see for yourself!) is DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, in which the eponymous Susan, portrayed by Madonna, listens to a Madonna song on a jukebox! So! In G.I. BLUES, Elvis Presley, playing a guy named Tulsa, sings a little ditty in a nightclub. Well! One guy doesn't seem to like it so much, and decides to disrupt the proceedings by playing something rowdy on a convenient jukebox. As a closeup of the label confirms, he chooses "Blue Suede Shoes," as performed by one Elvis Presley. A donnybrook ensues! Yes, you are reading this correctly: the performance by Tulsa (Elvis Presley) is ruined by a recording of Elvis Presley. In fact, we may speculate that the much-derided "movie Elvis" is successfully attacked and devoured by "primal Elvis." Ha ha! I hate myself. (See also.)

Do You Remember Mabel

McNeil sent the above movie still, accompanied by the following note: "of all the times I have watched THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, I don't think I have ever noticed this famous guy standing in front of Buddy when he enters The Purple Pit." Ha ha, I like McNeil wanton use of the term "famous guy." I recognized the gentleman in question as the hapless telephone company employee (?) from TV's ALICE. OR DID I? I thought for years that this same fellow (Marvin Kaplan, above) played Jeff Goldblum's sinister flunky in DEEP COVER. I was impressed by his versatility and boldness! But while it was Marvin Kaplan in ALICE, it wasn't him in DEEP COVER. It was this guy, Sydney Lassick (below).

So I guess Marvin Kaplan didn't have any versatility and boldness after all. As you will see, however (perhaps with the aid of a magnifying glass), both Kaplan and Lassick are wearing jauntily patterned newsboy caps in their official imdb photos, as if to continue confounding me from beyond the grave (though one of them is still alive).

Later, McNeil appended a "boring interview" with Kaplan to his original message. Excerpts: "MARVIN KAPLAN: My favorite whom I met, but never worked with was Mikhail Rasumny. Remember Mr. Rasumny? INTERVIEWER: No. MARVIN KAPLAN: You don't?... MARVIN KAPLAN: Do you remember Mabel? INTERVIEWER: No. ... MARVIN KAPLAN: They were all top people. Irene Tedrow. Remember Irene? INTERVIEWER (silence): No. ... MARVIN KAPLAN: Remember Ruthie? INTERVIEWER (silence): No. You're stumping me."

Another Real Life Drama Tale of Life

One of our cats has a cold. I was like, "She should get some rest." Then I was like, how could a cat possibly rest any more than it already does? Cats rest all the time! Cats mostly rest! I feel sure I am not the first to ponder this conundrum, nor do I claim to be. It is most likely a standard quip in the hackier cat-focused standup comedy clubs, if such exist. That's it, that's all I've got, goodbye. You've been a great audience.

Feels Like Leonard

Well I was up at the old City Grocery Bar last night talking to Bill Boyle about this Don DeLillo book LIBRA. I quoted a line of authorial (close third-person) description - "He had that expression of where's the coffee." - and said it reminded me of Elmore Leonard... for, among other reasons, the punctuation, or lack of it, including the choice of the period over the question mark. This book had often been reminding me of something, and I finally realized, with that phrase, that it was Elmore Leonard. "In Leonard it would have been dialogue," Bill said of the phrase. And he was right. And I realized that a lot of the dialogue had been reminding me of Elmore Leonard, too... I think particularly the dialogue by members of the demimonde: gangsters, strippers, club owners (Jack Ruby). But there are a number of things I am too lazy to do, including looking for examples, researching the admiration (if any) DeLillo might have felt for Elmore Leonard (or George V. Higgins, as Bill suggested), checking to see if I used "demimonde" or "close third-person" correctly, so many things, so much laziness.

Not Quite Enough Marbles

So all these guys are sitting on one side a long table in masks talking to each other and the door opens and they all turn and look at the camera at the same time - that's pretty scary! I feel like I've seen this startling effect copied in later movies. I couldn't find the exact moment on the internet, but this came right afterward. It's from LA MAIN DU DIABLE (a much more apt title than the English version: CARNIVAL OF SINNERS), the latest entry in our annual Halloween film festival. Kind of a fairytale. Jacques Tourneur's dad directed it! I want to know why he was back in France directing this at about the same time his son was in America directing CAT PEOPLE - what a family! - so I'll grab that Chris Fujiwara bio of the younger Tourneur and get back to you later. So! I was walking back home from Square Books the other day when Melissa Ginsburg accosted me from the passenger window of a pickup truck! And Chris Offutt was driving. And they wanted to know whether I wanted a ride, which was funny because I was next door to my house, which they well knew, so they were being hilarious. And they pulled into the neighbor's driveway and I leaned in the window of the truck and we had a talk. And it turned out by coincidence that the newly and impulsively purchased book I had under my arm is one of Chris's favorites! Chris said he read it all as fast as he could and can't wait until enough time passes so he can read it again. It's the "Hollywood Trilogy" of Don Carpenter, three novels in one volume. I was telling Bill Boyle about it and he already knew everything because he's a big fan, too. They were out of print for a while, and Bill was tracking down the separate volumes at the library. So I just started reading the first one and to my surprise it's pretty much about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and it's narrated by Jerry Lewis. I exaggerate! The decade is wrong, for one thing. And I've only read a couple dozen pages. But one partner in the comedy duo is a crooner, and the crooner hates to rehearse and is always late, and the crooner likes comic books, and his teammate's schtick is to act like he has "not quite enough marbles rolling around in my attic," and they're embarrassed by the low-budget movies the studio forces them to make and are much more at home in their loose and highly improvisational nightclub act, which they have moved to Las Vegas... all these things apply to Martin and Lewis, though there is also a lot about these characters that does not apply to Martin and Lewis, but I'm going to ignore those parts.

I Finally Turn Into Larry King

You know, I have never warmed up to Van Johnson. Wow, what a lead-off sentence, ha ha, now the transformation is complete: I have turned into Larry King. But it's true. I don't like Van Johnson in any movie except DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE. It comes on TCM a lot. Whenever it's on I have to watch a few scenes at least. Last night I saw the scene with the nightclub hypnotist Pat Collins. I guess she was a real-life famous nightclub hypnotist. She was wearing these glasses. I think they were these glasses. This is a publicity photo, I guess, but she seems to be wearing her own stage finery in DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE. Have you seen it? It's pretty good! Van Johnson is okay as a loud, insecure, cheerful, cornfed car dealer who's obsessed with his mother. Better than okay! I have to give him that. But I hate him in everything else. I just can't watch him. He gives me the creeps. Screw you, the late Van Johnson!

Chad Bad in Rad Pad

Couldn't sleep again! Uh-oh! You know the drill! Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown! 3:30 AM! TCM! Ann-Margret! Something called MADE IN PARIS. Weird, uncomfortable opening where Chad Everett gets really grabby with our star. But at least she caves in his head with a decorative item from a nearby table. But it's a comedy so he's okay. He gets grabby again with her later in the movie, I mean, it's plain sexual harassment and even worse, I mean, the general "romantic comedy" tone here is sexual harassment and, really, something darker. This is not what I meant to talk about. What I MEANT to say is that after the wordless opening bit, which is supposed to come off dry and light and clever (but seems like somebody might get murdered to me!) the credits start to roll (our stars represented by mannequins, another instance, so soon, of unintended, uncanny horror), and I noticed that Red Skelton composed one of the songs in the movie. I didn't know he wrote music! The "internet" tells me he wrote more than 600 pieces of music. Shows you how much I know about Red Skelton. I thought, "This is going to be the most interesting thing about MADE IN PARIS." And I was right! But I'm going to keep typing about it anyway. But first let's talk some more about Red Skelton! I was tweeting about him and Megan tweeted back at me that Red Skelton edited some anthologies of ghost stories. And THAT made me remember (I think) reading an article when I was a little boy (maybe) in which it was revealed (possibly) that Red Skelton was illiterate! "Like most editors," I humorously remarked to Megan, but I didn't mean it! I love editors! Especially the ones I have now. It was just a humorous thing to say in that humorous way I have about me that wins over so many people all the time. My problem with Chad Everett (other than his character's horrific behavior) might be that I just kept seeing him as creepy old Chad Everett from MULHOLLAND DR. (in which he was very good, but no less creepy). But you know, Louis Jourdan is in MADE IN PARIS, too (that's him gazing into Ann-Margret's eyes, above), and I didn't see HIM as creepy old Louis Jourdan from SWAMP THING. I saw him as a French smoothie, with his own brand of sexual harassment, but managing a much more interesting performance of a more (relatively) layered character. FURTHERMORE I will say that I thought Chad Everett was creepy even when I was just a tot and Chad Everett was young and my grandmother wanted to watch him in a TV show called MEDICAL CENTER and I wanted to watch something else. He just seemed off to me! Walking around in his white lab coat looking down on people.

That's how I recall feeling. I'm learning a lot about my feelings regarding Chad Everett today! In MADE IN PARIS, Jourdan represents European sophistication, I guess, while Chad Everett is American brashness. It's Jamesian. Is that Jamesian? I have no idea. I almost forgot to tell you, I'm an idiot! But it certainly gets metaphorical when Chad Everett and Louis Jourdan start beating up each other. I can't tell you who won the fistfight because a big rainstorm blew in and I lost the satellite reception. And that was it for MADE IN PARIS, as far as yours truly is concerned. Hey! There's this crazy scene where the bandleader Mongo Santamaria tells everyone in a nightclub to "do the pussycat" and everybody starts dancing around and this guy in Santamaria's band make what are supposed to be cat noises, but they're just terrifying! I mean, something is WRONG with that cat!

The Long Double Feature

Ace's plan was a double feature of FUN IN ACAPULCO and BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. It didn't quite work out. A few weeks ago we watched FUN IN ACAPULCO but we got started late, and only last night did we get around to BRING ME THE HEAD. Anyway, that's pretty quick compared to our George Lazenby Film Festival. The protagonist of each movie in our double feature is an entertainer in a Mexican bar. In the latter, Warren Oates's lover strums her guitar and sings to him as they race down the dusty road in a red car. In the former, Elvis Presley sings to a "lady bullfighter" about how there's "No Room to Rumba" in her red sports car, if you know what I mean, which brings up an interesting point. Angela said - and I agreed - that Elvis made the wrong choice vis-à-vis the lady bullfighter, who, as Angela pointed out, was a "bad-a**" and also sexually progressive, with a thriving career to boot, whereas Elvis went for the "good girl," who was the daughter of the hotel chef - the chef was a disgraced count or baron or something... never mind... and Ace disagreed with us and kept saying of the chef's daughter, "But she's Ursula Andress! She's Ursula Andress!" But she's not "Ursula Andress" in the movie! She's the chef's daughter, and very vaguely defined otherwise. As you know, I like just about everything, but I was afraid we were going to see some stock footage of bullfighting in the movie because of the "lady bullfighter" and I just don't like any movie with bullfighting in it (see also). But there was no bullfighting, though in a funny touch, Elvis seemed to work at a nightclub where he was only allowed to sing about bulls. He sang a song about bulls and then the next time he sang at the club he sang a different song about bulls! Ha ha ha! I imagined him going to the manager, like, "I'd like to sing about birds tonight," and the manager is like, "No! Only bulls! My customers only like songs about bulls!" At the beginning of BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, when the guy tells everybody to bring him the head of Alfredo Garcia and they all jump in their cars and airplanes and whatnot and zoom away to look for the head of Alfredo Garcia, Dr. Theresa said, "It's like IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD." An apt analogy!

All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up

Welcome once again to All-Star Entertainment Wrap-Up. THIS JUST IN! Bobby Darin threw a big party for Richard Pryor and Groucho Marx was there! I'm getting this out of the new Richard Pryor biography. And Groucho had just seen Richard Pryor on TV with Pryor's hero Jerry Lewis. And Groucho asked Richard Pryor, "Do you want a career you can be proud of? Or do you want to end up a spitting wad like Jerry Lewis?" Author Scott Saul captures Pryor's - and my! - incredulity: "'Huh?' Richard stammered. His idol a spitting wad?" I chalk up part of it to the age thing. Here's this upstart Jerry Lewis influencing a young comedian (Pryor called Jerry "the god of comedy" on the show) and here's Groucho (born 1890) sitting around at a party at Bobby Darin's house. He probably arrived early and really wanted to be home in bed. I don't know. I feel you, Groucho! Not the Jerry part, though. And anyway that's not nice party conversation, Groucho. This seems to be a good spot to mention that in the Bob Hope book we discover that Bob loved Lenny Bruce and went to see him perform numerous times in nightclubs. There's a little anecdote about Bob Hope and Lenny Bruce hanging out in a Florida parking lot. Here's something else: "One of the men who kidnapped Frank Sinatra Jr. in 1963 told an FBI agent that the gang had first considered snatching Hope's oldest son, Tony, but opted for young Sinatra instead because 'Bob Hope is such a good American and had done so much in entertaining troops.'" You know, I was thinking about the Frank Sinatra Jr. kidnapping yesterday! I almost tweeted something to Jimmy about it but I found out I had all the facts wrong, rendering my tweet useless. You know, Kent Osborne and I once wrote a screenplay with a part for Frank Sinatra Jr. as Himself. There was a subplot about a young woman who loves XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS, that's how long ago we wrote this screenplay. Not that you can't love XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS! I'm just saying it was still on the air when we wrote the screenplay. XENA star Lucy Lawless just played an ant on ADVENTURE TIME. True story. I believe our screenplay took for granted the audience's intimate knowledge of the film ROUNDERS as well. You know, this photo has nobody in it I've talked about here but it kept coming up while I was looking for an image to use, and I'm just going to go for it.

Cat Name

I talk about sad clowns a lot here, but I can't take any credit for the sad clown angle of tonight's ADVENTURE TIME, storyboarded by the wonderful Graham Falk and just concluded in most of our large nation. It was entirely Pen's idea to make the character a sad clown; I was "pitching" (as we say in the business) for him to be a piano player for a torch singer in a seedy mob-run nightclub, like Cameron Mitchell in the Doris Day movie LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME. Strangely, it was also Pen's idea to name the episode "Sad Face" after one of our cats, Sad Face. I even tried to change that title a couple of times on drafts of the outline, but Pen kept changing it back. You may "click" here to see a drawing Pen did of Sad Face, with whom he was quite taken on his trip to Oxford. You will note that the drawing is labeled "Big Boy," which indeed became Sad Face's secondary name for a number of reasons. He was first called Sad Face as an aloof and slender feral cat who lurked mysteriously in the gray mist and shadows half-unseen and for whom we used to put out food. Those who say feral cats cannot be tamed have never seen Dr. Theresa in action. She made friends with Sad Face patiently over the course of several months. We caught him finally (ha ha! I know how boring this is and I just don't care) and took him in for his shots and had him fixed, intending to release him again, which we did, during a rainstorm! How terrible. What were we thinking? He didn't seem to care. But he came in one day and stayed in, this wraith who used to be able to jump over tall fences and run agilely if heart-stoppingly through the traffic in front of our house, back and forth across the busy and treacherous street like a maniac. He lost any desire to go outside ever again, just like me, and got comfortable and fat, just like me. So we took to calling him "Big Boy" instead of "Sad Face," though he still has a sad face, but a "happy head," as our young neighbor once observed. Anyway, I'll have you know Sad Face has lost a lot of weight since Pen drew that picture. For real! For further reading (ha ha! Don't do it!), remember when I was writing that dumb serialized fantasy novel for the Vice magazine and nobody cared? You will note that a daring brigand in it had a faithful horse called Sad Face.

A Package of Candy For You, Miss

I just saw a short on TCM called "Harry Reser and His Eskimos," forgive me for using that outdated and offensive word, but that was the title. So there were these guys dressed up like "eskimos," playing a bland little piece of music. Some of them looked happy to be all dressed up in their fur coats and hoods and some looked uncomfortable and even hostile. Like, there were two violinists sitting side by side, on blocks of ice, I suppose, and one was grinning in a goodnatured way - leering in ecstasy, really - while his companion was clearly thinking, "My parents died from working four jobs to send me to the Oberlin Conservatory!" One handsome man stood up and blew his trumpet and he was like, "I don't care what I am wearing, I look super handsome," you could read his thoughts, and they were accurate. So they're kind of going along, doodle deedle deedle, and the iceman comes out with a big block of ice in his tongs, which must have been a terrific gag at the time, and he tries to sell some ice to a woman in an igloo, but she is like, "No ice today." So the iceman moves along. Like a situation in Beckett! You can imagine this poor iceman going through his eternally fruitless motions. Because there is so much ice where he is! He IS modern man, bereft of purpose. So the band keeps tootling along in a boring fashion and another guy saunters up to the igloo and says "A package of candy for you, miss." And the woman in the igloo is delighted! It is a big box labeled very clearly "GUM DROPS." So the lady in the igloo eats some gumdrops while the band honks and squeaks along. And suddenly there are some guys playing poker at a table near the igloo...? And they start throwing their own supply of gumdrops (!?) at the igloo with apparently malicious intent, though the gumdrops end up forming a valentine heart. The woman comes out of the igloo and looks at the gumdrops and puts her hands on her hips like "Oh, you!" Then she throws some ice cubes at these card-playing degenerates in fur coats, and mind you that the band, in front of which all this is happening, is just tootling along all tra la la. In the illustration accompanying this "post," you may see the young hooligans recoiling from the well-deserved onslaught. So suddenly everybody starts singing a song about how they'd like "a cool mint julep on a summery day," which seems counterintuitive, or maybe "ironic." Then these three frightening monstrous icicles appear, looking like THIS IS SPINAL TAP props, and ballerinas come out of them and start dancing on their toes - ballerina style! - but tap-dancing sounds issue incongruously from their toes. Then a champagne cork pops and a huge bottle that looks more like a beer bottle descends from above and there is a guy straddling it, just wailing like crazy on his banjo. Like, finally some action. This guy is a maniac. "Straddling" is the wrong word but it added some piquancy, did it not? So we suddenly pull out to reveal that we are NOT in the land of ice and snow! We're in a nightclub! And all the nightclub patrons start throwing ice cubes. The band stands up and yells in unison "HOLD THAT TIGER!" though I could swear that's not the song they're playing. Then we pull back through the front doors of the club to reveal, unless I am nuts, that the nightclub itself IS in the land of ice and snow after all, blowing my mind. I think I've covered everything. Dr. Theresa walked in and had to laugh at the look on my face, a look of... undue concern?

The Channel That Shows Grape Ape

Spent Thanksgiving the usual way - took a pain pill and watched a little GRAPE APE on the channel that shows GRAPE APE. (See also.) The pain pill didn't help. I mean, it helped the pain but it didn't help Grape Ape. You remember Grape Ape. He had an okay vocabulary but mostly just said his own name a lot for no reason, as seen here. But I bet you didn't remember that his friend was an anthropomorphic dog (see also) who I believe was intended to come off as some kind of hipster. They just drove around aimlessly. So really it was like ON THE ROAD or the Bill Bixby version of the Hulk. And everybody they met was a regular human, yes, that hipster dog was the only human-size talking dog around. He talked like maybe he hung around in jazz clubs or something. I bet he was lonely. On the other channel was Kenneth Branagh's strenuous attempt at a musical comedy but Grape Ape was probably worse though when you think of the relative effort that went into them maybe it's a draw. Hey it's none of my beeswax really we're all just trying to have a good time.

The Smells Continue

You thought I was joking about Vic Norman's extraordinary sense of smell. Well, think again! He can even tell whose nightclub he's in by smelling it. "'Who owns it?' Vic sniffed the air. 'Frankie Powell?'" When this is confirmed, Vic continues: "I been in so many of these joints, I can smell the ownership. These retired racketeers keep changing the names, but they can't change the smell." Most of the rest of the book is various characters telling Vic Norman how amazing and incredible he is.

Thanks, "Internet"

For no good reason I mentioned Robert Mitchum and the lead actor from CRY OF THE WEREWOLF in the same "post." Now it turns out - according to wikipedia, anyway - that they are linked! Thank you for giving me something to do with my life, "internet." I was looking up the actor (Stephen Crane [!]) from CRY OF THE WEREWOLF because his terrible acting made me curious. His mouth would fall open at peculiar times. Turns out his full name was Joseph Stephen Crane, and he was engaged to the woman who was picked up along with Mitchum for smoking dope that time (here is a photo of them going to jail). Crane ended the engagement. Before that, Mr. Crane was married to Lana Turner. How did THAT happen? When I was checking Lana Turner's wikipedia page to find out how that happened, I discovered that Lana Turner was once married to a "nightclub hypnotist" who went by the name Dr. Dante. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THAT BEFORE? "Internet," you have given me much to ponder. Crane's daughter was the one who stabbed Joey Stompanato. Crane quit acting because he wasn't good at it and opened a Polynesian restaurant instead.

Frankie's Broken Heart

Okay, so Hogan was right, THE JOKER IS WILD was not a "good" movie. I watched it thanks to her "instant viewing" tip. I will say one thing about it: Sinatra uses a cigarette holder in at least four scenes! Remember when we used to count every man we saw using a cigarette holder? Those were the days! I don't know what Kelly Hogan has against Sinatra, though. He was pretty good in it! Like, there was one scene when he's doing his nightclub act and making a lot of "drunk" jokes and everybody's laughing - but his friends aren't laughing! They know that his heart is breaking! Then he looks up and sees his "one true love" with this other dude she married, and he asks the piano player (Eddie Albert) to start playing their special song, which he hasn't sung in so very long on account of his broken heart. And he sings it and everyone's heart starts breaking! Anyway, that was a good scene, and old Frankie was good in it if you ask me, but nobody's asking me.

Elke Sommer Speaks Five Languages

Remember our "post" the other day about Shields and Yarnell? What? You don't? What's wrong with you? I was going to tell you what Shields has been up to lately. This comes to me courtesy of Phil Oppenheim: it's a "link" to Shields's online shop where he sells his artwork, for example, a sculpture of a couple of raccoons on a motorcycle (pictured). Phil is also kind enough to say that I "made [his] day" with my recent Elke Sommer ruminations. He volunteers to "do the same" for me with a clip of Ms. Sommer bantering with Jack Benny (below). I know! You have no idea who Jack Benny is, unless you are friend of the "blog" "D." from Atlanta, who is the world's last known seriously hardcore Jack Benny fan. But chances are you are not him! Chances are you are a youthful "on the go" type person who can't be bothered to look up Jack Benny on wikipedia. In that case, I will describe the clip for you so you don't have to watch it. We find out that Elke Sommer speaks five languages (which is true) and then Jack Benny makes a joke about how nobody cares because she's so pretty. Then Elke Sommer sings a song from her hot new record album on the MGM label. I think it's called "He's a Clown." There's a sort of production number in a Spanish setting, maybe a nightclub. The background dancers are dressed as waiters and at one point they surprise everyone by whipping the tablecloths off all the little tables but leaving the dinnerware on top undisturbed, as in the classic magician stunt. Then they put the tablecloths over their faces Dracula style. They also end up twirling and whirling the tablecloths a lot. At the end they surround Ms. Sommer and everyone shouts "Olé!" There, now you don't have to watch this:

I Am Not a Naturalist

After the reading last night, I went over to City Grocery Bar to meet up with John Currence and Joe York. Several other people who were at the reading ended up there as well, including Bill Boyle (whom you may remember as the man who once attended a lecture about frogs) and his wife (whose name I won't give because I don't have permission) who works for the Audubon Society, which may explain the lecture about frogs. And SHE told me that crows understand the meaning and purpose of traffic lights! More evidence that we need to be worried about what the crows are planning. She also told me that chimney swifts - even ones who are not related - will rush into a burning tree to save baby chimney swifts. The nature stories were just beginning! And some of them would happen to me in person, yes, that very night. It was just a little after eight when I got a phone call at the bar from Theresa. She advised me to use the front door when I got home because there was a possum on the back porch and it wouldn't leave. It had been there for an hour, she said. She had intervened in a developing altercation between the possum and a neighborhood cat (shades of the cat who entered the groundhog's lair!), which had consisted, before Theresa stepped in to save the day, of some mild hissing and wary curiosity about one another - the curiosity being mostly on the part of the cat, verifying the old legend. I got home at about 11 (time flies!) and assumed that the coast was clear by then, so I came around the back as usual. There was the possum, on the card table on the back porch, lying on a tote bag filled with tubes of acrylic paint, looking mainly indifferent yet full of assumptions. Was it "playing possum" (pretending to be dead) as possums are reputed to do? It wasn't moving much, that's all I can tell you. I tried reasoning with it ("I already tried that," Theresa explained). I tried scaring it away with noisemaking that annoyed Theresa more than the possum. I shook the table (long distance, via broom handle). I threw a shoe at it (as Theresa had done earlier in the evening). Maybe it WAS playing possum. I walked off the porch and confronted it from the other side of the screen, which it was facing, by rattling a large bush. Oh, the possum hated that! Yes, my rattling of the bush finally got a rise out of it and caused another round of mild hissing. And the possum hissed too. Ha ha! No, really it was just the possum hissing. We stared at each other a long time through the screen and the bush and I started to like the possum. I learned some things about possums. 1) They are stubborn and patient. 2) When they yawn, their mouths open REALLY WIDE, wider even than you might expect. 3) Their paws are freaky. 4) They have (this one did, anyway; I am not a naturalist!) really long fangs that show even when their mouths are closed. I didn't expect that, based on my lifelong reading of Walt Kelly's POGO (pictured), of which comic strip Caroline Young has given me a number of vintage promotional figurines. Finally we just watched the possum through the window on the back door. It didn't do much, though at one point it sniffed the air vigorously. "It senses something," I observed wisely. And then A RACCOON WADDLED ONTO THE PORCH! DOES THIS KIND OF STUFF GO ON EVERY NIGHT AND WE JUST DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT? IS OUR BACK PORCH SOME KIND OF NIGHTCLUB FOR WILD ANIMALS? The raccoon (perhaps tempted because we had propped open the porch door so the possum could escape) didn't find anything interesting about our porch, not even the possum, so it turned around and waddled back down the steps. A little after midnight, I decided to check on the possum again and witnessed it lowering itself very slowly and eerily off the table, using its tail, it seemed to me, in the prehensile manner for which it is so justly famous. Then it left the porch. In other nature news, McNeil just called as I was typing this to tell me about developments with the large hadron collider which interests him so, you know, the machine that is going to end the world, and yes, this is a nature story, because McNeil said a bird dropped a bread crumb on the large hadron collider and broke it! I am not kidding! That's the way McNeil described the story on cnn.com, which I have not yet read. I like McNeil's version the best anyway. A BIRD DROPPED A BREAD CRUMB ON THE COLLIDER AND BROKE IT! Sounds like a fairy tale. And the bird dropped the crumb, claims McNeil, in the ONLY SPOT WHERE A BREAD CRUMB COULD POSSIBLY BREAK THE COLLIDER! According to the story, says McNeil, some scientists believe that the collider IS BEING SABOTAGED FROM THE FUTURE! Maybe the crows are doing it! The bird and the bread crumb tipped me off. McNeil says it is a "great story" with "a lot of weird stuff in it."

Furniture and Clothes

Mr. Ward alerts us to an interview with Jerry Lewis in Entertainment Weekly. Here's his office: "Everything is hermetically clean, superstitiously orderly, and most important, red: the carpet, his old-school IBM Selectric typewriter, the telephone, even the bowl of hard candy on the coffee table." Here's Jerry: "He wears a pair of black velvet slippers with gold filigree." I think this backs up every laudatory thing we have said in the past about Jerry's furniture and clothes. (Pictured, from THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, the infamous Purple Pit.)